Janet Graham and Carlos Mendoza stood on the Williams Bridge station platform one recent Friday waiting to board the 5:21 p.m. Metro-North train to North White Plains. Graham, who works at Montefiore Medical Center, was waiting to go home. Mendoza, who works nights in Westchester County, was just beginning his day. That Friday, like every day, they boarded the train in Norwood and didn’t get off until they reached North White Plains.

“It’s great,” Graham said of the direct service. “A lot better than before.” Local trains connecting lower Westchester County and the Bronx began running last fall.

Although the service has been available since October, Metro-North officially announced it during a July 20 press conference at the Montefiore Children’s Hospital, part of “Transportation Day” at the Medical Center. The long awaited train service, which highlights a developing trend in Metro-North’s train service as a whole, was celebrated during the event as a boon for local businesses and attractions as well as for Metro-North.

“This has been on the agenda for a number of years now,” said Spencer Foreman, MD, Montefiore’s president, in a speech. “Having MTA open Williams Bridge station to southward bound traffic is a wonderful thing.”

Previously, passengers commuting between Westchester and the Bronx, such as Graham and Mendoza, were forced to change trains at Mount Vernon West, resulting in waits of up to half an hour, Graham said. The local trains run on a new third track, completed by the MTA in October 2004, which allows local trains originating in North White Plains to stop in the Bronx while keeping a second track open for express trains into Manhattan.

“We have employees who live on that line who have always had to drive in or take an indirect and remote [train] route,” Foreman said. “[This] enables us to get more associates to work where they don’t have to use the critically short supply of parking.”

Dart Westphal, president of Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore that publishes the Norwood News, said that the new service would allow businesses to stretch farther when looking for employees, a point that was echoed by the MTA.

“The third track allows more trains to stop in the Bronx,” said Charles Zabielski, director of Marketing at the MTA. “Now, businesses can extend their employee reach into the suburbs.”

The local trains also stop at the New York Botanical Garden.

“It’s good news, it’s a convenience, and we welcome it,” said George Shakespeare, senior publicist at the Garden. “It’s a great way for employees and visitors to get to the Garden.”

Aside from benefiting local Bronx community development, the new service, which Montefiore, Fordham University, the New York Botanical Garden and many other local interests spent years fighting for, exemplifies the rise of two new passengers bases: intermediate and reverse peak. Intermediate passengers are those who board the train at a middle stop and get off before the end of the line, similar to how one would use a subway.
Reverse peak passengers head out of Manhattan during peak morning hours and back into it during peak evening.

In recent months, Zabielski said, the amount of intermediate and reverse peak riders on Metro-North has skyrocketed.

“That’s the only reason we’re not losing ridership,” said Marjorie Anders, a Metro-North spokeswoman. The third track coverage, she said, recognizes this increased demand for intermediate service. Since the service began running last fall, the number of passengers departing at Williams Bridge has more than doubled.

This is a major identity shift for a railroad originally designed to shuttle suburban commuters directly into Manhattan’s business district. Now, with the rise of intermediate and reverse travel, Zabielski said, “I like to think of us as the subway of the suburbs.”

In coming months, Metro-North will continue renovations on Bronx stations and work on replacing the current cars running on the third track with newer models, Zabielski said.