bobtehpanda

On 2/16/2022 at 4:01 PM, Trainmaster5 said:

Perhaps now you understand what I was saying in the Subway thread. There's no difference in crime in Suffolk, Nassau, or NYC. Subway, bus, LIRR. Same crimes but different locations. Just my opinion. Your opinion may be different. Carry on.

Hey now, there is a difference.

You get to pay an arm and a leg for the privilege on the LIRR.

3 hours ago, mikecintel said:

I called Walgreens and they tell me they don't have the scanner activated and there is trouble and so they called "Tech support" to solve it. Is that true?

Most of the national drugstores are run like shit across the country. All about driving costs down.

4 minutes ago, Vulturious said:

I and O are pretty reasonable, but you're pointing out current services that also sound similar to words like the N and R. It's pretty much contradicting yourself regardless of whether wikipedia says so or not.

Eh, so at least Y makes sense as well; there's a whole famous skit based on confusing the word "why" as the question word rather than a statement

2 hours ago, CenSin said:

Not 💯. The super express becomes a local east of Forest Hills? But why? Seems counterintuitive. I would expect a tapered/graduated “demotion” of super-express to express and express to local, not a complete switcheroo where both services end up taking the same amount of time to get to Manhattan, taking away the possibility of an actual faster service.

"Super express" became kind of a misnomer as the project evolved over the years to become more useful.

The original iteration was one track with no stops. It was about as useful as the possibility of running QBL 3/1 in the peak direction; not very, because what goes in must come out.

Later it became two tracks and stopped at Woodside for the  . This is no net stop reduction; the makes one stop between Queensbridge and Forest Hills and so would the super-express. At that point, the speed improvements would pretty much just come from rolling stock, but there's an additional wrinkle there as well; higher speeds lower your max TPH because it takes longer to come to a full stop. All the NTTs have 55MPH limits anyways so in practice we would've never taken advantage.

When you consider all of those things, the switch at 75th becomes an equivalent or bigger time saving than the new route.

If anyone's interested, uploaded the 1994 study of a Tappan Zee/Cross Westchester rail link 

23 hours ago, Vulturious said:

Dekalb is a disaster only for express trains, the  isn't running express. It's pretty much alone for the most part straight from Bay Ridge until Whitehall St. Obviously, the  added in would hinder it, but they're only limited rush hour service. Even if you were to include the rush hour put-in from Coney Island yard, they literally stuck outside of 9 Av for like 30 mins to even an hour at times. 

I never said they should swap services around, I said they could. For example, let's say the  were to be reintroduced again, but instead of it running from 168 St to WTC it would be extended to Bay Ridge. There other examples, but I decided not to bring them up because I wanted others to think of something up for themselves. Maybe it might not be the best for short term investments, but long term investments definitely can work.

Just thought of another problem with an E-R swap.

Right now Staten Island Ferry passengers have direct connections to the east side via the and the LES/Broadway via the  . The would be redundant with the , as previously mentioned, and ferry passengers would have to walk longer to the already overcrowded for East Side services. This would be true as well for all stations south of City Hall.

1 hour ago, Vulturious said:

I won't argue about how much it would cost to build the connection alone including rescheduling every service and whatnot. However, I am going to argue your statement of, "This doesn't give any new opportunities to riders." I feel like you skimmed over the whole reroute thing and swapping services around. While you are right that it might worsen connections for Broadway riders, it wasn't like people taking the  were happy with it anyway.

Like you said, riders could easily transfer over to the  or . Hell I could go a step further, riders can easily transfer to any South Brooklyn train like the  at Dekalb or Atlantic, the  at 36 St/59 St or Atlantic Av, and the  at 4 Av-9 St or Jay St-MetroTech. I don't see much of an issue with providing more alternatives or at the very least in my opinion, better alternatives. Especially those along 4 Av local stops, I can easily see more riders finally getting better service. People are probably still going to transfer over to another line entirely anyway, but that's ok. 

I ignored it because you didn't explain what *new* destinations people gained access to. Musical chairs is not a service improvement if everyone already had access to it. No one is gaining a new alternative because you just eliminated the current route. There's zero net benefit.

The already has pretty tight operating conditions. Smushing into DeKalb would be a disaster.

14 hours ago, Vulturious said:

Well you're right on one hand, but I don't necessarily see why this idea should be thrown away. It's not only about having access to west side, it's mainly about providing alternatives. I don't see an issue with terminating the  at City Hall, in fact I think it's more manageable. This would essentially allow for  trains to have a better time turning trains around if the lower level is renovated since there are 3 tracks (that's if they use the full 3 tracks which would be a waste not to). The  wouldn't need to run at all during late nights because it's cut back. 

For those along Broadway wanting service to Whitehall for that service to the Staten Island Ferry, the  could still be running there or extended into Brooklyn. Routing it via West End instead wouldn't be a bad thing in this case because 4 Av local riders in my opinion would probably have a much better time with the . 

I'm not sure how service during other times would run as that one is a bit confusing. I don't necessarily think it's a big issue if the  was running fully local during late nights since a lot of other lines are already doing so anyway. Maybe a special  service would be running the same way the late night  currently does.

Honestly, this connection would give more opportunities to riders and the MTA. The MTA could easily reroute  and  trains pretty much entirely along 8 Av and could still get to their respective branches in Brooklyn. If they wanted, the MTA could swap some services around. 

This doesn't give any new opportunities to riders. Riders wanting west side stations have the at Borough Hall or the   at Metrotech. Riders wanting 53rd St can already take the  and walk a little bit from 59th St. 

It would have cost a lot of money, and would result in no net benefits for Brooklyn riders, and significantly worsened connections for Broadway riders. At least the Chrystie St connection brought new direct Midtown services to lines that did not have it before.

1 hour ago, T to Dyre Avenue said:

Yep. I don’t know if they considered back then (first WTC construction in the late 60s) and if so, why they didn’t go through with it. But that train has left the station.  

One of the problems with to Montague is where exactly is the supposed to go? If it just terminates at City Hall that's just musical chairs.

4th Av passengers already have west side access via the at Borough Hall.

On 7/19/2020 at 8:12 AM, Union Tpke said:

This had been holding up 8th Avenue CBTC.

Screen Shot 2020-07-19 at 10.07.54 AM by Union Turnpike, on Flickr

Screen Shot 2020-07-19 at 10.08.11 AM by Union Turnpike, on Flickr

Interesting.

TBH, parkland alienation should probably be moved to the City Council but state politics is FUBAR.

3 hours ago, NewFlyer 230 said:

I don’t think they are necessarily a waste of money, my biggest gripe with the MTA is that they are not consistent. It always appears that a handful of units will get a particular feature but others don’t. That’s why you still have R46’s running around after all these years with the brown floors that date back to the late 80’s while a majority of units had their floors replaced with the standard black ones found on every other car fleet. 
Their buses are the same way in terms of some get a particular feature while it’s absent in others and it can be seen on fleet of the same age and model. 
What I will say is that Jamaica wasted money putting door floor mats and looped stanchions on the R46’s when their much newer R160s lacked them. If anything they should have made sure all the R160s had them. 

I think it was more about testing. Older equipment is generally used as a "safe" test bed in case the test is a total f**kup.

12 hours ago, Lex said:

A Staten Island link can come at a later date, but I wouldn't link the two ROWs. (Given that this is a bus-related thread, I won't elaborate here.)

Right.

As an interesting thought exercise, if it was a BRT, one other option would be a bus tunnel either to the existing Gowanus HOV or some kind of new busway facility to the BBT.

2 minutes ago, N6 Limited said:

Perhaps they should extend the Interboro RX across the bay and along the North Shore

The point of RX is that it's cheap to do, and a tunnel to Staten Island is definitely not cheap

15 minutes ago, Eric B said:

According to the map legend, the Astoria-LGA section is "Airtrain Skytrail (atop Airtrain)" [Green] above "Airtrain using JFK technology" [light blue], like the LGA-JFK section (with the exception of the TBD portions), yet the description says the first portion is a shuttle bus.

And I'm not even seeing a description of the "Skytrail" (though the map says something about a "linear park".

A linear park is something like the High Line.

Personally, the last place I want to be when going for a jog is choking on vehicle exhaust on top of the Van Wyck.

6 hours ago, B35 via Church said:

Speaking of scares, I personally find the fear mongering the Weather Channel does particularly disgusting.... You watch that channel enough (whenever the potential for some impending [rain, snow, whatever] storm of some sort looms) & the glee that emanates from the reporters/newscasters on there... Quite sickening.... It's as if they a] want these storms to happen & b] tragedies to occur, due to them.... Sunny skies, or cloudy skies with no chance for rain makes for slow news days, I suppose....

Most TV, not even just the Weather Channel, have gone with "if it bleeds it leads" because the media has been bleeding money since the internet took their ad money. And the Internet's not that much better.

At this point, pretty much the only safe news is NPR, because they don't take ad money.

7 hours ago, trainfan22 said:

Tomorrow's snow loans should be interesting now that we have XDE40s & Nova Hybrids in the fleet. I expect a lot of fanners out and about tomorrow getting footage of said snow loans. 

 

 

MTA twitter is being a tad bit dramatic urging people to stay home and not use the system during the storm. Based on the forecasts I saw for NYCT/MTA Bus service area I doubt this storm will cripple the system and force outright suspensions, will see I guess.

7 hours ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

I assume you have never been stuck and stranded in a snowstorm with no service from the . I have and it is something I won't forget. They know that they can have a difficult time providing service, so why chance it if you don't have to be out there? 

It could always be worse. Here we shut down after a half inch of accumulation.

To be fair, it's because most of the city is on massive hills, so you get scenes like this: 

There's a bus that wipes out at 2:50.

3 hours ago, NewFlyer 230 said:

The  tracks beyond Jamaica Center do in fact travel south but I think it would be very costly at this point to continue the line south into SE Queens. The time to do that was years ago. Now I think the best thing to do is to continue the  along Archer Ave to 168th street and call it a day. They can provide the  with a better terminal and it would close the transit gap in downtown Jamaica because the  on Hillside was never a good alternative. I doubt there are that many folks walking from Archer Ave/Merrick to the 169th street station. I suppose if the  got extended to 168th they would have to also extend the  there too. 
 

As far as how to better serve Southeast Queens, I think it would be cheaper to modify the existing LIRR Atlantic branch (I believe that’s the one that includes Locust Manor, Laurelton & Rosedale and convert Valley Stream into a two platform station. However the new island platform would be for terminating trains coming from NYC. I was thinking the MTA could add additional stations at 108th Ave, Linden Blvd, Baisley Blvd and have trains run from Valley Stream to Penn Station & or Grand Central when it opens up. Anyone needing Atlantic Terminal & Brooklyn can either transfer at Jamaica or take a Far Rockaway train on the weekdays. I would have the price for such service be $4.50 the city ticket price to encourage ridership and maybe have service run every 30 mins on this new NYC LIRR shuttle service. Maybe this idea is an overkill but I think it would still be cheaper than to implement than a  extended into Southeast Queens because good luck with construction and funding for it. 
 

 

Right. The original plan involved the E just taking the line entirely, but that's no longer possible in 2021; in 1968, LIRR ridership had been in steep decline, and so it was projected that they would be fine with just the line to St. Albans. Today, there are too many trains to fit on a single pair of tracks; you'd probably need to triple or quadruple the line through St. Albans.

On 11/15/2021 at 4:22 PM, 1998NewFlyer said:

 

Seems like a waste of money just like the looped stations on the r46s

On 11/15/2021 at 4:25 PM, BenTheMiner said:

Looped stanchions were NOT a waste of money. They allowed for more passengers to have a pole to grab onto while standing as the pole split into two. LCD advertisement screens are a technological upgrade which makes displaying advertisements and transit information much more flexible. I'm not sure when they'll ever start displaying service information on those screens, though. That would make them much more useful.

Also, IIRC, the way advertising works in the MTA is that the ad agency pays for things like the digital ad spaces, the touch screen kiosks that also have ads, etc.

20 hours ago, R10 2952 said:

If I recall correctly, the reason they've still been sending a bunch of  trains to 179th since 1988 is because the Parsons-Archer station was never intended as a long-term terminal, and it just doesn't have the turning capacity.  For me personally, the Archer Avenue Line project was over-ambitious from day one, and frankly more trouble than its worth.

With the amount of time and money the MTA wasted on this glorified stubway, they would have simply been better off retrofitting a third track onto the Jamaica Avenue El, rerouting some bus lines from 179th-Hillside to 168th-Jamaica, and calling it a day. 

Well, day one did not involve demolishing the .

Archer Avenue would've been a lot simpler had they not done that, and I think we would see the full line down towards SE Queens. Ironically, the Macy's that asked for demolishing the left Jamaica shortly after.

The devil is also in the details on this one. Bay Ridge Av's northern end is under Senator St, so it's only 690 feet to the ROW.

22 minutes ago, CenSin said:

On the Bay Ridge end, bypassing the looks like it’d be another missed transfer opportunity. With the extra space provisioned along the eastern half of 4 Avenue, it should be easy to cut and cover a short tunnel to connect with the at Bay Ridge Avenue.

 

It could even extend southward for all the buses to/from Staten Island since the Bay Ridge branch itself is so short that it doesn’t make sense to make people take the for 4 stops just to get on the RX. Those coming to/from the local stations 53 Street and 45 Street could also avoid making 2 transfers in Bay Ridge/Sunset Park to use the RX.

Where exactly are the extra spaces on 4th Av? They ruled out subway cars as an alternative, so presumably they'd need to at least be walled off from each other.

1 hour ago, Vulturious said:

I can definitely say some buses will see a drop in ridership say for example the B6 and the B11. Both Midwood High School and Brooklyn College is along the B6 route and I always hear people complain about how trash the B6 and the B11 runs or how much they hate taking the bus just to get to school. Both those lines also directly cross paths with other subway routes in South Brooklyn so anyone that lives near one of those subway lines could just take that to transfer to the IBX. However, this all depends on how much the fare costs and if subways and buses will allow for easy transfers with the IBX and vice versa.

Let's say the IBX has the same fare and easy transfers, this would definitely without a doubt get some people off of certain bus routes. Certain lines in Brooklyn would also see an increased amount of people because of it. Even certain bus lines might also see an increased number of people if they were to directly cross paths with the IBX. People would change their path from their current one that'll get them to their destination, maybe it'll be easier without having to backtrack or transfer so many times. 

This will definitely happen, but I don't think anything about the bus routes themselves will really change, which is more of what I was getting it. IBX is not really a major change in that sense, not like how Archer Avenue's opening in 1988 rerouted dozens of buses to serve the new line.

On 1/23/2022 at 12:56 PM, Lex said:

Typically, they're 6-8 cars long (7-car trains are fairly common on trains to/from Connecticut).

Okay, so 4 cars is maybe not the end of the world.

I was just thinking of LIRR's 12-car trains, where the 4-car platforms are a hassle.

2 hours ago, LaGuardia Link N Tra said:

Something that I've been thinking about recently is what impact would a fully realized IBX have on the rest of the system in terms of how we run service? (This includes both the Subway and Bus Network)

I don't think bus or subway service changes all that much. It'd be a faster line in the grid, but if you're far enough away it's still faster to just take a parallel bus than to go in on subway, connect to IBX, and come back out on subway.

Maybe on parallel routes, you see some fall in ridership that is going end to end, but this is a much smaller change on the network than say expanding subways east and south in Queens.