Armandito

The M60 SBS is always jammed, and I rode the bus a few times before. I bet many riders are commuting to or from the Bronx, not Manhattan

The only way the F express could have worked is if we go back to conditions before the 2010 budget cuts with the V. The MTA in its study on how they can improve F service before they went ahead with the Culver Viaduct rehab assessed the problem of the V terminating at 2nd Avenue as it held up the F needing to access the Rutgers Street tunnel causing a chokepoint. So they concluded that it may be necessary to extend the V to Church Avenue.

 

Well now we have the M to Forest Hills but thats another story.

It's likely the will stay like that forever...

Ignoring that foolishness you'd have this "Q73" doing between the subway & Main st. for a second....

 

You're delusional if you think those Q64 riders would ride down to Union Tpke. subway for a bus that runs along 73rd av - Compared to the Q64 which puts many more riders on that route closer to their places of residence......

OK...so, should I instead make Forest Hills the terminal instead of Kew Gardens?

That loop on 73rd Terrace would bring out the NIMBY crowd like nothing else. The route would have to do the quick jog onto Main Street for one block.

You mean the bus must be rerouted to Main St when it leaves Union Tpke?

Then how can you come up with that conclusion?

Some areas along 73 Av (west of 188 St) are several blocks away from the Q46 and Q64, so a Q73 would serve commuters living along this corridor without the need to walk to reach either bus. Also, since I rode the Q46 several times before, from personal experience, I found out it gets packed during rush hours

Here's the 30 million dollar question... Would the route have 30 minute headways?

Yes it will. That's how the MTA implemented the B32, B84, Bx46, and M12 buses recently

Here's the Q73 map link: https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=zh758mgJc1tw.kjdsOhQbx0Vc

Just a quick note: the route doesn't travel along Main St.

The ignorance on display with that last part of your statement sums up your proposals on this forum......

The Q64 is one of the most efficient bus routes in the entire city!

 

The question isn't one of ridership; the Q64 definitely has the usage along the main stops of the route.....

Not Enough?

 

I mean, come one, anyone from that area know how the lines are long and buses are almost packed throughout the day.

 

As a comparison in weekday ridership stats:

 

 

The Q64 was 13 in the MTA Bus network (10,361 weekday riders) :

 

Beating the Q47, Q49, Q22, AND the Q69.

 

The latter has limited stop service on the corridor, the rest get packed throughout the day, and the Q49 is longer in distance and time than the Q64.

 

It's ridership levels are similar to the Q4, although slightly higher

I never rode the Q64 before...besides, my last proposal would likely relieve overcrowding on the Q64 (and Q46), if that's what you mean

Q64 LTD making the following stops: 164th Street, Parsons, Kissena, 150, Main, 137 (combination of 136 and 138), 112, and Queens Blvd. Well?

The Q64 is way too short to support a LTD service, and besides, there's not enough ridership to justify it

Q73: Local service between the Union Tpke station in Kew Gardens and 67 Av/230 St in Oakland Gardens via Union Tpke, Vleigh Pl, Main St, 73 Av, and 69 Av. Operates from 6AM to 11PM on weekdays and from 7AM to 10PM on weekends every 30 minutes.

Until 1976, trains used to serve Brooklyn as a local, but was discontinued since then. Why was it discontinued?

The 8th Av terminal currently ends at bumper blocks, which limits track capacity on the line. I suggest extending the tracks all the way to 10th Av for train storage during rush hours. This would increase track capacity on the line; the MTA once proposed a similar move at the Flatbush Av terminal in 1989.

It sounds like a SAS along 125th St won't come to fruition some time...so why not have a bus that would run along the M15 corridor from Pike St to Manhattanville instead? Here's my proposal:

 

M17: Local service between 12 Av/125 St in Manhattanville and Pike/Cherry Sts in East Village via 125th St, 1 Av (northbound), 2 Av, (southbound), and Allen St.

 

All M15 local buses that short turn at Pike/Cherry Sts will become M17 buses.

 

Weekdays:

Toward Pike St - 5:20AM to 7:26PM

Toward 12 Av - 6:27AM to 9:22PM

 

Saturdays:

Toward Pike St - 6:26AM to 7:34PM

Toward 12 Av - 7:37AM to 9:01PM

 

Sundays:

Toward Pike St - 7:02AM to 7:23PM

Toward 12 Av - 8:06AM to 8:50PM

 

(Note: I used the M15 local bus timetable from August 31, 2014 to come up with the times)

BM6: Express weekday and Saturday service between Beach 116 St/Rockaway Beach Blvd in Rockaway Park, Queens, and 57 St/3 Av in Midtown Manhattan via Beach Channel Dr, Flatbush Av, Cortelyou Rd, Prospect Expy, Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, Downtown Manhattan, FDR Dr, 23 St, 6 Av, and 57 St. Operates from 7AM to 9PM every 30 minutes during weekday rush hours and every hour all other times.

The idea of an Culver Express via 2nd Avenue might be something more for nights and weekends to supplement the on the Upper East Side as that part of Manhattan could then retain heavier service in the evening and overnight hours in one of the most densely populated areas of the country. The question would be, where would you run such on weekdays, especially if you don't want 6th Avenue trains crossing over to the SAS at 63rd/Lex?

 

One thing that could be done would be this:

 

Re-route the after West 4th to the Culver Line and have it be the Culver Express to Coney Island (the would be cut back to Church Avenue except overnights when it would run its normal route).

 

Evenings (after PM rush hour) and weekends, this new version of the would be a second local on 6th Avenue, running with the to 63rd before running with the to 96th and later 125th/Lex.

 

The remains as it would be otherwise in Brooklyn.

 

The (and in rush hours) would be extended at least weekdays to Brighton Beach and replace the as the Brighton Beach Express (if warranted, this could also run to Brighton Beach on weekends). Late nights, the would continue to terminate at Broad Street. This would have the side benefit of giving Brighton riders looking for lower Manhattan and/or Metrotech and Brooklyn Heights those options like the used to.

I think this proposal would work better. The (P) proposal may be a tight squeeze along 6th Av. This might mean reducing frequency on the , leading to more overcrowding on trains, and worse if each train only has 8 cars.

Connecting the 3rd Ave el into the Lex would have been very difficult to do and would cause the Lexington Ave line to be more crowded, not less. The crowding is mostly in Manhattan, so that's where the relief is needed most. While much of that ridership is coming from the individual , and branches, it's when they come together in Manhattan and pick up riders in East Harlem and the Upper East Side that you see the crowding. The will partially help to relieve that crowding, and perhaps a supplemental ( P ) service (that continues onto the 6th Ave Local and the Culver Line express) may help a little more.

Would my proposal work with phase 2 of the SAS completed?

If it remained IRT, then you would have likely have been looking at the SAS as also being IRT in large part so any extension of the SAS to The Bronx would be on that portion of the 3rd Avenue El.

 

More likely scenario would have been since the 3rd Avenue El would have likely had to be completely rebuilt during the 1960's and '70s anyway, with plans to make the SAS BMT/IND, you would have been looking at consolidations of many stations with many moved to where they could be combined (and built as 600' platforms) and those stations that did survive would likely have seen their platforms shaved back to handle the larger (and heavier) cars of the BMT/IND. This would likely also have applied to the Bronx portion since that would likely have been configured to handle BOTH the 3rd Avenue El and SAS (with a new platform at Gun Hill Road, most likely above the current platform to handle BMT/IND trains).

If the 3rd Av Elevated still existed today, a connection to the Lexington Av line would have been a lot cheaper than building a parallel subway along 2nd Av in Manhattan. Here's what I propose: an (8) train running between the Gun Hill Rd and Brooklyn Bridge stations via Lexington Av Local. It would run between these stations at all times except late nights, when it would run as a shuttle between Gun Hill Rd and 3 Av-138 St. The stops would be as follows:

 

Gun Hill Rd

Webster Av

204 St

Bedford Park Blvd-NY Botanical Garden

Fordham Plaza

183 St

180 St

Tremont Av

174 St

Claremont Pkwy

169 St

166 St

161 St

156 St

3 Av-149 St

3 Av-138 St

then all train stops in Manhattan to Brooklyn Bridge

O

 

 

Ohhh No....

What's wrong?

You know they did have a time years ago when trains did that for the most part...

However, at that time, full-time trains went to Marcy Av, trains terminated at Myrtle Av, and a special shuttle ran in Manhattan between Essex St and Broad St, while another rush hour ran between Chambers St and Bay Pkwy.

I propose an Culver Express train in Brooklyn. The service plan will be as follows:

 

Rush hours, trains will run between 179 St and Kings Hwy in the peak direction only, running express between Jay St and Kings Hwy, and making stops at 7 Av, Church Av, and 18 Av. Off-peak trains will terminate or originate at Church Av, running express between that station and Jay St and stopping at 7 Av. local service in Brooklyn will remain unchanged, but some rush hour local trains will now become express trains.

What if...the Williamsburg Bridge was closed for a third time for repairs on the subway tracks:

 

and trains will run in two sections:

 

trains:

1. Between Jamaica Center and Hewes St

2. Between Essex St and Broad St on weekdays, and between Essex St and Chambers St on weekends

 

trains:

1. Between Myrtle Av-Bway and Metropolitan Av

2. Between Forest Hills and 2 Av on weekdays only

 

skip-stop service will run between Jamaica Center and Broadway Junction only ( trains will terminate at Broadway Junction).

 

peak-hour express service between Myrtle Av and Marcy Av will be suspended

 

Free shuttle buses will replace trains between Hewes St and Essex St

 

Customers wishing to travel directly between Manhattan and Brooklyn should consider using and service instead, and customers wishing to travel directly between Queens and Manhattan should consider using service instead.

No. The runs less frequently at 8-9 trains per hour during the peak. Harlem-148 can handle that frequency. Plus, there's little travel between the upper west side and Flatbush, Crown Heights, Brownsville and East New York. The and are slightly less crowded than the and during the morning rush (out of Brooklyn).

 

You're just going to delay the which runs frequently enough without the need of any other train. Another to add is that some trains in the morning terminate (and then originate) at City College, due to greater demand heading downtown, but the demand isn't for the aforementioned residential areas in Brooklyn.

But the has the worst chance of getting a seat during rush hour...

I propose an additional peak-directional rush hour extension to 137 St-City College running nonstop between that station and 96 St. Harlem-148 St might not have the capacity to run more trains during rush hour, so I'm suggesting this will help ease constraints on the . Besides, it will provide passengers at that station an express service to Brooklyn. What do you think?

There used to be a crosstown bus running along Broome and Grand Streets...I wonder why it was discontinued

Yeah...try making that out-of-system transfer if you're elderly, pregnant, in a wheelchair or if it's raining, sleeting or 90+ degrees and humid outside. Hell, I'm not elderly or in a wheelchair and I'm a man and I did it five years ago on my way from my then-home in the Bronx to a job interview in the Queens County Courthouse in Jamaica. And it was a nice day in October. Took me 10 minutes to get from the platform at 59th St to the deep-level platform at 63rd St. 10 minutes! Imagine having to do that every day? No thank you!

 

And you don't think there are Queens Blvd riders whose destinations are 57th and 7th, Times Square or the Bronx? Those riders would be screwed big time by rerouting the R down 2nd Ave. Queens Blvd riders who wish to have access to Broadway trains - I'm one of them - already have a direct one now in the . Why must that be taken away?

So why did the MTA propose a track connection between Second Avenue and the at 63 St to Queens?