Tommy Meehan wrote:At present, of forty-nine westbound morning Peak trains from the Hempstead, Long Beach and Far Rockaway branches, twenty-nine of them go to Penn Station and twenty to Brooklyn. Are trains from those branches routed to Brooklyn because of their ridership -- a high percentage going to Brooklyn? -- or are those trains selected for other reasons? In other words, what percentage of the peak hour riders from those three branches ride to Atlantic Terminal rather than NYP? Obviously the LIRR has the figures. My guess is it's not too high.It's difficult to quantify how many people ride through on those trains to Brooklyn since the railroad does not make such information available, but from what I've observed, probably about 60-70% of the people you see in the West of Jamaica column on Brooklyn trains likely ride through Jamaica, with another 15-25% or so transferring to or from other trains, and another 5%-10% originating at Jamaica.
According to this LIRR 2012 ridership report, total ridership on the three branches was about 32,300 riders per weekday. Ninety percent of LIRR weekday rush hour riders traveling to or from a western terminal are traveling to or from Penn Station and ten percent for Atlantic Terminal. I wonder if that percentage holds true for rush hour riders on the Hempstead, Long Beach and Far Rockaway Branches? If so it would seem maintaining through service to Brooklyn for those three lines is not critical.
It seems to me when I have ridden PM Peak trains from Atlantic Terminal they were not especially crowded. They ranged from almost empty to comfortably full. They really filled up at Jamaica.
But something that is not reflected in the ridership books (and likely among the biggest flaws of considering that when planning) is intermediate riders. The train counts are taken immediately before and after Jamaica, so if someone gets on an eastbound train at Mineola and rides to Brentwood, they're not counted. The Brooklyn trains do a very good job of shouldering those intermediate travelers, since the trains to and from New York are considerably crowded. For example, take train 2096, which makes every local stop from New Hyde Park to Ronkonkoma. If that train originated out of New York at the hour it does, it would likely be tremendously overcrowded since pretty much everyone who lives along the Main Line would be served by it. Having it come from Brooklyn does an excellent job of discouraging hoards of people from New York changing at Jamaica and mobbing the train, allowing it to make all local stops and serve those intra-island commuters. Similar things happen with the South Shore Brooklyn trains in the evening as well.
Getting rid of the opportunity for the LIRR to run trains like that further jeopardizes that intra-island market, since local trains that come out of New York would likely be too crowded to be of any use.
