Getting Off-Track: The Costly Commute Of The LIRR

Traveling into “The City” has never been easy. Doing it by car meant sitting in literal hours of traffic and by train bearing with the elements schedules and often times lack of seating. And, now it seems like taking a trek into The Big Apple, may be getting a bit tougher and taking another bite out of our already frayed nerves.

As if customer service (typically and generally speaking) hasn’t suffered enough, now the lack of personal care and attention is making it way to the rails. And, it may be cutting back on jobs, as more and more (not-so-qualified) machines are taking over the jobs once done by (qualified) people.

Rail riders are now encouraged to purchase their tickets at one of the automated ticket machines, which frequently experience glitches refusing both credit and debit card transactions. In fact, this was exactly the case at the beginning of the week.

Yet regardless, commuters continue to pay the price as they are fined a penalty of $4.25 (per ticket) for buying their ticket on the train; and officials suggest they have no answer as to by the penalty was not lifted in light of the malfunctioning machines. And, they add that those penalized can apply for a refund for the railroad