He just wants his day back!
Glen Cove resident Ian Siegel’s daily commute to Brooklyn is now at least an hour longer and mayhem-filled thanks to the schedule overhaul ordered by the MTA’s Long Island Rail Road to bring service into its new $11 billion train hall beneath Grand Central.
“It used to be very peaceful, it was very pleasant,” Siegel told The Post.
“You never saw issues, you never strife, you never saw impoliteness. Now it’s like ‘The Hunger Games.’ It’s like every man for themselves.”
Siegel lives on one of the LIRR lines that is only served by diesel locomotives, meaning that he has always had to change trains to get to get to his job at a property development and management firm in Brooklyn.
But the schedule overhaul has turned what he describes as a once-peaceful and run-of-the-mill transfer over to the next set of tracks into a mad dash across the length of the station, where he now often spends far more time waiting for a train than before.
“You want to make your connection, you don’t want to get stranded and you want to get a seat,” he said. “You don’t want to be late for work.”
Before the massive change launched this week, Siegel took the 6:43 a.m. train from Glen Cove to Jamaica, changed for the train to Brooklyn and then connected to the subway to get to his job. He says he was easily at his desk by 8 — a commute of approximately 80 minutes.
Now, that the schedule changes nixed the timed transfer to the Atlantic Terminal train, Siegel has to take the 6:10 a.m. train to get into the office by 8 a.m. His morning commute now measures in at 110 minutes.
The trip home in the evening, he says, is even less convenient. The new schedule ditched the 4:56 p.m. train that seamlessly connected to an Oyster Bay train that got him home by 6:05 p.m. sharp.
Now, he has to choose between 4:12 train or a 5:22 p.m. train — one, he says, is too early to leave work; the other gets him home a half-hour later, at 6:35 p.m.
It’s an hour of lost time that he’d rather be spending with his husband and their dog.
“It cuts into precious family time and time at home,” he said, of the longer commute. “We value our time. It takes away time from being able to go to the gym, getting caught up on TV shows.”
“It’s also stressful,” he added. “It used to not be, it really didn’t. And now it’s turned into the Hunger Games.”