Armandito

Or in other words, revive the pre-1987 service arrangement with trains rerouted back to Forest Hills. One other change I would suggest is building a new connection between Queens Plaza and 21st Street-Queensbridge so trains could access the 63rd Street line from the former. That way, you would have 59th Street trains from Astoria run local with 63rd Street trains running express. On the other hand, the loss of direct access to Jamaica Yard would be somewhat of a drawback, though I suppose the 1987 terminal swap with the came to be because of greater maintenance needs for rolling stock at the time. If such a service plan comes along, several adjustments to current service patterns would be needed. In this case, trains would run express in Queens at all times while trains would be routed via the new connection to Queens Plaza making all local stops to Forest Hills, replacing service which would terminate at 96th Street. (Overnight trains would terminate at Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center with service in Manhattan replaced by trains.) During weekday hours, the would be eliminated and become part of the rerouted train, with select rush-hour trains from Astoria terminating at Whitehall Street.

Or you could just extend trains to Bay Ridge. Not really a new service plan since it once ran there in the weeks immediately following 9/11.

I don't agree with most of those proposals at all. You do realize most Brighton customers prefer Broadway service, which is why the MTA decided to make service full time after the reopening of the Manhattan Bridge north tracks in 2004. Also, I don't see any benefit from rerouting some trains along different trunk corridors during different times of the day, especially if there will be more confusion among commuters when it comes to arriving to their destinations and transfer points. On the other hand, the only proposals I agree with are B and E, though for the former I would wait till signal upgrades along the Culver Line are finished before such a plan is considered. Although skip-stop service along the line was once proposed in 1991, I wouldn't say the same for the line today, given the rapid increases in ridership over the past several years. I can guarantee you that skip-stop service on this route will be doomed to suffer the same fate as the train before it.

Absolutely. Better yet, have the X terminate at the Ditmars terminal while the latter two services get extended toward LGA.

That's one reason why I wasn't enthusiastic about a new line along Amsterdam north of 72nd Street. Too much redundancy isn't a good thing.

Connecting a Utica subway to the Canarsie Line is out of the question...because the is already at capacity and the segment along 14th Street cannot handle more crowds coming in from the neighborhoods Utica serves. Also, the West Side of Manhattan is already well-covered by the trains so there's really no need for a third line along Amsterdam. (PS - I'm already using the X designation [see my profile pic] for my proposed new service between Court Square and Brighton Beach via the Crosstown, Franklin, and Brighton local tracks)

One big problem is that the local stations along Jerome have too much ridership to justify running expresses even in a service pattern similar to the . A decade back when the MTA tried running select 's as expresses on an experimental basis, reactions to the service were mixed at best. AFAIK, there were complaints about bypassed stations getting more crowded along with locals suffering the same fate. The best thing to do would be a extension to Jerome instead--and readjust the connection to the Bronx so both trains could stop at 145th Street. In addition, the 145th Street station would get lengthened for full-length trains and the 148th Street station would be permanently closed.

These plans would work out very well for my X proposal, indeed.

Quite ironic to know that more than three decades ago, ridership on the was so low that the MTA was looking to abandon it and let it go the way of the dodo. It would've been a different story talking about connecting a Utica Avenue corridor to the Canarsie Line back then.

There's been talk about a new subway line along Utica Avenue for decades, but rather than create a new trunk line for it, why not just connect it to the in Williamsburg and have it run to the Eighth Avenue terminal? This could be an ideal way to reroute rush-hour short-turns at Myrtle-Wyckoff Avenues, too.

Probably so there would be easy access to the QBL from the station.

In that case, have Crosstown trains terminate at the current terminal at Ditmars while the latter two services continue eastward via 19th Avenue toward LGA. If the BMT Astoria Line extension to the airport benefits more people, we can't let NIMBYs interfere with such plans. It's called public transportation for a reason.

If the and X could possibly benefit from an Astoria extension via 21st Street, why not extend them further east to LaGuardia Airport too?

However, it would be way better to extend the and X trains to western Astoria than to settle for the building of a superfluous and useless BQX Streetcar which is not only overpriced, but doomed to become a white elephant after just a few years in service. Big waste of scarce state (and federal) funds and likely to only serve as a catalyst for real estate development at the expense of improving transit access for more people. Needless to say, if the Crosstown Line is ever extended to Astoria, it would more or less mimic the originally proposed BMT routing between Queens and Brooklyn, with the planned segment connecting with Franklin Avenue more or less paralleling my X proposal.

Absolutely, 1000 percent.

That could work too, and it would surely be beneficial to both my proposed X line as well as the . If routing it via 21st Street to reach 43rd Avenue and then 57th Street should be the way to go, the Van Alst station would need to be demolished to make way for the new tunneling, not to mention the station having very low ridership. Likewise, the existing Court Square station would be closed and a new station would be opened at 21st Street and 44th Drive to replace it. In addition, I would have the planned 57th Street extension go up along Amsterdam Avenue to the 72nd Street station to provide service coverage for the far west side of Midtown. Or...would it be better to split the and X between a 57th Street crosstown line and a 21st Street line up to Astoria? If so, which of the two services would be the one to serve Astoria?

The Franklin-Crosstown connection was first proposed in 1946, but for unknown reasons it was shelved at the eleventh hour. If it were to already be built, the original pre-1998 Franklin line would still be maintained, but with the old Dean Street station razed and the platforms at the other three stations lengthened to accommodate longer trains. There would also be a pair of ramps leading underground toward a new junction at Bedford-Nostrand using the middle track at that station. A new station around Gates Avenue would have been built as well. In addition, there would be some sort of flyover built between Neck Road and Sheepshead Bay so locals could terminate at Brighton while expresses would continue toward Stillwell (going back to my proposed and terminal swap). This could have allowed for the outer stub tracks at Brighton to be used for additional layups, thus increasing capacity there. (On the other hand, one commenter here has argued that the building of a flyover would be a low-value investment if it were to be built today or in the future.)

An even bigger question is, should it be a new trunk line to Queens or is it better as a crosstown shuttle?

It was to prove a supporting point for the recent posts about why maintaining a transfer to the in LIC would matter if the Crosstown Line should ever see an extension toward Astoria along 21st Street.

The transfer was originally created as a free out-of-system connection to appease customers who would otherwise lose their old transfer point at Roosevelt Avenue when the route got truncated to Court Square upon the opening of the 63rd Street Connection in December 2001. That and the resulting slew of service changes along the QBL, which included the birth of the train, is what led the MTA to make Court Square a secondary transfer point to the QBL, or in laymen's terms, an alternative to the more popular Roosevelt complex in Jackson Heights.

If a extension to south Brooklyn is ever in the books, it would most likely supplement the to Bay Ridge. After all, Bay Ridge could benefit from a second line during rush hours.

Agreed. Especially if the mythical SAS ever gets extended into Brooklyn via a new East River tunnel past the current site of the Transit Museum, which would require returning the museum tracks to revenue service.

So it would've made more sense for the to be permanently cut back to Court Square after the transfer to the and at 23rd Street-Ely Avenue was opened in 1989. And if you're saying trains were mostly empty after Queens Plaza, it's most likely the to Forest Hills was kept purely for political reasons. To make an analogy, the to Forest Hills was basically the old to Coney Island via Brighton before 1986, and then to Bay Parkway via West End from there till 2010. From what I read before, the was not useful as a part-time service anywhere in south Brooklyn.

Continuing from your response, it seems like the wasn't at all useful along QBL even before the 63rd Street Connection was finished, correct?

Understood. Now suppose the never came to be and the still operated to Forest Hills. Though it may still be possible to turn X trains at Court Square by relaying on the middle track in this scenario (the same track trains use to relay there), it would seem rather unusual because terminating trains would have to go the opposite direction to access the track and then return to the other side of the platform to depart. This would be the only way to turn there if there still were to be through service to QBL, assuming the alternative scenario I envisioned here.