engineerboy6561

Yeah; there's a particular American thing that likely grew out of slavery and the aftermath of Jim Crow that makes it hard to run the playbook that's working so well for Viktor Orban and co. in Hungary, which makes it harder, and honestly a coalition that could hold all of those seats together would be weird as hell and extremely fragile.

A Republican trifecta would likely either mean a very different local Republican party or some sort of fascist crazy that disenfranchises most of NYC; if we ignore the latter case (in which the subway system would be the least of our problems) then we're left with a Republican party that looks very different from what we have now, and a lot would depend on in what ways the Republican party had shifted. The most likely worst case scenario for the MTA would be a Republican party that was truly committed to privatizing everything that turned around and broke up and privatized the MTA the way the UK broke up and privatized British Rail during the Railtrack era; you'd get a slow and steady degradation of infrastructure and fare hikes until things become completely untenable in 10-20 years. Alternately, a right-wing populist party that was able to be racially reasonable enough to actually compete and win in the outer boroughs might wind up in a weird spot where they promise massive improvements to service but all the money actually goes into the pockets of people politically connected to the ruling government (so similar to now, except with a whole lot less transparency, and fewer homeless people because the homeless just disappear).

Thanks! I'd agree mostly with your assessment of Albany, and I'd argue that the steady decline of the moderate/establishment Dems is largely a function of the 1990s grand bargain (minimal safety nets, free trade, privatization, and public-private partnerships in exchange for a steadily rising standard of living) hitting rocks and foundering, especially post-2008. A lot of working-class people got left behind when that happened; one chunk turned to right-wing populism whose main hallmarks are -isms and xenophobia; the other turned to progressivism with the goal being to restore the old New Deal, but updated for modern times.

A big part of the problem with the MTA is that it's a state agency that's largely run by Albany, and Albany doesn't really have any incentive to manage it well because discontent with how the MTA is run is fairly unlikely to wind up determining control of Albany or cost any individual legislator (or the governor) their job on its own, and it's an incredibly convenient cash cow/place to hand out jobs to the governor's friends (which means that on balance the governor and the state legislature are incentivized to raid the cash box all the time and appoint their friends to the board). Like a better, more sensical structure would be to have a single regional agency covering the current MTA (including MNR and LIRR), PATH, the northern half of NJT, and bits of CT (mostly stuff covered by MNR) that had a mostly elected board. Here's my proposal: let each governor (NY, NJ, CT) have a political appointee, and give the NYC mayor two. On top of that, each county that receives service should elect a representative, and each NYC borough should elect four. Like I'm imagining a situation where Passaic, Morris, Essex, Hudson, Bergen, Union, Ocean, and Monmouth Counties in NJ would join Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess, Rockland and Orange Counties in NY and Fairfield, New Haven, and maybe Litchfield County in CT would all join in the structure. That would give a total board size of 20 elected representatives from NYC, 18 from suburban counties, and five political appointees; a bit large and perhaps unwieldy, but better than what we have now. Elect the representatives for four-year terms, possibly staggered so that you have some level of continuity on the board (though there is a tradeoff there between continuity and accountability). Give that board a dedicated operating funding stream from a mix of fares and a service tax on counties that get at least some service from the new MTA, and if needed add additional minimum statutory funding commitments, legally indexed to the CPI, for remaining maintenance obligations, capital expenditures and expansion. Use the capex money to establish an in-house engineering department that does planning and design work for new services, expansion, electrification, etc. and then have the board lay out and vote on a set of projects (with associated start dates and priorities for funding) to be completed over a rolling 5- to 10-year period. The goal of structuring it this way would be to make the new MTA far more directly accountable to the people who depend on it for service, in a way that sidesteps the messes in Albany and Trenton. The design I've outlined above would give NYC on its own a bare majority of the votes on the board (20 elected officials and two political appointees, so 22 votes out of 43), and NYC plus either NYS or NJ suburbs a supermajority (30 out of 43 for NYC + NYS, 31 out of 43 for NYC +NJ). That would basically be enough for NYC to unilaterally make any decision requiring a majority, and NYC plus any one bloc of suburbs able to jointly make any decision requiring a two-thirds supermajority. Since political appointees by themselves make up only 5 out of 43 board members, no governor or state legislature would be able to get a quorum to raid the cash box or implement poorly-conceived pet projects that make no sense for the majority of New Yorkers. The reason I'm suggesting doing this is that there's a lot of value we could add by un-Balkanizing the provision of public transit to the NYC metro area, including fare integration, eventual subway or PATH extensions through the densest parts of northeastern NJ (basically from Journal Sq to Fort Lee), including new connections into Midtown, and through-running at Penn Station. Part of the reason I've suggested a structure with NYC having a majority on the board is because I don't want to see the new RTA I'm suggesting wind up in a situation like WMATA was in where wealthy suburbs had enough board seats to consistently deprioritize urban service to working-class and poor neighborhoods until the mayor of DC basically threatened to veto WMATA's budget if the Green Line didn't get built. I could see a new MTA structured that way being free to actually build subway extensions at reasonable prices (a lot of which can be accomplished by moving from tunnel boring to the Milan method of construction (cut and cover but done from the top down so you get a lot less disruption while you're working; that would likely drop construction costs by enough to make quad track viable again), implement variants of commuter rail through-running, better integrate northeastern NJ into the NYC belt, and make the sorts of proposals we talk about on here a lot more likely to happen. Unfortunately, the only way I could see this happening would be a citizen initiative/ballot proposal like we have in MA, which would unfortunately require 50% plus one in both houses across two sessions separated by an election in all three state legislatures to refer things to the citizens as a direct vote. Ideally, you'd get all three states to authorize citizen initiatives as a general good governance thing, and then once that passes you'd create the new MTA I'm describing through a citizen initiative.

I don't know that you do either (unless you work for them), and you haven't explained a damn thing; you've made a bunch of assertions that don't really hang together (some of which are provably false) and then gotten really offended that I won't take you at your word. I'm not entirely convinced that it would cause that much pain for the LIRR to adapt its operations to what it can buy off the shelf (though I'm open to being convinced that it wouldn't be worth the cost and hassle to do so), but I remain completely unconvinced that faster, lighter trains are incompatible with LIRR's operations as they are (and fairly certain it would be a small extra cost for a lot of operational breathing room). Amtrak is basically ordering modified OBB Railjet sets to replace the existing Amfleet sets, and the new Acelas are basically a very lightly modified Avelia Horizon, which is the new generation of France's TGV stock (with far fewer modifications than the original Acela sets had); TEXRail has ordered (and Caltrain is ordering) basically off-the-shelf Euro stock with a few tweaks, so the LIRR is very much the odd one out here. The other thing is that there are no American peer railroads to the LIRR/MNR/NJT that we can evaluate against, because most American commuter rail systems have far more interaction with freight, are unelectrified, and for the most part are a joke. The closest peer on this continent we're going to have is GO Transit sometime in the next three to five years once they finish electrifying everything and increasing branch frequencies to every 15-30 minutes. Honestly the closest peer NYC has for commuter rail is London, and for the LIRR that would probably be the pile of franchises in the UK that used to be bundled as Network Southeast under British Rail (all of which basically run with Euro stock that's been modified to match the UK loading gauge, platform height, and capacity needs). Like the Brits take trains from continental Europe, modify them significantly to match the smaller loading gauge and higher platform heights, and then run them; we would basically be doing the same (take a design from continental Europe, modify it to meet AAR Plate B, possibly tweak it to be a married pair of 85' cars, and raise the floor to 48" for level boarding).

That's fair; I was on that same Reddit thread where that came up, and that makes sense. As far as faster acceleration is concerned, a lighter train actually needs less power to achieve the same acceleration (force is mass times acceleration, and also torque times wheel radius, which means a train that weighs 20-30% less needs 20-30% less peak torque (and thus 20-30% less power draw) to achieve the same acceleration, or can accelerate 20-30% faster with the same power draw as the M9s. Logistically, it strikes me that the way to handle this would be to actually put in the work to raise MAS on a lot of the portions of track that are currently rated for 40-45mph and get them to 60-70mph so you can actually keep the schedules as written, then move the M7s and M9s to semi-fast and express services where possible (if the train is running express along segments of track whose MAS doesn't actually change that much, then it only has to accelerate at the beginning of each segment, and so the cumulative impact of the slower acceleration on the timetable is much lower). If we're really serious about making a half-and-half fleet work then you'd either need to push the M7s and M9s onto the expresses to minimize the impact of slower acceleration, or just putting the old stock primarily on specific branches that don't run much on the mainline (Far Rockaway, Port Washington, Long Beach) in order to keep the mainline clear for optimized timetabling on longer runs that could benefit more from decreased travel times. That also means that you'd only need to beat the shit out of the M7s and M9s west of Jamaica (so for 2-4 accelerations each way out of 10-15 total accelerations), which means that you'd still get decent reliability out of them if you did it that way.

What about this has you so worked up, and why are you so afraid of running something different and better? Like the existing buff strength standard was questionable at best, and lighter stock with crumple zones should actually be safer in a collision because less energy is being expended, and it's not like American stock is actually going to protect you if something happens

Except they already have; the same core train platform is available in variations ranging from 60' to 85' long, 8'11" to 11'5" wide and 12'4" to 14'5" tall with floor heights ranging between 1'11" and 4'7". Like we know a Desiro or FLIRT Northeast is possible because both platforms have been used to produce trains both smaller and larger than LIRR loading gauge, and those trains have run just fine with no issues. A Desiro Northeast or FLIRT Northeast would be a new sub-product based on the same platform, in much the same way that the Audi A4, Q5, and S8 are all sub-products based on VW Group's MLB platform, and while I'll give you that you couldn't just drop a European mainline version of the Desiro or FLIRT onto LIRR without running into a host of issues, a Desiro Northeast or FLIRT Northeast wouldn't require that much new design effort. To stretch the analogy a bit further, you're basically telling me that the Audi Q7 doesn't exist and can't exist in any reasonable universe because you've only ever seen a Q5, and there's no way you can make something Q7 sized on the same platform as a Q5; I legitimately don't buy it, especially given that Buy America means that construction of a Desiro or FLIRT Northeast would require the trains be built over here anyway and so they'd be either building a new facility or significantly retooling their existing one to work on that contract. They've built Desiros with 85' long cars before; they've built full FLIRT sets that are 170' long (the same length as a married pair of M-series MUs); they've built both types of train with both lower and higher platform heights than we have in the US, and it wouldn't really be that hard for them to do it with specifications to match Northeastern operating conditions. Seriously, I work for a company that makes large-scale solar inverters, and while I can't talk about details it's totally normal and common for different products of the same family to share a shitton of engineering work and design underpinnings. That sort of sharing means that the effort to develop a new product or variant based on an existing family is far lower than that required to design that product from scratch, and the development time for Siemens, Alstom or Stadler for an M11 with European underpinnings and aluminum construction would probably be the same as or less than the development time for Kawasaki to create an M11 that's basically just an M9 with new LCD screens. It also wouldn't surprise me if LIRR thinks they're too special and unique to benefit from modern things like aluminum construction and solid-state power supplies (because by American standards NYC-area services are far and away the best passenger rail in the country), but compared to NYC's actual peers in public transportation (London, Paris, Tokyo) we're an obsolete embarrassment.

I don't think you read a damn word I said; a FLIRT or Desiro with a 10' width at the door, a 10'6" width at the beltline, a 48" floor height and a 12'10" overall height to clear ESA restrictions would be trivially easy for Stadler or Siemens to make. Most of the Desiro UK units are also short sets of 3-5 cars with flat fronts designed to let people walk between sets; dropping a center car to make married pairs is also trivial if so required. Like the LIRR could literally take the Class 450 Desiro design from the UK, drop the trailer cars from the set to make a 2MW married pair, widen it about 9-12 inches, lengthen the car bodies to 85', update the signaling system to ACSES/LIRR pulse code, and be done with it; you wouldn't even need to lower the roof because the British loading gauge tops their trains out at 12'4". I'm pretty sure Siemens would happily do that for a customer ordering several hundred railcars; furthermore, the Desiro UK also comes in a dual voltage version that can handle 25kV AC and third rail (because Thameslink uses a mishmash of old rail lines electrified to various standards), so it wouldn't even be that hard to get a train that can fit through ESA with pantographs on it, which means you could totally order one MU to rule them all (25-60Hz AC, top contact third rail, bottom contact third rail, trap doors, underslung diesel engine for branch lines, and ability to fit through ESA) and have the weight for the whole thing come in at like 50 tons per car.

I don't think you're following what I'm saying either; most of the attributes that LIRR and MNR actually need (platform height, outer car dimensions, signaling system, etc.) can easily be accommodated by a new design based on an existing Euro platform; train platforms are fairly flexible in that regard. UK trains have different carriage lengths, widths, platform heights, etc. than continental European stuff does, continental Europe itself has like ten different signaling systems, and and most modern Euro designs are set up as modular platforms specifically to accommodate that sort of diversity. Like the difference between NYC and the EU is similar in magnitude to the difference between the UK and the EU, and most new UK trains are based on modified versions of common European trains. For example, the Stadler FLIRT in its base form is 9'3"-9'5" wide and has a floor height of 600mm (23 inches) to match with the 550mm platform height common across most of Europe. That same train has been manufactured with widths ranging from 8'11" (UK, about even with A Division subway cars) to 10'6" (for Norway, also the maximum width of the M7s and M9s) and all the way out to 11'5" for use in Belarus, and floor heights up to at least 915mm (36 inches, UK version). Similarly, the Siemens Desiro can be manufactured with floor height ranging from 23 inches (European mainline) to 1.4m (55 inches, Russian version) and carbody width from 8'11" (UK) to 11'5" (Russian version). Most of the dimensions relevant to the LIRR land somewhere comfortably between UK railways and Russian railways, and a fair number of European train platforms have variants designed for both of those; developing an NYC-spec FLIRT or Desiro wouldn't be that hard for them, nor would an NYC-spec Aventra be hard for Bombardier to build. In all seriousness, give me a week and access to Solidworks and I can whip up a pretty solid rendering of a FLIRT (or Aventra or Desiro) modified to fit the LIRR's platform height and loading gauge; give me a $750k power electronics budget, a mechanical engineer, a controls/embedded engineer, and a year and I can whip up a compact, lightweight power system capable of taking in 10-50kV any frequency plus 750V top- and bottom-contact third rail and providing 1MW continuous power per car (840kW continuous traction, 160kW HEP) None of this is that difficult; the only thing stopping there from being Northeast-compatible variants of most common Euro train families was pre-2018 FRA rules, and that obstacle is now gone. Can you at least give me a list of things the LIRR needs (or believes it needs) that you believe Euro stock can't do?

The first American agency to try to run a full service schedule with Euro EMUs is starting this year or next; the M7s are going to be up for replacement in the mid-2040s, by which time there will be twenty years of data demonstrating that modified Euro stock can do everything the MTA needs it to do faster, better, and more cheaply and efficiently than an order of updated M9s will; frankly at this point their requirements haven't meaningfully been updated in a very long time, and if they aren't updated by the mid-2040s will have gone from being merely conservative to actively self-defeating, and it's worth remembering this and bringing public pressure to bear on them in the mid-2040s when the M7s come up for replacement to get them to reconsider those requirements (quite frankly a new governance regime wouldn't be a bad thing, but that would require getting Albany to stop messing with the MTA, which is politically difficult if not impossible to achieve).

24 tph all local would be a shitshow for anyone coming in from northern Westchester, Putnam, and Duchess counties, as well as the folks driving in from Fairfield and Litchfield Counties because the Danbury branch is so infrequent; the run from North White Plains to GCT making all stops is an hour to an hour and five minutes, and the run from Southeast to GCT is currently an hour and a half (45-50 minutes making all stops north of North White Plains, then another 40-45 minutes into GCT); making all trips to Southeast local would push that travel time almost to two hours and push travel times from Wassaic and the far upper ends of the line up from 2:05-2:30 to 2:45-3:00, which is much. I'd say the absolute most you can get away with is 12-16tph local in the city, which during rush would give you 4-8tph worth of extra capacity. Also, you can't through-run NJT via Grand Central unless you're proposing a new tunnel between NYP and GCT (which isn't a terrible idea), and you only really have 20-25tph worth of slots via Hell Gate total (30tph absolute max, but Amtrak will probably take 5-10 of those slots). Your core constraints on Midtown are: 30tph LIRR to Grand Central Madison 60tph into Penn from the east side, of which 45-55 would be available for commuter use 30tph over Hell Gate, of which 15-25 would be available for commuter use 60tph via Park Av into GCT Currently 8-10tph into Penn via the Empire connection, potentially increasable to 30 if you double track across Spuyten Duyvil and south of 39 St, and convert that junction to a flyover. 30tph into Penn from NJT There are probably ways to make that work to take some load off the Bronx and Queens, but it's nontrivial and messy. TBH, if we could get funding for it and through-running were to happen I'd be very interested in adding underground platforms at Hoboken Terminal and connecting them to a new, much lower-level platform at Atlantic Terminal, with intermediate stops at Canal St and West 4th St as a replacement for the Hoboken ferry service, and as a way to relieve lower Midtown demand on QBL.

I'm pretty sure those are basically Class 777s with a modified interior and wider loading gauge to match MARTA's system. For reference, the vehicle on the left above is a Class 777, next to the stock that it's replacing (credit Ross McCall/Wikipedia for the image); these are 200' long, 9'3" wide four-car sets designed to do 75mph on an interesting sort of commuter rail/subway hybrid system out of Liverpool in the UK. If you lengthen the cars to 75' and widen them as appropriate (10'6" for Atlanta and SF, 10' for DC) you basically have a product that matches well with the sort of commuter rail/subway hybrid systems you have on MARTA, BART, and WMATA. You could make them work for the B division here with a mix of longitudinal and 2+2 seating, but you'd probably want to keep car length below 75' because these sets are truly articulated, with Jacobs bogies under the open gangways, and would probably have issues navigating the tighter curves on the system unless you dropped individual segment length down to 60' or 67' long.

In all seriousness, it makes no sense for MNRR/LIRR's next order to just be a slightly tweaked copy of the M9s; they're heavy and slow as hell. The main reason for the heavy/slow issue is that up until 2018 existing laws required all mainline rail cars to comply with a massive buff strength requirement that made them super heavy to build; that rule has been updated to allow much lighter stock that uses crash energy management structures (basically crumple zones) to provide the same level of protection in the event of something happening. The M8s weigh about 72 tons per car; the M9s are probably around 65 tons per car, if the NYPost article is to be believed. If we take advantage of the change in laws on the next order it's entirely possible that we could procure something in the realm of 40-45 tons per car, maybe 50 tons for cars that have to run on the NEC (which in turn would allow them to be built with 25Hz capability so they could run south of Harold under the wire; my understanding is that the M8s were almost built that way but the extra transformer weight would have pushed the M8s up to something like 80 tons). Furthermore, as power electronics gets better and better it becomes possible to shave a lot of weight on overhead line units by replacing the existing 25- and 60-Hz transformers with solid-state power conversion systems; you'd still have transformers and inductors, but they'd be sized for several kHz operation instead of 25 or 60 Hz (which in turn would let them be 50-500 times smaller depending on the power system design; you'd basically be trading a ridiculous amount of copper and iron mass for some added complexity and a bunch of silicon and silicon carbide modules). If you combine solid-state power converters with the sort of construction allowed by the 2018 law change, you could basically adapt one of any number of European off-the-shelf designs to match whatever MNRR and LIRR want to do fairly easily. Married pairs and singles are nice from a redundancy perspective, 8- and 12-car sets work well because you can increase capacity and mobility through the set with them; if they're really that afraid of long sets then they could order a mix of 4-car sets and triplets; that would basically let them run 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, or 12-car trains while still providing enough redundancy that a bad set wouldn't cost them an entire train, and still gaining some benefit in terms of usable passenger space from that integration. Even if they want to be truly conservative and stick with married pairs that can still be made to happen while achieving massive weight savings. That in turn should allow for significantly faster acceleration (though we'd also need to improve signaling and track top speeds to be able to truly take advantage of that increase). I brought up dual-mode options because the weight savings from going to aluminum construction and solid-state power converters would easily be enough to fit something like a Cummins QSX15 under the cars (it weighs about two tons dry; with oil, coolant, and a few hundred gallons of diesel underneath it you're at about three tons, and when you add in the alternator and power converter that would let it drive the traction bus you're probably looking at about four to five tons all told); that would then let you stop running diesel locomotives in third rail or overhead line territory, reducing emissions and total costs as well. Furthermore, an M8 replacement that's 25Hz capable, has an option for trap doors, and has a diesel option is basically capable of running anywhere in the country and is especially useful in places that have partial electrification and partial high platforms, like the MBTA, SEPTA, and NJT. What I'm proposing is basically that for the next procurement cycle for trains, MNR and LIRR design a unit that takes advantage of advances in power electronics and the 2018 FRA rule change to order trains that are significantly lighter and faster than the M9s are, and then work with NJT, SEPTA, CTDOT, the MBTA, and maybe MARC if they want in to place a very large combined order of that unit with different options (LIRR gets the third rail and dual mode versions with high platform doors; MNR gets third rail, catenary, and dual-mode versions with high-platform doors; NJT, the MBTA, and SEPTA all get catenary and dual-mode versions with trap doors) with a unit cost that gets pushed significantly down from where the M9 procurement was because of the sheer volume of trains being ordered, and MNR and LIRR take advantage of the reduced unit cost to order more trains than they would otherwise be able to afford as part of a fleet expansion program to allow for things like half-hourly service along the Oyster Bay and Port Jefferson branches with more direct trains into Penn and GCT from non-electrified territory. In the interim, if there was a regional rail reorganization of the sort that Alon Levy wants before procurement happens, then we just buy the units with pantographs, overhead line power converters, dual position third rail shoes, trap doors, and a Cummins engine and they can then go anywhere, offering the new agency full logistical freedom for how it chooses to structure service patterns. Like it's fairly ambitious as a plan goes, but significantly less ambitious than it sounds on the engineering side.

OK; as things stand now Metro-North has about 60tph hard maximum worth of slots available into GCT, assuming that they upgrade their signaling system to something computer-controlled and moving-block to let them get 30tph per track pair. Split that up about evenly between Hudson, Harlem, and New Haven and that gets you 40 trains going through the Harlem Line corridor, of which 20 would be on the Harlem Line; figure during peak time that a little under half that capacity needs to go through to Southeast and Wassaic, so you have about 12tph you could configure as North White Plains locals and run making all stops, including Melrose, Tremont, and if possible a new stop at 149 St or 138 St Grand Concourse. Those trains will likely be at least half full of people who are either coming from or going beyond the city limits, so you have about 4-6tph of free capacity, and Metro-North trains fit a lot fewer people than subway trains; I'm not sure that would actually be enough to meet demand, though it's not a bad stopgap. The LIRR has a grand total of 70-85tph hard maximum available if it upgrades its signaling system; there are two tracks under the 63 St tubes and four in the East River tubes, and out of that Amtrak moves and NJT moves to Sunnyside combined eat up anywhere from 5 to 20tph worth of capacity depending on how things go; that capacity then needs to be spread across up to ten branches, so each branch can push maybe 7-8tph into the city during rush if things go extremely well for them. Out of that I'd say that Hempstead, West Hempstead, Port Washington, Far Rockaway, and Long Beach are all short enough that adding in the extra travel time for commuters that additional local stops would entail makes sense, so you could probably get about 6-7 LIRR tph on Port Washington with a pocket track at Great Neck to turn trains, and probably about 20ish tph stopping at Kew Gardens, Forest Hills, and Woodside (which is a more direct alternative to QBL), though during rush I think most of those trains would be 60-80% full, so actual available capacity would be closer to 5-7tph worth. As far as WPR not needing an express, I seriously disagree. The travel time on the from 241st and Wakefield to 42nd-Times Sq is on par with the travel time on the and from Coney Island to Times Square, and there are express trains that make that run in meaningfully less time (the gets from Brighton Beach to Herald Sq in 40 mins flat) that run because people from that far out deserve a proper bidirectional express service. A 3 Av express to a Gun Hill Rd crosstown basically knocks 20 minutes off that commute, which gets a whole bunch of northern Bronx riders off WPR and frees up seats for people coming in from the South and Central Bronx. I do agree that NJ needs subway service, but I don't think trying to burn the north end of a double-tracked 2 Av line there makes much sense. NJ basically needs a four-track trunk running down Bergenline Av/JFK Blvd from 91 St down to Communipaw Av, could also use 15-30tph into Manhattan at various points, and could also use proper subway service through Newark. I sort of picked up a crayon and threw this together as something I think NJ could use as far as subway service is concerned: https://metrodreamin.com/view/ZWUxVVR2d2tYZ2d3NnprYkFybTBoU1k2NWkzM3wy Key points: A four-track trunk between 91 St/Bergenline Av on the north end and Newark Penn Station on the south end; this offers 30 express tph and 30 local tph worth of capacity on this corridor, which is more than enough to replace the jitneys, the PATH, and the 1 bus 15tph from the GWB to Newark via Anderson Av and Fort Lee; this basically replaces the northern half of the Bergenline Jitney route 15tph between NJ and 125 St; this would replace the 125 St crosstown portion of the 2 Av subway, and offer both crosstown connections between NYC subway lines and a direct connection between Harlem and NJ. 30tph between midtown and Bergenline Av; a combined 15tph coming from the north and 15tph coming from the south into the heart of Midtown, with connections to 59 St , 57 St/7 Av , 57 St , and 59 St Several branches that basically absorb some of the busiest routes in northeastern NJ: Line 1 absorbs most of the 25, Line 2 covers the combined 21/71/73/79, Line 3 absorbs the 31, Lines 4 and 7 together replace the Paterson-PABT jitneys, Line 5 absorbs the Bayonne jitneys and replaces them with a one-seat ride to Midtown, Line 6 replaces all the Paterson-GWB jitneys, Line 8 replaces the 13, Lines 1 and 4 replace the 159, and the Hoboken PATH extension replaces the 126.

A few comments: I disagree that the central Bronx doesn't need more capacity; the and are all slammed during rush, and Metro North isn't going to be able to alleviate that well because it makes no stops between 125 St and 42 St, makes a grand total of three stops along the 3 Av corridor, and doesn't run south of 42nd St or hit any of the hospitals or other employers along the far East Side. Like right now that corridor is supporting a limited-stop bus, a BRT, and a lot of folks on that corridor wind up just taking the bus to either Concourse or WPR, which results in lower WPR overcrowding pretty badly. A quad-track subway down that corridor with connections at Gun Hill Rd on both the and will draw folks to it from WPR, and the ~10min plus travel time improvement on a 3 Av or Concourse express over a or will also pull riders from the northeast Bronx onto the new corridor and decongest the lower half of WPR; an express down 2 Av is also a direct substitute for the Lex for anyone working at Rockefeller or any of the hospitals on the east side, which means it should pull most of those folks off the Lex, which should massively decongest it. Rebuilding the Eastern Division is mostly about decongesting the with new express services that can match or improve on QBL travel time to major employers in Midtown and on the East Side; the reason the gets away with being so infrequent and poorly optimized is that nobody seriously considers it as an alternative to QBL because it doesn't serve Midtown and is 10-15 minutes slower than QBL expresses. If you offer Broadway/Jamaica Av expresses out of Sutphin and Parsons then the breakeven point between Jamaica Av and QBL (i.e. the station where two people taking QBL and Jamaica Av in a loop from Sutphin in opposite directions would arrive at the same time) moves from Delancey/Essex or Marcy Av well into Midtown, which takes a huge load off the and trains. The trunk also runs close enough to the west of Broadway Junction that local services there could pull a chunk of local passengers who don't take the seriously because of its lack of frequency and slow speeds. I think not going quad-track on 2 Av was a profoundly stupid and short-sighted decision, and as expensive and obnoxious as adding a track pair under or next to the current track pair from 72nd St to 96 St is going to be we really ought to bite the bullet and do it. If not, then the only way you fix 57 St/7 Av is by giving upper 2 Av entirely to the and running the to Queens to decongest the . I'd love to see subway service into NJ, but honestly given where their density is I'd advise doing that by extending PATH up JFK Blvd/Bergenline Av to Nungessers to start with, then eventually across the GWB to connect to the and , as well as adding a 57 St crosstown line that would connect with basically all the Manhattan trunks there.

Honestly 2 Av ought to be four tracks the whole way up, and run to the Bronx and Queens. I have a personal pipe dream proposal that I've articulated a few times, but the basic gist of it is this: A four-track trunk under 2 Av and 3 Av in Manhattan (2 Av from 125 St to 66 St or so, 3 Av between 66 and 37 Sts to connect to the 59 St complex and Grand Central, then 2 Av again from 37 St to Houston St) Another four-track trunk under 3 Av and Webster Av in the Bronx. This would run under 3 Av from 138 St to Fordham Plaza, Webster Av from Fordham Plaza to Norwood/205 St, then a two- or three-track extension under or over Gun Hill Rd to Bay Plaza; there would be provisions at 161 St for a branch to run via Boston Rd, Tremont Av, the Amtrak ROW, and the median of the Hutchinson River Parkway to Bay Plaza. Another four-track trunk under Northern Blvd and 36 Av in northern Queens. This would run from 36 Av from Vernon Blvd to Northern Blvd/42 St, Northern Blvd from 42 St to Flushing, with a two- or three-track extension under Northern to Bell Blvd. There would also be a provision for a branch to turn at Junction Blvd to run to the airport. Another four-track trunk along Broadway/Jamaica Av in Brooklyn and southeastern Queens. This would run under South 3rd St from Wythe Av to Marcy Av, Broadway from Marcy Av to Broadway Junction, Jamaica Av from Broadway Junction to 125 St or so, then via a tunnel to Parsons/Archer. From Parsons-Archer, two-track branches could fan out to run under Brewer Blvd, Farmers Blvd, and Merrick Blvd to provide subway service to working-class neighborhoods in SE Queens that are currently relying on overcrowded buses and dollar vans. Basically that would set up the 2 Av core with a similar route pattern as 8 Av/CPW. The would go to Astoria, the would go to Forest Hills, and the and would jointly provide local service along the upper 2 Av corridor into the Bronx as far as Norwood-205 St, while the would provide express service as far north as Norwood-205 St and local service alongside the to Bay Plaza; if funding was available to add the extra Boston Rd branch the would run to Norwood-205 St and the would run to Bay Plaza via the branch. Three new routes would run along the Northern Blvd segment of the route, an express and two locals (I'm calling them and for now) would run from northern Queens into lower 2nd Av, joining it somewhere above 61 St (72 St-2 Av would be a multilevel station, with all three trains coming in from Queens stopping on the lowest level, express trains to the Bronx on the intermediate level, and the local and on the upper level currently in use. From there, the would run to Delancey/Essex via 2 Av as a trunk, and then run into Queens. The would turn off at Myrtle Av, while the local and expresses continued on to Parsons/Archer. At Parsons/Archer either all three services fan out, or the terminates while the and split up; one runs under Merrick Blvd into Springfield Gardens, while the other one runs under Liberty Av and Farmers Blvd out to Locust Manor LIRR. If we wanted other options, we could always add a new set of track connections between the existing Lower East Side-2 Av express tracks and the new Broadway/Jamaica line, and between the 2 Av line and Grand St station; that would allow the and/or to run to South Brooklyn/Coney Island, while the and/or would run to Queens. Either way, that setup would decongest 57 St/7 Av, enable 30 additional express TPH between Jamaica and Manhattan, 15 bidirectional express TPH between Flushing and Manhattan, and 15 additional bidirectional express tph between the north Bronx and Manhattan; the hope here would be that the travel time via the revised Jamaica line between Jamaica and lower Midtown would be about even with travel time between Jamaica and upper Midtown via QBL, which would hopefully pull 30-50% of passengers off QBL expresses (so those trains wouldn't be SRO to/from Forest Hills anymore), the Northern Blvd trunk would take a big load off the (which would no longer be SRO from Grand Central to Junction Blvd or worse), and the 3 Av trunk with the connections to both the and the at Gun Hill/WPR and Gun Hill/Seymour Av, respectively, would offer significantly reduced travel times compared to those trains, which would take a large load off both 7 Av and Lex.

IMO a Utica Av subway should be combined with either a track connection between World Trade Center and Court St, or a major rebuilding of the Jamaica trunk that puts it underground. If you want to do with the then connecting the local tracks below Canal St to the tracks at Court St would be ideal; you'd free the to run something close to 15tph during rush because the only merge it would have would be with the at 145th and 59th; I'm assuming that 207 could probably handle most of that, and if not then 2-3tph could just turn at Dyckman St; that would also push inner Fulton local frequencies up to 21+ tph even if nothing is done to the . The only issue I can think of with that is that the turn off of Fulton and onto Euclid would be a tight 90-degree turn, which isn't ideal from a construction standpoint.

Honestly it sounds like the ideal solution would be for the next order (M11/M11A) to be comprised of lightweight Euro-style stock with trap doors, a universal powertrain (25Hz/60Hz AC plus both varieties of third rail), and a dual mode option; that would basically let the units run anywhere along the NEC they want, as well as all over MNR/LIRR territory. If you go with something FLIRT-based that gets even easier, because the powertrain mostly lives in dedicated sub-units about 20' long that combine four small diesel engines to get 1500-2000kW available electric power in diesel territory. At that point you could probably even do a split MNR/LIRR/NJT order; the dual-mode equipment would be able to run on the third rail and under the wire where those options are available (conceivably at up to 125-150mph under wire; probably still limited to 100 on third rail (and in practice probably to 79 along most MNRR/LIRR routes)) and then up to 80-100mph on diesel. The best part of that approach is that if/when the MTA and NJT add electrification along the entirety of their turf you can just drop the diesel power packs from the equation (or if fuel cell technology gets better we could replace the diesel power packs with fuel cell stack-based power packs; right now that's expensive as hell given that a 6kW fuel cell station goes for $27k, so a 6MW stack capable of running an 8 car train would cost like $27M off the Internet. Even if you assume a 30-50% discount from economies of scale and the contract being between large companies you'd still be looking at $10-15M extra per train for hydrogen power). Do a joint order of that MU between all three agencies in the NYC area plus SEPTA, use the cost savings from the order size to drive down unit cost, order enough trains for a meaningful service increase in the spots that need it, and then we can get to a place to start fixing the other issues.

That makes a lot of sense; I usually grab the BxM3 when coming from Midtown because it spits me out right across the street from my parents' place (and at night I'd rather do my waiting downtown than at 231 St and Broadway), for Riverdale the BxM1 and BxM2 serve a similar role. An actual express would be really cool and interesting to have, but would be an engineering adventure and a half. You'd probably require a second tunnel under the current one and stacked platforms a la the Lex between 51 and 96 Sts from Dyckman to 137 St (with an intermediate stop at 168 St), and then widening of upper Broadway to four tracks (with an express station at 116 St). I'd love to see it, but it would be a huge engineering effort, and the project where it would make the most sense would be combining that with a Fordham/Pelham crosstown. The would stay on its current route, and then the express would stop at Pelham Bay Park (transfer to , Eastchester Rd, Williamsbridge Rd (transfer to ), White Plains Rd (transfer to ), Southern Blvd, Fordham Plaza, Grand Concourse/Jerome Av (transfer to ), and Sedgwick Av in the Bronx, then stop at Dyckman, 168, 137, 116, and 96 Sts before running local to South Ferry. The down side to that is that you'd still only have 30tph to allocate across both services, so either both corridors are capped at 15tph (which may well underserve both of them) or one of them is getting severely underserved. You could in turn fix that by replacing the with the Lenox shuttle, rearranging the 96 St junction, and operating the to New Lots Av via 7 Av express (allowing for 30tph , 15tph , 15tph ) but this is getting pretty crayon-y already.

Honestly same; I used to commute to Newark from the Bronx, and I used to take the 1 from 238 St to 96 and usually made it to NY Penn in 45ish minutes

The idea for the isn't terrible, though I'd argue to make it successful you'd need to convert Fordham Rd and Bedford Park to express stops; run the from Bedford Park and then the to Woodlawn with stops at 125, 149, Burnside, Fordham, Bedford Park Blvd, and Mosholu. Bringing back the is going to be a whole other can of worms, especially since it's going to carry air down to Dyckman because you're skipping 231 St (which is a huge transfer point for folks from Riverdale and Norwood) and you're going to skip 116 St as well. It'll be awesome for Washington Heights residents, but I'm not sure it makes the most sense.

Shit, thanks for catching that; here's the proper pattern Service patterns: : Bedford Park Blvd-Coney Island via Concourse/CPW local, 6 Av express, Franklin connection, Brighton connection : Norwood/205 St-southeastern Queens via Concourse, CPW/6 Av/ express, Jamaica express : Unchanged : Mostly unchanged, runs along the new trunk between Myrtle Av and LES-2 Av : Bronx-Coney Island via 2 Av Bronx extension, upper 2 Av local, Broadway/4 Av express :Bronx-Brighton Beach via 2 Av Bronx extension, upper 2 Av local, Brighton express : Astoria/Ditmars-Whitehall St or 9 Av via Astoria, Broadway local, 4 Av local : Bronx-Coney Island via 2 Av Bronx extension, 2 Av express, 4 Av express : Northern Queens-Jamaica via 2 Av Queens extension, 2 Av express, Jamaica express : Northern Queens-Hanover Sq via 2 Av Queens extension, 2 Av local : Queens extension-Linden Blvd via 2 Av Queens extension, 2 Av local, Jamaica local : Delancey/Essex St to Broad St via Nassau shuttle My preferred alignment for the 2 Av extensions in the Bronx is via 3 Av/Webster Av to Williamsbridge, and then along Gun Hill Rd to Bay Plaza (four tracks to Norwood-205 St, three to Bay Plaza), with an optional two-track branch along Boston Rd, the existing Amtrak alignment, and the Hutchinson River Parkway also ending at Bay Plaza; in northern Queens I'd advocate for a four-track trunk along Northern Blvd to Flushing as a Roosevelt relief line, with a three-track extension out to Bell Blvd along Northern Blvd. On the southern end, the Jamaica trunk would have six tracks to Marcy Av, four to at least Jamaica, possibly even out to Linden or Springfield Blvd, and a two-track extension out to Hook Creek Blvd. That configuration gets the Bronx 30tph through the central Bronx and up 3 Av, 30tph across the Bronx on Gun Hill Rd, and 15 relief tph for the south of West Farms, and the above West Farms. In northern Queens it brings Flushing 30 extra tph and LGA 15 direct tph, as well as 15tph east of Flushing taking a load off the bus network out there. It also takes Williamsburgh and Bushwick from 6-7tph up to 60-75tph, and offers 45 TPH (of which 30 are express) into Jamaica, which should fix at least some of the massive crush loading on the and lines, as well as offering the Linden Blvd corridor in southeastern Queens a one-seat ride into Manhattan. Within Manhattan and Brooklyn it fixes the 59 St tunnel bottleneck on the Broadway line, allowing for up to 15 tph each on the and , and it gets the off DeKalb (which should provide some congestion relief for DeKalb). The pared-down version that has only a rebuilt four-track Jamaica line with no six track segment from Essex to Marcy and a two-track 2 Av line gets reduced but still decent benefits for Jamaica and Southeastern Queens (30tph as opposed to 45), and still does a bit for DeKalb, but leaves the Bronx and northern Queens in the cold, as well as forgoing decongestion of the 59 St tunnel.

A train running just up to Franklin and Fulton from Coney Island would be a no-go; if you're going to reintegrate Franklin Av with the rest of the system you'd need to tie the northern end of it into something with spare capacity; in my opinion the best way to do that would be to incorporate that into the replacement of the Jamaica elevated with an underground four-track trunk. Basically you'd have a two-track branch coming off the four-track trunk at Marcy Av and connecting with the above Flushing Ave, then use existing trackage as far as Bedford-Nostrand Avs. From Bedford-Nostrand new tracks would branch out and swing south under Franklin Av, serving a new lower level at Franklin Av , moving Park Place below ground, and connecting to an expanded upper level at Franklin Av/Botanical Garden before continuing down the existing trackage to Coney Island. In order to actually make this work, the chunk of the 6 Av line south of Broadway-Lafayette would need to be reconfigured; the would branch off to serve Grand St and the would still make the hard right just past LES-2 Av to serve Delancey St, but the would serve the express tracks at LES-2 Av before joining the Jamaica Av trunk to Marcy Av. The Jamaica Av trunk itself would be connected to the new 2 Av line (preferably a four-track 2 Av corridor, but two could be made to work if you kept the existing Nassau St tracks to turn some trains). Your final service pattern would wind up being something like this in the two-track case: : 145 St-Coney Island via Williamsburg : Unchanged : Unchanged : Pulled off the Jamaica el and rerouted to the new trunk line as far as Myrtle Av : 55 St/2 Av-Jamaica Center via 2 Av local/Jamaica trunk express : Broad St-Jamaica Center via Nassau St/Jamaica trunk local : 125 St/2 Av-Brighton Beach via DeKalb : 55 St-Hanover Sq via 2 Av local. In the four-track trunk case, the Nassau St line gets reduced to a shuttle from Broad St to Delancey/Essex, and the 6 Av and 2 Av lines split service between Jamaica and South Brooklyn, giving service patterns like this: : 145 St-Coney Island via Williamsburg : Norwood/205 St-Jamaica via CPW/6 Av/Jamaica express : Unchanged : Pulled off the Jamaica el and rerouted to the new trunk line as far as Myrtle Av : Bronx-Jamaica via 2 Av Bronx extension/2 Av trunk express/Jamaica trunk express : Queens-Jamaica via 2 Av Queens extension/lower 2 Av trunk local/Jamaica trunk local : Bronx-Brighton Beach via 2 Av Bronx extension/upper 2 Av trunk local/Broadway express : Queens-Hanover Sq via 2 Av Queens extension/lower 2 Av trunk local (with provisions for extension to Euclid Av)

@Real Greenpickles987 On the one hand, it would be amazing to be able to go from Stamford to New Brunswick for $2.75; on the other hand having the subway system swallow up the inner three quarters of all three commuter rail networks would be a massive logistical disaster. You'd have huge rolling stock compatibility issues since commuter rail cars run at 80-125mph and are physically 18 inches wider and 10 feet longer than the R44s, and the existing track in Newark is light rail, so the rolling stock is comprised of LRVs (low-floor bendy vehicles with pretty low capacity). Some of these routes are likely ~80 miles in one direction; with subway max speeds and stop spacing you'd be looking at 20mph average speeds if that, so you'd be looking at transit times of at least four hours one-way end to end on the pink C for example, and the commute from New Brunswick to midtown Manhattan would go from 45-50 minutes to two and a half hours. You're better off having a really robust subway network serving NYC proper, a mirror subway serving West New York (primarily comprised of an expanded PATH and an expanded HBLR), and robust through-running commuter rail comprised of combined MNR, LIRR, and NJT services. Maintaining separate light rail, subway, and commuter rail networks lets each type of transit play to its strength and makes for a much better overall system network.