Lance

Well, it's open. Based on what I've seen in videos, it looks to be on par with the rest of the Central Park West rehab stations, where there is still work to be done and the station was reopened simply to meet the deadline. In the same vein, is there a reason why none of these stations have those entrance canopies seen at the 4th Avenue stations? While it does seem New Coke-like with the '80s style design for them, they would be quite useful in keeping the elements out of the station entrances.

So, it appears they're explaining why some lines are running at reduced intervals under the header Modified Service. Their reasoning kind of makes sense in regards to some of the lines affected. However, as usual, there are those that are simply headscratchers, like this one: You know, there's a really quick way to fix this: run the express. Even with the Queens Blvd handicap, the combined and should be able to handle the five Broadway local stops between 57 Street and Canal St on their own without necessary assistance from the . Also, there's some good news and some bad news on the Sea Beach rehab project. The good news is that Coney Island-bound service at Kings Highway, Avenue U and 86 Street is finally back. The bad news: the rest of the stations will not reopen until sometime next Spring. No slack vs all the slack. A middle ground would be nice.

Got it. Among other things, I was wondering why there were two dead-ending lines that close to each other, hence my thought of resurrecting the old pre-'87 route. That should've been my first clue I didn't read something right along the way. Oh well, swing and a miss on that one.

So they've completely abandoned the whole practice of pre-opening self-congratulatory press releases, huh?

Thing is, it wouldn't be a one-seat ride to JFK Airport. Similar to the actual Train to the Plane, any trip to Howard Beach would require another leg to get to the terminals. We would just trade those buses for the present AirTrain. And even if we were to ignore the semantics of it all, using Rockaway Beach as an airport connector would be incredibly useless as we already have that. It's called the mainline to Jamaica, then change to the AirTrain. As a standard subway or LIRR link, it might work, but there are a bunch of other issues with that, most of which have already been outlined in previous pages of this thread. Above all though, it needs those intermediate stops to be useful. Without them, this would be even more of a pointless endeavor than the proposal is already.

My apologies. I was under the impression that this idea existed solely within the current constraints of the subway system, not including the proposed idea to connect Whitehall with the Fulton St local tracks. The pitfalls of skimming while doing other things I suppose. I still don't like that the would essentially become a dead-end line, but that's just me.

The problem isn't so much at the ends of the line, but rather at the intermediate stops. Sure Bay Ridge would see better service as the Nassau would only run to Essex St, but that line would only operate as a feeder to other lines. Anyone taking that at Jay St or Court St would have to transfer at another station to get anywhere north of Delancey St and vice-versa. Either that or backtrack to DeKalb for the and . While it wouldn't be a problem for some riders, as their destinations are in the Lower Manhattan area, I feel it's a bit of a disservice for riders heading to Midtown from Downtown Brooklyn. Riders can use the other nearby services, no doubt, but I feel that just exacerbates an already bad situation in the area. On the northern end, it's not so much of an issue as few riders are coming all the way from Astoria and seeking the Downtown Brooklyn area specifically. I just feel that creating three separate routes to "fix" Broadway is a bit overkill, especially when two would work well. After all, out of the 100 years the main Broadway line has been in operation, it's only been the last 30 of them where 4th Avenue wasn't served by the Broadway local from Astoria. Revisiting that service should be looked into first before splitting each of the present 's segments into three separate routes.

Re @Around the Horn's proposal: My main concern with this three-way split of present service is that it removes all Broadway service from Brooklyn. With the continued growth of Downtown Brooklyn and the MetroTech area, the last thing I'd advise doing is taking away a direct Midtown - Brooklyn route. All that would do is shift riders to another already overcrowded line with its own share of riders. That's why I've been more partial to reverting back to the '67 plan where the is the primary Broadway local, running from Astoria to Bay Ridge. There's a reason why that was always the prevailing route since inception, regardless of other service changes over the years. Frankly, the yard issue is overstated in my opinion and if I'm wrong, well, the 38th Street conversion is a shovel-ready project. Whether that's combined with the '67 EE or the one from the '30s is based on your personal preferences, but I don't think we should be taking away services that can be good with a little optimization with ones that likely won't, regardless of how well they're run.

The 480 ft vs 600 ft is not as big an issue as you'd think. The problem is however just as you mentioned. If there is a slow speed order in place along 4th Avenue, running another line down there will not do anything but delay the whole corridor even further. Also, the extension of either the or the affects riders up the line, the former along the Jamaica line and the latter on Broadway and more importantly in Queens, where it needs to act as a bridge for the suspended . There are two ways Transit can handle such an extension: add more trains or extend the intervals between them. We all know what they'll choose, thus spreading the pain even further across the system. The will see Jamaica on a weekend? Is that even allowed?

Nice. As promised several weeks ago, here are some more curtains from the R10s. As always, click on the images for full resolution versions. Date: 1985 Printed by: Bergen St Sign Shop Used for: R10s Much like the head-end destination signs, the aging and mostly obsolete side signs for the R10s were finally replaced in or around 1985 with these updated curtains. Again, like the destination curtain, this was produced in-house to coincide with the light overhauls the cars received around the same time. Based on the limited exposures on each, the cars were intended to only be used on a select few routes at this point in their lives. The next sign reproduction will be from another car class. We'll return back to the R10s at some point with the side and head-end route signs to close out this batch, but it will not be the immediate next one. Stay tuned.

Interesting. It also answers a question I had in regards to the Guadagni book. His illustration for that roll had the southern terminal for the CC as Whitehall St and I wanted to know if that was a printing error in the book or the sign. Finally got to the bottom of that mystery. Also, do you know if that sign had exposures for the RR and SS routes? By the way, love that fake Standard on the Bedford Park Blvd part. Since these rolls were created in 1967 (pre-signage standards), I doubt they use anything resembling Akzidenz/Standard or Helvetica. I've been trying to find a similar font myself for this specific purpose to no avail unfortunately.

New Mean Distance Between Failures: It's nice to see those improvements on most of the classes, but especially on the new techs. There's no reason why the 142As should be anywhere near as unreliable as cars 30 years their senior. It also looks like the Westchester curse is being lifted as the MDBF on the 62As has increased as well. I'm a little concerned about the drop in reliability of the 42s and to a lesser extent, the 32s though, especially since they need to be the clutch cars during the Canarsie shutdown next year.

I believe it's gotten such poor support here (and I'll freely admit I haven't been a strong supporter of this) because, at least in my opinion, the runs such abysmal headways on weekends that increased service on that line should be considered before attempting to add weekend Brighton express service. I'm more of the baby steps approach is all. The same can be done on the as well since ten minute intervals on that line on weekends are just as unacceptable these days. As for Lyft and Uber advertising on the subway as an alternative, instead of the last leg they originally were when such advertising began, they're obviously considering that any ad revenue is better than none. The folks in charge probably don't even consider that these ride sharing companies are doing in city transit.

So, we will see 3010-14 again sometime this decade. Cool. In all seriousness, they're cutting it a bit close in the effort to make the full length before the Canarsie shutdown. That is if we're going by the plan for the five-car sets to displace the 46s to the .

You know, I completely forgot that Rutgers was the only other tunnel that has not really received the full Fix and Fortify treatment. Unless there was some situation up the line causing this delay, this is some bad dispatching for a weekday afternoon. I wonder if it would've been possible to send an via Whitehall to compensate. I'd also consider the , but those usually return back uptown after terminating at Whitehall St, so that wouldn't really work unless the goal is an ABD on the return trip.

Speaking of the IRT cars with LED screens, it's too bad they don't have the foresight to replace those line maps with these monitors. Seems like it would be a perfect position for them, especially if they're going to take up space in the ad section. If I had to guess, it might have something to do with the signal work they've been doing on the line since early this month.

It'd be better if they redid the whole damn thing in my opinion, but that's just me.

That's what I said the last time we had this conversation. For the record, I'm not against the push for inclusion. I just feel the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Then again, that's par for the course with the MTA, isn't it? Mitchell's (I finally remembered her name) PSAs just sound too soft-spoken for my taste. They were replaced because people tuned out Pellett's old announcements, but their replacement will likely be drowned out because they're just too low. Though in all fairness, that could just be the way they were recorded in the booth or the volume setting of the speakers. It does sound a bit like Mitchell doing the destination recording there. Regardless of who it is though, the announcement itself sounds a bit mumbled, which I don't really care for when these are supposed to be clear announcements. It's partly why they went to Bloomberg Radio in the first place instead of doing the whole thing in-house back in 2000.

I'll check it out later as I'm currently at work.

Since I haven't caught the to 241 Street in a very long time, my information may be a bit outdated. With that said, apparently when all of the extraneous route options were added to the IRT AAS, they were done after 2004 when Thompson and Ettinger did their updates for the 7th Avenue and Lexington Ave lines respectively. That means Ettinger likely never recorded a station announcement for Wakefield-241 St, leading to that weird mix of the two at the penultimate and last stops on Wakefield-bound trains. Why the most likely extension of the Nereid Av-bound wasn't added back in '04 is a good question, obviously one I have no answer to. That's my problem with people who feel they are entitled to things because of their circumstances. Normally, I have no problem offering my seat to someone who needs it more. All one needs to do is ask. I stopped assuming a long time ago as I've gotten up way too many times to offer a seat, only for the person not to want it and for me to lose my seat to someone else. However, if one expects me to give up my seat or worse, starts demanding it for X reason, well, I've got noise-cancelling headphones for a reason...

People probably thought there was an explosion in the station on account of the very loud noises heard in the area. Turns out, it was the train's brakes malfunctioning.

Everything has to be gender-neutral these days and apparently, those who don't identify as either a lady or a gentleman took offense. Or something.

I'll go one further and say they need to redo all the announcement with one voice. The current setup worked well back in 2004 when the announcements were relatively consistent across lines, Lexington Ave being the oddball from 2000-'04 with the combination of Kleiner, Thompson and Ettinger on the . Nowadays, with all of the updates in recent years, it's extremely easy for multiple voices to play on the same announcement set. It's an extremely minor thing in the grand scheme of things, but the audiophile in me really notices this. In regards to the new PSAs, the person who recorded them (I'm blanking on her name at the moment) does not sound authoritative enough to convey pertinent information the way Pellet did. It's actually why they had him do all of the PSAs back in 2000 and left the other announcements to the ladies. Also, "hello everyone" sounds way too casual for important announcements. Of course, "ladies and gentlemen" is such a taboo around here nowadays. I guess it's better than "what's up" or "hey dudes" though.

The latter. If I'm not mistaken, Thompson no longer works in the NYC area, nor does Ettinger (the primary voice of the Lexington Ave line), which is why new recordings fall to Cowdery and Campion. I think the new MO is to simply label them as specials on the trains nowadays. Reduces the amount of confusion when passengers see random trains signed as services that normally don't run at those times.

Hmm, something just doesn't seem right about that. Can't put my finger on it though...