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| How the LIRR and Nassau PD Conspire Against Commuters (550330) | |||
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How the LIRR and Nassau PD Conspire Against Commuters |
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Posted by Mitch45 on Wed Jan 9 11:24:50 2008 I've ranted about this before, but what happened today at Cedarhurst was an egregious example of how the LIRR screws commuters.Here's the background. Cedarhurst station runs at grade between Cedarhurst Avenue at the east end and Washington Avenue at the west end. Both are fairly well-used 2-way streets and there is a bus line running on Cedarhurst Avenue. Both street crossings have the obligatory gates and bells. The trains make their usual honks. The station is located in the southern part of Cedarhurst, so all commuters who live north of the station (like me) have to cross the tracks to get to the westbound platform. Due to a long-time scheduling quirk, the eastbound (Far Rockaway) train arrives at Cedarhurst at 9:01 a.m. and the westbound (Flatbush Avenue) train arrives at Cedarhurst at 9:03 a.m. Approximately 60 seconds before the westbound train, the gates go down at both Cedarhurst Avenue and Washington Avenue. Now, the gates remain down until the train pulls into Cedarhurst, stops, discharges/accepts passengers and then pulls out. The typical Far Rockaway line train is 6 cars, so the front of the train is approximately 200 feet from the gates at Washington Avenue. The gates don't go back up until approximately 10-15 seconds after the train has fully pulled out of the station. Here's the problem. If the eastbound train is even 30 seconds late (quite common on the Far Rockaway line, especially in bad weather), the gates will stay down for the eastbound train while the WESTBOUND train pulls into the station. Since the gates are down and the eastbound train will shortly be moving, people who were stuck at the gates waiting to cross to the westbound side will miss their train unless they duck under the gates and scamper across the tracks before the westbound train gets near the station. They do this because the next westbound train, which runs local all the way to Flatbush Avenue, doesn't arrive until 9:45. Obviously, this is a very dangerous thing to do and no one likes doing it. Nassau County has taken to posting a squad car at the Washington Avenue gates to ticket anyone who crosses once the gates are down. That's precisely what happened today. The eastbound train was late in arriving and the gates went down, trapping westbound commuters on the wrong side of the station. The westbound train then arrived right under the noses of the westbound commuters, who couldn't cross because of the presence of the police and/or fear of getting run down by the eastbound train. They all presumably had to wait another 40+ minutes for a train. Who knows what that did to their appointments and job situations. I think its very irresponsible for the LIRR to schedule trains in this fashion, since there is no overpass at Cedarhurst for people to use for just this situation. Sooner or later someone is going to get killed while crossing under the gates. The LIRR should either build an overpass at Cedarhurst (and perhaps all at-grade stations) or adjust the schedule to ensure that the gates won't interfere with people's commuting needs. |
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