Great, Now You’ve Gotten A Bunch Of Drunk Leprechauns Mad

The MTA decides that the Irish race is a little too fond of the drink:

Anticipating an inebriated crowd commuting into and out of Manhattan to celebrate the holiday along the parade route Saturday, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s two commuter railroads, the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North Railroad, are banning alcohol from their property that day and into early Sunday, making the Roman Catholic feast day the sole religious holiday when bar cars are closed for business and stations and trains run dry.

“It definitely looks like stereotyping, and that’s what the MTA should be faulted for,” state Senator Martin Golden, a Republican of Brooklyn who is Irish, said. “Some people do get out of control, but to focus on that day, and on certain segments of the population like that, is totally wrongheaded.”

Mr. Golden said the MTA should lift what he dubbed a discriminatory liquor ban that assumes Irish revelers are more out of control than other groups when celebrating their holidays.

“We want to maintain orderly travel,” a spokeswoman for the Long Island Rail Road, Susan McGowan, said. “It’s a day when we have more ridership than usual, and when there can be disruptions related to alcohol.”

. . .

Metro-North railroad typically runs 16 bar cars out of Grand Central Terminal, and on weekdays sells alcohol on bar cars along the New Haven line. The Long Island Rail Road also sells alcohol at many of its station platforms and aboard its Hamptons-bound trains during the summer season. Both railroads allow passengers to bring their own alcohol aboard. This weekend, however, customers caught with open or closed containers of alcohol will be fined about $50.

Meanwhile, Manhattan bar employees have reacted favorably to the plan:

Even some diehard St. Patrick’s Day revelers said they see some logic to the MTA’s alcohol ban. “I’m not offended by it,” a bartender at Ryan’s Pub in the East Village, Steven Goldrick, said. “The train should be a good opportunity to take a rest from all of the drinking.”