(Newsday posted the following article by Samuel Bruchey on its website on April 19.)
NEW YORK — The Long Island Rail Road has begun its first commuter-based survey in nearly a decade in an effort to better understand its riders’ transportation needs.
Called the Origin and Destination Study, the survey will enable the railroad to gauge shifts in travel behavior and plan for necessary service modifications, railroad officials said. The last survey was conducted in 1998.
“I think it’s essential,” said Metropolitan Transportation Authority board member Mitchell Pally. “In the past 10 years, where people live and where people work on Long Island has changed.”
One change, Pally said, is that a smaller percentage of Long Islanders commute to New York City for work. This helps explain why LIRR ridership has leveled off over the past five years while bus ridership in Nassau and Suffolk has skyrocketed. Both counties have seen growth in bus ridership every year for the past five years, according to the MTA.
In fact, neither of Long Island’s two largest industrial areas, Hauppauge and Melville, which grew over the past two decades, has its own stop on the LIRR. Nor is there an active LIRR line to service the planned Nassau Hub in Uniondale, Pally said.
“The problem is that the railroad was created way before modern Long Island was created,” Pally said.
Although it is unlikely new tracks will be laid or stations built, information from the survey can be used to increase off-peak train service or improve transportation options to and from existing stations through expanded bus service or larger and additional parking space for LIRR riders, according to MTA officials.
They began collecting information on Long Island and in Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan for the survey this month and will continue through June, LIRR president James Dermody said, explaining that the undertaking will cost the LIRR half a million dollars to complete.
Passengers will be counted on every platform, Dermody said. In areas where ridership is scarce, officials will count the number of passengers on trains, Dermody said. In addition, a random sampling of the railroad’s 262,000 daily passengers will receive questionnaires in the mail along with prepaid return postage. A report on the survey findings will be given by the end of the year.