NEW YORK – The Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) train service has released proposed new schedules for train service after the Grand Central Madison project finally opens later this year.
Long Island Rail Road will increase weekday service by 41% when the former East Side Access project, now known as Grand Central Madison, opens later this year, the MTA said Thursday.
The proposed new subway schedules include 274 extra weekday trains, including 44 extra morning trains to Manhattan.
Located hundreds of feet below Grand Central, the East Side Access Terminal aims to bring much more traffic into Manhattan from Long Island at peak times, with the added benefit of reducing congestion at Penn Station at peak times. It is scheduled to open sometime in late 2022, 17 years after voters approved a bond issue to finance the project.
The construction is one of the largest transportation infrastructure projects completed in the United States in recent years, according to the MTA. It is the largest new rail terminal built in the United States since the 1950s and the first LIRR expansion in more than 100 years.
It will provide new direct LIRR service to a new concourse below Grand Central Terminal on Manhattan’s East Side. The project encompasses work at multiple locations in Manhattan and Queens, and includes more than eight miles of tunnels. It will bring all 11 branches of the LIRR through a new East River tunnel with a final destination under the current Grand Central.
Click here to see the LIRR’s new preliminary schedules.
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