Pre-Dawn Commutes Are So Hot Right Now

Starting next week one of the biggest shifts in commuter rail in the past two decades will begin. In response to rider demand Metro-North, New Jersey Transit and the LIRR are all in the process of seriously upping their pre-dawn service.

Apparently as the world moves towards a global market 6-to-5 and 9-to-9 shifts are the new black for the white-collar set, and the trains are bending to keep their riders in style to which they are accustomed..

Among Metro-North's train lines (which carry 130,000 commuters each weekday) the fastest growth is coming "before 7 A.M. and after 7:30 P.M." In 2002 New Jersey Transit didn't have any trains going to Penn Station between 5:30 and 6 A.M. Now it has three. The LIRR's 5 A.M. train from Babylon to Manhattan, meanwhile, "was so packed that some riders had to stand." So this month is added a second train fifteen minutes behind as "the number of passengers on trains arriving between 6 and 7 A.M. rose by about 1,000, or 8 percent in the past three years, but was essentially flat after 7."

"The peaks of the commuter traffic known to some transit officials as "human high tides" still occur just before 9 a.m. and just after 5 p.m., but more and more commuters are straying from the herd." Those crazy herd straying suburbanites!

The inside of the double-decker LIRR trains from slainte1971's flickr stream.