Q: Some fellow LIRR travelers say that the conductors won’t hold the doors for a passenger who’s boarding in the morning with a cup of coffee in his or her hand, because that suggests they’re lackadaisical about making the train. But if you’re free-handed and running, they’ll be far more accommodating. Is that true, or is it merely an urban myth? 

A: This one’s hard to debunk fully, for one reason. I don’t think that the door-holding decision is a matter of policy or indoctrination; nor some practice commonly shared as a matter of tradition, conformity, or fraternalism. It’s personal, variable, and mutable. 

Which is to say: Yeah, it’s probably true. 

But it’s complicated, too—yes, I am actually saying that the issue of a coffee-clutching commuter is possessed of nuance. I can’t stick with a flat answer on this one. Let’s peel back a few lattes—I mean layers—and look more closely, shall we? 

When it comes to a conductor holding open doors, we’re talking about what is essentially a discretionary act. Technically, the doors are supposed to stay open only as long as it takes to disembark passengers and board new ones—ones that are ALREADY waiting on the platform. 

But here comes the exception right now: The inevitable she-idiot who’s 500 feet away, clopping across the parking lot on her stiletto heels, waving her knockoff Prada bag over her peroxided coif and yelling, “Wait! Waaaait! Hold that traaaaain!” 

You hate her. I hate her. And, I suspect, conductors hate her, too. But while you or I have fantasies of The Nassau Nag falling (Lee press-on nails and all) into a nice cozy nest of concertina wire, the conductor has a choice to make. 

If he holds the doors open a few more seconds, it probably won’t matter much in a railroading sense. If the train runs a pinch late as a result, the motorman can most likely make up the time on the straightaways or on the schedule-padded final few miles of the run. (See previous Engine Bob installment for the full explanation of schedule padding.)

However, there are significant limits to the conductor’s charity. Consider that there are bound to be runners at most station stops during the morning rush. Were the conductor to hold up the train for, say, 30 seconds each time he had a runner on his hands, now we’re looking at pulling into Penn Station 10 or more minutes late—not good. (Yes, I know what you’re thinking: “Dude, this is the Long Island Railroad; they don’t CARE about on-time performance.”

Point taken. But no conductor wants to be directly responsible for a late train, okay?)  

Remember, too, that during rush hour, you’ve got more trains sharing the tracks—schedules are tighter. Holding the door open on a lazy Sunday afternoon doesn’t matter much; holding it open on a Manhattan-bound express at 8:40 a.m. on a Monday DOES matter. 

So a conductor has a limited amount of door-holding indulgence he can mete out on a given run, and that means the issue comes down not only to a quantitative analysis, but a qualitative one, too: Some passengers will receive his graces, some will not. And only his subjectivity will determine who gets a seat and who gets the door. 

Based on my many years of riding the commuter lines and watching these scenarios all the time, I can say one thing for certain: pity counts. For a guy in a wheelchair: Door stays open. For a lone mother with four kids in tow: Door stays open. For an elderly couple teetering on their four-footed canes up the icy platform ramp: (Um, duh. Yes, the door stays open.) 

But for able-bodied commuters, the rules get tougher. And this is just the shadowy ground onto which your question falls. I hold that the conductor’s decision breaks along two considerations: If the would-be passenger is reasonably close to the platform (the 7-Eleven parking lot across the road is too far); and if the would-be passengers is making a visibly strident effort to reach the train. That means running. Show a little perspiration and a lot of desperation, and you’ll probably receive the conductor’s charity. 

Now, I personally don’t think that, considered by itself, the presence of absence of a cup of coffee in the tardy commuter’s hand is going to sway the decision very much in either direction. However, it does seem uncannily common that a Venti Starbucks splashing its soy-milk foam into the breeze just so very often happens to be in the hands of a perfumed and pretentious commuter who—whether because of the designer brew or not—is not the type to hurry up for anybody. He’s got a bad case of ’Tude, and let me ask you this: If you were a conductor and had the choice, would you reward it? 

In conclusion, then, I submit that the issue comes down to effort, whether or not java is part of the mix. The commuter who’s worried about spilling his $4 latte on his Bruno Maglis? The man who expects the train to wait but is barely quickening his step? The presumptuous lout who won’t move his ass a little faster for the sake of a thousand fellow commuters already aboard? The commuter who is—to use your term—lackadaisical?

In those instances, sir, I would put ten bucks on many a conductor thinking: “No way, bud. Learn to get here on time.” Then his key turns, the door shuts, and Mr. so-and-so can sip his espresso while he waits 32 minutes on a freezing platform for the next train. 

And don’t even try to tell me that that doesn’t look just a little bit like justice. 

Q: Engine Bob, Why does my morning train take 48 minutes, while my evening train—with the exact same stops—takes 42 minutes? Does it take longer for people to get on than get off? 

A: First, pat yourself on the back for picking up on a detail that 99.98% of commuters have never noticed. We’re going to have a little fun with your question because, first, I’m going to give you my speculation and then, second, we’re going to see what the MTA has to say about it. Last night I stopped into the Stationmaster’s Office to retrieve a customer-comment/question form, and on it I wrote down a more detailed version of your question, using two specific New Haven trains for comparison—ones that showed a seven-minute discrepancy between north and southbound runs. The Stationmaster promised me I’d receive a personal reply from the Public Affairs Office. We shall see. 

Meanwhile, here’s my take. Assuming that the trains you’re comparing share all the relevant parameters in common—both peak, same station stops, no transfers with one and no the other, etc.—what you’ve struck upon here is evidence of a practice that’s as old as train schedules themselves. 

It’s known as “schedule padding.” 

While it may take a wee bit longer to board a train than disembark from one, I doubt that such a thing would result in a schedule adjustment. And if it did, logic would hold that you’d see a greater amount of time allotted for station stops where the most people get on—and when I tore through some Metro North schedules last night, that’s not where I found the discrepancies. More on that in a minute. 

Here’s another interesting observation. While your trip home (northbound, I presume) is taking six minutes longer, I found that the opposite appears to be more often the case. For example—and these are all peak trains I’m referring to, with all station stops common to both directions—catch a morning express train at South Norwalk and you’ll get to Grand Central in 55 minutes. Homeward on the same run? 1 hour, 4 minutes. Hop an early local out of Stamford and you’ll be at GCT in 1 hour, 2 minutes. Grab the same run back and it’ll take 1 hour, 9 minutes. 

Is that just the New Haven’s quirk? Nope. Let’s get a morning-rush local out of Croton-Harmon on the Hudson Line. Train No. 704 will take precisely 1 hour to reach Grand Central. But at evening peak, the same run (Train No. 757) will take 1 hour, 4 minutes. 

I found a few other examples in which run times were exact, and a few, like yours, in which the return runs took less time. But overall, it seems far more common for the northbound runs to take longer. And this brings me back to the practice of schedule padding. 

What is “schedule padding”? Schedule padding is the practice of adding a few extra minutes to a run—time that a train does not really need to cover the allotted distance—merely to “help” a late train make up time on paper, and hence arrive “on time” even if, in fact, it’s not. In short, schedule padding helps boost a railroad’s on-time performance statistics. Before you shake a fist at Metro North for stooping this low, consider: New Jersey Transit does it, too. So does Amtrak. So does VIA Rail in Canada. Most every railroad uses schedule padding. 

But let’s take a closer look at how it works. We’ll go back to our local train between
Stamford and Grand Central, because the discrepancy is pretty dramatic—a full seven minutes more on the return (northbound) run. 

I made a chart and marked down all the station stops with the corresponding route-mile distance for each (Grand Central is Mile Zero; Pelham is at Mile 15; Harrison is Mile 22, etc.) With some simple subtraction and comparison, we see that both southbound and northbound trains take the same time to cover the same distances for the vast majority of the run. For instance, The southbound train travels the 14 miles between Mt. Vernon East and GCT in 26 minutes—and the northbound train takes just as long over that same stretch. It’s an even time match for the bulk of the route. 

But watch closely! Let’s take a look at the last two stops at the top of the run—Stamford and Old Greenwich. Those two stations are 2 miles apart. If you’re taking the train southbound out of Stamford, you’ll get to the next stop in only 2 minutes. Returning home, however—why, this is amazing!—to cover that same distance of 2 miles between Old Greenwich and Stamford, Metro North allots SIX MINUTES. 

Where did those four extra minutes come from? Does the northbound train pause to pick up a crate of caviar and champagne? Hardly. The schedule has been padded. So if northbound Train No. 1360 out of Grand Central is running a few minutes late, not to worry! That two minutes the train should take to traverse the final leg of the trip has been conveniently tripled. Think of it as loosening your belt by two holes. There now, don’t you feel thinner? This numeric hocus pocus means that a really late train will be less late, and a slightly late train will suddenly, magically, be “on time.” 

(Incidentally, the one other extra minute on the northbound run that adds up to the total extra northbound travel time of seven minutes comes from the stretch between Harrison and
Greenwich. That’s six miles of track; the southbound train does it in 10 minutes while the northbound takes 11.) 

As I said, schedule padding is not a secret that only Metro North knows. A number of years ago when Shirley Delibero headed up New Jersey Transit, an absurd amount of padding was added to the schedules—always between the second-to-last and the last stop, as in my example above—to keep on-time statistics high. But too many people noticed the trick, and the railroad’s loose schedules quickly became known as “Shirley Time.” 

In theory, if a railroad uses padding to improve on-time statistics, it should be able to use them in both directions, right? But in the case of Metro North—I’m making an educated guess, here—the four-mile stretch between 125th Street and Grand Central is so complex a choke point shared by so many trains at any given time, it’s just not a wise place to toy with the schedule. Uniformity rules on this stretch; I’ve seen no examples of trains taking longer in either direction. Plus, I just have this feeling that discrepancies would be easier to notice down on the GCT end of the timetable; it’s not a good place to hide stuff. 

But let us not close the book on this matter yet, and wait to see how the good people at Metro North explain these discrepancies—if, that is, they reply to my comment form.

Got a question for Engine Bob? Email it to trainjotting@gmail.com.