The Blue (same blue as the A train) SIR ‘local trains’ provide 24-hour service along the Staten Island Railway line. Trains the entire length of the route from St. George to Tottenville, except during rush hours. During rush hours, when express service is operating, local trains terminate and originate at Great Kills (a few AM rush hour trains begin at Huguenot, no trains terminate there) with passengers having to transfer at Great Kills to and from express trains to ride between intermediate stops on the island. Express trains are scheduled to stop within 4 minutes of a terminating local train. Service operates every 15 to 20 minutes during rush hour (based on the ferry schedule) and every half-hour at all off peak times including overnight (the lowest frequency for the ferry). During the PM rush hours trains, trains only provide passenger service in the peak direction from St. George to Great Kills, before deadheading back to St. George to make another local trip (all local service during the reverse-peak PM rush houris provided by returning express trains from Tottenville). There is no non-peak direction St. George-bound express service during the PM rush hours, only the AM rush hour.

Trains are indicated on R44s by blue square signs at the fronts and back of trains that simply say “St. George,” “Great Kills” or “Totten-ville,” with no further designation on the signs for local trains. The new R211 trains, currently in testing, will introduce a proper circular SI (not SIR bullet on the fronts and back of trains, like those used on subway trains, onto the Island that is slowly being introduced at new station signs.

A major political hot-potato is the City of New York wanting to run the ferry just every hour overnight (I remember this was also the case during the daytime hours on weekends too in the 1990s) which last happened during COVID-19 between 2020 and 2011. When the ferry has only operated hourly, the frequency of the SIR has also been reduced to hourly, although overnight service has nearly always operated on the line, even during the days when the B&O Railroad operated the Staten Island Railway.