For a commuter rushing to catch a train, a minute can mean the difference between dinner with the family and leftovers in the microwave.
What most passengers do not realize is that their minute is already there.
Every commuter train that departs from New York City ? about 900 a day ? leaves a minute later than scheduled. If the timetable says 8:14, the train will actually leave at 8:15. The 12:48 is really the 12:49.
In other words, if you think you have only a minute to get that train ? well, relax. You have two.
The phantom minute, in place for decades and published only in private timetables for employees, is meant as a grace period for stragglers who need the extra time to scramble off the platform and onto the train.
?If everyone knows they get an extra minute, they?re going to lollygag,? explained Marjorie Anders, a spokeswoman for the Metro-North Railroad. Told of this article, Ms. Anders laughed. ?Don?t blow our cover!? she said.
Entirely hidden from the riding public, the secret minute is an odd departure from the railroad culture of down-to-the-second accuracy.
The railroad industry literally helped invent the concept of standard time, and time zones were established in the United States in the 1880s, 35 years before they were written into law.
And most commuters know their train by the precise minute it departs; John Cheever, chronicler of the Grand Central commuter set, titled one memorable short story ?The Five-Forty-Eight.? (Turns out it was the 5:49.)
The trains quickly make up the minute: at all other stops, the public timetable prevails.
The courtesy minute does not exist at commuter railroads in Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, or San Francisco.
But in New York, railroad enthusiasts said, the secret minute dates back decades.
?That?s been done forever, from my knowledge,? said Jack Swanberg, 70, an unofficial historian of Metro-North who once oversaw departures at Grand Central Terminal. ?I was the trainmaster starting in 1970, and it was the case then. I?m sure it?s been the case since 1870 for all I know.?
At Grand Central, no rider should consider the minute a guarantee. Train conductors have the discretion to depart at the publicly posted time, as long as the platform is clear and no customers are rushing down the ramp.
But an unscientific survey of 20 trains leaving at rush hour on a recent weekday evening found that, on average, the trains left about 58 seconds past their listed departure time.
No schedules or signs in the terminal suggest the minute exists. At each train?s posted departure time, the schedule billboard announces, ?Departed,? even as the train idles at the platform, receiving its last cargo of stumbling, out-of-breath passengers.
A worker in the central information booth, asked if a train was leaving a minute late, emphatically shook his head. ?If it says 7:14, it leaves at 7:14,? he said gravely.
Not exactly.
More than half the trains surveyed this week waited the full minute or longer. The tardiest train waited at the platform for 81 seconds, while one train bound for Connecticut pushed off after just 32 seconds.
Still, the delay allowed at least one passenger, already running late, to buy three beers from a nearby concession stand before jogging down the platform to make it onboard.
?It makes me look like I?m a nice guy,? Jason Macaluso, a conductor on Metro-North for 12 years, said with a laugh.
The minute was originally known as ?gate time,? dating to the days when gates were used to block off the ramps that lead down to the platforms. (The gates are still occasionally used at Grand Central.)
At the publicly posted departure time, the gates would be closed; those who had already made it through would have a minute to climb onto the train.
The practice gradually extended to trains to Long Island and New Jersey that start in Pennsylvania Station and the Long Island Rail Road?s Brooklyn terminal.
Railroad officials seemed somewhat cagey when asked about the minute.
An Amtrak spokesman admitted that a few of his railroad?s trains in major cities wait 60 seconds after the listed time, but he did not specify exactly which trains or which cities.
Riders told of the tacit 60-second reprieve were by turns amazed and grateful.
?I was surprised the train was still there, to tell you the truth,? said Christian Riddle, 28, slightly out of breath and looking more than a little relieved, as he leaned into a leather seat on a Brewster-bound local at Grand Central the other day.
According to the departure board, his train had left at 8:22 p.m., just as the timetable promised.
But Mr. Riddle, a carpenter headed home to Hawthorne, N.Y., ran anyway, hopping into the rear car just as the clock ticked 8:23. Ten more seconds passed before the doors slid shut.
Missing the train would have meant a half-hour wait for Mr. Riddle, who deemed the secret minute policy ?pretty cool.?
?But I?d still try to get there on time,? he added. ?You never know.?
