Lance

It wouldn't surprise me if those are standard for the new cars. Paper ads are becoming dinosaurs in the advertising industry. Plus, the fact they are LED displays connected to the internet via WiFi means the MTA can use them to convey important information, such as service changes and the like as needed.

They're not wrong though.

3 hours ago, Lawrence St said:

Fulton St is a confusing place to transfer. I shouldn't have to walk up and down up and down to get to the  .

3 hours ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

Well they were supposed to untangle all of that and make it easier to transfer. In my mind, the only thing that is a tad easier is getting to the  train in that station.  Other than that, I don't think it's worth $1 billion dollars.  On top of that they added all of this retail and spent money building out spaces for vendors and they can't even fill them.

In regards to Fulton St, the only way there would ever be a direct transfer passageway that doesn't use the  platform would require the rebuilding of the Jamaica line tracks in the area. The Broad St-bound platform and track are at the same depth as the Lexington Ave platforms. And the passageway can't be continuous on a lower level because it would run into the Jamaica-bound platform and track. Tis the problems with three disjointed subway systems connected ad-hoc into one system on the fly. While the argument can be made that the money allocated into the Fulton St project should've been used for better connectivity rather than another shopping center, there were already better transfer points for the intersecting lines at other nearby stops. Brooklyn Bridge - Chambers St is a much better transfer between Lexington Ave and Jamaica than Fulton St and will be better once the latter half of the station receives ADA accessibility in the next few years. Same with 7th Avenue / Lexington Ave at Borough Hall and 7th Avenue / 8th Avenue at Park Place - Chambers St. As for the retail aspect, the idea was to collect some revenue to offset the expense of the structure in the first place. If I recall correctly, one plan floated about was to sell the air rights to a private developer and get a tower built on top of the station. Naturally, since the area is oversaturated with office towers, that idea quickly died out, thus leading to what we got, which actually may have worked if it was in another area, similar to Columbus Circle's Turnstyle. Of course, when it has to compete with the nearby shops at Brookfield Place and Westfield World Trade, those potential revenue streams tend to dry up real quick.

32 minutes ago, Wallyhorse said:

And I make it clear to the Culver Local riders that during the shutdown, it's imperative the needs to de-interline the and on that end as much as possible, even if that means all service other than late nights has to be express and all service is local in an attempt to better distribute those affected by the shutdown and lessen the load on Court Square (and this would have included doing all necessary work at Bergen Street to get the lower level in order to be put back in revenue service PLUS have an OOS transfer between the two sides at Bergen).  Park Slope riders would have to understand there is a much bigger issue with the and they would have to feel some pain in losing their one-seat ride between the and  at local stops (again, except late nights) as the would get priority as the local during this time.  

You hear that screaming there? That's the many riders in Carroll Gardens, Gowanus and Park Slope screaming bloody murder for taking away their direct Manhattan - Brooklyn service. You cannot rob people of their much-used services, even if it is to provide another service. The name of the game is to provide the best possible service throughout, not to give Canarsie all of the service while shafting everyone else.

2 minutes ago, Wallyhorse said:

No place to store the tracks at Atlantic Avenue any longer.

That is why I would have in preparation for the shutdown had rebuilt at least two if not all four of the old tracks that were previously taken out at Atlantic Avenue, including possibly the two that were the Snediker Avenue portion (enough of the old structure was retained that would allow for a rebuild), citing the need mainly for storage but also to allow for potentially shortening the main route by running such between Atlantic Avenue and 8th Avenue, also allowing potentially (after the shutdown) for a revival of the old route in some form.

I believe I mentioned this a few times now. Major construction projects like this have to serve a purpose beyond a one-use instance. Before the old Snediker alignment was torn down in 2001, it stood practically abandoned for a quarter of a century after the 6th Avenue K was eliminated back in '76. Even before then, the Broadway - Canarsie connection was only used during rush periods for the #14 / JJ Broadway-Brooklyn short line. The last time that connection was used heavily was before the old Fulton St elevated was demolished back in '56. There are much more useful projects that could use our very limited resources than to resurrect a service that really hasn't served a purpose in over 50 years.

32 minutes ago, RTSTdrive said:

Anyone wanna bet they'll change the NTT announcements for the reopened Cortlandt St? 👀

Probably. We won't know until the gets sent to South Ferry again, but I have no doubt they'll re-record the station announcement for Cortlandt St.

12 minutes ago, MichalkaManiac said:

Given that the  only uses R62/A cars, I kind of doubt it.

They've updated the announcement programs for many of the lines that presently do not use NTTs, like the and .

On the subject of the reopening, I'm surprised there hasn't been a press release on this, especially considering the upcoming anniversary. They've never been one to shy away from tooting their own horns, especially on something this important. Also, I wasn't aware they went back to using "Going Your Way" for the tagline. I thought they discontinued that back in 2010 in favor of "Improving Non-Stop".

17 hours ago, kosciusko said:

<removed>

 

Jesus

At least they're acknowledging the fact that this is ridiculous.

Not for nothing, but I find this all quite hilarious. It was not too long ago where everyone here was saying we need to shut down some lines completely for a time to get work done, even if that means impacting rush hour service. While not a complete shutdown, this compromised plan of action does impact rush hour service and yet, everyone's up in arms. You really can't have it both ways. There's no magic bullet that will solve this problem that's been growing for nearly a decade.

On ‎9‎/‎3‎/‎2018 at 6:42 PM, RR503 said:

No C/R boards IIRC

You'd think they'd hit up Bergen St and have them whip up a couple of boards for Pelham Pkwy, more so since the station's a transfer point to the Bx12 Select. I mean, this isn't a curved station where CCTV monitors are needed to see the full length and this is hardly a new issue. 

19 hours ago, R68OnBroadway said:

Was there ever a plan to build a passageway from Lex-63rd to Lex-59th? I'm sure doing so would take plenty of riders off the  considering  riders would now have access to Lex express and local, unlike the  which has just local.

Back when 63rd Street was originally conceived, it was to be a direct transfer to the lines at Lexington Av-59 St, at least according to the early '70s planning maps.

12 hours ago, Porter said:

Seriously?

Double-U T C, five syllables. World Trade Center, four syllables. Are they afraid that people will confuse it with the station? Who says Double-U T C?

Nobody says it like that. Ever. Even the most out of town tourist types call it the World Trade Center. And if the issue is potential passenger confusion, I have to ask, who's getting confused? Sometimes, I feel that they're going too far in the other direction in their efforts for clarity. It opens to the World Trade Center. It's under the World Trade Center. It's been the default station of the World Trade Center complex for over 40 years. Let it be called "World Trade Center". Damn try-hards at the MTA.

9 hours ago, Lawrence St said:

But didnt Westchester complain about this when they got the 62A's?

7 hours ago, MysteriousBtrain said:

Big difference. The had no choice but to accept non-NTTS without LED. R46s have LED for signs to easily change terminals.

Also, "loaner" sets from 240th Street notwithstanding, the circle/diamond LEDs are a good indicator of Parkchester local/Pelham Bay Park express service, which is good because it's extremely rare that those signs are moved from one to the other.

In regards to the sign issue for the , it's not a problem for the 68s since Bedford Park Blvd and 145 Street are right next to each other on the sign curtains. On the 32s however, they're on opposite sides of the roll since the destinations were arranged alphanumerically. Some curtains were modified to have 145 Street be the first exposure, covering over Astoria Blvd, to make it easier to cycle between the two northern terminals of the  line.

10 hours ago, Around the Horn said:

IMHO they should consider a "mid-life" overhaul for the R142/A bringing them up to R211 spec in both customer features and hardware/software.

I could've swore I read something about this a while back where there's a plan to upgrade the components of the 142s to R188 standards. Help me out here @Union Tpke. As for FINDs and the like, I don't see how those would be useful on trains that rarely leave their home lines. The  and  are the exception to the rule and not the standard, unlike most of the B-Division, where cars are shared among several lines.

Also, aren't those new displays sharper than the ones on the 160s as well?

It's also incredibly confusing for no reason. Unless there is some work happening at 145 Street that's knocking out the local track on the upper level, they should just leave the as the late night local and keep the express. After all, that is the normal service pattern.

1 hour ago, NewFlyer 230 said:

Another thing that I’ve noticed that I can’t stand about the MTA is how inconsistent and sloppy they are when it comes to refurbishing cars. Often times I’ll see half of a R46, R62A or R160 set with bright new lights, exit door mats and yellow poles (R160s), but then the other half of the set is still untouched. Most people don’t care as long as the train shows up but I would think that the  would at least try to strive for uniformity. I don’t lose any sleep over it at all but it’s just so noticeable I’m like “the MTA can do better than this”. 

It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't such a jarring difference. It's like the brand new 188 insert car smack dab in the middle of the beat up converted sets.

22 hours ago, Lawrence St said:

Has anyone else noticed signing up an R179 as an brings up the on the FIND screen?

11 hours ago, Around the Horn said:

Not always. There's only one car that does that.

I think we're going to see a bunch of these little glitches (like the one mentioned above, or the one the plays the  /   version of "the next stop is" / "this is" for all lines) until at least all cars are delivered and there are no technical faults with the cars.

16 hours ago, T to Dyre Avenue said:

I have to agree. Now if the A Division fleet were made up entirely of R62/R62A cars, then it would probably make more sense to continue having colored yard stickers on the cars. But we don’t see them on the R142 or R142A cars. In the early days, some R142 cars did have colored stickers under their number plates, but those had a totally different meaning from the colored yard stickers used on the R62 and Redbird cars. The R142 colored stickers signified some kind of mechanical modification. Eventually, they were removed, and no visible attempt so far has been made to employ color coded yard stickers on the R142 or R142A cars.

That's been my thought since I heard of this relabeling project in the first place. The yard stickers made perfect sense when the  and  (notorious car sharing lines) both used redbirds and the 62s/62As were predominately on the  and lines and those cars can be easily confused with each other at a casual glance. Nowadays, only the and have that potential for misplaced cars, whereas the  does not interact with any other line that uses 62s or 62As in any fashion. This whole thing sounds like some idea from the suits that nobody vetoed on grounds of pointlessness.

On a separate issue, has anyone seen a full ten car set of refurbished 62As in service? I ask because I've yet to come across one. One half of the train always looks all bright and shiny while the other half remains drab and depressing.

11 hours ago, S78 via Hylan said:

Given how problematic they are, it’s best to keep them on the . The last thing we need to do is to run them on one of the busiest lines while CBTC fails every now and then.

On the flipside, now it's going to be another expense to retrofit the cars with CBTC equipment when it really should've been done at the onset, even if the cars were not going to be assigned to the . 8th Avenue CBTC was always on the horizon and forgiving the initial belief that the bulk of the four-car sets would run on the  line, it's always been a strong possibility that these cars would run on a CBTC line at some point in their lives. Then again, since Transit keeps using different CBTC systems on each line, it might actually make sense to wait rather than install something incompatible with the signal system.

5 hours ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

I don't blame you.  Stations like 96th street are really bad in this weather.  42nd is horrible too... Unbearable in fact. They should make it a requirement to add an HVAC system to all stations that are rehabbed. Instead they focus on pretty mezzanines.... 

I imagine that any new platform ACs work about as well as the ones at Grand Central. They're fine if you're standing directly below the vents, but move a couple feet in any direction and you're back to boiling on the platform. With the HVAC kickouts from every passing train and the relative openness of the subway stations themselves, it would be extremely difficult to cool down the stations in any significant way. That's why it's always brought up as a secondary benefit of full-height PSDs.

1 hour ago, BM5 via Woodhaven said:

QBL's turn in today's fiasco...

Service Change

There is no train service in either direction between Parsons Blvd and Jamaica-179 St because of a gas leak at street level near Jamaica-179 St. 

train service is also reduced between 71 Av-Forest Hills and Parsons Blvd.

Not mentioned:

service to/from Jamaica-179 Street is suspended for the mean time, where the 179 Street-bound trains will terminate is uncertain.

I wouldn't be surprised if those  trains are cut back to 71 Avenue or are abandoned entirely.

That's interesting because I noticed that some of the transfers have been omitted in a previous update for the line. For a while now, the M60 Select portion at 125 Street, the M86 Select at the eponymous street and the  at Lexington Av-63 St portion at 59 Street were all dropped in the Clark St AAS update.

Hello everyone. Back again with another entry into the gallery. We're sticking with the '70s, but moving to an older group of car classes:

Click here for the full size PDF.

Intended for: R27-38

Here, we're looking at a route sign designed and likely created in the late '70s, the approximate timeframe based on the exclusion of the K line, which was discontinued in 1976, but before 1979 where the route colors were changed to their current design. Regrettably, there is very little information that can be gathered for this sign beyond the fact that at one point in time, it existed. Unlike the IRT counterparts, which would be modified in the '80s to reflect the correct route colors, the B-Division version here was likely discarded in favor of new route signs that would be created in 1981 and 1984, likely because it would've required more modifications than simply covering over the original route bullet.

There are design drawings for this curtain, which were used as a basis for the reproduction, but aside from the text itself, this reproduction is more in line with the IRT version in terms of measurements for the components as there is more visual evidence of those signs available. I don't really care for creating reproductions of signs with very little, if any, information available for it (the transfer information on the interior exposures of the R40-46 signs don't count in my opinion), but I really wanted to make this sign for a while now, probably since I made this one way back when. Luckily for me, our next sign, from an even older car class, will have some supporting backup.

Enjoy.

Oooh, does that mean they're going to go on the line now? /s

Ding ding ding. Even at the 4th Avenue ESI-rehabbed stations, the "original" ('70s) tiling is still in place for the most part. The idea behind the renovations is to open them up and make them feel less dark and claustrophobic. Besides, if they replaced perfectly good tiles, I'm sure the complaints would revolve wasteful expenses.

That was "option 1" that Gotham Bus Co. posted upthread. Oddly enough, or perhaps not so much, the proposal to rebuild the Twin Towers was supported and sponsored by Donald Trump. The winning proposal mentioned by bobtehpanda was supposed to look something like this:

Courtesy: Studio Libeskind

For those interested, here is the evolution of the design of One World Trade:

Courtesy: NY Times

8 minutes ago, NoHacksJustKhaks said:

If you're talking about 2 WTC, it still is yet to be built since IIRC the developers aren't sure about which design they should use to proceed.

That and they cannot get a major tenant to justify another tower in the area. Not when the other buildings of the World Trade Center still have a lot of occupancy. A few years ago, there were rumors that 21st Century Fox would move their headquarters to 2WTC, but with Disney's buyout of all non-News related properties, that plan has since fallen through. Recently, there were discussions that the new Amazon headquarters would be in the lower Manhattan area, possibly at 2WTC as well, but if I recall correctly, should they decide to expand here in New York, they would more likely be in the Hudson Yards area rather than the World Trade Center. That means the future of 2WTC remains undecided and will likely remain an empty lot for the foreseeable future.

5 hours ago, LaGuardia Link N Tra said:

I don't get why the can't just say that  trains are suspended between Crescent and Broad and have service cover for lost service south of Essex. Wouldn't that make more sense?

It's readily apparent the MTA considers the line the primary service on Nassau St and not the , which is why the latter always gets the shaft in this service change.

2 hours ago, Lawrence St said:

Wow, they took the Middle Village bound announcement from the (M), took the local from the to Queens, and the "via the line" from the to Prospect. Awesome!

Obviously they couldn't (or didn't bother to) get someone to record a proper announcement so they had to make due with what was available. It's kind of long in my opinion though. Really should've used that old "Metropolitan Av-bound..." portion from the , but whatever.

Here's a new one:

Quote

PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE | 9:45 PM Fri, Aug 24 to 5 AM Mon, Aug 27

Church Av-bound trains skip Bedford-Nostrand Avs in Brooklyn

If only there was a way to switch over to the center track on either side of the station so trains can open their doors on the Court Square-bound platform.

Oh wait...