NEW YORK — After a banner year in 2001, a sagging city economy and the aftermath of Sept. 11 have pushed overall ridership on the Long Island Rail Road down 2.6 percent so far this year, railroad officials said at an MTA meeting yesterday.
According to Newsday, the railroad is seeing 5.8 percent fewer commuters on rush-hour trains to Manhattan and Brooklyn five days a week. But 3.4 percent more riders are taking the train at non-traditional times, railroad officials said.
“We’ve been seeing travel habits change for several years now,” LIRR spokesman Brian Dolan said. “Meaning that people are not working that traditional five-day week in Manhattan or Brooklyn.
“The majority still are. But we are seeing … our customers working out of their homes, working out of Long Island offices and visiting clients in Manhattan or they are consultants working in field offices on Long Island and visiting field sites in the city.”
The LIRR first started to notice a decline in commuters almost immediately after Sept. 11. Before the attack on the World Trade Center, rush-hour ridership was up 1.1 percent, but from September to December, those numbers decreased 3 percent and the trend continued this year, Dolan said. About 35 percent of Long Island commuters work in the finance, insurance and real estate industries, a job sector that has seen a 6.4 percent decline in employment this year, he said.
“With the economy and Sept. 11, we knew we were not going to exceed 2001 and 2000,” LIRR president Kenneth Bauer said, adding that the railroad had budgeted for the losses this year and is expected to meet its revenue goals.
So far this year, 41.4 million people have taken the train. In 2001, annual ridership reached 85.6 million, the best year since 1949, when more than 91 million people rode the train.
This year, the LIRR saw a jump in non-traditional ridership when the railroad carried 168,000 people to the U.S. Open in Bethpage. LIRR officials also said the number of riders taking the train to leisure activities, such as the beach and the theater, is increasing.
Rick Chan, a computer technician from Manhattan, also travels off-peak. He waited in the middle-of-the afternoon heat on the Farmingdale platform as most commuters still were at their desks in Manhattan.
“You can relax, read a book or fall asleep,” Chan, 24, said of his ride. “On peak, there’s very limited seating because there’s so many people.”
Mitchell Pally, vice president for government affairs for the Long Island Association, the region’s largest business group, said the increase in non-traditional riders actually can be good for the railroad.
“It expands the market of the railroad to non-peak usage, which is very important in the perspective of regional transportation, of getting people to take mass transit when they don’t have to,” he said.