Full LIRR Service at New Grand Central Madison Starts Monday

Grand Central Madison officially kicks off its full LIRR service schedule on Monday -- this after the greatly anticipated new transportation hub starting off with a limited LIRR run that stretched a few weeks.

After years of delays and massive cost overruns, the enormously expensive railway project shuttled its first passengers last month from Long Island to a new annex in New York City's iconic Grand Central Terminal.

The MTA initially said that for the first few weeks, LIRR will operate a limited shuttle service from Jamaica to Grand Central Terminal in order to help riders get familiar with the terminal, which had originally been slated to open in 2022. That debut got delayed to last month because the safety system testing had not yet been completed, according to Jamie Torres-Springer, the president of MTA"s construction and development.

The LIRR begins full service from Long Island to Grand Central after debuting limited shuttle service for a few weeks. The $11 billion project is a month overdue, and comes more than a decade after the originally conceived schedule.

With full service now available at Grand Central Madison, the LIRR adds about 300 trains per weekday on top of the roughly 660 trains already in operation, officials have said. About 160,000 passengers are expected to hop on and off platforms at the new terminal.

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Coupled with expanded service to Penn Station, the link to Grand Central allows for rail stops to open along long-neglected parts of the city, including the Bronx, spur new housing developments and serve as an economic engine.

“It obviously makes the businesses in Midtown East a more attractive destination for commuters from Long Island,” said Kathryn Wylde, the president of the Partnership for New York City.

Regularly scheduled trains will operate from 6:15 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays, and 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. on weekends. Trains will run every 30 minutes in both directions during weekday midday periods and weekends, and once per hour during peak periods, according to the MTA press release.

Those looking to travel to Grand Central Madison can use Penn Station tickets, as both terminals will be in the same fare zone.

For more information on schedules and other details, click here.

Back in April, NBC New York got an exclusive look inside the project terminal that will allow LIRR riders to have shorter commutes. Sitting hundreds of feet below Grand Central, the new terminal aims to bring 60 percent more traffic into Manhattan from Long Island at peak times, with the added bonus of cutting down on congestion at Penn Station at rush hour.

The station was to have opened by the end of 2022 but was delayed slightly by issues with heating, ventilation and air conditioning.

The construction is one of the largest transportation infrastructure projects undertaken in the United States in recent years, according to the MTA. It is the largest new train terminal to be built in the United States since the 1950s and the first expansion of the LIRR in more than 100 years.

For Long Island commuters headed for Manhattan, the terminal's key benefit is the ability to take a train directly to the East Side, where previously the only option was to go to Pennsylvania Station on the West Side, then travel back by subway or bus.

The new transit center, built inside a massive man-made cavern and served by rail tunnels carved through bedrock, is being heralded as an important addition to the nation’s busiest railway network.

“We got the job done,” Gov. Kathy Hochul previously , the ninth governor to oversee the project that had its genesis six decades ago. “There were so many roadblocks and challenges and detours along the way."

The project encompasses work in multiple locations throughout Manhattan and Queens, and includes more than eight miles of tunneling. It will bring all 11 branches of the LIRR through a new East River tunnel with a final destination below the current Grand Central. This new route will save commuters headed to the East Side precious time.

The Federal Railroad Administration announced in November it had approved the project that will connect the LIRR to the new station near Grand Central Terminal, providing direct LIRR service into a new concourse below the established transit hub.

The MTA said that the $11 billion project will increase service 41 percent across LIRR, adding about 274 trains every weekday. The morning rush could go from 113 trains to 158, and the afternoon rush from 98 trains to 158. A new schedule for trains is expected to be released soon.

The new 700,000-square-foot terminal, dubbed Grand Central Madison, was conceived and constructed at a time when New York City's transportation system was bursting with passengers. It opens in a different era, with ridership still significantly down from where it was before the COVID-19 pandemic ushered in a new era of remote work.

The new terminal, adorned with public art and replete with storefronts and restaurants — most still empty — is the country’s largest new railway station in nearly seven decades and the most significant expansion over the last century of the Long Island Rail Road, the busiest commuter railroad in North America. The two-level concourse supports four platforms and eight tracks.

“I've been waiting for 30 years," said John Cannon, a Long Island man who was on the inaugural 21-minute ride from Jamaica to Manhattan last month. “I don't have to take the subways anymore.”

Passenger Alexander Rodriguez, a 15-year-old Queens resident, described the inaugural ride as “nice and smooth.”

"And it was fun,” he said. “It's a once in a lifetime thing. It was the first train.”

Many of the subterranean tunnels that carry rail passengers below the Hudson River are more than a century old, some of which are in need of deeper maintenance. The new tunnels built for the project will also allow Amtrak to temporarily divert its trains to the new tunnels so it can begin refurbishing aging eastside tunnels and tracks.

For decades, the project kept chugging along, even amid concerns about ballooning costs. Construction began in the 1960s, but was abandoned for a time because of a series of economic crises.

Spending on the massive construction project has grown to more than $11 billion — more than triple the initial estimate of $3.5 billion two decades ago. The project bore through two miles of bedrock; per mile, it would be one of the world’s most expensive rail projects ever completed.

“It’s a useful project. But for $11 billion, it would be better not to have built it,” said Alon Levy, transportation fellow at New York University’s Marron Institute, who has been compiling railway cost data from around the world.

The money, he argues, could have been used for other transportation projects, including improving capacity for existing railway lines.

Officials have acknowledged that engineering costs and the high price of New York City labor contributed to spiraling expenses.

“This is not a small project. This is one of the greatest engineering feats. And it’s a tribute to the MTA that they were able to overcome what I would say was some delays of bureaucracy, delays of engineering,” said Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban policy and planning at New York University.

Despite the setbacks, Tom Wright, the president of the Regional Plan Association, previously hailed the new station as a “driver of economic growth and prosperity,” even as the region “still faces urgent transportation, housing and resiliency challenges.”

“Because this region has an interconnected network of transit, when you make an improvement, the beneficiaries are actually systemwide,” said Wright, whose nonprofit develops and advocates for ways to improve the regional economy, environment and quality of life.