Okay, if You Had to Guess: Which Comes First: These Long-Awaited New Cars, or the Just-Proposed Service Cuts?
Reduce “Car Consists and Increase Train Occupancy”: the MTA will reduce the length of trains “wherever possible” up to the current Loading Standard of 95% of available seats. (forget about the empty middle seat in the three-across, folks) The MTA estimates 12,000 daily customers would be affected by this, as a “number of trains” will have their occupancy increased–bringing them to 93%-95% capacity. This proposal would be implemented in June, and save $2.8 million.
Reduced Service for New Haven Line: 2 weekday PM peak trains combined, and one weekday evening (off-peak) train discontinued. The trains affected include the 1:34 PM express to New Haven and 2:33 PM express from New Haven, and one late night train seven days a week: the 1:15 AM to Stamford. The proposal would affect about 605 platformers every weekday and 265 on the weekend, and save about $1.6 million.
New Haven Line service would shake out this way: with cut train service, 500 commuters would lose half-hourly service between 1 and 3 PM, and 105 commuters (weekdays) and 265 (weekend) would go from 45 minute frequency to 60+ minutes frequency.
Thoughts?
There will be a series of town hall meetings starting in March. Read the full proposal here.
Here’s the MTA Prez on the proposals:
