Long Island Rail Road service to Grand Central Madison officially began Wednesday, with an inaugural train arriving just after 11 a.m.

The first train to Grand Central Madison departed from Jamaica, Queens at 10:45 a.m. on Wednesday and traveled express to the new 700,000-square-foot terminal in Midtown.

Gov. Kathy Hochul was on board the inaugural trip and, at a press conference following the ride, called it a “gift to New Yorkers.”

“For our commuters, the people we represent, the ones we care the most about, we are giving them something that's precious: we’re giving them time back in their lives,” Hochul said.

She said the new station will dramatically cut commuting time for New Yorkers who are forced to travel via the LIRR to Penn Station, and then circle back to the east side of Manhattan.

Though, she did acknowledge that the project has taken much longer than many previously thought it would.

“It was quite a journey to get here, and I'm not talking about the 22-minute ride from Jamaica station,” Hochul said. “I'm literally talking about something that started under eight of my predecessor governors, the nine governors who worked to try and get this accomplished. People lived and died never seeing this come to fruition until now, until this very moment. And why? Because this is New York. There's nothing you cannot imagine. There's nothing you can't do right here in the state of New York. So I want to thank everyone involved in this project.”

The MTA originally hoped to open the station in 2011, and then December 2022. Most recently, the project was delayed due to ventilation fans, which were fixed this week, allowing the station to open safely to the public.

The station stretches from 42nd to 47th streets, 17 stories underground along Madison Avenue. It is the first Long Island Rail Road extension in 112 years.

During a tour prior to the grand opening, NY1 was able to see inside the station, which boasts three floors, eight tunnels and a new retail and dining concourse.

The construction took 22 years to complete, and the total cost came to $11.8 billion.

Lieber said the project ended up being so costly because crews and equipment were transported to the station via tunnels from Queens, in order to avoid disruptions in Midtown.

“So it cost a lot, there's no question, but doing it that way avoided disrupting Midtown, the center of our economy,” he said during an interview with Pat Kiernan on Tuesday.

Though there are plans for expanded service, for the first three weeks, the only LIRR trains in and out of Grand Central will be a shuttle service between there and Jamaica, according to the MTA.

For now, the Grand Central Direct line will only run once every hour during peak travel times on weekdays — arriving in Manhattan between 6:30 a.m. and 10 a.m., and departing between 4:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. — and once every 30 minutes otherwise.

The trains will be available between 6:15 a.m. and 8 p.m. on weekdays and from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. on weekends, an MTA release said.

It remains unclear when further service from Long Island to Grand Central will begin, but the MTA has boasted that LIRR service will increase by 41% when the lines are fully operational.

LIRR customers can use Penn Station tickets to travel to Grand Central Madison, because the two destinations are in the same fare zone, according to the MTA.

Commuters can find schedules for the shuttle service between Jamaica and Grand Central Madison on the MTA’s TrainTime app or at new.mta.info/GrandCentralMadison.