Many commuters may take the roads instead of the rails into New York City next week when Amtrak's planned track work begins on Penn Station's aging infrastructure.
The MTA is prepping eight park and ride lots across Nassau and Suffolk counties for Long Island Rail Road commuters. There, express buses will be heading straight to either the Penn Station area or Grand Central Terminal.
The buses will leave every 15 to 30 minutes between 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. Those buses will then head back to Long Island between 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.
The MTA says it has a fleet of about 200 Coach buses to move LIRR commuters who have monthly or daily rail tickets. They say bus tickets will not be on sale at any of the lots.
Some commuters told News 12 Long Island that they are skeptical of the plan. They say buses can still get stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway.
"Forget that. This is going from bad to worse," says Angie McMahon, of Massapequa.
Doug Dolgoff, of Roslyn, drives to a private paid commuter lot near Citi Field and takes the subway into the city as a way of avoiding bad traffic and LIRR delays. He says he has been using that system for 10 years.
"Traffic can obviously pile up… so I can avoid all of that," says Dolgoff.