bobtehpanda

Pardon my ignorance but as a former Queens guy how exactly do people wait for buses in other boroughs? Most buses are still front door only.

I mean this isn't really a surprise to anyone, but it becomes exhausting to have the same arguments with the same people over and over and over again. What's the point of talking about it if everyone's stuck in their positions.

Yeah the RPA honestly produces a lot of pretty presentations but once you look behind the curtains it all seems a bit thin. A better selling point would be to compare it with something that actually exists. The RiverLine is in Trenton and runs along mostly old rail right of way but on downtown streets where it would be advantageous to get closer to destinations like residents and jobs. And even with single tracking they've built strategic overtaking points so that service runs every 15 minutes, which would be way more useful than anything either Oyster Bay or West Hempstead is running right now. In this case it might even be an easier sell than the River Line, since I don't think there are freight customers along either Oyster Bay or WH. I don't know that you'd want to run it as one line through Hempstead though. You'd probably get more value running them as separate lines hooking Hempstead and NCC and RFM.

Disclaimer: not a Long Islander Heavy rail to light rail is not the worst idea in the world. We even have our own examples around the area like HBLR or the River Line. It generally solves the problem of "legacy heavy rail often doesn't go where people go", and Long Island's commercial and office hubs pretty much fit that description to a T.

The branch runs every two hours M-F, of course no one uses it. IIRC the only useful proposal I've seen for it is that the RPA wants to sever it from the LIRR, and knit it with the Oyster Bay Branch via street running tracks to create a sort of cross-island light rail line from Green Acres to Oyster Bay.

Yep. I wouldn't call it close to Grand St by any means. Canal St could use some Fulton-style love; the platforms and stairs and everything is all too cramped.

If you are so burdened you need an elevator that Canal-Grand schlep is longer than you think. Try telling grandma with the cane or mom with the stroller that they just need to go 10-15 minutes out of the way. And on congested Chinatown streets (though probably less true these days)

Well it could always be worse. WMATA is downright dysfunctional. https://www.washingtonian.com/2015/12/09/why-does-metro-suck-dangerous-accidents-escalator-outages/

Youth has been set up for failure for a while now. The math hasn't added up for at least a decade, maybe two or three. Jobs that didn't used to require a BA now do, and you need so many years of minimum experience. Takes too much money to do basic ongoing life things, let alone the big-ticket things like a house. And most people are one bad-luck event away from crashing to the ground. It's more of a coping mechanism than anything. But no one knows when the music will stop and it's time to grab a chair.

So now that I'm reading the report, it is very clear how this study was tilted. note that option 1 says "time-certain." It doesn't say "competitive", or "faster", because the preferred alternative is not any of those things. this strays from how NYCDOT and NYSDOT has operated in New York City for one decade going on two, because the way it's used in the screenings draws a red line on any reduction in lanes or streets. The only alternatives that don't impact lanes in any way whatsoever are the ones along the promenade. question 2, option 4 I think I've talked about, but this is the ultimate kicker, because the LGA revamp is squeezing out parking on the property to make room for planes and taxiways, and if you need to replace it 1:1 the only parcels of land without people living or working in them are located in Willets Point/Corona Park.

In the report it's 8E. A (shortened) excerpt: TL;DR - this alternative really hurts a lot of peak riders, and because of the generally longer distance than the other alternatives there's more shit in the way, which makes things more complicated.

During the pre-JC days it was turning the entirety of the QB express, 30 TPH. I don't think that in practice anything higher has been tried. How'd you get that number? The examples we have in the system most like ours, London Underground, are sobering, since I don't think they plan on hitting anything higher than 32tph on their sub-surface railways.

The way I see it, employers are holding up less and less of a bargain. First it was pensions, then it was health insurance, then in some jobs you don't even get a stable week-to-week working schedule, etc. You hear older folks talk about "if you're looking for a job you just ask to speak to the manager and hand in a resume they didn't ask for, and you get a job that pays enough for 20% down at 25" and it sounds like some wacky bizzaro world. It's only natural that employees follow suit. It reminds me of what they say across the pond. "Europeans work to live and Americans live to work." My cohort is starting to realize that whatever we were getting out of that arrangement is no longer working. It is also a reflection of the fact that most jobs that check for butt-in-seat time, you actually end up doing nothing for a good chunk of that, so some people just want to cut the bullshit and get some time back for themselves while producing the same amount of work and getting paid the same.

And then we wind up with something like the signals where decades after the lifespan the MTA is custom-building parts because the original manufacturer either doesn't give a shit or doesn't exist. It would never happen here, but there is a reason why European rolling stock gets procured with maintenance contracts these days as well.

IIRC I think @RR503 has proposed the following Chrystie St Connection style reconfiguration before West End & Brighton Express to 2nd Av Jamaica and Myrtle Lines to 6th Av Express 6th Av Local to Culvers Local and Express Personally I think there would be better connectivity to connect today's with the Fulton Local.

Peak loading on the Lex is between 42-GC and 125th; Phases I and II + the Bronx would divert a *lot* of people to the Second Avenue Subway, including some transferring passengers who are going to the West Side via 59th or 53rd. The northern portion of SAS is the busier half anyways. Intra-borough riders aren't likely to be taking a full-length SAS over Lexington anyways. It's not that fast because it makes more stops than the express. Relieving the Lex doesn't necessarily mean you have to copy everything that it's doing. To be clear, what I am advocating for is the SAS to take over the current West End and Brighton expresses. It wouldn't be that far (at least the Brighton line wouldn't be), the transfer at Atlantic isn't that crazy, and it'd have a big speed advantage over the Lex given that it bypasses Downtown completely.

There is another way. All Phase III and IV service has a northern terminal at 55 St, or moving up to 57 St for an additional connection to Lex-59. Future extensions swing it east to Queens, probably not via the 63 St tunnel since it could be full with some rearranging of services. If you swap the Chrystie St tracks to link Second Avenue to the bridge, that gives a relatively quick South Brooklyn-East Side ride.

Personally, I think there is a time and a place for capacity restriction, but with the exception of the Queens Blvd Line and bypass I don't think most places in the outer boroughs need the full 30 at least for the decade after it opens. Where I am more concerned is SAS Phases III and IV, because Manhattan *is* busy enough to need all that capacity.

To me, it sounds like it'll be as successful as the old intra-borough Queens Blvd or Fulton locals.

What really matters is the last paragraphs. All of the alternatives have serious problems except 8B; I would argue that 10,000 cars doesn't make anything a particularly busy street, since the FHWA estimates that's the capacity of a two-lane road, and that closing 31 St is not that big a deal, or also moving a utility is not a big deal. But also, general reminder that if the subway is going to cost a billion dollars a mile it's just not going to be built, period.

This is not a big deal as you might think. 15 trains per hour each holding 2000+ people is still way more capacity than a 60 foot bus holding 120 people at the same or slightly better frequency.

The chickens are coming home to roost, but hearing it from the NY Post is a bit rich given that NY Post will attack Dems for literally anything. I think the NY Times put it best: Really, this is just Chris Christie all over again, which is apropos because they used the same playbook to gain power (domineering tough guy prosecutor comes in to steamroll the establishment and puts on a show of bipartisanship)

How many of those people are old enough to vote? Someone calling Byford "Train Daddy" is probably at least under mid-20s.

On the other hand, plans for the have been around since the 1910s, but the original plans were blocked because they were an el.

To add onto this, the R44s and the R46s weren't exactly problem-free when they came in, and they stuck around for a good while. The R179s aren't going away, because there is no plan B, and there is no money for a plan B that is going to take years to happen anyways.