Gina Sillitti (D-Port Washington), who pushed the LIRR for months to reconsider the service plan. I feel like we all saw this coming,” said Assemb. “From Day One we knew, as I said, that there was going to be a learning curve, and we know there’s a long way to go to make sure that our customers feel truly comfortable with the new timetables and the new operation,' Lieber said.Īlthough officials with the MTA and LIRR have suggested that the issues that have arisen could not have been foreseen, many riders, advocates, experts and elected officials predicted them, but said they were ignored. Metropolitan Transportation Authority chairman and CEO Janno Lieber on Thursday acknowledged that “absolutely, there are further adjustments and improvements to be made” on the schedules for Grand Central Madison - the byproduct of the MTA’s $11.1 billion East Side Access megaproject, which took more than two decades to plan and build. Responding to assertions that the railroad did not consider public input - including from several hundred speakers at three hearings in July and August - LIRR interim president Catherine Rinaldi noted that “the bulk” of the comments came from Port Washington riders upset over the elimination of express trains to and from Penn Station, and that the railroad did respond by restoring some of them. 27, chaos ensued, as tens of thousands of riders complained of longer commutes, dangerous crowding, and inconvenient transfers.

Those were a few of the hundreds of comments made at a series of public hearings held over the summer by the Long Island Rail Road to gather input for a proposed overhaul of its service plan to accommodate the opening of its new Manhattan terminal, Grand Central Madison.ĭespite the warnings, the railroad made few changes to its draft timetables. And when the railroad pulled the trigger on the problematic plan Feb. “Please get busy now and make this work.” “Send it back for further study,” Horn said of the LIRR’s draft schedules. By clicking Sign up, you agree to our privacy policy.

Mta lirr schedule