4 Things You Could Have Done in 4 Hours Instead of Riding the LIRR

The Long Island Rail Road and many of its riders had a rough Wednesday morning.

A power failure east of the East River tunnels around 5 a.m. caused signal trouble on the rails and led to thousands of Long Islanders being late to work. Penn Station-bound trains stopped at Jamaica and dumped passengers, who then had to figure out which subway line would get them to the office.

Many commuters fumed on Twitter about their normal hour-long commute turning into four hours. At one point, the #LIRR hashtag was trending worldwide on the social media site.

“We regret the inconvenience caused earlier today by this morning’s rush hour service disruption,” the LIRR said in a statement on its website Wednesday afternoon.

Mark Epstein, the chairman of the Long Island Rail Road Commuter Council, said ”communication during this morning’s power failure and signal malfunctions clearly failed to meet the standards set forth by the LIRR and MTA.”

Full LIRR service was restored for the evening commute, but just for fun, if you are one of the unlucky ones who endured a four-hour a.m. commute, here are four other things you could have done instead this morning:

1. Fly Delta Airlines Flight 4048 from JFK to Chicago, taking off at 7:08 a.m. and landing at O’Hare at 9:06 a.m. EST. Factoring in how long it takes to get off the plane, go the bathroom (because you weren’t using that one on the plane), and grab your bags, you should be able to get on the Chicago “L“ by 10:06 a.m. An hour-long train ride gets you into the heart of the Windy City.
2. Knock out four hours on that six-hour online defensive driving course you’ve been meaning to get to. Eat a nice breakfast while you keep the computer on mute, returning every few minutes to click “next page.” Ace the quiz despite not paying attention because the most difficult question is, “What color is a stop sign?”
3. Watch four episodes of the second season of “Orange Is the New Black” on Netflix from the comfort of your couch. You really need to catch up since your wife has threatened to replace Netflix with Hulu Plus so your 2-year-old daughter can binge-watch “The Wiggles.”
4. Sleep for four hours. In a real bed. Instead of on the shoulder of your fellow really pissed off LIRR rider.

Photo (Flickr/CreativeCommons/Dhilung Kirat): You could have flown from JFK and been in Chicago’s beautiful Millennium Park in about fours Wednesday morning.