Lance

Also, aren't there long-term plans to wire the tunnels for WiFi? Or have those plans been scuttled?

Isn't the G a straighter shot between those two stops over the F? The G doesn't have to cross the East River twice and serve midtown Manhattan. Then again, the F isn't supposed to be the quicker route between Brooklyn and Queens. That's historically been the job of the G, even with it permanently truncated to Court Sq. The purpose of the F is to transport riders from Queens Blvd and Culver to the CBD.

So they have changed the announcement sets. Apparently, it's not a straight lift from the 179 program. I actually don't hate it. Though that could be due to the fact I can't stand the D's automated announcements. They along with the and announcements all sound like Catherine fell asleep in the booth while recording these stations. Seriously though, if they decide to consolidate the announcement sets, I'd recommend keeping the Broadway set, the one for the Eastern Division and have everything else use the 8th Avenue (and 6th Avenue if necessary) recordings, including for reroutes and have said reroutes use the home-line versions instead of the ones specifically created for the rerouted lines. Right now, there are seven different versions of station announcements, most of which have their own versions of station recordings for reroutes: Rockaway Park / Franklin Ave (uses Broadway version of "next stop", but slower recordings than Broadway stations) (which sounds slightly different than the A / C version) (some stations are announced differently, but most share the set) Using this weekend's service changes, any train on Fulton St will use one of the four known recordings, with only the using the actual announcements. via Fulton St currently has its own set, as does the and reroutes in that area. Same for anything rerouted on to the Culver line. The and will use its own version, as with the and . There's no need for that. I can actually understand if the computers have limited capacity if there's this much bloat installed on them. They can use those three main sets I mentioned and treat rerouted trains like they do on the 142s (but retain the relevant "next stop / this is" portions)

Seriously. I have a feeling this is all driven by the operations and crew picks. As you said, this could be more easily done by sending the to Euclid and terminating the at Delancey/Essex. Nothing is gained on a rider's standpoint by rerouting the and yet again, nor are any of the corridors out of service since both 8th Ave / 53rd St and 6th Ave / 63rd St are still in use. The usual reason for having the stop at Hoyt-Schermerhorn is to facilitate a quick transfer between it and the extended for 6th Ave / Culver service. With the on 8th Ave, that purpose is lost, so the whole reroute becomes pointless. If it is a matter of crew choice and the longer-run jobs need to come out of 179 Street, they can easily flip the Queens terminals for the two lines so that the JC-Delancey route is roughly the same as JC-WTC. There is precedence for flipping the terminals as they've done so continuously for nearly a year with the and for Clark St work a few years back. Also, it's much less confusing for casual riders since everyone knows the serves 8th Ave and the runs along 6th.

Late I know, but they could condense the walking transfer announcement to something as such: usual in-station transfer plays, followed by... "A free out-of-system transfer is available to the and trains at Lexington Av-63 St." That's much better than "A free transfer is available to the and trains by walking to the Lexington Av-63 St station and using OMNY or your Metro-Card." Also, they could lose the "watch the gap" portion on one of the straightest stations in the system.

The text on these new signs will need to be reduced to compensate for the smaller LED matrix compared to the other trains. The 211s have a matrix field of only 160x15, much smaller than the 224x16 field available for the 179s. As shown on the video, a lot of the longer-named stations will be forced to display on two separate lines. If they do something like they've done with the 143s-179s where the text is shrunk down to 13 pixels in height instead of using all 16 rows of space, most of the stations should fit easily. I'm surprised they spec'd out such restrictive displays, but the security cameras directly next to the displays might've forced the issue.

To answer the other question, the 179s have all the route options that are available on the 160s. The only difference between the two systems is that due to a coding error, the 179s all use the 8th Avenue "this is/the next stop is" recording. That K option was just a test of the audio/visual systems by Bombardier.

Well, you're definitely not going to like that they apparently added it to Pelham Pkwy-Dyre recently. I caught it on a downtown 5 yesterday. I'm starting to think they're adding them to all these stations just to spite us at this point. I agree with you that it isn't needed for most of the stations it's been attached to these days. Only Union Square on the Lex, Times Square on the shuttle and West Farms Sq need it for the severe curves at those stations. Might as well just add it to every station with an announced transfer at this point and save everyone the trouble.

If it becomes an issue when the Flushing line is out, I imagine they'll issue an emergency order for repairs in the 60th Street tunnel while Flushing work is delayed to facilitate this.

Rather than quote every response, and because I don't want to be here forever, I'll just respond to the general points made. Delaying Queens Blvd CBTC is a definite non-starter. The MTA spent a lot of money installing this new signal system on the line and it's in no way cost effective to maintain two signal setups while they wait for a sufficient number of new NTTs to be operable. 46s running on any of the Queens Blvd line long-term is pretty much a thing of the past at this point. As for delays on the other two capable lines, Canarsie was delayed due to a lack of available compatible trains The 42s weren't booted off the L line until mid-2007 and even then, the A1s that replaced them weren't CBTC-compatible until 2010. The issues that delayed full implementation on the Flushing line were more technical than anything else, but were also in part caused by problems with the trains themselves. We all recall those constant signal problems on the 7 line in the lead up to the transition. In terms of train reliability, yes there was an uptick in reliability on the 32s when they were briefly pressed back into active service (and please spare the semantics on whether the trains are in storage or are semi-retired, they're currently not part of the general car requirements either way), they were out of service entirely for a few months before the 179s were forced out of service necessitating the 32s' return. It's not really that surprising that trains not in regular service might perform better than trains that see service almost every day like the 46s. And to take one of the suggestions to put them into service during rush hours only, it doesn't negate the fact they're limited from running on a lot of lines right now. They can't run on any of the Queens Blvd routes due to CBTC, so the E, F and R are out. The C is also out because it's a fully underground route that will risk overheating the HVACs. While this is another instance where the MTA shot itself in the foot, the repairs on the Montague tunnel mean the 32s also cannot run on any of the Broadway lines anymore. Realistically, that only leaves the A, B, G and J as suitable candidates for the 32s to displace some other trains around. As for the incoming 211s, that order, at least the base order itself, is still on track. The options may be delayed due to the pandemic and issues with funding, but the base order was already budgeted into the last capital plan and is not affected. If all goes well, that should be able to replace some of the worst-performing cars in service right now. Of course, the delays don't help matters as it will likely take a year once the test train arrives before they start accepting cars en masse, if we go by the previous car orders as an example. We do need those options funded as well obviously, but I honestly can't see that happening right now. Ridership needs to bounce back significantly from their still incredible lows to generate some of that lost revenue. I say that because I don't think the MTA can use the stimulus funds to pay for those new cars while so many other transit agencies need support as well just to operate. We'll see obviously. And to answer the question above this post, the A currently requires 38 - 40 trains at the height of the rush hours while the Rockaway Park shuttle uses three short trains. If the base order directly replaces the 46s there, that'd be 270 cars to the A and 15 to the shuttle, leaving 155 to be placed elsewhere. Of course, this assumes no service expansions anywhere or any problems with any of the new cars, but that's to be expected given the circumstances.

Makes you wonder what their end goal is here. Speaking of the 59 Street transfers, I just wish they'd fix it so it stops playing before 4 and 5 trains have already come to a complete stop. Conductors won't open the doors until it finishes so the destination/next stop announcement plays correctly, which I'm guessing is on orders from management since it happens on every train I'm on regardless of time of day. They got it right once when they moved the playback trigger back a couple hundred feet sometime after 2010 when they added the walking transfer to the F announcement. Of course, it got knocked back when they added the "watch the gap" portion later and hasn't been fixed since.

Isn't the move from Jamaica to Coney Island a transfer of necessity over anything else? The 46s can't run on Queens Blvd once CBTC is fully activated there and we can't wait five years for a sufficient amount of 211s to be pressed into active service before switching over to the new signaling system. It's the same reason why the 6 now uses the older 62As instead of the 142As that used to hold down the Pelham line. As for the diminishing performance levels on the 46s, and forgive me for making the obvious point, but the trains are 45 years old and it's quite expected that they will start to break down more frequently than they did in years prior. After a certain point, there's only so much preventative maintenance that can be done before it's time for the trains to be simply replaced. Even the replacement electronic signs are nearly 30 years old at this point. I seriously doubt Luminator expected those signs to still be in use longer than most of us have been on this Earth. Hell, even the signs on the newer 142s are starting to fail at this point. They're all up for replacement, but no one's obviously going to spend money to replace signs on trains that won't be around in a few years hopefully. And even if they did want to replace them, they'd likely have to replace all of the surrounding components because the system is so old and outdated at this point. Circling back to the cars themselves, it doesn't help that the 46s are now the backbone of several primary lines and have been so since the transition from Jamaica. They are currently the primary fleet of the A, C, N and Q lines, whereas before, it was only the A and R, while providing secondary support for the F whenever needed. Of course, as mentioned above, it can't be avoided unless Transit delays implementation of Queens Blvd CBTC until the arrival of the 211s. And to offer a rebuttal to the oft-mentioned suggestion here, the 32s are not the silver bullet some of the folks here like to pretend they are. The 32s were retired because they are consistently even worse performers than the other aging fleets in active service. The 32s have averaged 35K miles between failure for years now, whereas the 46s have only recently dropped below 60K MDBF. In my opinion, that's not bad for trains from 1975. That doesn't include the accommodations that need to be made for the 32s to even run these days. If by some miracle the 32s were pressed back into active service, they're pretty much limited to the Jamaica line or their HVAC starts overheating and they get taken out of service. Isn't that why the 160s were temporarily placed onto the A and C lines when the 179s were taken out of service last summer? Right now, all we can really do is wish for the best and hope there are no further delays in receiving those new trains. There are ways to avoid putting unnecessary strain on these aging cars, like putting them on the secondary routes like the B. The problem in that lies in the fact there aren't enough applicable secondary routes to avoid having the cars continue to mainline full-time routes like the A, C and Q. It'd be better than the current operations though.

Not a clue unfortunately. It looks to be full Helvetica, but that doesn't narrow it down much I'm afraid.

I thought it was a capacity problem on the ancient hardware in those trains, and also the reason why most of the remaining '04-era transfers were replaced by Charlie Pellett versions.

Get a load of Spider Man here.