Gold Coast Metro-North Commuters To LIRR Customers: Hold Your Liquor, Lightweights!

Battle lines are being drawn in an intra-agency debate over alcohol on trains as Metro-North takes a pro-hooch stand:

The state announced plans last week to buy new bar cars for the Metro-North New Haven line, even as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is considering a ban on the sale of alcoholic beverages on commuter trains and platforms.

Eugene Colonese, the rail administrator for the state Department of Transportation, would not say when or how many cars would be bought, but he left no doubt that the state was committed to bar car service.

“We will do our utmost to maintain it,” he said.

Mr. Colonese’s comments came after an M.T.A. board member from Long Island, Mitchell H. Pally, proposed banning alcohol on all M.T.A. trains. The New Haven line, which has bar carts at Grand Central Terminal as well as 10 bar cars on trains, is run by the state and Metro-North, which is part of the M.T.A.

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Drinking on trains became an issue after a woman who was found to be intoxicated was killed in Queens in August after she fell between a station platform and an L.I.R.R. train and was hit by another train.

But many Westchester and Connecticut residents who use the bar cars on the New Haven line defended them, saying most people drank responsibly.

“I have yet to see a person get that drunk on a bar car,” said Terri Cronin, vice chairwoman of the Metro-North/Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council, a riders’ advocacy group.

Ms. Cronin said she had been riding in the 5:46 p.m. bar car to Norwalk almost every workday for more than four years.

“Most people that are drunk on the train get on that way,” she said.

Mr. Colonese said that there are no bar cars among the 300 new cars scheduled to be delivered in 2009, at a cost of $75 million, but that the next car order would include them.

Ms. Cronin said she would like to see the bar cars replaced as soon as possible.

“They’re old and practically falling apart,” she said.