AndrewJC

Subway ridership has been growing by leaps and bounds in recent years, partly offset by a steady (but smaller) decline in bus ridership. I rode two R46 R's yesterday.

No it's not. (Why would it? The R188's are never going to run anywhere other than the 7.)

Q1-509 - the upright signal - appears to be dark. I wonder what happened here.

Get used to seeing R160's on the R in Queens on weekends for the next 14 months.

The R143's only ran on the weekend OPTO shuttle, because R42's aren't OPTO-compatible. As you say, once the R160's arrived, there was no need to use R143's on the M shuttle. I highly doubt that. People ride the subway to get from point A to point B. If the C train that pulls in is the best way for them to get there, they'll take it. If not, they won't. Exactly. How did the midterm go? And waste ten minutes of their life? No. Railfans do that. Regular subway riders don't. Again, no.

Can't argue with you there!

That should be 8 fully new trains (88 cars' worth), of course. Conditional acceptance of of the 8 new trains. Thanks.

R32's could possibly show up on the M in an emergency situation, but I certainly agree that they won't run there on a regular basis.

E congestion in the reverse-peak direction, to clarify - there's currently a lot of traffic from 34th to the two East 53rd stations. "Nearly all the jobs" is quite an exaggeration - Midtown East certainly has a greater concentration of jobs than the Penn Station area, but it doesn't have anywhere close to all the jobs. If funding is obtained. Don't celebrate just yet.

If a 2 strip map on a 5 train isn't a big problem, even though the most prominent indication of the line is on the strip map, then a 7 strip map on a 6 train certainly isn't a big problem, since the large 6 bullet in the window is much more prominent than the strip map. The R188 order includes 88 fully new 11-car trains, plus 38 existing 10-car trains converted to 11-car trains. Sorry, I'm not following - reforecast of what?

The shop assignment has nothing to do with which yard(s) the cars are stored in. The shop assignment simply determines which barn is responsible for maintenance and scheduled inspections. Currently, R trains lay up at Jamaica Yard, on the outer QBL express tracks, at City Hall, on the 4th Avenue express tracks, at the spur track north of 95th, and at Coney Island Yard. (Have I missed anything? Probably.) But every single one of those cars is based at Jamaica Shop. Many if not most lines have multiple storage locations, but (aside from the temporary situation on the C and the J, and possibly a few other rare exceptions) all of the cars assigned to any given line are maintained at a single shop. If the cars on the southern R are based at Jamaica, that doesn't mean that they have to physically go to Jamaica every night.

Boy, this thread suddenly got very quiet. So, how did the hunting go today?

Who is "everyone"? Either this guy is trying to fool us or someone else successfully fooled him. Nothing's happening on August 1 either. Go out and enjoy the weather, if you like, but you're not going to be riding an R188 in service. Trains have wheels. They can move. What's the question?

Good find, thanks. Enjoy your wait, but I doubt you'll be catching anything in service.

Actually, it doesn't, since the Canarsie line south of Broadway Junction has a moderate-capacity wayside signal system that was installed along with CBTC to allow unequipped trains to reach Canarsie Yard and its car wash - I believe there are enough signals for 12 tph, which isn't enough for rush hour service but is fine off-peak. So, in principle, unequipped trains (or trains equipped with the eventual systemwide-except-Canarsie-and-Flushing CBTC system) can use that connection and run to Canarsie as long as service doesn't run any better than every 5 minutes.

Any train running express between 241st and East 180th, stopping only at Gun Hill, would be virtually empty. Why spend money running it? It's not like 2 trains are overcrowded at that point. I'm not certain about this, but from what I'm hearing, the cars on both parts of the R will continue to be based at Jamaica Shop. The southern R will be using R160's so that Coney Island Shop can pitch in and make small-scale repairs, but inspections and larger maintenance jobs will still take place at Jamaica. The cars can be easily swapped out for other R160's on weekends (or, if necessary, any day on the F). The car assignments split out the R68/R68A and the various types of R160, when in practice the yard dispatchers don't care. The car assignments still have to include an absolute number of each car class on each line, even if reality isn't so cut-and-dry. In practice, the G runs a lot of R68A's. I don't know if this is still the case, but the D used to use one CI-based train on Saturdays, and it was (or is) often R68A. R68A appearances on other days of the week, aside from baseball specials, are not common. No it's not. The G runs plenty of R68A's on weekdays. If my information is correct and the southern R is using Jamaica-based cars, then I would say an R68/68A is very unlikely - an R46 would be far more likely. They don't have transverse seats.

Aha, so this is where the rumor started! Folks, the so-called 30-day test is not for a fixed 30 (or 32) days. If there is a major failure (which is not unlikely), the clock starts over again. Anybody who claims a fixed 30-day (or 32-day) period for the test is either making up his information or getting his information from somebody who's making it up. Hold your foam, folks. Yards (i.e., storage facilities) certainly don't care about cab configuration. Maintenance shops might. But in this case it's being done simply so that any two five-car units can be coupled together with no risk that the conductor will have to walk back and forth between cars as the platforms switch sides. You say that passengers were complaining. What were passengers allegedly complaining about? The crew certainly doesn't get to decide when they want to take a train out!

...or with 150 foot trains (Franklin) and 300 foot trains (Rockaway). There were some targeted service increases that would have gone along with congestion pricing, but the C was going to be lengthened in any case, first as part of the R160 program (it would have gotten either R44's or R46's, which can't add up to 480 feet) and later as part of the R179 program (in its original 290+50+80 configuration). When the R179 order was trimmed to an order of 300 cars with no options, the decision was made to keep the short C's.

That is 100% correct. As for gracefully switching between signal systems, that's a prerequisite for QBL CBTC, which will only be installed initially between Union Turnpike and 50th St. (And before anybody asks, the 7 extension is also opening with a wayside signal system - otherwise it wouldn't be able to open until the CBTC and R188 projects are complete.) After QBL, I'd expect some more IND lines before moving on to the BMT. The BMT, as far as I know, has had all of its signals modernized at some point, while much of the IND is still using its original signals. The 64 CBTC-equipped R160's are equipped with the Canarsie CBTC system, which will be unique. The Flushing CBTC system will also be unique, but everything after that will share a common standard.

No, although the three car classes all look very similar, they are quite different under the hood and are not compatible.

Nonsense. The Port Authority can obviously stop any other party from building on their property, but simply undercutting someone's prices is not grounds for a (successful) lawsuit.

Anybody has the right to sue for any reason, but the Port Authority is unlikely to win a lawsuit on the grounds that somebody is undercutting their fare. On the other hand, the Port Authority is extremely likely to win a lawsuit on the grounds that somebody has constructed something on their property without their permission!

Last weekend was the end of a week-long heat wave. It was much cooler this past week, so the R32's have presumably coped much better.

Park is 4th. Lex splits the long 3rd-to-Park block, and Madison splits the long Park-to-5th block. (For whatever reason, the long 5th-to-6th block, equal in length, isn't split. The other avenue-to-avenue blocks are a bit shorter.)

THIS. Everybody, read this. Should the SAS serve a corridor of Lower Manhattan lined with large office buildings that's currently unserved by the subway? Or should it be tightly sandwiched between the two IRT lines, possibly forcing the J/Z to be cut back to Chambers? Here's what the SDEIS has to say about this issue: In conclusion, the Nassau Street Option would not meet the goals and objectives of the project as well as the Water Street Option. It would not reduce crowding levels on the Lexington Avenue Line to the same degree as the Water Street Option. With the Nassau Street Option, crowding levels on the Lexington Avenue 45 express routes would continue to exceed NYCT’s loading guidelines at Grand Central Station. The Nassau Street Option would also not improve subway access to the Lower East Side and the easternmost areas of Lower Manhattan as well as the Water Street Option. Three new station areasChatham Square, South Street Seaport, and Hanover Squarewould be served by the Water Street Option. Also, access to a new north-south subway service would be provided at Grand Street with the Water Street Option. Under the Nassau Street Option, it would not be possible to accommodate future growth by adding trains without an equivalent reduction in JMZ service over the Williamsburg Bridge. The estimated costs for the Nassau Street Option could rise considerably if the existing stations were fully expanded and upgraded to accommodate the additional riders (and it may not be completely feasible to do so), eliminating one of the major advantages of this Option. The Nassau Street Option also has the potential to create significant adverse impacts to historic, visual, and archaeological resources, as the areas of construction would be very disruptive and are often in more sensitive areas than the Water Street Option. Finally, with the Nassau Street Option, there would be significant construction-period and permanent impacts to existing Nassau Line (JMZ) service, a potential significant environmental justice issue as well as a transit impact.