Long Island Rail Road - a painful experience

I love traveling into New York City to meet friends, go out for dinner, visit museums and especially to go to concerts or to see New York theater.  It is insane to drive into Manhattan what with the cost of gasoline, tunnel and bridge tolls and the exorbitant parking fees.  The train and Subway is the only sane solution.
But I am sick of the Long Island Railroad.  The rail cars are filthy.  Sticky floors, littered and sticky seats.  Are the cars ever cleaned?  If there are rules about bringing drink (alcoholic or non-alcoholic) or food onboard the train those rules are not enforced.  If there are rules about litter and noise - those rules are also not enforced.  The 1-hour 15-minute commute from Ronkonkoma to Pennsylvania Station is a horrible experience.  The view from the dirty railcar windows is one of 50 miles of litter strewn along the tracks.  Why don't they clean their own tracks?  The Ronkonkoma line, now 177 years old, still has only a single track in place at most locations between stations.  This means that eastbound trains too often must delay departure from stations until a westbound train passes by first.  One Hundred and Seventy-seven years and still they have not completed double rail tracks for the complete extent of this 50-mile trip.  What will it take?  Having experienced commuter rail lines in San Francisco, Dallas, Washington and Europe I know what these commuter rail lines could be like.  Why are Long Island commuters such pigs?  And why is the LIRR administration so disinterested in providing a clean and reliable product? 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On The Twentieth Century 2015

Image
Last night I saw a revival of "On The Twentieth Century" at the beautiful American Airlines Theatre. "20th Century" was the first Broadway musical that I saw on Broadway, 37 years ago.  I had forgotten how very funny this musical was. Kristen Chenowith was born to play Lily Garland/Mildred Plotka. In this role she fully demonstrates her magnificent voice and great comedic skills.  Peter Gallagher was a great hammy and handsome Oscar Jaffe. I've always thought the Oscar Jaffe character was based on the late impresario David Merrick.  Andy Karl was very good as the egocentric Bruce Grannit although not as agile as Kevin Kline was 37 years ago in pratfalls and comic timing.  Nevertheless he was quite funny.  Mary Louise Wilson was a scene stealer as the nutty Letitia Primrose and much better and funnier than the original Imogene Coca.  The sets were again a star of this show - as they were in 1978. Almost all the action takes place on a train traveling ...
Read more

History always repeats itself

Image
When I moved into my old Long Island township 30 years ago garbage collection was privately run. You had to contract with a private company to pick up your garbage.   The township did not take care of it.  I had not moved into my new house 2 days when I got a pounding on my front door from some Italian goombah trying to shake me down for $100 to get my garbage collected.  Either that or I would have to drive 12 miles every week to personally dispose of my trash in the town;s waste management dump.  I refused to pay this guy unless he provided me with a contract and an invoice.  That came in the mail 2 days later.  And then, after signing their contract, they started picking up my trash.  No more than 3 or 4 months later there was a shootout in the street about 6 blocks north of my house.  Three trash collectors were gunned down in the early morning while picking up trash.  One of them was killed. 1987. It was the top story in Newsda...
Read more

Grumpy Old Man? Not me!

I would never consider myself to be a “grumpy old man”.   I believe I try to be pleasant to everyone (except to mean or rude people.   I have no tolerance for them).   But then again, I am from New York.   Now New Yorkers are actually friendly people.   Hollywood might have convinced the rest of the country that we are rude and competitive and would knock our own mother down if she got in our way.   But that is just not true at all.   Still, I realize that the adjustments I need to make for the overly friendly culture of Florida is happening too sloooowly for me. I will give you a typical example:   When I lived on Long Island, if I needed to pick up a quart of milk at the grocery store, I was able to drive there, park, enter the store, find the dairy section, grab a quart container of milk, get in line at the check-out counter, pay for it when the cashier announced the total I owed, slip the quart into my grocery bag and leave the store – wi...
Read more