Lance

Well, I'm glad he's open to alternative proposals. That's a start for sure because as mentioned, a complete elimination of service across the river is a non-starter.

It does bring up an interesting point though. The is not the only line subject to cascading delays. In fact, most lines suffer the same fate when an incident occurs. For example, a serious enough incident on 8th Avenue can cause significant delays on the and in Brooklyn and possibly the and as well depending on the location of the incident. Obviously we cannot split every line to avoid such a situation, and I'm aware nobody is suggesting such a drastic move. However, to avoid such cascading problems, the agency has to get better with delay mitigation. They get it right sometimes when they reroute trains away from the incident area, but more times than not, trains are either held in stations for the duration of the incident or are allowed to proceed through the area, albeit at slower speeds, thus leading to a conga line of trains on the opposite end of the line, well away from the location in question. We can fix this one issue by splitting the  into separate routes, but we're not tackling the underlying issue at hand by ignoring the true cause.

On the subject of the actual proposal @Via Garibaldi 8 quoted, I wouldn't read much into the particulars there. It's obvious he has a general idea of the subway layout in the area, but he's not an avid railfan and probably isn't looking at a track map to see what's actually possible.

Narrow roads above the tracks, shorter trains, possible reduced budgets forcing the IRT and the city to work within the confines of the street instead of widening the road. Take your pick.

@Lawrence St Who knows? I doubt it would've been much different from today's services as we were on course for a change in the south Brooklyn services for decades. The former rush hours-only  was becoming more of a useful line, serving as the primary Brighton local line after the Nassau was booted to the West End in '86, a year after its service hours were expanded to midday periods as well. The off-hours  to Manhattan was only necessary since something had to serve 57 Street and later 63rd Street. Once through service was operational on 63rd Street, it would not have been outside the realm of possibility for Transit to consider rearranging the services to something resembling the current setup, not just to give each line 24/7 primary service, but more importantly to them, to eliminate seemingly unnecessary and redundant routes during off-peak periods.

The MTA cannot just "stick to their original plans". Cuomo overrode those plans in his press conference last month, so this is what we got. While we'd all like the MTA to be completely autonomous without state control, that isn't the case and it never was. The governor said the MTA needs to complete this work while maintaining peak-hours service for the entire line. This is what the agency was trying to avoid by leaning heavily towards the full-closure option over the partial closure option when the plan was formally announced. Now, their hands are tied and there's not much they can do about it.

By the way, unless the plans have changed, the will run to 96 Street when service is reduced in April.

As for the comparison to the Bridge closures back in '88 and 2001, those were completely different. When the north tracks were closed, they did not simply close off the Brighton and West End lines as well. and service along those lines were replaced by Broadway services under the same labels in '88 and by the and  in 2001.

I like how everyone's got a plan on how they think they can fix 4th Avenue and the  line. I just want to remind all of you we have a proposals thread. If they don't directly relate to the issue being discussed here, please keep the ideas to that thread. We don't need this to turn into an offshoot of that thread where every idea and proposal only tangentially related to the actual discussion here is pasted in this thread.

On ‎2‎/‎20‎/‎2019 at 11:34 AM, paulrivera said:

I love how the  has been reduced to a rush hour (and nights) only route north of Burnside for the next 6 weeks. /s

On ‎2‎/‎20‎/‎2019 at 1:42 PM, paulrivera said:

Evenings, yes. But 9:45a to 3p M-F, 8a to 6p Sat, and 11a to 6p Sun there’s minimal, barebones service that’s not even worth using.

I know it's a pain to deal with these ongoing Jerome Ave service changes, but there is unfortunately a limited window where work can be done. Once baseball season starts in earnest, Transit is at the whim of the Yankees' home schedule in terms of construction work. They could just shut down the line entirely and get the work done faster, but the overwhelming majority do not want that, so this is what we get.

On ‎2‎/‎17‎/‎2019 at 1:52 PM, Union Tpke said:

You left out East Broadway, 77th, Union, Vernon-Jackson, East Broadway.

Also, GCT on the Shuttle is technically ADA-accessible, but is not listed because the only other stop on the route, Times Square, isn't. You should somehow list this. In the service guide, you list the Rockaway Pk  as non-accessible. You should mention that it can be accessed by a platform transfer at Broad Channel.

 

You should mention the green dots in the Key and that all buses are accessible.

 

28th Street  is accessible downtown.

V is capitalized in Park Place Franklin AV.

There is a plan to make Grove St. accessible.

The map is updated for the planned accessibility for East Broadway and 77 Street, along with the current accessibility at 28 Street, Grove St and Harrison. I did not include Union Av or Vernon Blvd as there is no information readily available pertaining to planned accessibility at these stations aside from a note on the Wikipedia pages.

In regards to both Times Square and Broad Channel, in my opinion, they don't count as a disabled rider cannot actually enter or exit the station from these platforms, hence the routes being labeled as inaccessible. Broad Channel's platforms are large and flat enough that riders can change between the shuttle and the there, but they are out of luck if they are trying to get off at Broad Channel or any of the shuttle's intermediate stations. Times Square is a similar case as while the Grand Central platform is fully accessible, riders cannot go anywhere on the shuttle since Times Square's platforms are completely inaccessible and that's the only other station on the line. It's the same reason why I have the as completely inaccessible despite the full accessibility at Church Av and the cross-platform partial accessibility at Bergen St through Smith-9 Sts.

On ‎2‎/‎15‎/‎2019 at 10:34 PM, T to Dyre Avenue said:

Even if the  ran seven days a week to/from Manhattan like it used to prior to 2001? Though I’d turn the  shuttle back at Atlantic, not 36th like it used to. 

The ran to Manhattan on the weekends before July 2001 because something had to serve 63rd Street when the 6th Avenue didn't run. That's not a requirement these days with the running through service along the line now. It's just a matter of justifying 3+ services on 6th Avenue and four along Central Park West during off-peak periods. I included the latter there as I'd try to avoid using 96 Street as the catch-all terminal for every short-turning route, especially if the plan also includes bringing all service there as well.

On ‎2‎/‎16‎/‎2019 at 8:26 PM, subwaycommuter1983 said:

Several years?? Some are already kicking and screaming about the retirement of the r42's and r32's and they still hope that both will stay in service forever and forever. A lot of railfans are still pissed that the MTA is changing plans in terms of car assignments, but the MTA has the final word.

There were likely people who did the same when these 32s and 42s pushed out the Arnines back in the day. They'll get over it eventually. Or they won't. Either way, those old cars are leaving and not even an early retirement of another car class will stop this now.

Here is the modified version of my Vignelli-inspired map illustrating the accessible stations and those that are in the planning or construction phases as of the latest update to the Capital Dashboard. Click on the image for a full resolution PDF.

As you can see, even with the new additions, we still have a lot of work to do to make the subway more accessible, especially on the Crosstown and Jamaica lines.

Of course you can run it in service. You can make the same argument for any route's intervals that presently run empty to the yards afterwards. That wasn't my point, though. The train still has to go from Essex St to the East New York yard; whether it does so in service or out of service is completely up to you.

On ‎2‎/‎12‎/‎2019 at 7:31 PM, trainfan22 said:

This 10 car set is generating more excitement than when the 8 car set first went into service on the   lol.

The eight-car sets on the are essentially newer 160s with a different propulsion system, which isn't a big draw since that line is saturated with NTTs. The ten-car set running on the makes it the first time in over a decade that a new tech train is running on the 8th Avenue express / Fulton St express / Rockaways lines that wasn't a rerouted train or an emergency put-in to make service after an event or something. Different circumstances entirely.

14 hours ago, Lawrence St said:

Has anyone noticed that the announcement system on 3010-3019 is slightly faster then the ones on the 4 car sets?

After all that time sitting idle at Bombardier and here in the city, they probably upgraded the announcement system to be on par with the rest of the NTTs. I wonder if they fixed that glitch where "the next stop is/this is" all comes from the , regardless of route.

It would be much better to suspend service west of either Lorimer St or Bedford Av. The only reason service has been cut beyond Broadway Junction as of late is due to pre-closure signal and track upgrades to allow trains to turn around there without severely delaying service.

On ‎2‎/‎12‎/‎2019 at 10:24 AM, RR503 said:

Broadway seems to work under any scenario, save for the one where 11th st cut interlining needs to be preserved, and needs to be preserved too on weekends. 

Broadway works well because it was shoehorned onto the Queens Blvd line via the 11th Street connection. Remove that connection and you've essentially reverted back to the pre-1955 semi-streamlined services, where the Sea Beach/West End express lines ran to 57 Street and the 4th Avenue local line to Astoria, which was the original intention of the Broadway line, minus the never-built extension to the Upper West Side. The IND doesn't lend itself all that well to streamlined services without over-serving at least one branch because of the half-assed way the lines were built. We're literally missing half of the trackage intended to make such a solution viable and without new construction, we'll continue to run into this same dilemma.

19 hours ago, Caelestor said:

The biggest issue right now is that the  doesn't have a yard servicing it and so its base of operations has to be moved to CI.

That's going to be an issue for a few of these "fix the 4th Avenue line" ideas as this particular branch does not lend itself well moving trains to a subway maintenance yard. Whether it's the to Astoria, an extension of the  or some other Nassau St line that would serve 4th Avenue, at least one service will require a lot of dead-heading to get back to their home yard. Under the plan to restore service back to its pre-1987 route, this would be the service that would have trains run to Coney Island out of service all the time. If we extend the to 95 Street and cut the back to Manhattan with its current route otherwise (and this assumes the oft-proposed "all Broadway express lines run to 96 Street" plan also goes into effect), whatever serves Astoria will have to dead-head down to Coney Island from whatever southern terminal said Astoria service ends at. If the 4th Avenue-Nassau St line is not the , but rather a completely separate line that does not run the entire length of the Broadway-Brooklyn line, that will also have to run light to East New York yard, along with the aforementioned Astoria line. It's quite a conundrum that will not be resolved unless a new maintenance yard is built along 4th Avenue. Too bad the MTA is reluctant to expand 38th Street into a maintenance yard.

Agreed, but they've been overruled on that front.

It's also going to be interesting how they plan on running weekend service. In the original one-tunnel closure proposal, the plan was to suspend service entirely between Bedford Av and Lorimer St to allow for semi-normal service on the Brooklyn end while the Manhattan side is relegated to severely reduced service. Full details still haven't been revealed as to how this updated closure will impact service away from the tunnel, but unless I'm missing something, it sounds like full service will be curtailed to those 20 minute intervals during the weekend tunnel closures.

Based on the information from the Capital Dashboard, quoted by @Union Tpke here, it looks like both the upgrade process for the 142s/142As and the construction process for the 262s will occur at the same time, pending funding for the 2020-2024 capital program.

Pinned.

I'll reformat the original post later to put the listed stations in some sort of order.

Shifting gears, we have the finalized plan for the partial shutdown. If you're familiar with the recent nights and weekends closures, you're more than well prepared for the actual shutdown, which still begins on the weekend of April 27th. During these off-hours closures, service will be reduced to 20 minute intervals across the river and possible across the entire line, especially during overnight hours to facilitate the closure of one tunnel. The shuttle buses loop connecting the Canarsie line to the Crosstown and Jamaica lines will be in effect, but all other shuttle bus options offered during the original planned shutdown will not run. Also under consideration is turning both 1 Avenue and 3 Avenue into exit only stations during the closure periods to avoid a massive overcrowding situation.

WNBC has the full story.

10 hours ago, RR503 said:

If we were to do Dekalb deinterlining, though, I'd advocate for  Brighton,  4th express. Then you have (assuming Broadway also gets deinterlined) an isolated route from CI-96 via Brighton and a pair of lines that branch on either end on 6th, which in turn the potential to make weekend/late night routings simpler to work out. Also keeps West End-Chinatown going, as well as Broadway-Brighton. 

Doesn't that shaft the off-hours Sea Beach riders? Unless you're also advocating full-time service to/from Manhattan, aren't you relegating them to those West End-style shuttles that were the bane of everyone's commutes back in the day?

3 hours ago, Union Tpke said:

Where else would the four-car R211s go? NYCT has them as an option for a reason. Where else would they go if not the ? The  ? I doubt it.

1 hour ago, VIP said:

Ummm,? I thought the R211 order was 5-car sets only....

I wasn't aware the 211s had a four-car option as the order has been painted as the replacement for the 46s. Either way, based on the quote, there will be an additional 88 cars for the East, presumably to off the remaining 42s as well as fleet growth. It still does not negate my point though, that the rest of East New York's NTT fleet should be upgraded for CBTC so there isn't an overreliance on the 143s. Those incoming 211s will face the same fate otherwise in that they'll be run to the ground because of a lack of options.

4 minutes ago, Around the Horn said:

In my personal opinion, they should just choose one of Campion or Cowdery (since my personal favorite voice, Ettinger, no longer does voiceover work) and have them rerecord everything so it's standardized or get the people that do the PATH announcements.

Agreed. I have no particular preference, even if it is Mitchell, but standardizing the recordings should be done at some point. Since the original recordings back in 2000 or so, there have been numerous changes to the announcements for service changes, new bus/train transfers, station name changes, etc. The ending result is a hodgepodge of different voices per announcement string. Also, if they ever did get around to redoing the announcements, perhaps they could agree to use one recording across all of the services. With @Mr Railfan's announcement dump over the past few weeks, it's become readily apparent that there are many instances where a station name recording was done multiple times for each line. vs is an obvious one, but there are also ones like vs via Broadway (the latter of which has slower station announcements despite using the same person). I get why it was done, since the entirety of the announcements are slower than the Broadway ones, but a complete redo, with awareness to avoid these types of inconsistencies, should negate the need for multiple and redundant recordings.

17 hours ago, Union Tpke said:

The second option order for the R211s could allow for 4-car sets, which would likely go to the  due to its increasing ridership and because open-gangways would help a lot. R211s to the  could allow the R143s to go out of service for refurbishment.

Or they could upgrade the remaining A1s along with the 179s to be CBTC-compatible. We have a lot of capable trains to take the load off the 143s. They just aren't compatible yet. There's no need for more four-car sets when the East is already saturated with NTTs. It would become even more saturated if the  ever became full-length, thus forcing the four-car 179s elsewhere.

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2019 at 9:52 PM, Lawrence St said:

What I would do is have the continue straight into the Bronx with no curve onto 125th St, (passageway would instead be built), via new tunnel then become elevated to 3rd Avenue-149th St, then make all original 3rd Avenue elevated stops to Gun Hill Road.

Good luck trying to sell an elevated line to an area that hasn't had one in nearly 50 years. In this day and age, it's subway or bust.

Probably should just get used to it. It's likely much easier to do these recordings in-house rather than outsource them to the Bloomberg team and have to wait for them to send back the updated announcement recordings. I just wish they'd stop using the first take Ms. Mitchell gives as they always sound garbled, which is my main concern as the whole point of the automated announcements is that they should sound clearer than the average conductor.

16 hours ago, LaGuardia Link N Tra said:

I just realized that without a Broadway or SAS-Fulton connection, Deinterlining 8th Avenue becomes very tough! (Especially if you deinterline Queens First) That is, you do the following:

8th Express/53rd Street -QBL Local 

 8th Local/ WTC to 168/BPK

6th Express to Norwood 205th/207th for the sole Purpose of creating a Lex Relief line. 

 6th Local/63rd Street -QB Express 

Under this scenario, I’d guess you’d have to short turn select trains at Penn Station, or Maybe, you’d have to do  in Queens (or )  

I can’t be the only one that thinks this. 

My main concern with this is that unless there is subsequent platform reconstruction on the Jamaica and Myrtle Ave lines, one of those Jamaica / Queens Blvd express lines will get the shaft with shortened trains due to the Eastern Division constraints. It would be even worse if the  became the line that ran to Jamaica Center as that branch is already restricted to a lower output due to the line's construction and poor switch placement. Sure, this problem can be resolved quite easily by resurrecting the (running it along the proposed route through 2 Avenue), thus removing the length restriction, and restoring the old  service, but then we'd eliminate direct midtown service for Myrtle Ave riders, forcing them back onto the much-overcrowded trains.

Tis the issues of a half-built line...

Also, isn't the Williamsburg Bridge another restricted stretch of track? Can the bridge handle the combined output of the and expanded service? I recall that during the planned Canarsie shutdown, service was going to have to be reduced to fit the additional trains that would run to/from Manhattan during the closure. Wouldn't this restriction still apply? Obviously this is not as big of an issue as the first point since 2 Avenue can easily turn around the overflow that could not run across the bridge, but it's still something to consider.

Re: Ditmars Blvd - I'm sure it's been mentioned before, but what's the current terminal capacity here?