Yet unlike other professions responsible for public safety, such as airline pilots and tube drivers, the NHS does not have strict rules on drinking before duty.
The partial LIRR drinking ban complicates an already patchwork system of rules about when and where transit passengers in the region can and can't imbibe.
In a bid to restore some order, new rules introduced on 1 January stepped up penalties for speeding, drinking and driving and using a mobile phone while behind the wheel.