Lex

That tells me everything I need to know.

That would depend on its ability to even enter the area during that time.

Yes, yes it did. And it was a horrible decision.

Would that have something to do with New Flyer phasing out support?

I love how the Bridge being (barely) faster is touted as an upside while conveniently ignoring that the bulk of the people using Lexington Avenue for service to Brooklyn are trying to go beyond Atlantic-Barclays. Also, failing to continue further south in Manhattan means that there won't be much of any relief for either route within Manhattan. You realize that you'd practically have to combine and headways just to match what the has now, right? Also, that's putting all of South Brooklyn's Sixth Avenue service on a single, hard-to-reach corridor which will then require a transfer just to reach 14th Street (remember, we're talking about the one trunk that has trains regularly skip a major street that is served by all others on both sides). I'd like to see what you'd do about the other track connections. Is the plan to copy our DNA and go the double helix route just to turn trains? Trying to have trains go down Utica Avenue via Williamsburg is possibly the most useless thing that can be done aside from connecting Utica Avenue to Eastern Parkway, as it would either have to awkwardly wind through there (with deep tunnels divorced from the grid) and serve none of the places people are trying to reach or travel under the Jamaica Line all the way to Reid Avenue.

Thank you.

If there's no money for a tunnel under the East River, then that'll complicate matters, particularly since the plan people seem to favor is one that'll give the MTA an excuse to cut service while failing to better serve those heading to destinations north of Eastern Parkway. Having trains follow Myrtle Avenue and Utica/Reid allows people to have an easier time reaching multiple points in Brooklyn at once. This would feed into Second Avenue (Hanover Square will not be built under this plan) and a maintenance facility would be built beyond Kings Plaza. Honestly, I don't like this idea (doing too much in Brooklyn, not to mention the aforementioned yard being in a flood zone), but I don't particularly like any of the ideas being floated. Capacity issues aside, I can't imagine that Fulton or South 4th Streets would really do anything notable, and Eastern Parkway would require some change in routes that would not be conducive to running one or more of them (aside from not doing enough or the fact that their service is hindered by several areas that are more removed from the potential line). Of course, doing nothing is also a terrible idea.

Given that the bulk of people going out there are KCC students, I can't imagine so, especially since the number of people going between there and Lower/Midtown Manhattan is unlikely to be high enough to justify. Not helping is the fact that it's so removed that in order to be time-competitive, it would basically have to have its last stop in the vicinity of the Brighton Line, and even with that, it would still have to try to beat the there. To make matters even worse, the bulk of that (small) area is residential, with business only having a small presence just outside the gate.

The is just barely slower by virtue of being a local. If anything's likely to be too slow, it's the .

Yes, by better adhering to the schedule than it currently does (traffic). The people of Co-Op City proposed having some routes run to rather asinine areas because of "need", regardless of reality. This is no different. If anything, the proposal comes with the implication that they don't know how these routes work, thereby being unable to know what is right.

As do the Broadway-7th Avenue platforms and the platforms at Fulton Street.

Follow the B41. (No, they won't be serving Bergen Beach together, as that designation would only apply to buses running from Kings Plaza to Downtown Brooklyn.) And no, I'm not suggesting that it actually should be implemented, but if reinstating the B51 is really worth looking at, something needs to change on the Brooklyn end.

You'd be better off tying the route into Bergen Beach. At least it would have a shot at attracting people.

Except the idea is to make running trains along the entire line easier, not just at that one spot. Given the other issues surrounding Eastern Parkway's routes (most of which are removed from there), Perhaps not, but there's an obvious solution that also allows for more coverage and a more capable terminus. It would be better than trying to connect Eastern Parkway down Utica Avenue (for what it's worth, I wouldn't do it with Fulton Street, either, though we'd still have service down the corridor). To make a long story short, trying to limit all stations east of Franklin Avenue to one trunk will only lead to a slight boost (at best) during rush periods and a sharp decline outside of the AM rush-early evening periods in service. Sure, the might see some small increases in weekend service to offset the issue, but even then, the was bound to be little more than relief after Lenox Yard was downsized (the decision to make them all express happened shortly after they announced that the shops would be abandoned, thus exacerbating the issue), and at this point, nothing will change that. The best thing to do at this point is to make the infrastructure more conducive to running the existing routes in order to avoid those losses and make more practical extensions that would make those routes more attractive without placing a larger burden at an awkward point.

Simply put, those stations aren't busy enough.

I'm well aware that it kills capacity as-is. What I take issue with is the idea that a quick "fix" will magically make everything better, even though the line's design is the whole reason for it killing capacity in the first place. Improving the design will allow for real improvements in throughput without leading to service actually decreasing to levels lower than we currently have.

Directly, it doesn't. The problem is that it comes with certain other issues that will cause a reduction in service. For one, the loses direct access to a maintenance facility (again), and would need to rely on pooling with the in order to retain some semblance of reliability, but with its current headways and stock, that becomes a chore for no good reason. (We'd probably end up retaining some amount of weekday service, but you can say goodbye to evening, weekend, and overnight service in order to give the cars a chance to go to a maintenance facility or rest at Lenox just to cut down on wear and reduce merging conflicts in Manhattan at a different flat junction. Naturally, that would be a giant middle finger to those in Harlem, particularly those in the 140s. If they somehow decide to restore maintenance capabilities at Lenox Yard, then the northernmost Lenox stations will also fly out the window just to cut down on awkward moves and storage losses.) The Nostrand Avenue Line is also dead on weekends, hence why we only have three routes on Eastern Parkway. (If it hadn't been for the need to make sure trains can go back to the Bronx fairly quickly while still covering a substantial part of Brooklyn, we wouldn't have the , either, as the only other thing really propping up that route is the carrying decent loads from the Bronx, but hardly anyone in Brooklyn.) For that matter, the bottleneck was built into the line a century ago because it was deemed better to preserve some surface element than to make something functional. Making the Eastern Parkway Line under its namesake functional is how you address that issue, as well as issues further east.

And in the process, put the right back where it was before 1983 while losing the ability to pool between the and in order to stroke someone's ego. Meanwhile, absolutely nothing is done to fix the issue that's actually caused deinterlining to be viewed as a solution (it isn't) in the first place, nor make short-turning at Utica Avenue easier. To add further insult to injury, any move of the sort will pretty much guarantee the closure of two Harlem stations in order to keep costs down and minimize the pressure of non-revenue moves, which will totally fly with people. As far as I'm concerned, nothing on Eastern Parkway should be used to facilitate Utica Avenue service, especially since there's a fair number of people heading/located further north of there on the Utica/Reid corridor. Moreover, while the has the greatest amount of unused space for the bulk of its run in Brooklyn, running to New Lots Avenue also allows the to be able to short-turn at Utica Avenue, and with the Lexington Avenue Line's ridership and existing unreliability that has nothing to do with Brooklyn, that's crucial.

And in the process, decrease service...

Not in this case...

That's what happens when people decide to play the hero while conveniently forgetting to look into the finer details.

How about no? I don't know if you've noticed, but your 8th Avenue-related "proposals" already exist (under the same lone designation, no less). The is long and unreliable, but doing that addresses neither issue. Moreover, much of no one's looking to have stations east of Forest Hills served by a local train (hence why previous permanent patterns involving such died so quickly), and this will only be exacerbated by using 8-car trains that will run into potential conflicts with (still more frequent) terminating trains. I won't even begin getting into the Broadway-related stuff.

If that's a "perfect world", then I'm the president of Zimbabwe.

You do realize that only three Brooklyn Division depots are currently capable of handling artics, right?

With any luck, Flatbush will receive some for the B41, while the rest go to GA for the B38 and Q58. Of course, I'm pretty sure that won't happen without substantial talks of conversion, but the MTA has a tendency to throw curveballs.