EvilMonologue

3 hours ago, Union Tpke said:

The latter connection should be permanent.

Is there any real reason why they don't? Same with providing a transfer with the  and  lines with Atlantic Av. Is it a revenue thing? Does it really cost them that much?

2 minutes ago, engineerboy6561 said:

My argument about that is that with subway service extended beyond Flushing and Jamaica we can look at deemphasizing Jamaica and Flushing in the Queens bus network. As an example, Hillside Av coming into Jamaica carries the Q1, Q2, Q3, Q17, Q36, Q43, Q76 and Q77. There's no need to have all of these buses come all the way into Jamaica once there's subway service out to Hillside/Springfield and Merrick/233 St. You can leave the Q43 as the Hillside Av bus, but you could eliminate the Q2 and have the Q17 take over the Q2 route south of Hillside Av, and you could do the same thing with the Q76 and Q77 (eliminate the Q77 and extend the Q76 down to 147 Av) with no actual change to Q76 runtime. The Q36 could just run full time from Little Neck Parkway to 212 St/Hillside Av and the Q1 could be replaced by the Q88. On Merrick, the Q4 could continue west on Linden to Rockaway Blvd and end at Rockaway Blvd train station, and most people wouldn't mind as much because they'd still be connecting to the trains.

Is there a reason you chose to extend the M over the LIE as opposed to extending the QBL local? Just thinking that it's likely most people would transfer to QBL to get to Manhattan faster, and even if they wanted to go to lower Manhattan and stay on the local, it's just about the same number of stations. It might make sense to extend the QBL local out rather than extend the M because of this. Just a thought.

1 hour ago, Theli11 said:

Highline - 14 St   - It ends at the end of the Highline and it's a 2 track terminal. With trains being able to enter both tracks and a cross over on both sides. We can extend the train to have a staircase at the Highline, or an elevator if we extend the platform into a transfer. 

Christopher St or some sort of M8 Connection on West St.

It goes down your route do Battery Park City. I'm not versed in LRT stuff. 

Any reason you don't want to extend it up 10th/Amsterdam?

There's really a couple conversations going on at once here huh

3 minutes ago, LaGuardia Link N Tra said:

I'm still under the notion that Phase 3 of the Second Avenue subway should not be built, Or else we're stuck with this:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1YOMBdOm6Y_U4S047evR--fEtzjeiWte6

That's why I think build phase 3 down 3rd av from 63rd st to 42nd st, and then have it go over to 2nd av so it can take over the  going over the Manhattan Bridge. That way you avoid the interlining, but more importantly, the transfers are better so the SAS can actually do its job and be an adequate alternative to the . It will still be less of a walk for riders to the east, and you would still need to build another tunnel if you were de-interlining anyway. The 3rd to 2nd av move is a little awkward, but I'm sure doable and preferable to building it on 2nd.

4 hours ago, KK 6 Ave Local said:

I have a similar plan with Fulton service replacing the Jamaica Line past Bway Junction, then branches to Utica Ave and a Metropolitan Ave extension to the LIE which would be the  on utica and  on LIE

Then what service stays on Fulton?

21 minutes ago, Theli11 said:

Wouldn't it just be easier to send the down Utica Av. Also, 5th avenue is a hard place to put trains. Not only would residences not welcome the train, you'd have to do digging interrupting 5th Avenue's constant movement. Especially since it's next to the park. You'd probably do better if you made it a Second Avenue Route, with track connections to the Manhattan Bridge off of Grand St, while the  goes to Willy B. It's as close to Midtown as you can get without causing too much of a fuss.

If you do it that way, though, you limit frequency of Utica and New Lots. And I agree that 5 av in the UES is a difficult sell, but I don't think it necessarily needs to go to the UES. It could go to Midtown and end there, or go to Queens, or (given the timeline we're talking about here maybe transit is integrated by now with New Jersey) go to New Jersey.

56 minutes ago, T to Dyre Avenue said:

However, the problems I found with this idea was that the ,  and  services would be limited at best to 10 tph apiece if evenly split, and all three services would make for a tight squeeze on the 6th Avenue Local tracks. And Rutgers, while getting more service than it has now, would still be under capacity because it would be limited to 20 tph between the  and . 

The Nassau line definitely needs to be looked at in a critical way, especially given the popularity of the  (look at that it only took me 20 posts to figure that out haha). Sending the Brown  to Bay Ridge isn't really that much more valuable just because people still ultimately want to go to Midtown, and this is just an inherent flaw with the Nassau line. 

In the medium term (hopefully) maybe you could do it this way. The  and  take over the  and  in Brooklyn and Queens once the southern section of the 2 av (with provisions for 4 tracks) replaces  and  service on the Manhattan Bridge (under a de-interlining scheme). Stop consolidation should occur along today's line, also making sure to combine Hewes and Lorimer stations for a better transfer with the . A 3rd track connecting to Cypress Hills station and platform extensions should be done as well. The Manhattan portion of the  is now a downtown shuttle.

In the long term (again hopefully but realistically never), this is what I'd like to see. Start the Utica av line as a  extension, but with the intention of shaving back platforms for eventual B Division conversion. The line would go first from Av U to the . And then once it was converted, extended to the  and , then to the (at this point)  and , and as far as the  and the  eventually. The goal would be to have a line with an obvious connection to the  and  and 2 av, you'd just need to build the tunnel. When the other 2 tracks for 2 av are built, they would take over the  south of the Bowery station. To have the  and  connect to the Utica av line, introduce a new 5 av line which would go over the Williamsburg Bridge and would go to Middle Village and Jamaica on today's  and  lines. 

Breaking up the Nassau line, in the long term, is probably the best way to increase ridership along the corridor to provide Midtown access. In the medium term this can be done by replacing  and  service with  and  but in the long term, we'd hope to see the number of services in the outer boroughs increase with the number of services in Manhattan. Sending the  and  down Utica av and the  and  up 5 av might be the long term solution to that.

29 minutes ago, T to Dyre Avenue said:

If the  is to run via QB express, then platforms on the “original” segment of the  (Metro to Essex) will need to be lengthened to accommodate 10-car trains. Running the  to Jamaica Center via QB express in place of the  will be a hard sell to riders unless the  can run 10-car trains. That’s partly why for QB deinterlining, I prefer to run the  and  local and the  and a new 8th Avenue service - called  or  - express.

I tend to favor returning the Brown M service so as to maximize the capacity you get out of the Rutgers tunnel but I understand that probably would be a hard sell. Still though, even will the Orange M, I'd think the platforms should probably be extended to accommodate 10-car trains anyway, no?

Just now, Jova42R said:

So what way to Manhattan? The ?

No, the point is you don't want to connect a new train line to Manhattan via an existing line because it would then reduce the number of trains you can run on that existing line. So if you run Lower Montauk trains on the L or the 7, there will be less trains going to Flushing or Canarsie. So you would want an entirely new tunnel connecting Lower Montauk to Manhattan. The reason it doesn't really make sense to build the Lower Montauk Line with the connection to Manhattan is because there is not enough population density along the line in Queens to warrant the cost of tunneling under the river and then under Manhattan.

I guess you could make it a light rail line, but it's not advisable to connect it to Manhattan via the L like you drew

5 minutes ago, Jova42R said:

No, this would be a light rail that can also run on subway.

I'm saying though that the tracks should probably be used for freight or regional rail, rather than subway or I guess light rail in this case

17 minutes ago, Jova42R said:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KqU_BnY3NDaOs5QypGaqtPtmZduGHrJbWapC5y-zMgI/edit?usp=sharing for SAS connections. 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1SL9wr0A2fQfvlNLk79LPr3s0hpRt39M2&usp=sharing - the (MQ) train.

I've got more - PM me and I'll send links

Thoughts?

I kinda think it's best to leave the Lower Montauk line as freight or maybe an express regional rail line. Idk about subway, though, especially not sharing tracks with the L

11 minutes ago, KK 6 Ave Local said:

What do you think would be the best service patterns and alignments/expansions for Queens?

I guess in order, create a transfer between Queensboro Plaza and Queens Plaza. De-interline QBL so F/M trains go express via 63rd St and E trains go local via 53rd St, send the R/W up to Astoria and the N/Q up to 125th St.

In terms of extensions, I'd like to see the R/W go to Laguardia, the 7 go to College Point, the F extended on Hillside Av to Springfield Blvd, the E (no longer express) extended along Jewel Av after 67th Av to Francis Lewis Blvd, and the G extended to Astoria Blvd on 21st Av after connecting to Queens/Queensboro Plaza and then Queensbridge.

In terms of new lines, the Triboro of course. Getting either a new crosstown line or the Second Av Line to go up Northern Blvd to relieve the 7 would be good. I also think having a Main St light rail that connected Flushing with the Jamaica Station would be really useful for people in deep queens. I think if you do that, and you make LIRR more accessible for people in the city, you don't necessarily need a bypass line.

22 hours ago, bobtehpanda said:

Yup, a typo. Too late to edit that.

Ah ok

3 hours ago, bobtehpanda said:

The idea is to force people to pick between a local or 53rd, but you can't have your cake and eat it too.

Wouldn't you want to make people pick between an express or 53rd?

3 hours ago, mrsman said:

(*This first line could be a 6th Ave express with a 6th Ave local line limited to the CBD running from 57/6 to WTC.  But that would be largely superfluous, so just eliminate the 6th Ave local and run the express on all stops between W4 and 34.  I would much rather have 6 lines run frequently than 7 lines slightly less frequently.)

Other than a few switches, the above can be implemented without any new construction, except for phase 3 and 4 of SAS.  Again, a critical element is to be sure that SAS will have good transfer connections in Midtown.

If there is only one service on 6 Av, you could in theory connect the PATH to the other set of tracks, although you'd need to do station reconstruction. This also assumes that PATH and the Subway could get along and introduce free transfers, which is doubtful.

8 minutes ago, bobtehpanda said:

57th has more express transfers, most stops at 50th are local.

That would probably be true for two tunnels in different locations, but not tunnels that are going to be on top of each other. The 63 St tunnel was precast as a two-story tunnel and then sunk as an immersed tube, so it didn't actually involve much more digging.

I guess that makes sense. Does Queens need 4 extra tracks though? And where would they go? Bypass and Northern?

I tend to think 50th is better than 57th, just because of the transfers, even if 53rd is there. But either way, and this is a genuine question idk, wouldn't it be cheaper to do two separate tunnels than one two-level tunnel?

3 minutes ago, bobtehpanda said:

Under this plan no trains run the full length of 2 AV. 55 St is the terminal, with connections to 53 and 59 Lex. Future provisions for extension to a new Queens tunnel.

You could terminate it more North, connecting to 59th and 63rd, which would also function as a passageway for a transfer between the two

Would it be more trouble than it's worth to do some tunneling to connect the A/C/G trains to Atlantic Av? Lafayette St and Fulton St stations would be abandoned in this case. I've also personally pictured what other people have said, with the G connecting to the N/W/7 trains at Queensboro and then the F at Queensbridge, and from there going up 21st and then across 86th st in Manhattan.

If you want to get even crazier with it, you could then connect this to a Bergenline Ave line in NJ, and even crazier still have the G turn westward to make stops in Red Hook and then finish the loop from Liberty State Park. There's obviously a ton of legal jurisdictional things that would need to change for this to happen and it probably is way down the list of things to do in the city in terms of transit projects, but its been a fun fantasy of mine having a big outer-ring subway line.

Alon Levy has mentioned this with his plan, but a good way to get better transfers out of SAS 3 would be to extend it down 3rd Ave rather than 2nd. I know it's very close to Lex/Park, but it is still less of a walk for people East of Lex/Park and still alleviates congestion on the 4/5/6. Connecting it North of 63rd St might be tricky, but it could start as a shuttle with a transfer to trains at 59th St and 63rd St.

This is much more long term, but if the LIRR Atlantic Branch ever gets connected to Manhattan, it might make more sense to convert the Rockaways back to LIRR service, ofc assuming comparable headways and pricing to subway. This would then mean more service to Lefferts, and the C could still terminate at Euclid, you'd also have a kind of super-express in the form of the LIRR. Just a thought.

So even just looking at phase 3, it probably wouldn't be necessary or worth it to have the T go from Houston on 2nd ave, then switch to 3rd before Grand Central, have a new station at 63rd st on 3rd ave, and then reconnect with the Q at 72nd st?

Someone posted something about Alon Levy's subway crayon, and I was wondering what your thoughts were regarding his plan for the T. Under his plan, the T goes from Utica to Williamsburg, up 3rd ave, then goes through Central Park North of 63rd st and into Washington Heights. I'm not so sure about the part North of 63rd st, but I do think there is something to be said for having the train have good transfers along 3rd rather than 2nd. Perhaps between Grand Central and 63rd st it snake over to 3rd ave then go back to 2nd. Thoughts?