Trains to new Islanders arena are empty of fans, full of sadness

access_time personNeil deMause

I almost headed out to the new New York Islanders arena for the team’s first two home games last weekend to see how the Rube Goldbergesque temporary train travel situation was, while everyone waits for the full completion of a new $105 million station for the arena, about 40% of which will be paid for by state taxpayers. But, you know, that would have required leaving the house, so instead I did the 21st-century journalist thing of just looking at Twitter — and at least there, people are not happy.

Much of the reporting comes from the Long Island commuting site The LIRR Today, which started by doing headcounts of how many people were riding trains in the vicinity (QVG is Queens Village, the stop where riders from Long Island need to get off and take a shuttle bus while waiting for the new Elmont station to be open in both directions):

Yep, that’s not much. In a longer web post, The LIRR Today reports that “on both nights, ridership was only about 5% of the 17,255 fans in attendance,” so clearly pretty much everyone was driving to the games, either because they didn’t want to deal with shuttle buses or just because they would rather drive. The state’s environmental impact study “projected potential adverse traffic impacts” if anything less than 12% of fans took the train, and a further study projected that once the Elmont station was open, “24% of attendees would take the LIRR for a Saturday game and 30% for a weekday game.” So clearly there’s a ways to go there.

As for those who took the train, things did not always go well for them:

https://twitter.com/tnminutmen/status/1462628484803706883?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1462628484803706883%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thelirrtoday.com%2F2021%2F11%2Fopening-weekend-at-ubs-arena-weak-on.html

I could get into details about exactly how the train transfers are supposed to work here, but suffice to say: You can’t get anywhere without switching trains, and the trains aren’t timed to allow for quick transfers, which led to a lot of standing around on platforms waiting for the next train. This is a very LIRR thing to have happen, but it also has people wondering why the state is spending all this money on a new train station right next to two other stations (the Queens Village stop and the existing Belmont Park rail spur, which like the temporary Elmont station only works in one direction) instead of just running a ton of free shuttle buses:

But, of course, the rationale for the new train station wasn’t that it made any sense, but rather that the Islanders owners reeeeeally wanted it, because half the point of a new arena was so that it would have better transit access than the old Nassau Coliseum, which required taking a train to a bus. To their credit, they’re splitting the cost with the state; less to their credit, even $41 million in state funding is $41 million that the LIRR could be using on something else, whether figuring out how to get people between the train stations and the arena or something entirely non-hockey-related.

All this could change once the Elmont station is fully open, of course, though there’s also another problem with the idea that commuters will just hop off the train on their way home, check out an Islanders game, then resume their journey afterwards:

UBS Arena is one of an increasing number of venues with an unfriendly “no bag policy”.  Only impractically small clutch bags can be taken inside the arena.

This will make things difficult for those looking to take the train from work to an event on weeknights—if you can’t take your bag into the arena, you either need to leave everything behind at your office, leave your belongings behind at the bag check outside the venue (which I would never do if I was carrying my laptop or had any work papers with me), or stop off someplace else to leave your bag. This almost requires going home or getting back to your car first so you can leave your belongings behind before getting to the arena.

This was all thought through really well! Maybe in a distant future where the Elmont station is operating in both directions and no one carries laptops or work papers because all that resides in their brain chips, that $41 million in state money will end up being well spent. For now, though, it looks more like burning a pile of money so that a handful of people can have terrible train rides to the game, which, again, is very on-brand for the LIRR, but maybe something the state didn’t entirely need to do just so the Islanders could advertise their games as “now accessible by train (sorta)!”

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14 comments on “Trains to new Islanders arena are empty of fans, full of sadness”

  1. I’ll contend no bag policies are horrible for sports teams fans. I’ll swear that it hollowed out weekday evening Georgetown games at Capital One. As no one is going to head to the suburbs and then back to DC because they cannot bring their work bags after work.

    Lots of even hard core fans just don’t bother.

    1. It’s certainly true that the changes made to the “experience” of going to games over the last 20 years have pushed some fans out. Some of those changes are just ownership looking to extract the maximum amount possible from each patron for everything they want to do, others have deeper roots (IE: so called anti terrorism measures… which sound a lot like anti tourism measures when you say them out loud).

      That coupled with the in home viewing experience improvements make me wonder just how long tens of thousands of fans will keep flocking to arenas and stadia to see their teams up close. Some just want to “be there” regardless of the hassle and expense (see: Chavez Ravine et al), but I get the feeling that every year more and more fans are just as happy to pay for the tv package and sit at home watching.

      It’s not the same, but it’s pretty good.

      1. I see it heading in the same direction as movie viewing: You’ll pay (roughly) the same price to watch at home as you used to to go in person, but if you go in person you’ll get an enormous cushiony seat that reclines, and nobody around you.

        1. My local movie theater just installed recliners for everyone.

          Still, for most movies, I’ll just wait until I can see it at home.

    2. No bag policies pretty much ensure that my wife will never attend another major league sporting event and I’m about 50/50 on that myself.

      Sometimes I think that team owners are making seeing a game in person more and more unpleasant as some kind of experiment to see how much we’ll take.

  2. Thanks, Neil. I was wondering over the weekend how the first couple of games went. It’s not that surprising to me that there were problems… nor that it sounds like few/none of them can be fixed easily as the TA works through the process.

    First two games against Calgary and Toronto, so maybe numbers will go up when bigger rivals come to town?

    Or maybe not…

  3. I did not take the train because I was afraid I’ll be waiting awhile for a train or shuttle. That and I figured I could park just across the Cross Island Parkway for free. That worked out just fine.
    First time I ever saw a zero-tolerance bag policy. Apparently people with medical reasons to bring a large bag can enter through one entrance, but they don’t tell people that, and it’s still annoying to people who need it.
    Strange that they make everyone enter/exit (except premium tickets) on the east side. Might be a problem in an emergency? Makes it harder for people arriving on foot or by train.

  4. I live so close (two miles away) that I plan to walk there on nice days, and drive to the Elmont statio/ walk from there on inclement days. I’m just waiting on the MTA to finish building the walkway over the tracks. I think not being able to cross the tracks is a big reason why heading home westbound has to be done from Belmont, and arriving from the island you need to go past the arena to Queens Village.

  5. One of the problems with the location of Nassau Coliseum was that if you worked in Manhattan it was a herculean task to get there by a 7PM puck drop. But if people aren’t going to their jobs in the city this might not be as necessary as before but we couldn’t have known that before Covid

  6. All of this should have been known when the LIRR blueprints were on the table several years ago. It was common sense then as it is now. It was driven by a very corrupt governor obsessed with building monuments to remind posterity who made them happen. The financial sinkholes of the BP LIRR stations were in good part to cause the State Dept. of Environmental Protection to lie about the environmental risks of traffic congestion on the CIP and Hempstead Tnpk. Some people brush that off as merely politics as usual. More accurately, it was concrete evidence of criminal corruption by sleazy politicians in both parties. Which guarantees neither will ever point an accusatory finger at the other. Hmmm, then again, if anybody can get to her, maybe AG Letitia James will do it. “Lock him up! Andy Cuomo.

    1. I only commuted on the LIRR for a year. However if someone kept a diary of the daily trip and all the stuff that happens on the LIRR after a few years they would have a funny book

  7. The bag thing is a hassle, but that does seem like a legit security issue. Or, at least, I don’t see any hope that the rules will change. The alternative would be for something like the security in government buildings. That would make it impossible for most people to get to their seats on time on weekdays.

    Perhaps they just need a more secure and trustworthy way to check it.

  8. I have not lived on Long Island for years, but looking at Google maps, the solution is add stops to Elmont on game days. According to Google Maps, it is about a 10 minute walk from Elmont station to the arena though maybe add a few minutes. Still that seems easier than Queens Village or the Belmont stop.

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