bobtehpanda

Well, Manhattan Mall is getting demolished for Penn South, so I wouldn't hold my breath.

You're "unsure of the answer" because it doesn't meet your preconceived notions. Here's the exact picture of a Toronto Rocket you posted to start this thread: You'll notice that there is a bench with a man sitting on it right before the gangway. The inner walls of the gangway are no further out than the tips of his feet. 3 feet of space is 3 feet of space but you're doing all these mental gymnastics to say there's not enough space, when clearly there is at least the same amount of standing room as there would be if you were standing directly in front of the man. (I really hope you're not standing any closer than that to someone sitting on a bench.)

MTA's left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. Given that it's never happened on the subway, and generally speaking I haven't heard of bus operational practices crossing over to subways or vice versa, this is all hypothetical.

This hasn't really happened during previous sets of subway car replacements, what makes you think they'd start now?

Well, if you're willing to make the journey, these trains have now been converted to diesel operation on the Isle of Wight.

To add onto this general point, it makes the classic NY problem of "position yourself near the exit" a lot less annoying. There are people who exit differently from where they enter, and right now some people will try to run as far as possible to get as close as possible, probably shove themselves into a door as its closing, cause it to reopen, and slow the whole damn thing down. In a train that you can mostly walk through, you could just get on, and then spread out or walk inside the train, so the above becomes less necessary.

To be honest, even pre-pandemic I was wondering how long it was going to last. When I went while I was visiting for the holidays, it seemed like there were a lot of people visiting, but not buying anything. And I don't know how long it would be that New Yorkers and tourists would stay excited about yet another department store, particularly one with no historical connection to New York.

It seems like maps are on the fence about whether or not the part of Frankfort St before the Park Row ramp could also be considered Park Row. Ulitmately, I don't know that it really matters, since there isn't a bus stop on Frankfort St itself, and the segment is what, barely a few hundred feet?

I will believe this is going to happen when I see it. After all that Nicolls Road BRT is still nowhere to be found.

I mean, there are definitely LTD routes that have weird clusters of local-spaced stops. This is probably the worst in Manhattan; to use the M4 as an example, everywhere else the bus is fine with more or less stopping every 7-10 blocks, but around 110 St you have stops at 110/Lenox, 108/5th, 106/5th, and 102/5th; and that's in the middle of the route.

It didn't help that as far as recent developments go, Hudson Yards had some extremely questionable things bolted onto it. At the end of the day, BPC has nice little apartment blocks, park space, and playgrounds, which is not exactly groundbreaking but those are all fundamental things people want in a residential neighborhood. Hudson Yards has the pine cone, a curvy bit of new High Line, and a shopping mall anchored by Neiman Marcus, which was so out of touch even the Times panned it, and the Times isn't exactly the paper of the people. No one wants a mall in Manhattan; look at the husk of Manhattan Mall a few blocks down.

Gangways were actually introduced by Pullman to prevent telescoping. Even if ridership declines, there is more emphasis on keeping people distant, which will drive up demand for space. There is a reason why offices do not actually see a reported vacancy decline; many firms are looking to expand the space they have for the headcount they already employ. Does the average passenger care about side windows? They're certainly nice to look out of but if you ask "would you rather get on the train or get passed up by a train with slightly larger windows" the choice would be plainly obvious. And unless the MTA is going to cut costs new subway lines are not going to happen. How many times has the MTA been burned by slow adoption of technology? Metrocard lasted way longer than it had to. Cell and wi-fi came very late to MTA, as did countdown clocks, BusTime, to say nothing of earlier attempts at technology like air conditioning. Quite frankly, this is a lot of hemming and hawing over one small test train, which is the only R211T actually confirmed to come since the option order has not been paid for. If it works out it works out and if it doesn't it doesn't; that's the entire point of a test train. Sticking your fingers in your ears because "we don't do that here" isn't some great display of independent thought. Particularly when the examples of things like car flexibility have to be brought up from almost 40 years ago.

It mostly just sounds like you're fishing for people to go along with your excuses rather than actually engaging a debate. Three feet of space is three feet of space. Compared to a 60 foot car, that is 5% of space.

The trick to standing in a gangway is you gotta be in or out, not both. If you're in the gangway you have to be holding onto something in the gangway itself. People take nasty spills outside the gangway too. But we haven't made the train one solid car from end to end because that's just plain silly. To add onto this point, the main cost of providing service is not the length of the train (directly), but labor. Half-length trains only saved money on the because OPTO. But notice that the MTA never cared to cut train lengths any shorter; because it really wasn't worth the trouble.

Off-peak service is actually cheaper to provide than peak service because peak service determines the maximum amount of people being hired, trains being run, etc. Off-peak service is run with equipment and people already on hand. Does LIRR do split shifts for peak services during normal times?

I mean, I think people will just say that because the Penn Station area does not have the best reputation.

SEPTA does through-running, PATCO is completely separate. But nothing at like a regional-rail like frequency. And with much wider platforms: Compare to Penn: From experience, a 12-car train can easily take 3-4 minutes to completely clear the platform of passengers, maybe longer if some grandma or otherwise encumbered person is on the narrow stairwells. You can't really run a reasonable frequency with that kind of dwell time. Having 2 12-car trains berthing at high frequency at one of these platforms is asking for trouble. Track capacity is certainly a problem, but less than one might think. From the LIRR perspective West Side Yard is essentially a through-run destination. Sunnyside Yard is for the NJT. But the problem is really track paths; both railroads run lopsided schedules in favor of the peak direction, and for through-running to work each railroad would need to give up some peak slots, which will probably happen over each agency's respective dead bodies. Even then, a new two-track Hudson tunnel is pretty much required, but due to the lack of track paths and huge dwell time you would probably need Penn South anyways. If Penn already had wide platforms and reasonable dwell times, that would be one thing, but we don't live in that world, and getting from A to B without something that looks like Penn South or Macy's Basement would be very painful.

It might not be completed but it's already pretty big. Even filling the area up to its current capacity would be bigger employment than most neighborhoods, and the existing buildings are noted in the article as 93% leased. Eateries and shops aren't doing that well in general, but also personally I was never that enthused by that mall. A lot of people visiting, but not necessarily buying. And don't get me started on the inevitability with a staircase sculpture and the jumping.

I would be pretty optimistic about Hudson Yards, if only because it is some of the newest Class A office space around. It might be less densely packed because an open-office is not going to fly post-COVID, but people are still signing leases. If anything, I would imagine that companies would be more keen to abandon older office buildings, which are generally less flexible layout wise, have worse problems with elevator congestion and air circulation, etc.

I could see why Utica is the priority; it balances the load away from Nostrand, by using some of the train capacity that just terminates at Crown Heights.

IIRC (I read pieces covering the EIS, not the actual document) this pretty much is what the linchpin of the whole LGA remodeling is. The remodel will push the terminals much closer to the GCP to make room for more gates, taxiways, etc. This in turn squeezes out the parking lots that are currently in between the current terminal and the GCP. Airport passengers will still be able to park somewhere on the LGA property (and a good deal of traffic is mostly pickup/dropoff anyways), but the employees have to go somewhere, and the biggest open parcel of land in the area is Corona Park/Willets Point.

Penn South is extremely expensive but to be honest it may be the only way to get things done. Through-running as proposed by countless entities always had the problem of the Penn platforms being unable to clear off passengers at maximum through capacity. The current footprint definitely has the space for wider platforms with less tracks, but it presents a chicken and egg problem where getting from A to B would result in reduced capacity during the interim works when they'd have to shut down platforms and tracks to reconfigure things. I did see some whinging about it resulting in the demolition of the historic Gimbels', but the Manhattan Mall transformation already gutted that building, so I don't think we're losing much in terms of historical things since not much of the original thing is left around. Of course, because it requires the wholesale demolition of several blocks of Midtown, I expect it to take about as long as either Moniyhan did from start to finish, or PABT replacement.

The main issue with it has always been figuring out a way to build the connection that doesn't entail shutting down Nassau and Chrystie St service and destroying the largest park in the area for about two years.

No 1. where would you even connect the two 2. the high line doesn't really have passenger stations 3. the high line runs through buildings, some of which were integrated after the conversion to a park and so can't handle the weight, vibration etc. of an actual subway line 4. state law requires replacement of parkland in the area, and there isn't a whole lot of free land on the Far West Side to just turn into park

The issue is not really that you can't hold powerful people accountable through the legal system; the Sacklers, after many years, are going through the wringer for pushing Oxy sales in America. The reason this is being brought as a suit against the MTA is that ultimately, in our legal system the entity doing the direct action is the one you have to seek remedy from. And the burden of proof is a lot easier to accomplish. Chris Christie was never successfully charged with wrongdoing in Bridgegate, because there was too much plausible deniability. Preet Bharara had access to the entire Moreland Commission but there was not enough in it that directly constituted a crime that Cuomo could be charged for. (If he could've pulled it off he would've done so; Giuliani, Spitzer, and Cuomo himself all made their political careers on high-profile prosecution efforts, and people were throwing around Bharara's name for governor at one point.)