bobtehpanda

We have a kind-of-busway in Seattle where an entire four-lane road downtown is buses only thru (and emergency vehicles obviously). All other traffic can only stay on the road for one block. To be honest, I'm kind of surprised that the bus lanes in Jamaica are not double lanes, since even if the cops weren't blocking it there are so many bus stops in the lane itself. (At least as much as I remember it isn't an offset bus lane where buses leave the lane to get into stops.) Aren't there double lanes in Manhattan?

To a degree I think this need is wildly overstated. If you take a 6th Av 63rd train from QB, you have transfers to all Broadway trains at Herald Square anyways and that transfer is fairly simple. You also have a cross-platform to the Broadway Express at Lex-63rd. The only Broadway Line stations between Herald Square and the East River are Lex-59, a short walk from Lex-63 5 Av-59, a short walk from 6 Av-57 St 57th St-7 Av, a short walk from 6 Av-57 St 49 St, a short walk from 47-50 Sts 42 St, a short walk from Bryant Park, to the point where there is going to be an in-system transfer built as part of the Shuttle works

This is basically what happened with Metrocard as well, it wasn't dropped in overnight. It took six years from the introduction of Metrocard to get rid of tokens. Of course, at this point it's basically ancient history; I would guess a good portion of the forums were either not born or were toddlers when Metrocard fully launched in 1997.

The Onion always has something for this.

Agreed. And if we don't need to handle cash in booths, we don't need the agents either. I really hope they'd plan to actually upgrade the MVMs into something reliable though. They're unreliable, they barely take money as it is, and if I remember correctly they're running Windows 2000 ffs.

No, if push comes to shove booth agents are literally supposed to stay inside and don't contact police directly even if something is happening within their line of sight. That's the actual policy, because booth workers are not actually police. What you want is actual police; why would you keep something around that is totally ineffective? It's like getting a cardboard cutout of a guard dog for your house instead of an actual guard dog.

The resemblance isn't a mistake. Former prosecutor who is a moderate governor capable of bipartisanship? That's a pretty common path to tread to the primaries. Giuliani did a version of it where he was mayor instead of governor. People were throwing around Preet Bharara's name around as a candidate to primary Cuomo but he wasn't interested. In other states, you have people like Kamala Harris doing the same.

They really don't help at all. In 2005, a woman was raped both in front of a booth attendant and a conductor, and they called MTA command who then called the police, and so ultimately police came and it was too late.

FFS. All this performance art is so stupid. Cuomo is in his third term, at this point any issues with the process or the alleged incompetence that he's just now commenting on, he could've done something in the decade he's been the government. Just take his own words:

This is a weird bill at the federal level, because most agencies do not staff all of their stations in general. Most light rail stations don't have any place for a manned booth to go in the first place. I'm down with requiring accepting cash, but not with the booth requirement.

I would imagine it has a bit more to do with stop spacing. Generally, the E-W subways stop every two avenue blocks or so. Most lines have 7th Av and 5th Av (14th has 8 & 6). 3rd fits in with that pattern better than Lexington, since Lexington is technically 3 1/2. And honestly even today I would imagine subway entrances on Park itself (4th) would be a nonstarter. And then there's the issue of clearing the river; some of the Lexington stations are very deep to clear it, and a 2nd station would be even more so.

I mean there was supposed to be a whole Worth St subway at one point. There are other options. The E-W tunnels could be one direction on different blocks. You could make the connection through City Hall Park (although you'd miss Chambers St then)

Isn't that a park or something these days? Destroying a park is a nonstarter.

So I just had some crazy ass idea that I don't think I've ever seen before; a Worth St connection. trains are connected through to WTC Cortlandt and one of the two stations in the WTC complex closes. trains on weekdays run to 9 Av Lower on the , with some peak hour trains starting at Bay Pkwy. As far as I know, 9 Av Lower isn't in too terrible shape, since it has to be in good structural condition for the upper level to not collapse onto the lower level trains jog over to the Nassau St Line on Worth St, with platform extensions to Chambers, Fulton & Broad. Trains use the Nassau St Montague connection instead. Jamaica Line trains terminate at Chambers St. trains terminate at City Hall. (City Hall station is closed on weekends.) A transfer is built between Park Place and City Hall. (They're literally around the corner from each other.) Several benefits: service to Brooklyn Ideally, the Worth St curves are less tight than the City Hall curves service terminating no longer gets in the way of service

Kinda surprised you also don't throw in Bowery/Grand St as one complex.

It's the difference between standing on a packed train and getting passed by. If you had to ask riders "would you rather stand or miss a train or two" they would almost certainly pick the former option. On the at least this was not uncommon as far east as Forest Hills or Kew Gardens.

What's interesting is that the British counterpart to the ADA requires high-contrast between the general car and things to grab (for those with less sight), so this inadvertently achieves that.

There was also the rise of competing organizations, like Transportation Alternatives and Riders Alliance. Love them or hate them, you cannot deny that they put boots on the ground in the city and in Albany in a way that the Straphangers Campaign never really did at all.

The BMT A/B service pattern was created way before the stole most of those passengers in 1988. I haven't actually looked at the ridership tables in a bit, but I would imagine that over the past two decades we'd see something similar to the where ridership shifted towards the inner, gentrifying sections of the line so this is less of an issue.

I don't really see what the benefit of any of this is supposed to be given that it results in no net new trains under the river. Nassau was rejected not only because of the capacity constraints (the deinterlining is not the only one; remember that the Eastern Division can only handle 8 cars, and is not ADA accessible) but because it would be a massive headache to construct and heavily impact Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridge operations for years, which is a nonstarter.

TBH if the LGA AirTrain costs $2B we should throw it in the trash, since the entire point was that it was supposed to be cheaper, and it sure as hell doesn't sound cheaper. Remember when the AirTrain was supposed to be $400M? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

This is 100% definitely not true. The reason it is built like that is very simple; when the Nassau St line was built, most BMT service was designed to use Nassau St. Nassau St had four tracks from the Willy B to Canal St and two joining from the Manhattan Bridge. The inner tracks were simply for terminating some trains early.

Same problem still applies; the fastest path between two points is a straight line. Also, given that most of the expense of Phase 2 is the property taking for the curve, two curves on either end is not a good idea, on top of how slow it would be.

They have studied it. There are zero Alphabet City alignments that are constructible without slowing down everyone passing through Alphabet City, so it's never been a realistic option. Duplicating the Lex is kind of the point of providing relief to it.

That lawsuit presumably didn't actually work, so doing the same thing and expecting different results would be a waste of time. There's also the fact that, at least from what I've gathered anecdotally from being here, the operators find timers just as, if not more annoying, than regular riders do, because they can actually be penalized for violating them.