Commuters coming from Long Island into Brooklyn say their commute was chaotic after big service changes were implemented on Monday.  

One of the biggest points of contention for commuters was the removal of direct service to Atlantic Terminal. Long Island Rail Road riders will now have to transfer at Jamaica.  

Commuters said this change was extremely hectic. The MTA did say there will be 30% more frequent train service along the Atlantic branch in Brooklyn, and that the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s No. 7 line subways will now be the ones responsible for this transfer.  

“We had to get off at Jamaica and walk all the way from track 1 to track 12 to transfer to Atlantic,” said Marie Francois, a Long Island resident. “It’s unacceptable, inexcusable, and before they did that, they should’ve consulted us.” 

Commuters told News 12 that they left early for work this morning to prepare for the rush, but some of them were still delayed in their trips.  

The MTA provided the following statement to News 12:

“What I would say is that this additional terminal is providing an additional opportunity to have more flexibility with respect to how we serve our customers and it resulted in a complete rewrite of our schedule, and there’s really never been a rewrite of our schedule as comprehensive as the one that is really accompanying this project as well as the Third Track project, which we brought back online in the fall. So what we’ve tried to do is accommodate as many customers as possible, we’re providing 41 percent more service across the board than we were before with multiple transfer opportunities, a lot more frequency, a lot more flexibility in terms of how our customers travel around the region, regional connectivity here at Grand Central to Metro-North, so it’s just different. And I think people will accustom themselves to these differences, we’ll find the trips that work for them. It’s day 1. I think day 1 has actually gone pretty well so far. The customers we’ve seen here at Grand Central are really really excited to be here, so that’s obviously because they have their jobs or other reasons to be on the East Side, and we’ll figure it out. We are looking at passenger loading, we’re looking at frequency of service, we’re looking at who is taking what train. This is not fixed in stone. We’ll be adjusting and adapting as we go forward.”