AndrewJC

If not the Rockaways, then where do you claim the former-Lefferts A's would have gone? If "Lefferts riders complained that they wanted their one seat Express Ride to Manhattan" (your words) then Lefferts riders were aware of a proposal to take away their express ride. How did they become aware of said alleged proposal, and how did you become aware of their alleged complaints? Hammels Wye to Far Rockaway is almost twice the distance of Hammels Wye to Rockaway Park. In the PM rush, the scheduled running time is 10-11 minutes from Broad Channel to Rockaway Park and 14-15 minutes from Broad Channel to Far Rockaway.

The A to the Rockaways is a much longer run than the A to Lefferts. Running all A's to the Rockaways would require significantly more cars and more crews than the current split service. Where would those cars have come from and why on earth would NYCT have proposed a major service increase during a budget crisis? Lots of stuff that has no basis in fact is mentioned here by employees. If this alleged proposal made it to the local communities, it also undoubtedly made it into the press. Can you find me one single link to an article, anywhere, regarding this alleged proposal and the alleged community uproar that followed?

Even if changing the order were as simple as you make it out to be (it isn't, because A cars are more expensive than B cars), you've just replaced an order for 36.5 trains with an order for 31 trains. How do you make up for the shortfall of 5.5 trains? The A and C don't share any terminals. There's no operational advantage to sharing a fleet. The 2 and 5 (effectively) share a fleet because southbound 2's often become northbound 5's and southbound 5's often become northbound 2's at the shared Flatbush Avenue terminal.

Complete and utter nonsense. The R142's are in 5 car sets, and the 7 runs 11 car trains. A 30 tph test was run one day in 2002 on the 7, to see if the line could get by with 10 car trains running more frequently. The test failed. So the R142's, as initially configured, couldn't go to the 7. If you are seriously claiming that, one year after a major round of service cuts, NYCT was proposing to implement a major service boost in Rockaway service, then surely you can provide links to documentation of said proposal and of the alleged complaints. Incidentally, both the A and the C would have required many more cars for this service plan - where would these cars have come from?

As I've already pointed out: A motorist who violates the law in a fashion that results in the death or injury of a pedestrian is punished, in very limited cases, by a $250 fine and up to 30 days in jail. A pedestrian who violates in the law in a fashion that results in the death or injury of a pedestrian is punished, without exception, by death or injury. On a walk signal? Of course. The New York City Traffic Rules make it abundantly clear that a pedestrian may cross the street on a walk signal unconditionally, while any motorist approaching such a crosswalk is obligated to yield. Is there a different version of the traffic rules that you're working from? If you can't see into your blind spot, you don't know if somebody's in it or not. Assuming that nobody's in it is a recipe for hitting a pedestrian. There's nothing accidental about driving directly into a space that might be occupied by a pedestrian. Or to put it more simply - if you can't see where you're going, stop. For the third time: A pedestrian who violates in the law in a fashion that results in the death or injury of a pedestrian is punished, without exception, by death or injury. Is that not penalty enough for you? There are no laws restricting the use of electronic devices on the part of pedestrians, and the city can't enforce a law that doesn't exist. Personally, I'm far more concerned about distracted motorists than distracted pedestrians, since distracted motorists put other people's lives at risk. How about enforcing those laws? It absolutely was preventable. Francisco de Jesus could have waited to enter the crosswalk until he was absolutely certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that no pedestrians were in or approaching the crosswalk. (This is what we refer to as yielding the right of way to pedestrians, and it's what the law requires from motorists making turns.) That's a pretty stupid distinction. Those of us who take pedestrian safety seriously, who think that pedestrians crossing the street with the walk signal in their favor should not have to worry about being hit by a bus or a car or a truck, have been speaking out in favor of this law. How about we not rely on "Hope"? How about we try to persuade people to not endanger others by penalizing them for engaging in illegal activities that endanger others - or, at the very least, by penalizing them after they've already caused injury or death to somebody who wasn't doing anything wrong? It didn't grant any leniency to Jiahuan Xu's left leg, did it? His clean record went out the window the moment he decided to drive his bus into pedestrian crossing the street with the light. The point of 19-190 is to encourage drivers to drive safely, so that they don't ever injure or kill a pedestrian who was crossing legally - not even once. According to every article I've read, Xu was crossing the street with the light in her favor. If that's the case, she had no fault in the matter. End of story. The law is quite straightforward.

A motorists who violates the law in a fashion that results in the death or injury of a pedestrian is punished, in very limited cases, by a $250 fine and up to 30 days in jail. A pedestrian who violates in the law in a fashion that results in the death or injury of a pedestrian is punished, without exception, by death or injury. Francisco de Jesus broke the law and struck Jiahuan Xu, who was crossing the street in the crosswalk with the light in her favor. As a result, she may lose her left leg. The pedestrian, who was doing nothing wrong, nonetheless bears a far worse punishment than the driver, who broke the law. Actually, no, we're talking about Jiahuan Xu, a 15-year-old girl who was crossing the street with the light and had every reason to expect to make it to the other side of the street with both legs intact. And nobody ever claimed that he did.

Red herring. Nobody claimed that de Jesus deliberately struck Jiahuan Xu. Perhaps he was perfectly law-abiding up through February 12, 2015. Unfortunately, on February 13, 2015, he violated this law: He failed to yield the right of way to a pedestrian lawfully within the crosswalk, and now he's no longer law-abiding anymore. Quick tip for dealing with blind spots: If it's a blind spot, then you can't see whether it's occupied or it's vacant. If the law requires you to yield, then perhaps it's not a good idea to assume that it's vacant. For daring to cross the street with a walk signal, Jiahuan Xu may have lost her leg. In a way she's lucky - many other pedestrians have been killed for engaging in the same act. It's about time we started holding drivers responsible for failing to yield to pedestrians while turning.

Former motormen don't decide these things. Even current motormen don't decide these things. I think someone was pulling your leg. A simple sanity check can work wonders. If somebody is telling you that something totally irrational is about to happen, he's probably mistaken or lying.

SAS Phase 2 hasn't been funded and you're speculating on car moves for Phase 3 already? Why on earth would the tiny 40 car fleet of 5 car R179's - or a portion thereof, as you claim! - be reassigned to Coney Island Shop? Supervisors don't make these decisions. The A runs 600 foot trains. The R160's on the J are in 240 foot units.

As others have said, this is nonsense. There's no room for more 4 trains on Lex, so there's no point in increasing the fleet size on the 4. At the same time, you're shorting the 3. There are only two options that would have made any sense: either the R62A's go from the 7 to the 6, or the R62A's go from the 7 to the 4. We all know which of those two options was chosen. The overwhelming majority of subway riders don't care about one car class as opposed to another, as long as the air conditioning is working. And to the extent that some riders do have preferences, NYCT has never had a policy of assigning cars based on those preferences. Car assignments are based on what makes the most operational sense. And individual shops don't get to decide what cars they're assigned. Those decisions are made on a systemwide basis. http://www.thejoekorner.com/carassignments/irt-2014-06-16.html The 6 runs 40 trains (400 cars); the 7 runs 32 trains (352 cars) - and don't forget that the 7 is getting 126 new cars in addition to the cars transferred from the 6. An isolated sighting of a foreign car class is meaningless. Maybe a 5 train was diverted up the Pelham line (to fill a gap in 6 service or because of a blockage on the Jerome or WPR line) and it ran in 6 service for a trip or two and was laid up at Westchester temporarily. If the crews on the 6 line are too lazy to do their jobs, they should be disciplined or fired. Wholesale car fleets are not reassigned to accommodate somebody's desire to not do his or her job. Converting all of the R142A's to R188's would be an incredible waste of money. The R188 contract doesn't call for it, nor is it funded. It's not happening. I guess it's possible that some people find unsubstantiated rumors interesting or exciting. I suspect that you're making them up to try to fool others (it doesn't seem to be working well), or maybe your friends made them up and fooled you. It has nothing to do with what the crew wants and everything to do with the need to pump trains through Flatbush Avenue terminal as fast as possible in order to maintain the intense rush hour service there. (Even the midday service there is incredibly intense - aside from Brooklyn Bridge, which doesn't really count, I can't think of any other terminal that runs a 4 minute headway straight through the midday.) Holding the train at the terminal for five or ten minutes as the crew cranks the signs from 2 to 5 just isn't an option. If the 2 were to get any R62A's, they simply wouldn't be reassigned as 5's at Flatbush (barring a massive gap in service). Back in the redbird days, 2-5 swaps were uncommon. The strip maps aren't the issue. (When R142 2 trains and R142 5 trains swap places, the strip maps are all wrong.) The issue is that the trains don't spend enough time at the terminal to have all of the signs cranked from 2 to 5 or 5 to 2. The R44 and R46 originally came with rollsigns remote-controlled from the cabs. The wiring for that system was recycled into the digital signs when they were installed. The R62 and R68 never had such wiring. In any case, the idea to retrofit the R62/R68 with digital signage was Jay Walder's. When he left, the idea died. Kawasaki is producing CBTC-ready cars in the R188 contract. Thales (the CBTC contractor) will come in at a later date and install the CBTC equipment. Difficult? I think you're understating the case. The R32/R38 air conditioning unit completely blocked the panel that needed to be opened in order to crank the rollsign.

But the 2 and 4 both run local south of Nevins at night, so the analogy isn't perfect. The A and D could still make connections at 59th and both run local - the D would have to pull into 59th on the express track and then cross to the local. (That's for northbound - reverse it for southbound.) That way, if the D is running a minute late and misses its connection with the A, the people going to local stops aren't stuck with a 19 minute wait for the next A - and the express stops are far enough apart that walking from 59th or 125th isn't a realistic option for most.

Watch it, somebody might take that as encouragement to break into the cab and change the signs!

Any sort of signal failure will cause major disruptions. Even with CBTC, they very rarely take out the whole line (and, on the flip side, if you've never encountered an AC power failure that knocks out all of the wayside signals along a stretch of track, consider yourself fortunate). I'm sure there are procedures for maintaining some semblance of operation when the signals are out, but it will inevitably be seriously degraded from regular rush hour levels of service. Except at interlockings and south of Broadway Junction, there are no more wayside signals on the Canarsie line, so there are no (or, more accurately, few) wayside signals to fall back on. Signal systems are quite pricey - it's very hard to justify spending money on two redundant signal systems on the same line. Signal replacement projects are basically wayside or CBTC, but not both - and CBTC is higher-capacity, safer, and faster than wayside, and I believe the life-cycle cost is lower. That said, the Canarsie CBTC system does seem to be somewhat lacking in reliability - I hope Siemens and Thales do better in future jobs. Subway cars have lots of systems and components on board that have the potential to fail. Just because a car seems to run well doesn't mean that those systems and components never fail. CBTC-equipped cars do have extra components that other cars don't have, so I do agree somewhat that it's a bit unfair to compare MDBF on cars with CBTC to MDBF on cars without CBTC - an R143 with failed CBTC is no worse off than any non-CBTC car. As the CBTC program progresses, I wonder if the MDBF tables will be split between CBTC cars and non-CBTC cars. The signals are most certainly not staying put! The entire point of a signal modernization project is to replace the old signal system with something new, whether wayside or CBTC. Flushing will have more (brand new) wayside signals than Canarsie, but I believe they're only going on the two-track section of the line (and at interlockings), and, like on the southern end of the Canarsie line, they still won't support regular rush hour headways. Given the cost involved, I don't see how a high-capacity wayside system on top of a high-capacity CBTC system could possibly be justified.

The 6 will mostly run R62A's, but some R142A's will still run, simply because they're not all needed on the 7.6 riders will cope the same way 1 and 3 riders cope today. For the most part, they don't even care. CBTC is a type of signal system, which enforces safe train separation and safe interlocking operation, much like the old wayside signals we're all used to seeing. ATS is an overlay on top of a signal system that automatically tracks trains and routes them through interlockings. Nonsense. They didn't run on the 7 at first because they were in five car sets, because Corona Shop wasn't yet equipped to handle the roof mounted HVAC units, and because there simply was no pressing reason to run them on the 7 rather than the 6.

Actually, you can't even pick two. Systems that shut down every night also have weekend GO's. This weekend, for instance, the London Underground website shows outages on the Central line for six stops, on most of the Metropolitan line northwest of Wembley Park, on the Piccadilly line for seven stops, on the entire Edgware branch of the Northern line, and on a segment of the DLR. Line shutdowns are unavoidable. In fact, we're fortunate to have express tracks and reroute options that often allow some semblance of service to continue running, where other systems would have to shut down. There's nothing wrong with posting your opinions, but don't be surprised if others disagree. Who do you think benefits from adequate system maintenance? Nobody's bashing you.

There are very important events every single weekend of the year, all over the city. When GO's are scheduled, the goal is not to make it convenient to get to all important events easily, since invariably that's simply not possible. The goal is to try to keep the inconvenience to a minimum, to ensure that the various GO's aren't incompatible with each other, and to try to maintain adequate capacity for everybody. (That's why Flushing line GO's are avoided during Mets games - because there wouldn't be enough capacity to handle the post-game rush.) I'm not downplaying the Wood - but I think you may be downplaying everything else.

And you've verified that there are no conflicts with any GO's scheduled for those weekends? No they're not. NYCT policy is to institute out of system transfers only to take the place of former transfers that have been eliminated by service changes. While I'd like to see a transfer here, NYCT hasn't been willing thus far to incur the loss of revenue (from people who the MetroCard system might be transferring but aren't actually).

Railfans? Be nice. Not in my opinion.

Yes, but it's only 31 trains, rather than the 36.5 that the actual R179 order is providing.

Great news! Thanks. April 31? I've marked my calendar.

Very few of them care one way or the other.

That was on a temporary basis with the current fleet. Once the 300 R179's (most in 4 car units) replace the 272 R32-42's and SAS opens, there won't be enough cars for a 600 foot C. Again, the CBTC standard doesn't exist yet. The cars will be CBTC-ready, and once the standard is finalized, the cars can be equipped. Yes, they also have to be divisible by 4. What you apparently don't understand is that the MTA doesn't have an unlimited capital budget.

The 1 was cut off from its usual storage areas all weekend, so it presumably borrowed some equipment from the 3.

The M would have to be cut back to Essex whenever GO's affect 6th Avenue or QBL service. The QBL interlockings are currently being redone. Then comes years of CBTC installation on the QBL, plus interlocking replacements on 6th. What's the point of paying for a service that might run a few weekends each year for the next decade or more?

What would be the point of that?The East New York fleet includes 64 cars equipped for the unique Canarsie CBTC system. Those cars, at a minimum, will not be leaving East New York. They could in principle go to any line running 600 foot trains, bit why do you think they'll go to the Q specifically? The C can't run R46's. The R179 order isn't large enough to accommodate 600 foot C trains.If QBL CBTC is ready to go before the R211's are in, the Jamaica R46's will have to go to Coney Island in exchange for more R160's.Fresh Pond, by the way, is a yard, not a maintenance shop. Cars are assigned to maintenance shops, not to yards. No cars are assigned to Fresh Pond. The entire R143 fleet has specialized Canarsie CBTC equipment. The R143's won't be going to the C. The NYCT CBTC standard hasn't even been determined yet! 50 isn't even divisible by 4!