officiallyliam

You could run trains every ten minutes on the two Main line branches (Port Jefferson, Ronkonkoma), plus on Babylon and Hempstead during peak hours pretty comfortably. This adds up to 24 tph between Jamaica and Harold interlocking, and as long as Queens interlocking is grade-separated, only two lines at a time ever have to share tracks (Ronkonkoma and PJ, Hempstead and Babylon). The only downside to this is that it leaves out the Atlantic branches (Long Beach and Far Rockaway). You'd either have to run all or most of these to Brooklyn (which would eliminate Jamaica conflicts), or they could share tracks with Babylon and Hempstead, but then you're looking at ~36 tph on one track, which is probably pushing it. (Although if Babylon/Hempstead/Atlantic trains got the express tracks between Jamaica and Woodside, 90-second intervals could be feasible, as long as Harold interlocking can work quickly.)

The LIRR, like the subway, has more of a problem with poor operation than it does with absolute lack of capacity. The money being poured into the third track project for the Main line ($1.9b) would have been much better spent on a number of smaller improvements - full electrification (or at least to Port Jefferson and Patchogue/Speonk), a flyover at Queens interlocking, and eliminating the grade-crossings would have done enough without the third track. (And running better, not less, service to terminals other than Penn would help). Two tracks is plenty for Ronkonkoma/Port Jefferson service (yes, you'd have to cut direct Penn service from Oyster Bay, but until that line really starts growing in ridership, I don't see that as the end of the world). I'm sure this is an unpopular take, but I'm not sure how necessary express service on the Main line really is, especially if all the trains were to be electric. It's five extra stops from Hicksville to New Hyde Park. The M7s are actually derated, meaning they don't accelerate as fast as they potentially could; if the LIRR changed this, and the Main line was run solely by M7s/M9s with PTC, I think we'd find that the added time would be negligible. And this would allow us to run proper reverse-peak service without the third track, which seems like another boondoggle in waiting.

149th to Astoria Blvd on Triboro, followed by M60 to LGA, isn't backtracking; nor is 149th to Flushing by transferring to the . The Q44 goes to West Farms, not the Hub, so it's two different corridors we're talking about. The problem with Astoria is street access, I agree. Hell Gate platforms to platform is doable; from Hell Gate to the street directly is definitely challenging.

Which job centers are we talking about? Jackson Heights is directly on Triboro, of course. LIC would be backtracking, yes, but from the South Bronx the Triboro to a Queens Blvd express would probably be just as fast or faster than the Lex to the . South Bronx to Flushing would be faster via a Triboro to journey, and even faster if there were a connection between Triboro and the LIRR; Jamaica would also be easier to access from the Bronx via Triboro. RE: Astoria - From a total non-engineer's perspective, Astoria looks undeniably challenging, but not entirely impossible. One advantage of LRT is that it would require shorter and lighter platforms, which would be easier to build than big railroad platforms considering the limitations of building around the viaduct. And it's a pretty valuable connection to have IMO; Astoria is pretty hard to access from areas of Queens that aren't LIC. The best way I see is to tunnel under 7th Avenue to the Gowanus Expressway, then elevated or surface to the lower level of the bridge. That won't lead to St. George without being quite circuitous, but you could continue the line across the SI expressway (or Victory Blvd) out to the West Shore, or possibly into Elizabeth. LRT opens up a lot of possibilities for street-ruuning the line through areas where tunnels or new-build ROWs wouldn't be warranted; the only concern is that LRT does sacrifice capacity compared to a railroad line, and without the will to seriously change street design, my concern is that LRTs street-running through dense areas could totally cripple reliability.

It's still a waste of capacity; you're just wasting LIRR capacity instead of subway capacity.

I personally don't have an issue with using (FRA-compliant) LRVs to take advantage of street-running in Jackson Heights, and maybe in the South Bronx as well to avoid tunneling, as long as it isn't going to sacrifice speed and reliability. Jackson Heights is a major destination (and would be one of the busier stops on a Triboro line) but street-running through there is no picnic. For as much as this line should attempt to serve major centers like Jackson Heights as best as possible, it should also be a quick way around the city, without too many local detours.

I'd love to be able to use upper Roosevelt, but any circumferential on the NYCR right-of-way should continue beyond Jackson Heights, and using upper Roosevelt makes this impossible. Even if we were able to send the new tracks through the IND mezzanine (which is where they end), I doubt there's enough room between the surface and the top of the QBL tunnel to fit a new tunnel for this rail line. The unfortunate part is that Jackson Heights is the worst "missed connection" between the rail ROW and subway lines, but it isn't an impossible one. The distance from where the ROW hits Roosevelt to the 74th Street station is two blocks (680'). This is far from ideal, but an underground passage with high-speed moving walkways should connect the two stations. We could also do something a little unorthodox: build the connection facing the other way to 69th Street, which is a shorter walk (500') and a much less crowded station. Now, the Bronx routing: a Randall's Island station might be nice, but I don't think that it would justify its expense. Once it gets to the Bronx, the line should absolutely serve the Hub in the South Bronx rather than turn north to Co-Op City. You could probably (at least partially) reuse the old Port Morris Branch tunnel under St. Mary's Park; I'd include a station at Southern Blvd to connect with the , then tunnel under 149th to intersect the . That's certainly the extent of the line that I'd build immediately, but in an ultimate pipe-dream world I'd continue the line up to Yankee Stadium (via Concourse and 161st), then to 168th Street in Washington Heights (following the Hudson line). It's not a Triboro anymore, but it does complete a half-circle around the city and adds a connection between upper Manhattan and the South Bronx.

Putting a bus lane in on Kings Highway almost resulted in war; widening the Bay Ridge ROW to four tracks is almost certainly not feasible, nor do I think it's really necessary. Having freight and frequent passenger rail coexist on one corridor will require changing the way we operate freight service (so as to avoid the nightmare scenarios that Amtrak have faced), but our lack of willingness to be efficient with rail in much of the country doesn't mean it can't work here. Instead of operating really long, slower trains a few times per day, we could run shorter, more frequent freight services between Bay Ridge and Fresh Pond that could easily slot in between scheduled passenger intervals. In parts of the line that can be four-tracked (Fresh Pond to the start of the Midwood cut), freight and passenger trains can be separated; we could do the same on parts of the line that have room for three tracks (which I believe the line from north of FP through Maspeth does). More freight can be operated overnight and during early mornings with either no or less-frequent passenger service. A dual-mode (electric/diesel) freight locomotive could be useful; trains could run through from the greater region under diesel power and then switch to electric in the NYC area. The mass de-electrification of our rail network was a big mistake that should be reversed, and I'd hope that the success of electric freight in NYC could get the ball rolling on more electrification, at least in the Northeast before spreading around the country.

But an extension is somewhat harder to accomplish given the need to separate those tracks from the freight tracks (or find some other way to circumvent the FRA). A Triboro line - as an Overground-style railroad line, not a subway - is much easier to accomplish given the need to work side-by-side with both freight trains and Amtrak/Metro-North trains. As for adding southern capacity to the line, I'd use some of the old structure at Atlantic Avenue to build a terminating track there. Most of the capacity crunch exists west of Myrtle-Wyckoff (and soon will be west of Broadway Junction), and terminating trains at Atlantic rather than down in Borough Park gets them back to the area where they're needed most more quickly.

@RR503 is right - if the concern is the environment and emissions in the city (which it should be), than we should really embrace freight rail. The Bay Ridge branch and the Lower Montauk are both key to this, as are expansions of rail yards at Fresh Pond and in Maspeth. And if we're still that concerned about emissions, I'd be all for what @Union Tpke suggested - electrifying the line using catenary. Any cross-harbor tunnel (which, yes, is a pipe dream) will likely need to be electrified, the northern end (Hell Gate) is already electric, and electrification would almost certainly happen for any passenger rail project along the corridor. I think also, though, that a strengthened freight rail service and a hypothetical passenger one could coexist along the Bay Ridge branch. Most of the line (except the open-cut through Midwood) is four tracks wide, and as long as things are scheduled (and operated) well, it should be conflict-free. Building a full circumferential line around Brooklyn and Queens (Triboro) is a better use of the ROW than an extension, and if the rolling stock could just be M8 cars with a more rapid transit seat layout, which gets rid of the FRA problems that would crop up for subway service. The only issue with this is Fresh Pond: we'd need to build a second yard somewhere in Queens to take pressure off of FP; right now, NY&A basically uses the tracks as far south as Wilson Avenue as part of FP Yard, which would kill any passenger service. But anyway, freight rail in NYC is somewhat undervalued as a resource (and potential resource): if anything, we should be using more freight rail (which would feed smaller, more local trucks for distribution) not less - that would only lead to more congestion (and large trucks) on roads like the LIE and all over the city.

"Broadway-Brooklyn" is such an awkward name, and doesn't mean much to most. I think it would be fine just to say "Brooklyn Local" or "Brooklyn Express," the way the and lines are signed in the Bronx. Myrtle to Marcy is part of the Jamaica line though; technically speaking, there's nothing actually wrong with that reading, but I understand how it isn't really that relevant in Williamsburg.

If they were to restore the mosaics, couldn't they rename the stop as 138th Street - Mott Haven? It would eliminate some of the overlap in station names in the South Bronx (we have two Third Avenue stops and two Grand Concourse stops in different places).

The point of building a connection would be to allow riders to access Lex trains; access to Broadway trains is no longer necessary with the cross-platform transfer to the . That's why Third Avenue isn't a good choice: the connection from the to the would be extremely circuitous and used by few (walking on the street would probably be just as fast, if not slightly faster, than this). The idea to use the space occupied by the 59th Street pocket track is a much better idea.

And even that is probably a somewhat conservative estimate. Newer trains with faster acceleration could shave off some of the SI travel time; plus, trains won't have to enter St. George station slowly (as they do now), since it'll be a through station. You could probably get the time from SI to Hanover Square down slightly, too, since trains should be able to hit 60+ in the tube (unless we build it with timers lol). Another important thing that should be factored in (but can't in just a simple travel time comparison) is the consistency of the service. Barring significant incident, trains are far more consistent in their travel time than buses are since they're not subject to the whims of traffic congestion. It doesn't take much for buses to run over their scheduled runtime, which they do frequently but unpredictably. Anything grade-separated largely eliminates the problem of "flexible" travel time, especially when we're talking about some very congestion-prone areas.

But why should we resign ourselves to prohibitively high construction costs that others don't have? Why should we be content with the fact that we'll never be able to build as much infrastructure as other cities, only because we fail to reform the processes that drive our costs up from what they ought to be? The idea that the failure of East Side Access (and, admittedly, many other megaprojects) to keep costs under control should be something that keeps us from attempting other new builds (like tunnels to Staten Island) seems awfully pessimistic, especially given the current attitude towards reform of the MTA's construction and procurement methods.