New Grand Central Madison Service Set To Begin Wednesday

LONG ISLAND, NY — After years of anticipation, Long Island Rail Road service to the new Grand Central Madison is set to begin Wednesday.

The service will feature a first train that's scheduled to originate at Jamaica at 10:45 a.m. and run express to Grand Central Madison, where it is scheduled to arrive at 11:07 a.m.

For at least three weeks, the LIRR will operate limited shuttle service between Jamaica and Grand Central Madison, so customers can acquaint themselves with the new terminal as existing schedules continue.

The LIRR will initiate full service from Long Island to Grand Central, per schedules that will be posted here and in the TrainTime app.

The train will be the first of regularly scheduled Grand Central Direct trains to operate between Jamaica and Grand Central Madison, the LIRR said. Trains will operate between 6:15 a.m. and 8 p.m. on weekdays and from 7 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. on weekends. Trains will run every 30 minutes in both directions during weekday midday periods and on weekends and once per hour during peak periods, arriving in Grand Central between 6:30 a.m. and 10 a.m. and departing between 4:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.

During the initial period, the LIRR will have customer ambassadors on the Grand Central Madison concourse to greet customers and offer information about the new space. LIRR customers looking to travel to Grand Central Madison can use Penn Station tickets, as Penn Station and Grand Central Madison are in the same fare zone.

To enable travel planning, the MTA will provide notice when full schedules, increasing overall LIRR service by 41 percent, are scheduled to go into effect.

Grand Central Madison is a new, 700,000 sure foot Long Island Rail Road terminal that opens up East Side access to commuters.

The opening date for the new terminal was originally scheduled for the end of 2022. Final stages involved testing, officials said. MTA construction and development remained active on the site at the end of 2022, with contractors testing air flow and life safety systems, as well as the escalators and elevators that are essential for the operation of Grand Central Madison.

The new terminal is the largest passenger rail terminal to be built in the country in 67 years and has been one of the largest transportation infrastructure projects in the United States in recent years, the MTA said. The two-level caverns support four platforms and eight tracks, and upon opening, will provide Long Island’s commuters direct access to Manhattan’s east side, offer new commuting opportunities for reverse peak travelers, and enhance New York’s regional connectivity.

The new service will add 269 trains per weekday, or 936 trains per weekday from the current 667, officials said.

The new terminal will also allow the LIRR to accommodate anticipated customer demand to Manhattan when Amtrak begins a project in 2024 to rebuild its East River Tunnels to Penn Station. The project will take one of the four tunnels out of service, in sequence, over a period of three years, reducing LIRR capacity to Penn Station — capacity the LIRR will be able to maintain to Manhattan with its new tunnels to Grand Central Madison, officials said.

Other benefits include more evenly spaced trains and fewer gaps in service; more frequent service to Queens and on the Ronkonkoma and West Hempstead branches; a 28 percent increase in Brooklyn service; decreased travel times from Long Island to Manhattan; and less crowding in Penn Station.

Not only will the new terminal mean easier access to the East Side for Long Island commuters, it will save those same passengers up to 40 minutes of travel time per day, the MTA said.

Those increases will primarily benefit the electric portions of LIRR service, MTA officials said.

According to the MTA, plans were first proposed in 1963 and then, commenced in 1998; the years since have been long, with total costs for the project now projected at $11.1 billion, an estimate that has remained fixed since new MTA CEO Janno Lieber took the helm, MTA reps said.

At an MTA update last year, MTA President of Construction and Development Jamie Torres-Springer spoke, saying a "project of this size is an enormous task. It is many times larger than Grand Central's existing terminal. As Janno Lieber says, 'It's like laying the Chrysler building on its side.'"