LIRR Hicksville Station Improvements Project

Hicksville Station has more than 16,000 customer trips on a typical weekday. The station features three station tracks and two elevated island platforms, with a staffed ticket office. SYSTRA provided design services to bring the platform to a state of good repair, making it ADA-compliant and safer.

SYSTRA designed the north track siding, which involved civil/track, signals and communications, substation and third rail, and architectural support.

This siding is used to position and/or turn trains that operate between Hicksville and Manhattan during the morning and evening peak periods, providing additional operational capacity, improved train service choices, and enhanced onboard seating opportunities. It will also improve LIRR’s ability to route trains through the congested Divide Interlocking during maintenance, construction track outages, and train service disruptions.

To improve and deliver more reliable train service to and from Hicksville, NY, and provide a better customer experience, Hicksville Station was completely renovated with modernized station enhancements and upgrades. Serving more than 21,000 customers each weekday, Hicksville Station is Long Island’s busiest train station and a central and critical hub for LIRR customers.

The project included the installation of more than 3,000 feet of new track on the station’s north side to connect Hicksville’s track 1 to a track siding located about a half mile west of the station platform. This connection provides additional operational capacity, improved train service choices, and enhanced onboard seating opportunities. SYSTRA was integral to this work, being responsible for civil, track, signals, communications, electrical, and traction power design and architectural support.

Extensive electrical and traction power design work involved the installation of traction power cabling, third rail, and protection board for the new runaround track near the station. SYSTRA prepared drawings, cable plans, specifications, and a bill of materials for the installation of the new traction power duct bank and developed design details for the dc traction power cable connections to third rail. The negative return system was evaluated to determine the need for additional impedance bonds and negative return reactors to accommodate the new run around track. SYSTRA evaluated the existing 750 V dc, G20 traction power substation to ensure there was adequate capacity to support the additional tracks.

For the appropriate system design, SYSTRA developed an up-to-date traction power system model using RAILSIM® software to determine rectifier and feeder loading and rail-to-earth voltages under various operating scenarios. The simulations supported the proposed design and gave the LIRR the confidence to proceed with the final design.