IAlam

I’m having trouble posting more photos but the MTA flicker has a bunch.

The only thing I hear from this is that you want the route labeled back to the 34. Whether you have a 61 that runs like the 34 or a shortened version of the 34 doesn't matter. You could advocate for the same with the new number as well.

I'm not sure about ridership but they did cut the short runs to 165th st because the route became articulated. If CS is running 40ft buses on the line so consistently they should bring back the short runs.

Yeah the Q31 is just more reliable than the Q30 at this point.

That's insane that if someone(s) is able to cause that much damage that they have to suspend an entire subway line these people need to be caught. At a certain point, crippling an entire subway network isn't just vandalism anymore.

What would that achieve? The 61 is exactly that just without Mitchel Gardens service. Although if it was up to me I'd make the 61 a local route with all-day service and straighten it out by going via 31st Rd instead of all the current twists and turns the current 34 makes. I'd have the 20 just continue down Union like it does today. Yeah for some reason backtracking from Jamaica LIRR to Parsons is a pain. Regardless of how many options I have even during the day I constantly find myself waiting over 5 min for a bus. But I've noticed there are a lot of issues with traffic congestion and even small things like a B/O's driving habits can make a big difference. An aggressive op can get through pretty quickly but then there are others that just get paid by the hour and don't care, and that causes bunching. Then there is an issue like on the 20 where the actual runtime in the evenings is similar to the 44 but since the route is given more run time than is actually needed. Bus ops have 3 choices, run early and wait it out at a time point, drag their bus along the line, or leave late and make up the time. When the bus ops are all making different choices on how they want to approach it you often see buses bunching even without traffic congestion.

Was the bus signed up properly?

The main benefit for me for the 57 is the connection to Jamaica LIRR so if I miss the Hempstead train I could just hop on that it’s much easier than gunning for the 36 or 110. But, even then the route takes long enough you don’t save much time. As for the connection, it probably would be used more by riders from the Jamaica area only but I do agree it’s better than the current 112 route which uses a weird back door route. Honestly the viability of Terminal A in the long run is weak. Is it only spirit now? There aren’t many flights from there and from the 70 there are still a lot of options to get there from the other terminals. The 47 also doesn’t get much ridership and I doubt the 70 would improve that. Instead you’re jacking up the running costs/time for very little benefit.

From how I see it it's not capturing existing demand as I highly doubt anyone going from the Bronx to Eastern Queens or Nassau is currently using transit. But it opens the door for people from the Bronx to connect to routes like the proposed Q78 to get to SE Queens, it allows medical center and hospital workers to connect with the n25/26, and any students that may wanna attend the colleges along the n20H. While I doubt you'd get hoards of people on day one I feel like over time people would start to utilize it as they figure out how to use it. Me too honestly, even if a route like this could be on the table I could see both NICE and the MTA push the responsibility on to the other agency because neither of them would want to take the risk.

I think it was at least 10 years ago.

Curious anyone know anything about the current status of the Multilevel III's?

I'm just going to add this right here. CT ordered new passenger cars and the MTA ordered new engines, so once they start rolling in there will be equipment freed up to use for Hudson West. As for the line itself other than interest I don't think there's any funding set aside for it. However, there is a lot of commotion in the Amtrak forum land because Amtrak went ahead and ordered train sets that can run on battery-electric power in order to avoid having to electrify the line. Do with that information as you wish.

Yeah, day one wasn't great but at least they were constantly tweaking it until it got better. One complaint I kept getting was how the north shore was underserved and now it's a lot better off-peak. The one thing I still want to see is a SIM2c just with reduced service. Having it run hourly would finally give them a viable service, I feel like they gave it too much service for something people weren't used to yet. the old X17 was just a disaster that no one could really benefit from so for them the SIM2 was the first time they were getting real off-peak service. The other issue with that line was the fact it was downtown only during off-peak. I can't speak for the peak service cause I rarely use it at all and when I do it's almost exclusively on the South Shore which I still feel had an overall win. But I mainly remember him complaining about the stops being eliminated more than anything else.

I think Jamaica is just too big for itself and the major hubs are too far spread apart. You have 179th St., the bus terminal, Jamaica Center, and the LIRR station. While it's possible to get from any one of those points to any of those other points in our current network it requires the knowledge of what route goes where. Then you have routes like the Q43 which feels like it's doing double duty. Having some sort of circulator/downtown connection for Jamaica makes it, so the route can just focus on serving people going in and out of Jamaica. Passengers needing to go to different parts of Jamaica could just use the circulator instead and aren't worrying about what route goes where. There was a day I'd be excited about the idea of a Q27 going to Green Acres but now I can't and imagine how poorly that would run. But what I do think is a massive improvement is the fact with the Q78 you won't need to 3 buses to get from Springfield to Green Acres anymore. That was just a massive flaw in local connectivity in the area and now being able to do it in 1 ride is a pretty big win for the area. While I would enjoy the Q78 going to Green Acres for personal reasons, I think having it connect with JFK and routes to Far Rockaway do far more for its connectivity in the area. For Rockaway to Sheepshead, I really hope they do add that to the redesigns because it feels like something that should exist today. As for the Throgs Neck Bridge, anyone who finds themselves needing to drive over that bridge most likely doesn't have a good public transit option for their trip. But instead of a Q78 extension or a route that mirrors it down Springfield, I'd rather see a route connecting the Bronx with Great Neck. A route going from the Bronx could start somewhere along the line and after going over the bridge cutting through Bayside and connecting with the Q78 around Northern and Bell before continuing over to Great Neck for people to connect with all the NICE buses over there. A route like that opens up connections and destinations that just aren't possible now without a car.

Yeah, I suspect there will be changes once OMNY eventually rolls out since you need to tap on and off. Since you will need to be physically present at both endpoints it closes the door for abuse and might allow for a pricing structure in line with everything else. Yeah, having exceptions for short-distance trips would be ideal. The zone system in general is pretty antiquated, but it was invented to make ticketing easier, Charging by distance is fairer but it's also more confusing for passengers, it offers less flexibility and generally makes service less attractive for further stations as those stations end up being far more expensive to ride to/from. (Why pay more at your station when you can take a bus/bike/car etc... partway down the line for cheaper service. I've ridden in the WMATA system a lot and I've seen often people take longer bus rides to further stations where they can pay less and then on weekends when they have flat fares ridership feels a bit more spread out. There are pros and cons for both the current zoned system and the pay-by-distance systems. There could be a compromise between the 2 but doubt the MTA would ever get it right.

It never did the problem with changing directions is it opens the doors for abuse, that's why those tickets are sold with their own pricing structure.

With the SIM System looking at the old system and the current system, heck even the day 1 route network after the redesign, I'd say overall it was a win for SI. While it's not perfect the South Shore got more direct routes and now the SIM23/34 are part of the MTA which is something was was really wanted back then. On the North Shore while people weren't happy with the route shuffling the off-peak network has a major boost. Before you only had the X1 to the east X10 to the north and X17 to the west. There was a push for X12 to have an off-peak service, but it never came to be. At its current state, the SIM3c and SIM33c basically cover the X10 and X12 and provide frequent service in the areas they overlap and are near each other. The SIM4c runs later into the day as opposed to the X17 I believe that ended around 4 PM and now it ends at 7 PM. While it's not perfect I still believe it was an improvement. Also with regards to the SIR, they're getting new trains as we speak. They are currently testing the R211's and there are 75 cars on order (15 trains) if you want to discuss that I suggest going to the R211 thread on the subway forum.

The compartmentalization that they did with the Coop City is just annoying shoving everyone into essentially one line, it reduces how well the area is connected. But even then it kind beings the need for free circulator routes. Honestly, instead of the free routes they proposed, creating free circulator routes would probably be a better use of resources. The Bx23 is a perfect example of a route that could benefit from being a free circulator. Heck if the MTA could create a Downtown Jamaica Circulator that would be a massive bandaid to most of the terminal issues. They could also finally get rid of a lot of those dumb 2 xfer policies they have in place there too. But going back to the Q50 yeah it's not the right route to be going to the airport. Even I'm a bit lost as to how to replace the 48, but it really should be an eastern Queens route with something else completing the M60 from the Bronx. But who knows, with all these delays in the next draft maybe they're actually making good changes.

At the end of the day, I don't care what route does as long as it's logical, the Q50 is not the logical route for this.

Well, there's a good chance routes will be shuffled between depots, especially since the proposal already has instances of combined MTAB and NYCT routes. There's not much I can add to the 78 conversation that hasn't already been said, but the 78-serving Bayside LIRR will do a much better job connecting the community than the 31 does right now. I know people that will directly benefit from this change. While I do agree the Q50 to LGA is going to be basically useless, mainly because of the poor frequency and reliability of the route. On a side note, the whole argument from the MTA of cutting the route to the north because of reliability concerns and then extending it to the south makes no sense to me. What I can't agree with is eliminating the Q48 for the Q70, people from the east are not interested in dragging bags up and down so many stairs just to get on another bus, which in the best case takes about the same time and in the worst case can take longer. The 48 might run like s*** but it's predictable and I see a lot of airline employees already using it, especially in the mornings. You don't make service "better" by cutting service and forcing people to take a more circuitous route. We all saw firsthand what happened with NICE after their cuts once they started fixing their mistakes and reinstating service those riders didn't really come back. A bus-to-bus trip can already be annoying, but a bus-to-train and back-to-bus trip will basically kill any ridership from people who can afford to use other means. If there is one thing I've learned from my non transit-oriented friends is transfers are a burden. Each additional transfer you force someone to make for the sake of efficiency the less likely they are to use transit. Any rider that now has to pay a double fare regardless of due to this change or any other will less likely consider transit as an option. But IMO I really hope they listen to the feedback and extend the Bx15 or Bx41 to LGA and instead of the Q50 just use another route already going down Roosevelt like the proposed Q13.

The big issue I have with the Q20 being cut back is the fact there's decent ridership from the neighborhood to 84th Rd. The stop on 84th NB and 82nd SB both punch above their weight for a local stop and are constantly being used to get people to and from the neighborhood. Also in the case of the Q44, they're not rebalancing the stops to match the current neighborhood demographic. In the first draft they tried cutting too many stops and in the new draft, they're leaving them all in. Especially once you're in the Flushing area it's evident that the stop placements need to be adjusted. It feels tone deaf to the Briarwood residents to make their access to Jamaica more difficult. If I had to rebalance the stops it would look something more like this. The 139th St and Queens Blvd stop should be combined into a new stop by the library. The HHE stop and Reeves Ave need to be combined into one stop, I honestly don't care how it's done but they're too close to each other. If it's needed Q44 can do a courtesy stop to let kids off in the morning like they do now NB, and in the afternoon all the trippers can just be Q20 buses (I think there's at least 1 Q44 tripper atm). Elder Ave should be replaced by Franklin Ave with a new SB stop located there too this would serve downtown Flushing better where more of the busy commercial is located. The Q25/65 should be booted from their spot between Roosevelt Ave and 40th Rd in place for a combined Flushing Q44/20 stop. It's already too close to the Main St and Kissena Blvd stop and should be further back. Lastly, the stop at 35th Ave should be pushed down closer to Northern Blvd.

Adding on the Q17/27 also has greater frequencies than the Q25/65 which is sorely needed in the north. Q31 seems like another throwaway route to fill in the missing gaps though I do like that there is another north-south option that doesn't traverse through Flushing. It would make more sense to have that route coming from 162/164th St but that would come at the cost of the Q65 no longer serving Flushing and that was a major issue in the original draft. It made no sense to have the Q44 be the only Flushing to Jamaica LIRR route, the curtailing for the Q20 shows that the MTA doesn't know what people in that area are using it for. Honestly, it makes more sense to have the Q20 be the route going east of the LIRR than the Q44, I can't imagine most of the people getting on at Jamaica Center and Merrik are going to the Bronx. The Q25 really needs to go back to Jamaica LIRR, the way they want it to be a Limited route, yet a local version of multiple rush corridors, and not even provide a service increase. That route is doing way too much for almost no benefit for the people it's expected to serve.

I took a peak at the Far Rockaway ticket by trying to book a ticket from Penn to Far Rockaway. It looks like what I suspected is true it's geo-fenced to Far Rockaway. Next time I'm in Penn I'll try to see if I can buy it from there or the TVM's

While I completely agree with you if you regularly deal with CP operators you’d understand why people do that. I can’t wait 40-90 minutes for the next bus because the OP doesn’t wanna pick me up. This is an issue with both local and express buses with drivers speeding through the route and the next one being extremely late. I’ve gotten yelled at holding an early bus why 2 old lady were trying to get on. It was in the dead of winter late at night and super cold and the next bus was last 40 minutes away. I’ve also need a B/O yell at another B/O for being 20 minutes late and making a huge gap.

Yeah, I noticed it for the last week or so they're doing a better job getting the word out IMO. I guess one of the few good things they're capable of is keeping their displays up to date.