7-express

It's the new popular business thinking. Outsource everything you don't want to do to someone else, even if it's kind of part of the core of your business. Sadly, this will just mean worse lives for most of us that have no choice but to live far away from the train.

https://gothamist.com/news/mta-plan-subsidize-late-night-uber-lyft Looks like Queens would be a prime target to trial this out in. So there goes any hope of reasonable express bus service or restoration of cut service spans from the draft.

I guess it kind of makes sense because much of Queens is reliant on bus-to-subway transfers and vice versa due to the lack of subway coverage. Probably not going to get a ton of takers without transfers being an option yet with a lagging bus roll out.

I have a weekly unlimited card that's due to expire in 30 days but have not used it yet. Can it be transferred to a new card at a vending machine? Or does a booth have to do it for me?

Yeah but the DOT has seriously nerfed the signal timing on Northern Blvd and Astoria Blvd in an effort to reduce speeding. But in turn, causing more congestion that delays buses. It's a no win scenario here.

https://qns.com/story/2020/01/29/jackson-heights-assembly-candidate-presents-her-plan-for-a-safer-northern-boulevard/ Interesting idea to facilitate more express buses...close Northern Blvd from the Queensboro Bridge to 114th Street to private vehicles. Though there won't be many express buses left to use this route to NE Queens once the redesign goes through!

They did find a way to mess up the announcements in the East River tunnels in both directions. In both directions, the station announcements are way too early...the announcements conclude at least 15 seconds before the train even enters the station itself.

Kind of R188 related but I noticed the announcements on the 7 sounded different this morning. Turns out, the MTA reprogrammed all of them for 8 days with Awkwafina's voice making announcements. This is part of a Comedy Central paid promo for her new show "Nora from Queens" https://nypost.com/2020/01/16/queens-girl-awkwafina-will-be-making-subway-announcements-on-the-7-train/

Not sure why or if someone forced it open since I was too far back in line. But it looked like a grand total of 10 people swiped in a bus full of 50+ people.

I took the Q12 during the PM rush from Flushing for the first time ever yesterday. There was a massive line for the bus around 5PM and when it came, it was a free for all with the vast majority of people boarding the bus through the back door like an SBS. Enough that the driver would probably break his F5 button. Is this normal of what the Q12 looks like? It doesn't happen on the regular routes I take out of Flushing going north.

Why the reduction in LGA service for the Q72? Is airport construction adversely affecting reliability or is everyone just going for the Q70 instead?

Yeah no kidding. NE Queens buses back on 57th and taking a weird routing to the LIE. Pretty sure that's not going to save much time vs Northern. Major service cuts during off-peak hours too. Pretty garbage. But I guess there's downtown buses now?

Is this a legit map with times and headways? If so, it looks like pretty significant cuts all around to intervals outside of rush hours. This is going to get a crap ton of negative flak for sure.