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)

On 7/22/2021 at 5:45 PM, BM5 via Woodhaven said:

Significant work coming up that impacts the  and  trains on weekends, from Friday night to Monday morning (8/6-8/9, 8/13-8/16)

https://new.mta.info/ftrain-summer21

IMO, they overcomplicated this more than it had to. It was different when the  was operating on Culver back in the fall & winter in one continuous section, but if the  is operating on the Culver line, then the  and  swap was completely unnecessary. It could have simply been  to WTC,  to Delancey and call it a day. If they were concerned about capacity with the 8-car R179s on the  potentially leading to overcrowding, then at most I would have swapped the  and the , so that there is consistent 10-car trains throughout the weekend (and since the  already operates via 8th Avenue on a regular basis). 

 

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.

On 1/3/2021 at 3:13 PM, Lex said:

If they didn't already get rid of it, then that should be the first order of business. That station's not even remotely built on a curve and the gaps aren't particularly wide.

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.

They'll have to deal with those problems as they come up as there's no way they'll be able to preemptively without some divine intervention. Let's hope the 46s can last long enough to weather this.

18 minutes ago, Union Tpke said:

I think this might have to do with the fact that there was a plan to send the G and N to Jamaica Center. After that fell though, they started pasting over the signs.

Perhaps. It would make sense with the text being in Standard instead of Helvetica like it was by the end of the 1980s. Though unless the plan to send the G and N (later the R) to Jamaica Center fell through at the last minute, I'd imagine having erroneous station signs would be more confusing than not. Par for the course, but still pretty weird though.

19 minutes ago, Union Tpke said:

The side platform at Hoyt-Schermerhorn was used to segregate the additional fares from the Aqueduct Specials and JFK Express. This was also done at the 42nd Street L.L.

Right, I forgot the racing specials stopped there. However, the JFK Express never stopped at Hoyt-Schermerhorn, so that means those signs on the outer platforms lasted at least six years following the elimination of the Aqueduct specials. Wouldn't surprise me though as there wouldn't really be a need to waste resources removing signs that people won't access in the first place.

Damn, these are nice finds. Like MHV, I saw some of these pop up on your Flickr feed and had to investigate myself.

Regarding the Queens Blvd signs at Briarwood and Union Tpke, I'm curious why it looks like the latter originally had three services and the former four when the number of services running to those stations was inverted at the time. Van Wyck Blvd had the E and F through 1988, which then became the R and F with the G added in 1990 as a late night service after the R was cut back to the 4th Avenue shuttle that autumn. I guess they could've covered over one of the lines with a blank at some point and then sometime after the Hillside Ave services were consolidated to only the F in Oct. 1992, the sign was cleaned up with a left-justified F. I do wonder if the G was ever on that sign though. The sign at Kew Gardens is even stranger as there was no reason to replace the original E and F that was already there as neither line was slated to discontinue serving that station.

That bullet replacement at Broadway-Lafayette looks like it was a service sticker mistakenly used for an entrance sign. Note how the inner shading is slightly brighter than the surrounding bullet. For Hoyt-Schermerhorn, it looks like those service signs replaced ones similar to those found at Jay St in this photo.

Jay St-Borough Hall (IND 6th Avenue / 8th Avenue)

Collection of NYCSubway.org

On a side-note, I wasn't aware those side platforms at Hoyt-Schermerhorn were in service at that point. Nothing ran on the outer tracks at that time to justify opening the doors to the outer platforms.

@MHV9218 I believe there's a reason why there aren't many enamel CC signs floating around or captured on video, etc. The plan to eliminate the double-lettered routes was thought of way before 1985. The first batch of signs for the 16s - 38s after the trunk color redesign came out in 1981. This is the version that had the Broadway lines with white text on the signature sunflower yellow color. I wouldn't be surprised if the plan dated back to the Diamond Jubilee map design change, but wasn't implemented then due to budget concerns at the time. Too many trains were running with signs dating back to at least the Chrystie St connection, if not before. While the colors on some of those signs would be wrong when the trunk color design was put info effect, the route letters would still be the same if the double-lettered routes remained in operation.

In regards to some of these signs' longevity, the ones at out of the way stations tend to stick around for a while. There were a couple of old service signs on the Pelham line that lasted until the 2010s renovations. Sometimes, they stick around well after station renos, like this one at 59 St-Columbus Circle:

59 St-Columbus Circle (IND 8th Avenue) - 04/22/2018

Flickr: Coney Island Av

On another side-note, the reason behind some of the signs retaining their '67 colors well into the '80s was that it was close enough to the '79 design. There were plenty of gold N's scattered around with the teal E's. And if you looked close enough, one could find slightly different shades of A's and D's, but those were less noticeable since the '67 and '79 versions were almost the same.

16 hours ago, Vulturious said:

If anything, they could've kept it as like some shuttle going back and forth like what they did with the , only operating on 1 track

So, there'd be a shuttle on top of the through service to Van Wyck and the overflow to 179 Street?

After looking at this map, I have to say that in it's present state, I don't like it at all. Right now, it looks completely unfinished and slapping a "beta" label on it does not absolve it from criticism, especially when it looks like an alpha release. First and foremost, they need to decide on a map style. Using a semi-diagrammatic system map overlaid with a completely geographic topographical map is completely messy for no reason. If the goal was to show stations in relation to their general locations like the regular map, they should've used an overlay of that map rather than a 100% geographical one. It would result in less zigzagging lines that currently appear on the live map.

On the subject of the zigzagging lines, what's up with that? Why do lines have to parallel each other to show station connections and transfers? It's less noticeable at Columbus Circle where 7th Avenue will curve nearly 60 degrees to line up with 8th Avenue, but it's an egregious error at Canal St where Broadway juts over to the Lexington Ave line to hit that station, then bounces back to align with the eponymous street to hit the City Hall station. There's also the question of why there are so many 90 degrees turns on various lines that don't actually happen in real life. If they can do angled curves elsewhere, why does the Brighton line need to make four sharp turns between Brighton Beach and West 8 Street? Why is the Broadway-Manhattan Bridge connection completely eliminated in favor of what looks like another East River tunnel bypass?

Even ignoring some of the bizarre design choices and map overlays, I don't find this a particularly useful map at present compared to various 3rd party options readily available. Why is everything so small while still being so condensed at the same time? Users cannot see station names until they zoom in to a neighborhood. It's even worse for the subway lines, most notably on Queens Blvd. It's especially hard to see the various services on shared trunk lines as the line widths are inexplicably one pixel wide unless the map is zoomed in to the station level. As most people will be using this map on their phones, it would be much more useful if service lines were wider and more pronounced at higher zoom levels as there's presently very little contrast overall. Same thing with station labels. Another thing apparent, and which partially defeats the purpose of using a geographical map overlay, is that the roads also do not appear until the map is zoomed in fully, though it's unknown whether this is a limitation of the map overlay or something designed by the MTA. Another issue with the overlay and this circles back to an earlier point, is the complete lack of contrast. Everything from the general landmass/water to the roads to the parks are all in either in shades of light gray/white or a very light shade of green.

Another tick against this map is its current iteration is that it's presently very slow and buggy. Pulling up the real-time arrivals or moving the map can be a slow process at times due to system requirements. If this is to be used by the average consumer and become a necessary travel tool, the app must be optimized for more lower end devices rather than the latest and most powerful devices currently available.

While this map is a big step in the right direction, showing actual current service visually for the first time in an official capacity rather than through third party apps and programs, it has a long way before it can replace those other apps.

11 hours ago, Calvin said:

R143 #8132 now has the train strip map updated. However, added on to the map is the  lines. Similar map structure to the  lines. 

 

I demand compensation for this blatant theft of my idea.

Seriously though, it’s about time they’ve added the J/Z to the line maps on the 143s. It’s been years since these trains have started running on the J.

On a side-note, it looks like the J/Z portion is using old BMT rules making Broad St the “northern terminal” instead of going geographically north-south like the other line maps.

Is this the first weekend the Rockaway Park shuttle extension is in effect this year?

On 7/23/2020 at 7:25 AM, mrsman said:

I would think the opposite.  If  ran to Culver, the only changes to routing will be in the southern parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn.  Riders from Queens to Manhattan won't have to rethink their routes.  Why would somoene who travels from Queens to Manhattan worry about the Rutgers tunnel (and keep track of which weekends the Rutgers tunnel are closed) to determine whether they should take the  or the  that day?

For those on the Culver line, even if they are confused, as there is normally only one Manhattan bound train that runs on the line, they will simply take the train that comes and make a transfer at W4th for 6th Ave service, if needed.  For people traveling from Manhattan to Brooklyn, it's true that people have to remember to board on the 8th Ave platforms to head to Culver, but they would have to do that regardless of what we named the trains.

So if ran to Culver:  would run normally except for no service south of Essex,  would run to all of its stops (except WTC) and then be extended along the  to Jay and then down the Culver.  Culver bound riders in Manhattan (and Queens) would need to take the  , but if they forget, they can be reminded to transfer at W4th.  Inbound riders in Brooklyn will take whatever train comes without worry and transfer in Manhattan if needed.

Two things are likely playing a part in why this isn't being considered as an option: 1) The E and F swap between 53rd St/8th Ave and 63rd St/6th Ave all the time. So much so that riders are relatively familiar with this service change. When's the last time you've seen an E train on the Culver line? 2) During the overnight Rutgers closures, if the E was extended down to Coney Island in lieu of the F, that would be a long, slow local line from Jamaica-Parsons. The F currently has 45 stops between 179 Street and Coney Island, but it has that express portion on Queens Blvd to speed it up. The E as a full local at night doesn't have that option and would increase from 32 stops to over 50 crawling the whole way there.

Yeah, I'm bumping this...

Following a bit of inspiration and the fact that the 143s aren't exactly L-line exclusives these days, here's a new combined line map with the J/Z and L lines:

No requests at this time.

6 hours ago, R32 3838 said:

This is why the JACKASSES Should have never retired a single R32 yet. I knew this would happen. They kept covering up the problems and this happens.

Here's the thing though: how long should the 32s and 42s be retained just in case something like this happens? Six months? A year? Longer? The MTA cannot afford to keep around 300 cars from the 1960s while at the same time storing and maintaining their supposed replacements. At some point, the 179s need to become a reliable fleet that can remain in service long-term. Either that or Bombardier needs to be held accountable for delivering faulty trains.

27 minutes ago, R10 2952 said:

I have a very hard time believing that.  Could Cuomo possibly be pulling strings behind the scenes already?

3 minutes ago, MHV9218 said:

Eh, hard to think he cares about car equipment with the city on fire. I also do not believe her, unless she's specifically referring to this week. Next week it's simply impossible. There are not enough available 8-car units if you remove the ENY 179 fleet and all 32s and 42s at once and expect to run anything near full service. I mean, we needed 42s to cover for the 179 removal back when 32s were still in service! Daily News already reporting that 32s will be used. Will not trust them until confirmation though.

It's possible if the spare factor on the other classes is completely obliterated. There are just enough spare 46s and five-car 160s scattered around to meet service requirements on the A and C lines. However, I don't see that happening though as the MTA will probably just take the path of least resistance by placing the 32s back into service for the duration of this situation, rather than risk a potential car shortage by not having enough trains on a particular line.