LIRR platform at Hicksville station reopens with upgrades

The commute got a little more pleasant this week for customers at the LIRR’s busiest station on Long Island.

After being shut down since May 22, Hicksville’s new and improved Platform A reopened this week featuring several new amenities for customers.

“Some improvements in place include new electronic displays, translucent canopies, energy-efficient platform lighting, and new staircases,” the LIRR said in a statement Tuesday.

The work entailed demolishing, rebuilding and painting the 12-car concrete platform and taking down the old canopy. Some work at the platform is still underway, including the installation of a new escalator and elevator.

Hicksville’s Platform B, on the south side of the station, is in line for similar improvements. They’re all part of a larger $121 million effort to modernize the 56-year-old station, which is used by about 6,000 LIRR customers every weekday morning—more than any other in Nassau or Suffolk.

The project is scheduled for completion in the summer of 2018.

“This is nice. It’s much better,” daily commuter Melissa Granat, 23, of Woodbury, said as she waited for her train to Penn Station on Friday morning. “It looks a lot newer—updated, modern. It looks nice. It doesn’t look like a mess.”

There are also plans to increase capacity at the busy Main Line station, including by laying tracks to connect the station to a nearby siding where trains pull over and are stored.

As well, the railroad’s $2-billion LIRR Expansion Project aims to construct a 9.8-mile third track between Hicksville and Floral Park.

By Alfonso A. Castillo

alfonso.castillo@newsday.com@alfonsoreports

Alfonso Castillo has been reporting for Newsday since 1999 and covering the transportation beat since 2008. He grew up in the Bronx and Queens and now lives in Valley Stream with his wife and two sons.