At end of long day

Maria Ford waited outside Fairfield's downtown railroad station for a shuttle bus to take her back to Westport on Monday afternoon.

The Pelham, N.Y., resident usually takes the train to her job in Fairfield, and was pleased to learn that full service is expected to be restored by Wednesday's morning commute, following much more dire predictions of service disruptions in the wake of Friday's collision between two Metro-North trains in Bridgeport.

"It's hard enough when there aren't any problems," Ford said, of the typical commute by rail. Having to hop on a bus in Westport to complete her journey to Fairfield added about an hour to her trip Monday, she said. She left early, though "and just made it to work. I was here by 9." Ford had left her home at 6:50 a.m.

Overall, though, Ford said the challenges of Monday's travel weren't as terrible as she thought.

Buses stopped at the Fairfield Metro and Fairfield Center stations (but not Southport) about every 20 minutes Monday, bringing passengers back and forth to Westport, the western-most point where there was limited train service to Grand Center Terminal.

But even with the good news that there was only more day of the "modified service," First Selectman Michael Tetreau urged commuters to do on Tuesday what they did Monday, which kept problems at a minimum. Traffic at the town's train stations was greatly reduced as commuters either stayed home or carpooled to stations farther south.

In addition to the buses at two Fairfield depots, buses also picked up train riders in Bridgeport, bringing them to Stamford. According to Metro-North, all of the buses carried about 1,200 riders during the morning peak travel hours and another 1,500 between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. Overall ridership on the New Haven line was down at least 20 percent Monday, railroad officials estimated.

"It went very smooth," Cecile Girard, a commuter of seven years, said Monday afternoon. The only problem Girard experienced was on the way back to Fairfield. "The driver didn't know where the train station was," she said, "and got off the highway and started driving to the wrong part of Fairfield."

A passenger helped get him pointed in the right direction. "Other than that, it was fine," Girard said, and she knows fine from not fine. In July 2011, Girard was on the Metro-North train that got stuck during a heat wave outside Westport because of an electrical malfunction before limping into the station. She refers to it as the "hot train." "I was on that car," she recalled.

On the New Haven-bound side of the downtown station, Anthony Davis, an employee of Fabricare, was sitting outside on a bench. He'd been on the New York side before 6 a.m. in case any commuters needed to drop off dry cleaning. "Just one person," he said. "On a Monday, it's usually very busy; it's been so dead."