The mayor of Farmingdale knows what happens whenever there is an incident on the 18-mile, one-track railroad stretch between his village and the terminus at Ronkonkoma.
And disruptions happen with regularity on that Long Island Rail Road branch.
“Right now, we are the last station with two tracks,” said Mayor Ralph Ekstrand. “If, for whatever reason, a train is stopped on the five stations east of Farmingdale, they have to use [up to] five buses to ferry train passengers, either westbound toward Farmingdale or eastbound [toward Ronkonkoma].”
And those buses, said Ekstrand, who lives near the station, take up valuable parking spaces. In addition, they spew diesel fumes as they idle. And he and his neighbors have been subjected to them often enough.
Any incident that aborts a scheduled train, Ekstrand went on, “is an inconvenience” for his town.That is why Ekstrand is happy that Governor Andrew Cuomo traveled to Long Island recently to tout the completion of the 3.5-mile Phase I of the new track between Central Islip and Ronkonkoma for the LIRR Double Track project. Phase II has begun and will complete the second track all the way to Farmingdale and upgrade the signaling system as well.
“It’s a great thing for our residents,” Ekstrand said simply.
With his village becoming a leader of “transit-oriented housing,” the extra tracks will mean that off-peak service to the branch will increase from one train every hour to one every 30 minutes in both directions. The area around the Farmingdale train station has seen an explosion in new multi-resident housing over the past decade.
A press release from the governor’s office noted that the Ronkonkoma branch has a daily ridership of about 48,000 and because of the lone track, the LIRR operates a limited number of trains and “lacks operational flexibility in the event of a disruption. If one train becomes disabled, all other trains—coming from both east and west—have no way around the problem.”
Cuomo was joined by MTA Chairman and CEO Thomas Prendergast to tour the double track site in Central Islip. They watched as the new track construction machine laid down the final stretch of Phase I rails. The machine reportedly lays track more than 10 times faster than the MTA has ever done before. The savings in construction costs are expected to reach $2.4 million.
“We were just out looking at this really phenomenal piece of equipment, this track-laying machine that comes and puts down the ties and then puts the rail on top of the ties and clamps it all together, and it’s quite an impressive machine and it just shows you how far the technology has come in this entire area, and it was really fascinating to see,” Cuomo said in his remarks.
“New York state is moving aggressively to bring our mass transit systems into the 21st century—not just to meet the needs of our current population, but to foster smart, sensible and sustainable growth,” Cuomo added. “Adding a second track to the Ronkonkoma Branch is a project that has been talked about for decades, but was never set into motion. By pairing innovative equipment with our strategy of design-build construction, we are accelerating the pace of these types of critical infrastructure projects to improve Long Island commutes and strengthen the region’s economy. Put simply, we are building today for a better tomorrow.”
The press release noted that the $387.2 million funding for the project “has been secured in its entirety by Governor Cuomo and the State Legislature.”
