At least 20 percent of former Long Island Railroad commuter-train riders are “lost forever,” predicts Gerald Bringmann, the chair of the transit agency’s commuter council. This raises the question of whether capital improvements to the railroad that “sounded great” before the pandemic make any sense today.
“The longer people work remotely, the more businesses are finding, ‘You know what? This is working,'” says MTA board member Kevin Law, who is also the president of a Long Island business group. People like working at home, Law added, and don’t like spending hours trying to get to work on someone else’s timetable.
The decline in commuter-train ridership had “been a trend, but COVID-19 accelerated it at a massive rate,” notes the chief editor of Railway Age magazine. Commuter railroads “are going to have to adjust, if they can, to these new commuting patterns.” Continue reading
