MTA Dude

I've seen that years ago when the R46s were still running on the . Honestly pretty fun to watch.

I was asking about how many people use the Q58 specifically to get from Flushing to the Broadway/Corona Ave stop, then walk further up Broadway to get to Elmhurst Chinatown. But I guess people who want to make that trip are more likely to take the given the amount of traffic the Q58 often has to deal with. Still not sure why the Q59 should loop back to Rego Center. The only benefit I see is to connect it to 108th St. It's way too big of a loop to benefit anyone along Grand or Corona Ave.

Are there not a lot of people using the Q58 between Elmhurst and Flushing? Would've expected a decent amount since they're both Chinatowns, and if so, missing service to the Broadway/Corona Av stop could be a pretty big deal. But if not, I really like the idea of having the Q59 replace service along Corona Ave (maybe not loop back to Rego Center though, I'd have it end with the Q38). At least for me, the benefit of the Q98 is more about finally getting a direct connection between Flushing and QCM, and sending the Q59 onto Corona Ave would let the Q58 do that.

Is CBTC still having issues with the 63rd St shutdown? I thought maybe it was because it struggled to handle trains entering CBTC territory and then immediately afterward having to deal with the merges at Queens Plaza.

Yes, they are timed well, for the frequencies they have to work with. It's simply untrue that trains enter Roosevelt at high speeds during rush hours. Before CBTC, express trains would crawl all the way from Forest Hills to Jackson Heights. Now with CBTC allowing for closer spacing, trains only need to crawl after Elmhurst Ave. It's just inevitable with the combined 2min headways that Jackson Heights would be a bottleneck, especially with how crowded the platform is. The section at 65th St is extremely fast, I'll give you that, and I love riding it. But that's still an extremely short section of the route, after which trains need to slow down to turn onto Northern Blvd. Yes, I'm aware of the LIRR's 80mph trains going from Jamaica to Penn blazingly fast. That's because it's built like a railroad with favorable track geometry and limited stops. For how curvy QBL is, the speeds we already have are extremely impressive IMO.

I don't have an overall opinion on a extension, but an argument in favor of it would be to replace a big chunk of the functionality in queens, which is to feed into the . At least back in middle school when I was a regular rider, the would always tank out at Jackson Heights with people transferring to the express, much more than the . The would regularly arrive at Jackson Heights jam packed, sometimes even by Grand Ave if there was even the slightest gap in service. Extending the would fill that role and provide relief to the along QBL. Though I haven't seen how the is currently holding up or if those ridership patterns I observed have changed since then.

Do any of them even come close to 55mph for any extended period of time? Even then, you'd shave off like, what, half a minute? And only outside of rush hours because otherwise the high frequencies cause bottlenecks entering the stations anyway.

Possible? Yes. But ridership is so low on the BMT Culver that it can't be worth it, plus it would interfere with short turns at Kings Hwy. Honestly, having a high-frequency route like the run down to Coney Island never really made any sense to me, the entire route south of Church Ave has about the same ridership as Jamaica-179 alone.

...but why? Where's the demand between Northern Blvd and Roosevelt Island? Running it to College Point and bypassing Main St doesn't make any sense either, because again, where's the demand between Northern Blvd and College Point?

I just revamped the map of my (terrible) proposals I made a year ago. In this version I experimented with breaking up routes to improve reliability and avoid serving multiple disjoint ridership bases with a single route. PDF: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O2S3c3NDRbgXfH_oRwAFfIbeSaDuKxXl/view?usp=sharing SVG: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lVRDE5hga5xQu0x63f66ZL_xDcA0_D3H/view?usp=sharing I did assume certain ideal situations, so a lot of my proposals honestly might not be realistic IRL. Assumptions include: Archer Ave busway, Jamaica Ave returned to cars 165th St terminal replacement is built on the other side of 168th St instead New Flushing bus terminal built on the parking lot at Queens Crossing Bus lanes along Hillside Ave and Northern Blvd east of Flushing 160th St in Jamaica and 58th St in Maspeth become two-way roads Maybe Queens Blvd buses get moved off the service road like we've been promised for so long Buses have right of way when pulling out of bus stops You get unlimited free transfers within 2 hours (even on the same route) On my map, limited routes will have their stops shown as white circles, and there will be no local variant under the same designation. The labels are a mess right now and I don't really have the time nor motivation to make it look nice like I did with the last version of the map, so hopefully this will do. I already see a mistake with a 64 icon being left near Citifield... And here's a few proposed routings in the Bronx: Q44: Bx94: QBx1:

The one Vision Zero policy from the deBlasio years I'm familiar with is the traffic light turning green about 7 seconds after the corresponding pedestrian light. I still don't know what that was supposed to accomplish... giving pedestrians a chance to enter the crosswalk and make themselves visible? All it's done for me is give me an extra 7 seconds to jaywalk after the light turns red... I do like the new "delayed green" intersections though, where all the pedestrian lights turn green at once, and then stay red when the traffic light is green. As long as the lights are still synced properly along the street, I think it could do a lot for traffic flow at busy intersections by preventing turning traffic from backing up and blocking through traffic because they have to wait for pedestrians to cross. I get that some bus routes just suffer from traffic, and some of the redesigns haven't helped with that, but it's not bad enough along the Q25 on weekends for it to run as poorly as it does. It usually faces heavy traffic in Flushing down to Holly Ave and along Jamaica Ave, but afaik you don't often see the same gaps in service on the Q17 and Q27 that run on the same stretch of Kissena Blvd.

That's not an argument for more personal cars, that's an argument for fixing the damn management on these bus routes. It's ridiculous how badly the Q25 and Q65 run (I'm sure other CP routes run badly too but I haven't been paying attention). They get bunched up at some point during the day and there's next to no attempt to fix the bunching. I've seen days in the past few weekends where not a single bus on the Q25 wasn't bunched with another. This has been going on for years too, I remember as a kid when Orion Vs were still running that the Q25 was horribly unreliable and the Q17 was the much better alternative, so we'd walk the half a mile to the Q17 instead when we didn't want to gamble on the Q25. I think both routes should be split at Flushing since the 70min runtime of both routes certainly doesn't do them any favors, but with how bad CP management is I'm not sure if it would even help.

Because the express already exists right now in the form of the Q36 LTD (just that it'll also run outside of peak direction rush hours), and the N24 runs every 15 min, over double the headways of the Q36 during rush hours.

Yes, it'll run local from Floral Park all the way to Jamaica Center, which will take 8-11 min longer to get to Forest Hills and points west according to Google Maps. So the question is who deserves this 10 min reduction in travel time more, the 0.8 mile stretch of Hempstead Ave or the 2 mile stretch of Jamaica Ave/Jericho Tpke?

I'm more concerned with Jamaica Ave losing its Q36 rush service, especially in exchange for a not even one mile stretch of Hempstead Ave getting it instead...