Late January Storm 2015 Shutdown...

Time is money, the more time they add, the more people complain, AND there is still a good chance it doesn't solve anything. Why? Too many logistics. If a train leaves a terminal 10 minutes earlier, and it already has a tight equipment turn, then that train has to to be moved back 10 minutes, and if that train is in between an Amtrak and NJT slot, then they have to adjust that.

Or how about a less controllable thing, like Dashing Dan trying to flag a conductor down at the trains "scheduled" departure time, and that conductor chooses to hold the doors for Dan. That's easily 30 seconds extra time, if that happens in Jamaica, during rush hour, with 10 trains stacked up right behind it. Can it be solved? Yeah, by shutting the doors. A lot of the times they will, but a lot of times they choose to help out Dan and everyone else pays for it in some way.

You can get into your number games, show me this, show me that, but frankly as currently built there is not much more of a window for improvement with what they have now. The speed restrictions imposed due to the MN crash in 2013 have slowed places such as east of Divide to nearly a snails pace, and that is not likely to be lifted because it's a "safety enhancement".

Let's see what happens with this evenings commute.
Last nights was almost as bad as Mondays ... Except there was no advance notice of any delays or cancellations

Everyone:

As we all on Long Island know this has been a rough couple of weeks weatherwise since this significant storm
produced between one and two feet of snow on a good portion of the Island especially in eastern Suffolk County...

The LIRR has had its share of weather related problems with the recent storm event of February 2nd bringing even
more winter weather troubles for the region and at this posting the next two weeks may be just as tough with a
call for more snow and cold...As most of us know February can be the toughest winter month overall and this one
definitely looks that way if the meteorologists are correct...

This thread needs a better title then just "Shutdown..." to reflect what this topic is actually about...

MACTRAXX

If you want to play by the numbers, how many times have you have had to wait at your doctor's office for more than 5 minutes after your scheduled appointment time? Ninety percent of my appointments entail a wait of at least 30 minutes and I've had to wait for from an hour to up to three hours for quite a few appointments (and after waiting for some of those appointments I was told I would have go home and reschedule.)

SwingMan wrote:Time is money, the more time they add, the more people complain, AND there is still a good chance it doesn't solve anything. Why? Too many logistics. If a train leaves a terminal 10 minutes earlier, and it already has a tight equipment turn, then that train has to to be moved back 10 minutes, and if that train is in between an Amtrak and NJT slot, then they have to adjust that.

I think people would prefer a slightly longer travel time than a shorter travel time on a train that never arrives on-time. They adjust train schedules all the time to work around trackwork, etc., but somehow it's impossible to adjust the schedules of chronically late trains so they're not always late. I find it hard to believe that it would be impossible to make even minor time changes to intermediate running times for any train on the system.

SwingMan wrote:Or how about a less controllable thing, like Dashing Dan trying to flag a conductor down at the trains "scheduled" departure time, and that conductor chooses to hold the doors for Dan. That's easily 30 seconds extra time, if that happens in Jamaica, during rush hour, with 10 trains stacked up right behind it. Can it be solved? Yeah, by shutting the doors. A lot of the times they will, but a lot of times they choose to help out Dan and everyone else pays for it in some way.

So, explain this to me. How come in 2014 there were 26 perfect rush hours, where every single train arrived on-time? Did the LIRR send out an order on those days instructing all conductors to not wait for any passengers? We're not talking about 30 second delays, we're talking about delays on the order of 6 to 10 to 15 or more minutes. An extra 30 seconds on its own shouldn't make 10 trains 6 or more minutes late. If that's the case, then then either the trains aren't being dispatched properly, or the schedules are too tight, and that should be fixed with running time adjustments.

SwingMan wrote:You can get into your number games, show me this, show me that, but frankly as currently built there is not much more of a window for improvement with what they have now. The speed restrictions imposed due to the MN crash in 2013 have slowed places such as east of Divide to nearly a snails pace, and that is not likely to be lifted because it's a "safety enhancement".

Here's a novel idea, if the speed restrictions mean that it will take a train an additional two minutes, then add two minutes to the running time. Metro-North has figured out how to do this, and their on-time performance has improved tremendously over the course of the past twelve months.

Let's forget about the 'unpreventable' delays for a minute (there's a way to make those have less of an impact, but that's a topic for another day), and let's just consider the delays that could be considered preventable first (i.e. delays that are either completely within, or should be within, the LIRR's control). Capital program delays, engineering delays, MofE delays, Transportation delays, MofW delays. At least 35% of all of the LIRR's delays fall into one of those preventable categories. How about they fix those? Those have nothing to do with Dashing Dan.

Improvement is 100% possible. It's only when the LIRR becomes complacent and thinks that there's nothing that can be done do things become an issue. The commuters think that improvements are possible; other railroads have demonstrated that improvement is possible; the statistics show that improvement is possible. There's no law of physics that states that no more than 92% of the LIRR's trains can operate on-time.

Like I said above, we're talking about treating a sinus infection here, not curing cancer. There's easier and harder ways to go about treating a sinus infection, and often times your first attempt may not work, so you might have to try once or twice or three times to find the solution that works, but treating it is not impossible (it may require drastic action if easier methods prove unsuccessful (i.e. surgery; cancelling the train), but the amount of cases where it is "impossible" is very small). And like a sinus infection, people can muddle through with reliability problems, but if left ignored or improperly treated for too long, the issue could become a lot more severe.

Morisot wrote:If you want to play by the numbers, how many times have you have had to wait at your doctor's office for more than 5 minutes after your scheduled appointment time? Ninety percent of my appointments entail a wait of at least 30 minutes and I've had to wait for from an hour to up to three hours for quite a few appointments (and after waiting for some of those appointments I was told I would have go home and reschedule.)

I wouldn't say that that is a valid comparison. With office wait times you are so much more dependent on the timeliness of other people than you are on a railroad--there are many more variables. If a patient shows up a half hour late to their appointment they now have to get inserted into the mix somehow and that disrupts the patients who arrived on-time (for a point of reference, the rough percentage of patients that I've seen arrive within six minutes of their scheduled appointment time is only about 74%). The same can't be said for railroads. If you show up to the station a half-hour late for your morning train, that train is long gone. We don't hear about trains sitting for a half hour at Smithtown because Mr. Doe's alarm didn't go off this morning. Similarly, emergencies can arise that require patients to be seen either sooner or immediately. Last time I checked, there was no way for me to call the LIRR and request a train to my station at that moment because I'm in a hurry, and there's no way I could get them to make other trains wait at stations or on sidings so my train can get through right away. I would have to wait for the next scheduled departure.

And for your doctor, no two appointments are ever the same (you can schedule off averages, but you never know what you might find or what you might be asked). There's always differences from patient to patient. The same can also not be said for railroads. The route from Babylon to New York Penn's been pretty similar for the last couple of decades, last time I checked.

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Storm related delays are understandable
With the investment in new trains (M7's ?), delays due to other factors such as cold, should be rare

In any event, all delays should be communicated, and not leave people scratching their head when their train is cancelled

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@LIRR 42 - In all seriousness, I think with your passionate posts and abundance of ideas perhaps you could give Mark Epstein a run for his money as LIRR Commuter Council head. Wouldn't be a bad side gig in addition to your career in medicine. Play some local politics and maybe get some of your ideas in motion rather than entertaining the same peons on Railroad.net.