bobtehpanda

So as far as I remember, the biannual fare hikes are enshrined in state law as a result of the recession rescue package, and I didn't hear anything about the Legislature repealing it.

Gonna need a source. Here's one:

Testing everything together in service, probably. They don't just flip a switch and hope and pray everything works at a full 24TPH out of the box.

IIRC, OMNY's lineage is from Cubic, who licensed it from TfL, and Oyster there has had both contactless bank cards and fare capping for over a decade now. That being said, you'd be foolish to trust something this complicated just works out of the box, and American banks have only recently started issuing large numbers of contactless cards again, so I would imagine it'll happen when it'll happen, but it's not a huge lift like it would be on something truly not designed for it like MetroCard.

I mean, this thing was designed in 2004 and supposed to open in 2007. So that's not totally wild. The panels are actually pretty interesting, I would imagine that they're the waterproof paneling system described here:

Indeed. Some people will argue til they're blue in the face that Nassau-South Brooklyn service is useful because it provides an alternative, but the reality is that as an alternative it's not very compelling and probably negative for most riders to use that over the Broadway service they already have. If we were to run that again today, it'd probably carry air even if the was packed to the gills, because you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

Is there a track diagram series for Metro-North the way that the LIRR today (used) to have track diagrams for areas like Penn and Jamaica?

The NH line has four tracks and the Harlem Line through the Bronx has three, so it's not really a net loss for the NH line since there was a capacity bottleneck into GCT anyways.

The mobile wallet OMNY is not out yet, right?

Driving is the norm mostly because it is so much faster and convenient (since you're not waiting around for your own car.) It doesn't have to be. As an example, Canadian suburbs are pretty much just like American suburbs in terms of how they are built, yet they have very high transit ridership because they actually pay to run bus services as frequently as every 15 or even 10 minutes throughout the day. You get what you pay for, and in terms of that NICE was a whole exercise to pay a lot less.

That's probably (also) because in the immediate aftermath of the LIB transition the service cuts were so bad ridership collapsed by a third. The bus has to be generally useful for people to consider using it during non-peak hours. It isn't even very frequent or fast during peak on most routes.

I would imagine that the plan to go up the Harlem Line would still be the plan.

Has construction on Junius-Livonia started yet?

It's a bit too early to say, since I don't know if Hochul is going to be a caretaker or if she's going to Gilibrand herself into being one of the most powerful politicians in the state overnight, but at least early indicators are not that she's not a egotistical maniac with something to compensate for (unlike two certain metro area governors)

It kinda depends on if DOT wants to make the "red carpet" treatment of TSP, bus lanes and bus bulbs a separately named program.

that entire program was a mess. the drivers were complaining nobody was riding (which is why they were cut in the first place), the riders were complaining that the drivers were barely keeping to a published schedule if there was one and they didn't take Metrocard. I guess if you really wanted to decimate ridership you could make it so you could only pay $2.25 in exact cash. (I think that's what the fare would've been back then.)

Well, to add a counterpoint, MWAA is both Virginia and DC and is paying for DC Metro to come in. (Well, to be more precise, they are building the extension for DC Metro to operate, which is working out interestingly since MWAA is not used to building rail lines.)

I agree, which is really why I'd only ever expect an open gangway to happen to the married pairs. That being said, there is a fair amount of scope to increase standing room without doing it at all.

According to the ridership numbers, no one else did either.

somehow i don't think empty Q79 dollar vans were ever the problem. Man, I forgot about those.

Car lengths going down, I don't really see happening. Unlike the subway, 85 foot cars can run everywhere, and when you make cars shorter that's more axles, more coupling, etc. No reason to add all those costs. I can see the LIRR adding a third door, and maybe eliminating some row seating for a set of three seats immediately around the doors, but fundamentally LIRR riders are much longer distance than BART riders, so I suspect they would keep more rows in. (Pittsburg/Bay Point is 32 miles from Embarcadero, whereas Ronkonkoma is 52 miles from Penn Station.) That being said, if you wanted to make standing tolerable on the LIRR you would really only need to move to 2x2 seating and even that would be a massive improvement. 4-5 cars would require some capital work (definitely 5, 4 would be less since everything is already even married pairs and some stations are already neat multiples of 4). If you wanted open gangway, you could honestly start with the married pairs as they are, the center of the married pair could definitely be used for more space.

This is unnecessarily long. Just hook out from 79 or 86 (which is actually straight due west of Astoria Blvd) and call it a day. (But also realistically not happening.) Why make a hook north and then south?

This is also the impetus behind TBTA being included in the MTA, and future congestion pricing. The root problem though, is that for whatever reason you want to believe (not getting into the controversy), it is undeniable that MTA operating and capital costs are climbing beyond the scope of reasonable revenue increases and inflation; additional revenue sources are the equivalent of patching up the Titanic with duct tape. This is why I moved somewhere shit is actually getting done.

To be fair, that is true of literally every record-breaking office development that has ever opened (Empire State Building, 30 Rock, the Sears Tower, 1WTC, the Burj Dubai, etc.), because the only time you can finance such developments is at the top of the market, and by the time construction is completed your economy is likely already well into recession. But yes, the original deal with the devil was that the Port Authority would get the Hudson's Terminal property if it also took on the financially struggling railroad it was attached to, and PATH has not really gotten significantly better, nor have we actually finished building out all of WTC (and we probably won't, ever.)

This is half-true. Port Authority is the operator of the ports, but the legal landowner of Fiorello La Guardia Airport is the City. In any case, it's not totally impossible. Cortlandt literally runs straight through the Port-owned Oculus The Dulles Airport authority is literally paying to build a DC Metro extension Neither the PATH nor JFK AirTrain are particularly profitable, and the latter has seen price hikes and service cuts for an automated train that make the MTA look like Santa Claus That being said, the Port Authority is also not willing to extend their own goddamn PATH train to EWR's actual terminals, so it's not like sanity prevails over there.