Limited Long Island Railroad Service Restored; Delays Expected For Morning Commute

John Mancini NY1 08/23/2010 15:35

Long Island Railroad officials say 75 percent of its service will be restored by the morning commute following a fire Monday inside a switching tower in Jamaica, Queens which is causing significant delays for thousands of commuters.

Long Island Rail Road officials say they are not sure what caused Monday's fire at a key signal tower in Jamaica. But commuters certainly know how bad things were after all service was knocked out on 10 of the railroad's lines for much of the day.

"I've been waiting at Penn Station for two hours. And I'm waiting here for an additional hour. We're looking for some point of organization. It's a test of our patience. But I'm hanging in there," said one LIRR passenger.

The railroad was able to restore about 60 percent of its normal service for the evening rush. Officials even scrambled to create a security plan to handle the influx at Penn Station.

"We will have MTA police, Amtrak police, and New York City police. We will be ensuring that Penn is under crowd control. We don't want all of the customers trying to get to Penn and at once thinking 'Oh, I better get the first train.' They don't need to do that. They need to be patient, take their time, use the full rush hour, those four hours to select a train to get home," said Long Island Railroad President Helena Williams.

The ride home for more than 100,000 commuters was disrupted by the fire, which broke out just before 11 a.m. after torrential rains poured down onto the morning commute. It knocked out a track switching system designed in 1913.