LIRR updated schedules, trains take effect
the MTA hoping to fix some of the issues it saw after the grand opening of the Grand Central Medicine Terminal. Well officials are hoping some changes beginning today alleviate the crowd of trains and sprints to make tight transfers that many people faced. Robert Moses is at the LIRR station Jamaica Queens. Are things a little bit better this morning Robert? Things are looking better today Rosanne and Bianca good morning to both of you. One week ago you'll remember we were standing inside Grand Central Madison which opened to great fanfare. Shortly thereafter problems ensued and appeared very widely on social media so on Friday the LIRR announced some changes and today those changes are in effect. It's not the running of the bulls but rather the running of the riders.
From making mad dashes to connecting trains at Jamaica to standing in the bathroom the first week under the new LIRR schedules did not go so smoothly. Changes taking effect today at Governor Cappy Hockel's direction are intended to alleviate some of the headaches. The LIRR is lengthening 17 trains serving Penn Station adding cars to all trains that exceeded capacity last week. It is also increasing rush hour service between Jamaica and Atlantic terminal in Brooklyn. That means trains during the rush hours every 8 to 9 minutes versus around every 12 minutes. More capacity promised for tomorrow between the hubs will lessen wait times even more. Plus 30 more MTA employees have been deployed to Jamaica and 10 more to Grand Central Madison to help customers.
A platform controller at Jamaica will direct when Atlantic terminal bound trains depart in an attempt to maximize the number of riders who make the next train to leave. The full scale opening of the more than $11 billion Grand Central Madison one week ago meant some trains had to be shortened leading to overcrowding and the elimination of timed connections at Jamaica. The transferring goes from Railroad Platform 2 to 12 so I was worried I was going to miss the train. The LIRR heralded the long awaited opening of Grand Central Madison, the first LIRR expansion in more than a century as revolutionizing the commuting experience by shortening trips to the east side. And it did that for some but others suffered in cars packed like sardine cans or on platforms as connections pulled away. Time will tell if those scenes are repeated or avoided. And we're back live at Jamaica station and joining me now is the interim LIRR president Catherine Rinaldi.
Kathy thanks again for taking a few minutes to talk me today. First of all we discuss these changes. How are they going so far? So far so good this morning. I think the passenger flow is better. I think people are starting to understand the service. I think that the cars that we've added to some of the Penn trains have made a difference with respect to just people's comfort on their way into Penn. We have more frequency in the Atlantic shuttle, more predictability with the Atlantic shuttle so I think on the whole things are going better this morning than they had last week.
Absolutely. And one thing with that Atlantic shuttle that I found interesting is that the trains are being held a little bit longer just to maximize the number of people who make those connections. I mean we've tried to really improve communication between personnel that we have up here on the overpass and personnel who are down on the platform just so that there's a lot more fluidity and a lot less anxiety for our customers. So I think it's gone better this morning and I'm really grateful to Governor Huckle for her leadership. She's challenging us to do better. It's what our customers deserve. Critics say, hey you should have anticipated a lot of these issues.
What do you say to them and is that a fair criticism? Well I think some of the projections on ridership in terms of who is going to go to GCM, we're down pre-COVID and I think we're learning as we go. 30% of our customers in the morning, we're going to GCM last week, they're having a great experience. We need to focus on the rest of our customers to make sure that they have a great experience as well. So one train has been added here between here at Jamaica and Atlantic terminal this morning. An additional shuttle train will be added tomorrow. Can you discuss that? Yeah, I mean basically the purpose of that is to be able to increase the frequency of the shuttle service. So the shuttle service was last week about every 12 minutes.
It's going to come down considerably, averaging 7-8 minutes. I think that's going to be a big improvement for our Brooklyn customers. And as you said, having more personnel communicating better, people in charge of that platform operation just to make sure that we don't have the anxiety that we had last week for our Brooklyn customers. We've seen videos on social media of people sort of making a mad dash. I compared it this morning, the running of the bulls here at Jamaica. What are you doing to minimize that, try to lessen the amount of rushing people have to do here? Yeah, I think the predictability is really important and I think having the customer service personnel here to assist people who are adjusting to the new service is going to be really important. And they'll be here as long as it takes, right? I mean, we want this to be a positive for our customers.
Last week it was not and we are doing our best to make this a better experience for all our customers. Any advice to people who are a little bit leery about coming back to mass transit, especially in light of the issues we've seen this past week? I would say a couple things. To the extent that our customers haven't done it already, the MTA train time app is a great resource in terms of planning your travel, buying your tickets. There's a lot of information on there with respect to crowding of trains, all of that. So if you haven't downloaded that app, download that app, it's really, really helpful. The other thing too with respect to our customers who live out on Long Island, there are opportunities to transfer at stations other than Jamaica. So we've been trying to publicize that a bit more.
You'll have a better chance of getting a seat. So the extent to which you can transfer a little bit further east, that could improve your overall experience as well. So we're trying to publicize that more so that people understand that those opportunities exist as well. That's really good advice. Like Mini-Ola on the Ronconkama line, for instance. Oh, yeah. Other opportunities for transfers.
And we're trying to be much more proactive in terms of messaging those opportunities to our customers because I think that helps in Jamaica as well. Kathy Rinaldi, thank you so much. The interim president of the LIRR and the president of Metro North. Kathy takes the train all the time. And so she's a customer as well. Kathy, thank you very much. Rosanna and Bianca, I'll send it back to you.
All right. Again, the kinks out. We sure appreciate it. Robert, thanks so much.
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