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LIRR Service Alert

Posted by
on July 2nd, 2008 at 6:40 pm

Wednesday, July, 2, 2008 6:35 PM

Montauk Branch Customers:

LIRR service east of Sayville has been restored with 60 to 90 minute delays eastbound and up to 2 hour delays westbound because of an earlier disabled train west of Patchogue.

xoxo Transit Blogger

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2

LIRR Crew Foil A Rape In Progress

Posted by
on July 2nd, 2008 at 5:27 pm

The Long Island Rail Road has issued a press release praising a LIRR crew who with MTA Police foiled a rape in progress. Here is the release with all the details:

MTA Long Island Rail Road and MTA Police officials today commended the bravery of a LIRR train crew that came to the aid of a 28-year-old woman as she was apparently being sexually assaulted on the track bed just off the eastern end the Freeport train station.

Authorities said the crew’s response led to an immediate arrest by MTA Police of an Island Park man who was later charged with the assault on Tuesday afternoon.

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Tunnel Boring Machine Reaches Grand Central Terminal

Posted by
on July 2nd, 2008 at 5:17 pm

The MTA has issued a press release to highlight the first East Side Access tunnel boring machine reached Grand Central Terminal. Here is the press release:

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) today announced that after just eight months, the first of two 200-ton tunnel boring machines had completed its mile-long plus journey from the bedrock beneath the intersection of 63rd Street and Second Avenue to the terminus of what will become a new station and concourse underneath Grand Central Terminal. The second machine is scheduled to complete its parallel journey near the end of the summer.

“It is terrific that the progress on the East Side Access project is moving forward steadily,” said Elliot G. Sander, the Executive Director and CEO of the MTA. “We look forward to inaugurating Long Island Rail Road service at Grand Central Terminal – a dream many have shared for generations.”

Now that the machine has reached its destination, excavation will begin on what will become a cavern underneath Park Avenue between 49th and 51st Streets that will connect the newly built tunnel with parallel tunnels which will allow the future Long Island Rail Road flexibility in accessing all eight tracks in the new station under Grand Central. That work involves intermittent blasting and mechanical excavation that is scheduled to begin in mid-July and last for six to eight months.

MTA Capital Construction and the contractor working on the project, a joint venture of Dragados, S.A., and Judlau Contracting, have worked to minimize the size and impacts of blasts. One to two blasts per day will occur when blasting is underway, although the team does not expect that blasting will occur each day. Each blast will be imperceptible to most people in the Grand Central Terminal area. If felt, the noise and vibration may be similar to the muffled thud of a box of books dropped on the floor in another room.

The East Side Access project will provide Long Island Rail Road service to Grand Central Terminal for 160,000 customers a day.

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4

Man Stabbed 19 Times In Sayville

Posted by
on July 2nd, 2008 at 5:05 am

A 53 year old man was stabbed 19 times at the Long Island Rail Road’s (LIRR) Sayville station. Bill Mason of Newsday has the story:

A Sayville man was arrested and charged yesterday with the attempted murder of a 53-year-old man, stabbed 19 times Monday at the Sayville railroad station platform, police said.

The injured man remained hospitalized in critical condition, police said yesterday.

David W. Gorman, 22, of Willet Avenue, Sayville, was arrested near the Sayville station by Metropolitan Transportation Authority Police. He was to be arraigned today in First District Court in Central Islip.

MTA Det. Sgt. Peter Cummo said that after his arrest, Gorman led MTA detectives to a storm drain about a block away from the station, where he had disposed of the weapon used in the attack – a hunting-style knife with a blade of about four inches.

The knife attack, at about 3:45 a.m. Monday, was actually an outgrowth of a fistfight a few days earlier involving Gorman, the victim and the victim’s adult son, Cummo said.

“The victim actually called the suspect to apologize and asked the suspect to meet him at the train station to talk over their differences,” Cummo said. “It was not provoked. … From what we got, they met to talk. They were drinking, smoking. … Then somehow he [Gorman] became nervous, took out the knife and started to stab him.”

The 19 knife wounds were to the chest and back, and defensive wounds to the arms, Cummo said.

Gorman fled after the attack, and the victim, whose name was not released by police, made his way to a public telephone near the platform and called 911. He was taken to Brookhaven Memorial Hospital for surgery.

This story seems strange to me. Why meet up at the train station? What could have possibly been said or done that would lead an encounter to go from peaceful to an all out stabbing rampage? Hopefully these questions will get answered as I am quite curious.

xoxo Transit Blogger

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Design Changes For The World Trade Center Transit Hub

Posted by
on July 2nd, 2008 at 4:36 am

The biggest transit related story of the day is the design changes that will come to the World Trade Center Transit Hub. Here are some reports about it starting with this one from the New York Times’ David W. Dunlap:

It was to have been an audacious gesture in an already daring design. As envisioned by the architect Santiago Calatrava, the enormous counterpoised wings forming the rooftop of the World Trade Center Transportation Hub were to have opened almost 50 feet wide to the sky, in fine weather and on each anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

“On a beautiful summer day,” Mr. Calatrava said, “the building can work not as a greenhouse but as an open space.”

And on each Sept. 11, he said, the rooftop could open again, “giving us the sense of unprotection.”

The idea of an entire building in movement was startling, but it would not have been the first kinetic work by Mr. Calatrava, who is a sculptor and an engineer. The winglike sunscreen at the Milwaukee Museum of Art opens and closes twice daily, and has become a civic attraction in its own right.

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