Weekend service cuts to LIRR Babylon line

Riders on the Long Island Rail Road's Babylon branch, its busiest line, are in for major service disruptions this weekend and should add 30 minutes to their travel plans as the LIRR completes a $23-million project to upgrade old switches and signals.

Train service will be suspended between Freeport and Babylon from 4 a.m. tomorrow until 10 p.m. Sunday while LIRR crews conduct some 400 tests of a new microprocessor-based signal and switching system along nearly 15 miles of track on the line.

LIRR President Helena Williams said customers should build in about 30 extra minutes to their travel time to take buses between those stations. She encouraged customers who do not want to take the buses to drive to other stations, including those on the Ronkonkoma line so they won't have to transfer.

Mets fans heading to Citi Field for opening weekend should still consider using the LIRR, she said. The LIRR also added an extra westbound train Saturday to accommodate members of the New York State United Teachers union heading to a rally in Times Square.

"The Long Island Rail Road will be open for business," Williams said Friday at a news conference at the LIRR's Jamaica headquarters. "We expect our regular customers to be out and about, ready to travel in and out of New York City using our system."

Williams encouraged riders on the Babylon line to consult a special timetable and to visit the LIRR's Facebook, YouTube and Twitter pages.

The Amityville-Wantagh Signal Improvement Project is the latest step in the LIRR's long-term plan to eventually control all signals and switches in its system from a centralized location.

Compared with last year's modernization of Jamaica's switching and signal system, the Babylon line project is "smaller, but equally important and vital to our service," Williams said.

The technology used at Amityville and Wantagh, key switching points, dates back to the 1960s. As part of the project, crews have installed 15 miles of new copper wire and fiber optics, eight state-of-the art track switches, four new signal bridges and 12 new signal devices.

The project also creates a new backup signal and switching system that can be operated from the control tower in Babylon. The line's current backup system is controlled out of Valley Stream.

The upgrades will give the LIRR "better control, better redundancy and a more efficient signaling system," Williams said.