RR503

24 minutes ago, Lex said:

Yeah, for the one boneheaded enough to constantly need to go between some random-ass part of Westchester and Five Towns...

Takes a certain type of transit nerd to be interested in planning subjects but somehow unaware of the access plight of satellite job centers.

Some reading:

http://library.rpa.org/pdf/RPA-Trans-Regional-Express-T-REX.pdf#page=27

1 hour ago, bobtehpanda said:

We already have a new tunnel. It's the lower level of 63rd.

In a more logical world without stupid inter-agency politics, we would have Crossrail type operation from Port Washington, Hempstead and Belmont feed a tunnel from Grand Central to Atlantic via Union Square and Fulton, and then branching out again to serve Far Rockaway, Long Beach and West Hempstead.

As far as I am aware, it's not like there's room for two additional tracks on the six-track portion of the Main Line west of Woodside anyways. It'd be easier to build six tracks from Woodside to Floral Park to segregate this new inner-suburban service.

It'd also provide a lot more wallop than a new subway line given that those services combined are not running anywhere near 24 or 30TPH today, and they operate 12-car trains where the cars are 85 ft.

Inter-agency politics aren’t even the reason this hasn’t happened — it’s construction costs and imagination! You’re connecting LIRR to LIRR through LIRR’s basement terminal at GCT here; nobody else need be involved.

The only question in my mind is whether this is a good use of Atlantic’s expansion potential. There are many good arguments to be made for extending that line to connect with MNR or NJT rather than looping back on itself to foster through-core travel. A train from Valley Stream to White Plains would be quite useful. 

2 hours ago, JeremiahC99 said:

For that new tunnel across the east river, do you recommend linking it to an expanded Second Avenue Subway phase 3 (4 tracks) so that SAS 3 has an northern end with no destructive interlining? I was thinking of an SAS via Northern Blvd for this new line.

Yes, that'd be what I'd do. There are also a whole number of plans with an  extension via 10th Ave that'd be doable/potentially good. 

1 minute ago, shiznit1987 said:

The question is can we get passengers to accept that reality (Deinterlining)? It'd be easy enough to build tail tracks at Parsons/Archer and send 30tph  local and 30tph  express with another 20-30 tph  to Astoria and call it a day, but without that magical passageway at 63/Lex to the  one wonders if you can get buy-in politically. 

There is fast approaching a day when, even with CBTC, QB express will not be able to take more passengers. That day will bring ridiculous dwells at QB exp stations, unpleasant travel, etc. Deinterlining is the only realistic fix for that, and frankly doesn't end up costing riders that much time if done right, while also, through simplifying train movements, allows for greater overall capacity. 

We can also just build the passageway!

2 hours ago, Jemorie said:

@RR503, speaking of CBTC...let me bring this over from the Subway Random Thoughts Thread for a quick sec...

I asked @Union Tpke this after he and @NewFlyer 230 complained about the  and  being so close to one another during rush hours when both lines combined operate thirty times an hour between the Forest Hills-71 Av interlocking and the 36 St (Qns) interlocking. However, either @Union Tpke just doesn't know or he just ignored me, but it's whatever. I'm still very curious to ask the same question...I don't ride neither the  or the  anyway, so I don't know. What about you, though, @RR503? If I have to wager a guess to my own question...the current signals on Queens Blvd are so far apart from each other like say, 600 feet apart or so, but if there were many more inbetween, trains at 2 minute headways can be able to run at regular speed rather than constantly be slowed down multiple times between stations?

Thanks.

As hinted at in the above, it's really a question of dwell times. CBTC definitely will move trains faster given any dwell because you can close in at exactly the safe speed rather than via ST cutbacks (which, being a form of intermittent speed control, will necessarily have to enforce a lower closing speed to preserve safety), but that doesn't mean you're going to be flying into Roosevelt during the rush; CBTC is vulnerable to dwells too. 

Another angle I'd be interested to investigate is the way in which the interlockings at either end of Roosevelt interact with CBTC. CBTC treats interlockings like areas of fixed block control which actually is quite limiting to capacity; I'd love to know how that's working on the . 

2 hours ago, Lawrence St said:

I think the reason why they refuse to run more service in The Bronx is because then all those sets have to go into Concourse, which results in a shortage at CIY.

I mean, no? If you ran more PM peak Concourse local svc you'd also probably be running more AM peak Concourse svc, which would mean you need more trains at Concourse to begin with. 

2 hours ago, shiznit1987 said:

Speaking of Queens Blvd, let's talk about that bypass....

 

I've been thinking about it, and my idea is for the 63rd st line to run under the LIRR all the way to Archer Ave, where it would take over the Archer Ave Subway. There would be stops at 61st-Woodside (Transfer to ), Forest Hills-71st Ave (Passageway to 71st-Continential station), then a new stop at Van Wyck-Archer (To replace Jamaica-Van Wyck, which would close), and then on to the existing Sutphin Blvd/JFK and Parsons-Archer stations. 

The service pattern would look like this:

 Broadway Express to 96st/2nd Ave

 Broadway Express -> 63rd Street -> QB Bypass to Parsons-Archer 

 No change

 Astoria-Whitehall

 6th Ave Local -> 63rd Street -> QB Bypass to Parsons-Archer 

 6th Ave Local -> 53rd Street -> QB Express to 179th St (evenings/weekends cut back to Essex St)

 8th Ave Local -> 53rd Street -> QB Express to 179th St

 Possible reinstatement to 71st-Continental 

This gives 30tph through the 63rd st tunnel, finally living up to it's potential, plus the bonus of maybe being able to bring the  back. 

"Organization before electronics before concrete" should be a saying we all keep in mind. 

The bypass doesn't do anything for capacity that deinterlining couldn't do, and moreover forces the preservation of all sorts of ugly merges. The constraining factor on Queens today is the number of Manhattan-bound tunnels; the Bypass doesn't expand that figure and thus doesn't really get to the heart of Queens' issue. I'd prioritize some new line across the river over it. 

10 hours ago, Union Tpke said:

Is there anything short of CBTC that could fix the mess that is Coney?

Not really, no. And for CBTC to be effective, you'd have to move the switches around.

21 hours ago, Jemorie said:

4. Fair enough, I’d assume because of the merge with tracks 5 and 6 at the other end of the platform is why the agency put that horrible signal restrictive system on tracks 3 and 4. Also because of the bend before s come in after stopping/before stopping at W 8. Also, my fault. I got a little heated with my “how the hell” quote but overall, as always, you do raise some honestly fair points that even I cannot come back over anyway. @CenSin did mention just now about Ocean Parkway being a better terminal for some short turning s than Brighton Beach.

Ocean Parkway would face the exact same issue as Stillwell -- extremely restrictive signalling coming into the platform because of active switches lined against traffic at the end of the platform. Do not recommend!

7 minutes ago, m2fwannabe said:

Any idea which of the two trains?

Set included 4830. Was on the same trip as Friday AM. 

A set of 42s ran this AM. On their last legs to be sure, but not gone yet. 

Sad to see the 42s go. The railfan in me always preferred them to the 32s -- much better looking cars than their older brethren.

2 hours ago, Jemorie said:

1. NYC Transit surely has enough existing rolling stock to support 10 tph in the reverse peak  service (given the AM peak loads out of Grand Concourse/Central Park West and PM peak loads into Central Park West/Grand Concourse, yet there are still those fewer folks from time to time who bitch and cry that the  should make all local stops to help out the  in the Bronx on weekdays and the  on CPW on weekends...typical). Current  service out of Brooklyn in the AM is maintained at 10 tph (I thought it was lower than that at first).

No disagreement from me here! Concourse should have a lot more service than it does today; it's a critical Lex reliever. 

2 hours ago, Jemorie said:

2. The  takes 17 minutes to get from Brighton Beach to Prospect Park northbound; the  takes 23 minutes to get from Brighton Beach to Prospect Park northbound. If both trains have an across platform connection at Brighton/Sheepshead, that means both trains will be spaced evenly apart, with the  being approximately 5 minutes ahead of the first  from Prospect Park to DeKalb Av. However, I see that would cause some nasty bunching of trains due to the current 6 minute headways on both the  and  out of Brooklyn in the AM peak, so understandable. But they can get away with it off-peak, when both lines are maintaining service at 6 tph each (yes, I'm aware that the  got its tph increased from 6 tph to 7.5 tph following its reroute from Astoria to SAS, but I'm just making a generalized observation here, because honestly, a 10 minute headway on the  and an 8 minute headway on the  do not properly mesh anyway; you can do the scheduling math and see). Btw, the across platform connection is better off at Kings Highway (AM Rush only), not Newkirk Plaza. Kings Highway means both lines can still properly mesh their 6 minute headways each together for a 3 minute headway from Prospect Park to DeKalb Av. The first  catches up to the first  at Kings Highway, and by Prospect Park, the former is already approximately 4 minutes ahead. Newkirk Plaza seems too close to Church Avenue, so Brighton riders transferring from local to express at Newkirk Plaza just to bypass three stops is...meh. But six stops will do in addition to skipping the two local stops on 6 Av. It's good for a Brighton customer trying to get from, say, Stillwell/W 8/Ocean Pkwy to Grand St (Chinatown, somewhat closer to Canal St Chinatown on the Bway line) or 34 St (first Manhattan CBD station served by both the 6 Av and Bway lines).

Yeah, you cannot merge one train one minute behind the next. Just doesn't work! Hence the suggestion of timed connections at Newkirk. I certainly get your argument for KH meets, but do think Newkirk is better. For one, the calculation shouldn't be "how many stops do transferring riders get to skip" but instead "how many transferring riders can benefit from a zero penalty connection to a train that'll be slotted ahead of the one behind it/what's their savings" which is a calculation that heavily weights the connection point towards Newkirk. Secondary is the issue of track capacity in/around Dekalb Avenue. Scheduling an even 3 minute headway minimizes the chance of congestion through the crappy track geometry between Atlantic and Dekalb, and also minimizes the impacts of merge delays at Gold St. Newkirk allows a ~3 min headway; it's the one that should be done. 

2 hours ago, Jemorie said:

3. Who said anything about rebuilding the whole terminal? All I said is to remove the diamond crossover north of the said terminal, but keep the one to the south end for relaying. Fumigation takes 5 minutes anyway. Yes, it's more costly, but it is certainly better to organize Manhattan-bound goers on one side and Coney Island-bound goers in the other. I can surely tell you that operating any line in the system more frequently is much more expensive than relaying and fumigation operations...let alone by one line in question.

Reconfigure, my bad. The point remains, though, that the benefit of sorting riders at _one_ (not particularly busy) stop simply does not justify the costs involved in extending  round trip runtimes by 10-15 minutes and removing a crossover. The incremental cost incurred there is absolutely enough that it'd be taking away from service increases--that's a 20ish percent increase of  runtime! 

2 hours ago, Jemorie said:

4. And I still oppose this  short turn thing. Doesn't the  already operate frequently enough anyway on the entire line in both directions during the peak (10 tph)? If you want more than 10 tph, you might as well just relocate the diamond crossover switch to closer to the north end of the tracks 3 and 4, where northbound s depart from the Coney Island terminal. How the hell does it make sense for some s to short turn at Brighton with relaying, which is just as costly as my  relaying at Brighton proposal anyway? What makes the  so special than the ? It already has its spark.

Nobody is saying we should short turn instead of running to CI or instead of rebuilding CI. Both of those things should be done. However, the genesis of this conversation was the fact that even with moved switches, CI will still suffer from an extremely restrictive signal system design that prevents operation at turning capacities normal for similar ops in the system. I suggested that, if the  needed turning capacity above and beyond what could be provided at CI, this would be a way to create it. This has nothing to do with wanting to create a relay op or the  being "special" -- just a recognition of CI's limitations as a place to turn service.

On 12/21/2019 at 7:20 AM, CenSin said:

You're talking about those annoying holding lights that are there because the MTA doesn't trust itself to get trains to the terminal on-time?

The schedule version of that, yes. Let’s say NYCT expects  trains to lose 8 minutes along Queens Boulevard. The supplement schedule they write will have an 8 min long hold at the south end of the line (that location being itself a massive issue given having trains run late except for the last few stops throws merges to hell) with the expectation that the  will arrive at that station 8 mins late and thus will not need to hold.

@Union Tpke yes! 11 St is where the  gets added time for QB. 

3 hours ago, Jemorie said:

So simply put, what will be the point of moving the crossover then? We all know the  is limited by the merges it faces with the , , and , along its run.

There’s incremental capacity available.  will never run 30, but 15? Sure. 18? Maybe. Getting the infrastructure ready to support those 50-80% service increases would be good, and would also help prevent the ever present post disruption terminal holdouts.

3 hours ago, Jemorie said:

The  and  should be departing from both Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Bay roughly at the same time, instead of constantly at Church Avenue or the  finally showing up immediately after the  is fully platformed at Prospect Park and the  has no choice but to wait outside and follow it through DeKalb. Remember, trains tend to be on time in their earlier portions of their routes much more often than they would in the latter portions of their routes, even when trains on the opposite direction get to the terminal late, though I have noticed @CenSin stated that the  trains he/she often takes in the AM Rush tend to be late and bunched up severely northbound in Brooklyn (before Prospect Park).

I disagree. Synchronizing them that far south means the  will arrive at Prospect Park *just* behind the  in front of the one it connected with. Tying them at Newkirk means that won’t happen, and moreover means that everybody from Newkirk south on the  gets a cross platform connection with an express that’ll end up in the slot in front of the  they boarded at their local stop. It works operationally and from a planning perspective; it’s what should be done and as you say, given the relative reliability of near terminal service, it generally _is_ done. 

3 hours ago, Jemorie said:

I’m sorry, but the average passenger more often than not pay no attention at Brighton Beach and just jump on the  that they think will pull out first. If anything, Brighton Express trains should be the ones originating at Coney Island and Brighton Local trains at Brighton Beach, but current track layout says otherwise. So I favor having the  relay at Brighton Beach and having an across platform connection with Manhattan-bound  trains at both that station and Sheepshead Bay instead.

The average passenger has made that mistake once and knows not to do it again. At any rate, the solution to a customer communication issue is....better comms, not an all out terminal rebuild — one whose final configuration would, by the way, be significantly more costly to operate than current service.

2 hours ago, Lex said:

If I understand the proposal correctly, the crossover's not being moved. Instead, this is an addition to foster  short-turns.

Yes, my proposal for switches for short turn function got conflated with a proposal to turn the  into a relay op at BB. Another reason to oppose  relay, FWIW, is that it would prevent the construction/use of local short turn relays at the station, as s would be occupying the relay slots on the express. 

7 hours ago, Jemorie said:

The diamond crossover north of Brighton Beach should be removed entirely because it is too far away and causes delays if the  is running behind schedule and trains are bunching up severely around the area closer to the terminal. Even if the crossover was directly right outside Brighton Beach to the north, express trains have to leave the station northbound/enter the station southbound at relatively slower than normal speed.

I know you and especially @CenSin (who presumably lives in Coney Island and commutes daily on the  to/from Manhattan based on his/her posts) would disagree with me on this, but I rather have the  relay south of Brighton Beach instead of turning back on either express track already inside the station. It keeps all Manhattan-bound customers solely on the Manhattan-bound platform and all Coney Island-bound customers solely on the Coney Island-bound platform. There has been quite a handful of times where customers dump a  for a , even though the  is not expected to move for another 3-6 minutes on average (rush hour) or 8 minutes (off-peak), partly due to its lousy headways, current scheduling, or current terminal setup. Passengers just randomly jump on the , not knowing the one on the Coney Island-bound express track will pull out first. With more reliable headways and rescheduling, as well as a more -ish Utica Avenue terminal setup, the  can get a quick line up as soon as the  opens its doors at Brighton Beach and pull out roughly at the same time.

Strongly disagree here. There's nothing inherently restrictive about the terminal layout at Brighton Beach -- you can move the crossover and achieve more capacity -- and you frankly do not need more capacity there. The  will always limited to [capacity of Dekalb]- throughput, which isn't all that much. Like sure, terminal resiliency is good, but crossover movement + drop back crews could likely get you a theoretical capacity of 30tph, which will almost certainly never be needed. There's also nothing preventing operation of  service such that  leaves just after  -- it's just most people prefer that the  and  align at Newkirk or so so that a maximum of people can transfer onto an express that will skip ahead of the local. 

On the legibility front, people transferring from  usually do so at Sheephead Bay where everything is on the track that it's supposed to be on; the only people who really get subjected to the  confusion are riders originating in Brighton Beach, and they have next train indicators in the mezzanine for their sake.

5 hours ago, Jemorie said:

Work under traffic during off-peak hours increases running times, so all of the ’s printed schedules for every line in the system reflect that. That’s the only reason why they are “on time”. As for rush hours, every line’s tph is different.

The  is just playing around as always.

Yes, though increased weekend/midday running times are almost always reflected through end-of-line holds at gap stations rather than actual interstation adjustments.

A fun bit of trivia: there's one extremely common runtime add that's done in an interstation because there are no gap stations convenient to the corridor that needs extra time. Can any of you name it?

Dyre-180 and Flatbush to Franklin are the same because...they are. There's no really big truth to be found in that. 

45 minutes ago, subway4832 said:

Those extra few minutes of padding is most likely to accommodate for merge delays, which happens extremely often on the . You should see the late night runtimes, schedule gives almost 20 minutes between Franklin and Flatbush Late Night on the  and almost 15 minutes of padding from 125 to 149 GC on the .

Northbound  runtimes on the overnight from Flatbush to Franklin are 12; 13 during rush hours. Southbound you have a padding hold at Church, which blows runtimes up to 20. 

Honestly, though, padding isn't the best way to think about longer schedules. *To a point* longer schedules help make service better because your merge interactions work, your crews are in the right places, etc. Issue is a) when longer schedules aren't fine grained adjustments to segments with longer runtimes or that will be subject to some supplement/GO congestion but instead just padding spammed at the ends of lines or b) when you add so much runtime that trains run hot and end up getting held a bunch, lengthening actual runtimes. 

Really this all is just an argument for moving to runtime-based service metrics....

3 hours ago, T to Dyre Avenue said:

My original idea for express-on-the-local for the Jamaica el was for it to start at Crescent. Maybe that is better after all. Maybe. Before that, I agreed with past suggestions to just have peak  express service from Broadway Jct to Marcy. But I feel like an express starting at Broadway Jct wouldn’t really be any more popular than the current skip-stop service is. Though your points about the Jamaica el signal system and variability (delays due to door holding, mechanical failure) certainly would be strikes against an express-on-the-local operation, especially given how often these happen system-wide. Though I wonder how appealing it will be to build an express track structure above the current el between Cypress Hills and Broadway Jct to residents, riders and businesses in the area.

Thing with doing Bway Jct-Marcy express is through eliminating skip stop w/o eliminating runtime gains, you'd make boarding  at stops in Woodhaven/Richmond Hill much more appealing than taking the bus to QB. Crescent-Bway Jct would make that even more true, but honestly is icing on the cake -- big ticket item is getting peak headways below 10 mins. 

Re: the , Queens Boulevard is certainly part of the issue, but it's by no means the whole issue. Beyond the runtime issues with the 11 St cut merge and approaching Forest Hills, QB's biggest impact on  service is making its schedule incredibly complicated. You're not only weaving the  through Astoria traffic, but you're now tying it to the IND as well -- makes it impossible to schedule even, hold-free service and ridiculously hard to implement any schedule remedy for service issues because you'd basically have to rewrite the entire B division timetable to do so. 

Re: this express-on-the-local proposal, as the old saying goes, the difference between a local and an express on the local is one stops at stations while the other stops between them. You can make this operation work with super coordinated schedules and low frequencies, but on the , where peak headway is 3 minutes, skipping more than 2-3 stops will put you hot on your leader's tail. Merging is unfun, but if we're going to do an express, we should do it properly. 

To this specific proposal, assuming ~30 seconds of savings per stop, you'd be gaining about 3.5 mins of runtime against your leader. At 12tph frequencies, that leaves about 90 seconds of buffer between you and the train in front of you, or the absolute minimum headway achievable on the densest of fixed block systems -- assuming everything goes right. And FWIW, the Jamaica el hardly has the most capable signal system.

You'd _maybe_ (and a strong maybe at that) be able to do express on the local from Crescent to Bway Jct (2 mins of savings/4 mins of buffer), but even then I do wonder whether the inevitable variability makes it a better alternative to just build out the express track above the current el. 

3 hours ago, LaGuardia Link N Tra said:

The interlockings are near South Ferry as opposed to just outside of the station. South Ferry end in bumper blocks as an addition to that.

The bumpers are definitely the bigger issue — they mean you have to crawl in on GT.

1 hour ago, Trainmaster5 said:

I have seen part of your proposal, in a different form, firsthand so here’s my take. 137th was a terminal for many years. The relay position was that middle track between 137 and 145 . The yard /layup tracks straddle both sides of the existing 3 revenue tracks. I don’t know how to avoid the obvious problems in the 137th St area and south of the 103rd St stop  with trains switching between local and express lineups. Wouldn’t it be simpler to have the VCP trains run express on the tracks they currently use while bypassing 103, 110, 116, and 125 streets ? That’ll avoid the extra switching involved. While we’re at it Dyckman St was used as a terminal back in the day, too, which also helped us with overcrowded trains running the full route from VCP to the Ferry. It just seems like it would make more financial sense to at least consider reviving some past practices. Just my opinion. Carry on.

To be clear, the suggestion is keep the current track arrangement, and just run VCP trains express from 96 to 137 via M track? Or am I missing something?

1 hour ago, Jemorie said:

They have enough cars to do the proposed  to Lefferts. The agency is just bullshitting around as always. They would need at most an additional four extra trainsets to be operated by crews who would need to be paid to operate them. Meanwhile, all s head down to/from the Rockaways (10-12 minutes headways for both Rockaway sub-branches rush hours and 15-20 minutes all other times). This way, everyone on both Rockaway sub branches still get through service to/from Manhattan. The  operates only at night when all s go to/from Far Rockaway.

Oh, no contest on any of these points. Merely trying to elaborate on why this proposal hasn't been implemented. 

1 hour ago, Jemorie said:

Concourse Line sort of arrangement? Why? Do you mean those s or s skip most of the stops along the Liberty El? You don’t really need to do that when trains are already express in Brooklyn and Manhattan. From Euclid and onwards, everyone east of Euclid skip a total of 9 stations to get to/from the city (plus the 3 skipped stations between Canal and 59). Please correct me if I misinterpreted again. 

It's not so much about skipping more stops as it is allowing the  to go to Lefferts without adding merges with the . We're obviously not getting a 4th track on the Liberty El or a subway extension beyond Euclid, which leaves us with the middle track on the El to work with. You won't be able to avoid merges in the off peak direction, but with this design at least in the peak direction you're avoiding adding those interactions. 

I infer you're talking construction logistics here? I don't think those would be _that_ difficult given that this would be happening under a grassy median and the parking lots that surround Grant Ave. Doing a subway connection as you suggest would be great, but would require a much larger commitment -- this is somewhat deliverable within a reasonable timeframe. 

12 minutes ago, LaGuardia Link N Tra said:

Since the runs about 24 or so TPH Now, would this idea add more service, depending on how high a demand for this potential Express service might become? 

 runs 18tph into the core right now, but can only add 6 more thanks to the crappy terminal config at South Ferry. I'm sure that'll improve if/when they add CBTC there, but for now that's the number I'd work with. It's certainly enough to run express service, the questions I'd pose are 

- How does this affect  loads/how can we mitigate those effects?

- (as you noted) How does this interface with our service priorities for CPW?

- How do we avoid 137 becoming the next Parkchester?

7 minutes ago, Union Tpke said:

@RR503

In terms of upgrades to lines, something I have thought of for a bit of time is rebuilding 137th Street-City College as a two island platform express station. Expresses would run nonstop between 96th and 137th and continue to VCP, while locals would terminate and exit revenue service in the yard there. This would save time for riders from the Bronx, and would provide less crowded trains for the Upper West Side. Do you think this would make sense?

Definitely -- it's an idea I've toyed with too. Only qualifications I'd make is that I'd want to analyze the impact such a service pattern would have on  crowding, as well as what the most efficient way to route short turns through that complex area would be. 

Just now, Union Tpke said:

Again, half of the catchment area is a cemetery, and it would be a single track structure that could be located on the cemetery side of the street.

I'm not sure that makes it much better--people who don't want an el because there's really no upside for them in supporting it aren't going to be all that moved by us telling them it'll actually be 20 feet further away from their front windows than they thought. It saddens me that this is how things work in this city, but it is, alas, the only way things get done it would seem. 

Just sayin', we already have an elevated structure through the area with decent ridership to boot!

2 minutes ago, Around the Horn said:

The problem with Crescent Street is that they've built around the curve to such a degree that you can't make it any less sharp without demolishing buildings

True, but again am wondering whether at least 20mph can be squeezed out of the existing curve geometry. If you can get it up to that, returns to realignment start to go down a lot. 

1 minute ago, Jemorie said:

The only reason why the  is set up the way it is east of Rockaway Blvd is because of these rumors of “politicians” coming into play from the Lefferts Blvd Branch about through express service to Manhattan vs local service and then changing for express. Not that I’m saying we can’t stand up for the  to Lefferts though and believe me, I’m in favor for a  permanent extension to Lefferts. I just don’t see why it should be peak direction only.

It's not just politicians -- MTA doesn't like  extension because they can't get 3 roundtrips out of  crews if they do it. Not in any way an insurmountable issue, but it's just yet another little barrier between current svc and a  extension. 

As for the proposal, I was suggesting a Concourse Line sort of arrangement -- s to and from the Rockaways run express in the peak direction, local in the other.  runs local in both directions. 

4 minutes ago, Jemorie said:

As for as my earlier proposal, I see what you’re saying. It’s just Rockaway Blvd is an all honestly a bad terminal for seasonal shuttle trains from Rockaway Park. Northbound, they arrive shortly before an  from Far Rockaway. Southbound, they arrive shortly after an  to Far Rockaway. Just like they would at Broad Channel. So the seasonal extension is, well, sorta pointless. Because Aqueduct, North Conduit, Howard Beach, Broad Channel, and Rockaway Beach goers still experience lengthy commutes. Instead of trains coming evenly apart (10 minutes) between Rockaway Blvd and Hammels Wyes, trains were still often coming back to back and then nothing for another 18 minutes. But I get what you mean.

What other way to solve this seasonal problem though with the extension of the shuttle?

It helps a lot if you don't want to have to choose between a Lefferts and a Rockaways train! Just get off at Rockaway Boulevard and wait. 

I would staff Rockaway Boulevard better so that fumigation is quicker. Other than that, really the only way is to ensure you schedule adequate space between s and s. 

14 minutes ago, Jemorie said:

I don’t agree with this. Riders on the Liberty El already have an express service to/from Manhattan, and the headways are more or less 10-12 minutes rush hours, and 15-20 minutes all other times.

Those are really bad headways! The 's branches don't qualify as frequent transit, to say nothing of the fact that they are egregiously in violation of MTA service guidelines (not that those really are adhered to anyway). Thanks to the complexity of  branching and the complexities inherent in end-of-day layup patterns, there actually are considerable periods in evenings throughout the week where headways on both  branches go and stay above 20 minutes -- 24-30 min headways aren't uncommon. 

This merits a fix, and as it so happens this proposed fix could chip away at long commutes from the Rockaways. I say worth a look. 

1 hour ago, Around the Horn said:

Three track local stations that should be converted to express stations are Cypress Hills and Woodhaven Blvd (with the traveling non stop on a new El over Jamaica Avenue and then express via the middle track provision)

I'm still skeptical that, politically speaking, one can build a new el without any stops to provide community benefit...

Also, Crescent is a legit activity center! Would be curious to know what could be achieved at the curves there w/ better superelevation and CBTC to address the constraints of fixed block control over curves. 

1 hour ago, Jemorie said:

@bobtehpanda, @U-BahnNYC, and @RR503, is it physically possible to reconstruct Rockaway Blvd on the  into having two island platforms instead of the current two side platforms?

This would have made it easier for overnight shuttle trains from Lefferts Blvd and seasonal shuttle trains from Rockaway Park to turn on the middle track all without fumigating and relaying.

You certainly _could_ do it, I just don’t think it’s worth the investment. You’re fixing an issue that’s only present for a few months of the year and could be largely mitigated by just improving ops practices w/r/t relays.

Now, if this is a part of a larger plan to realign the middle track of the Lefferts El to feed the express tracks at Euclid instead of Pitkin so you can run  to Lefferts deinterlined in the peak direction, I’m all ears...