R10 2952

3 hours ago, Lawrence St said:

But I don't get your point. How would you bring back the 75 if 96% of the route is replicated by the 194?

You're misconstruing several things here.  First of all, the 75 did not replicate the 194.  The 75 ran along Hamburg Turnpike to Paterson, then swung down via a combination of local roads and freeway to Newark Penn Station.  It was almost entirely a separate route.

Second, I never advocated bringing back the 75.  The 75 was the replacement service when the Route 23 leg of the 11 to Butler got cut back to Willowbrook around 1990.  The 75 failed because the agency thought a quasi-express bus to Newark detouring through Paterson and running only three times during rush hour (if those runs even bothered to show up at all) would somehow be better than the local 11 down Route 23 and Bloomfield.  It was designed to fail and ultimately did by the time it got canned in 2013. 

What I did say, was that the 11 used to provide direct service to Newark from Butler before the roundabout 75.  Unlike the 75 out to Paterson, the 11 up Route 23 made sense, and it's unclear to me why NJT decided back in the day to replace a route that worked with one that didn't.

Going to have to disagree with both of you on that point; not everyone from Passaic County is trying to get to Manhattan, and transferring at Willowbrook isn't exactly hassle-free.

A few years back I made the mistake of trying to get to Butler from EWR via the 62 to Penn Plaza, 11 to Willowbrook, and then transferring to the 194.  In total, it took me over three hours, on a weekday during AM rush hour no less.  There are no trains that go that route, car service costs $85 if you can even convince them to got that far out, and backtracking to PABT would have also been a pain in the ass. 

Bottom line, trying to travel from Newark Airport to a destination one county over should not have to resemble a Greek odyssey.  Especially considering the 11, 15, and old 114 before that regularly provided a Newark-Butler connection for years before NJT cut the line back and replaced it with the roundabout, winding 75 (a route which was basically set up to fail from the get-go).

The executives seem to have this assumption that everybody has a car, and over the years its become a self-reinforcing, negative feedback loop.  The fact is, in many cases it was easier to get around within New Jersey 35 years ago than it is today, which is a sad commentary on the fate of public transit in the Garden State.

19 hours ago, Mtatransit said:

I mean this is an agency that allowed you to buy peak tickets throughout the pandemic, and even keeping a big warning in the app telling you when off peak tickets are not accepted well into 2020

It would make way too much sense to simplify the tariffs for the commuter railroads, but the  would prefer you try to comprehend which ticket is the best ticket you should buy when going from Atlantic Terminal to Rosedale:

Peak

Off Peak

CityTickets with minimal explanation

Atlantic Tickets, which is the same as CityTicket except it allows you on peak trains

I swear the railroad is begging you to just press peak/off peak and ignore the other options. For a while I believe the MTA had AT under deal and packages, not sure if they moved that now

 

It's the same agency that thinks everybody wants to get from Nassau or Suffolk to Midtown Manhattan and nowhere else; how they became this out of touch, I don't know.

I wonder if Prendergast ever even took a LIRR train while he ran that division.  Mindless, out-of-touch, Manhattan-centric beancounters.  That's all him and his executive team at the railroad ever were.

Delete

On 3/2/2022 at 6:24 AM, biGC323232 said:

One route can consist of like 4 to 5 different destinations

Always been my biggest gripe with NJT routes.  The 194 had several different lettered variants at one point in the late 1990s and early 2000s, instead of just having separate route numbers..

Honestly, I haven't been impressed with either the seating or the quality issues on the Prevost coaches.  Would rather see the agency go back to ordering MCIs- the D4500 is simply a better coach.

6 hours ago, checkmatechamp13 said:

Notice how they don't even mention the cheaper ticket programs. (For example, one-way off-peak Zone 1 - Zone 1 or Zone 1 - Zone 3 are still listed as $6.50 and $7.75 respectively, despite the $5 CityTicket being valid during all off-peak periods). And of course, the Atlantic Ticket prices are nowhere to be found.

 

5 hours ago, N6 Limited said:

Their excuse is probably because they're "pilot programs".

That and they want to milk all the sheep that don't know about it.

Honestly, they should just put R46s on the ; would reduce a lot of wear and tear.  The way the MTA runs them into the ground on the  and  reminds me of when the agency used to have an obsession, 2009 to about 2015, about not running spare R32 put-ins on the  during rush hours. 

Some weeks the R46s would drop like flies left and right from the overwork and low spare factor, there would be 20-25 minute gaps in PM rush service on the A, but still RTO wouldn't do anything productive to fix the situation :facepalm: 

Aside from issues that were already mentioned in years past each time platform screen doors have been brought up on these boards, I'll raise another one.  Fire.  Last place I would want to be in that scenario is-

a) a train in the station that's on fire and can't be evacuated because some extraneous wall-to-wall glass doors are stuck and won't open.

b)  a fire on the platform blocking exits and passengers can't be evacuated for the same reason as above.

A safety issue, and a liability issue.  Food for thought. 

On 2/2/2022 at 3:11 PM, T to Dyre Avenue said:

Interesting how they displayed the map from 1990 which briefly had the  train restored onto the south side of the Manhattan Bridge while the ,  and  all shared the north. I wonder what the significance of displaying that particular map was. Maybe that was the then-current service pattern when the first R32s came back from GOH. But I don’t think most people who rode on 1/9/22 would have known that.

The odder thing to me is why they didn't wait until the summer to do the trips, when the weather is nicer.  More tourists (instead of foamers) would be out and about, and I'm assuming the remaining coronavirus restrictions and mask mandates would probably be gone by July or August.

Do we not have the normal brown M bullet anymore? I can't find it.

On 2/19/2022 at 8:55 PM, trainfan22 said:

I know. I was talking about before the R160s came. Back then the R143s only ran on the and the weekend . The mixed and strip maps is a recent thing. I rode the regularly in 03-05 and only R42s ran on the line. 

I never understood the point of them running 4-car R143s on the weekend .  But then, things were strange in general on the post-WTC J/M/Z lines.  R40Ms on the  going to 4th-95th, R40 Slant  trains going to Coney Island.  Quite a detour.

The sentimentalist in me is sad to see them go, but the realist in me knew it's been years in the making.

On a side note, if Cuomo had been forced out of office a year or two earlier, I wonder if at least some of the cars would have stuck around, for the original Canarsie Tube rebuild plan or otherwise? Reason I bring it up is because at one point it was mentioned in several circles that it was the Governor's Office that was pushing for R32s to be retired sooner.  Not anyone at the MTA.

10 hours ago, CenSin said:

or people who just advocate from an ivory tower?

I'll wager that at least a few of them are phony, limousine-liberal social justice warriors... like the nonprofit a few years back that received funds from the City to do outreach, but never even left their office desks during the workday.

In this country, instead of actually helping the homeless, we instead have a homeless-industrial complex.

First World problems, in a nutshell.

@B35 via Church@NewFlyer 230  Pretty much nailed it, boils down to the effect media manipulation has on society (fearmongering to increase ratings), and definitely liability issues (a bunch of shysters just waiting to file a lawsuit the moment any type of organization makes a good-faith mistake).

It's why I can't stand local TV news, and personal injury lawyers ambulance-chasers, in that order.

5 hours ago, bobtehpanda said:

Well, day one did not involve demolishing the .

Archer Avenue would've been a lot simpler had they not done that, and I think we would see the full line down towards SE Queens. Ironically, the Macy's that asked for demolishing the left Jamaica shortly after.

Yeah, it was one of those rare occasions when the NYCTA actually didn't want to tear down a line on their own accord.  They were basically pushed into it by a decade of pressure from local elected officials and businesses in Jamaica after Mayor Lindsay first floated the idea in the late 1960s.  The whole trend of politicians squeezing the transit authority by the nuts in this city is a well-worn path, unfortunately.

Doubt it; keeping sub-fleets with different running gear in separate consists is a NYCT practice that goes back over 65 years, and even further if one counts the BMT and IRT days.  On the rare occasion that equipment was mixed up, those trains always bucked like crazy- at least the ones I ended up on as a passenger.

1 hour ago, GojiMet86 said:

Saw this article about the reefing program, and how it basically failed.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90716245/sinking-1000-nyc-subway-cars-in-the-atlantic-to-create-a-reef-didnt-go-as-planned

34 minutes ago, QM1to6Ave said:

That figures

And what amazes me is that none of the "experts" figured this out beforehand.  The post-Redbird reefing program was basically the MTA's creative way of getting around scrapping costs and regulations.  It's been argued that asbestos and the other nasty stuff in those cars is less of a problem when waterborne, but still... they shouldn't have been dumping that kind of shit in the sea to begin with.

6 hours ago, NewFlyer 230 said:

I caught one of the afternoon  trips from 179th street on Monday and I was so disappointed it ran local along Hillside Ave up to Forest Hills. There was a ENY R160 at Parsons Blvd on the express track laid up so we were forced to go local. I remember catching  along Hillside Ave sometimes back in 2018/2019 on my way to school in the afternoon and it was always cool to get a little taste of how service used to be before the Archer Ave extension opened up. 

If I recall correctly, the reason they've still been sending a bunch of  trains to 179th since 1988 is because the Parsons-Archer station was never intended as a long-term terminal, and it just doesn't have the turning capacity.  For me personally, the Archer Avenue Line project was over-ambitious from day one, and frankly more trouble than its worth.

With the amount of time and money the MTA wasted on this glorified stubway, they would have simply been better off retrofitting a third track onto the Jamaica Avenue El, rerouting some bus lines from 179th-Hillside to 168th-Jamaica, and calling it a day. 

Corner stores in Queens selling pay-per-ride Metrocards, and station token booths actually selling tokens was basically how I got around as a youth back then LMAO.

At this rate, the massive geniuses at 2 Broadway will be bringing the token back next LOL...

Yeah, this is fake news.  Someone else posted an article from this rag a few months ago and it was the same situation.  No point in taking any stock in it.

2 hours ago, Eric B said:

I don't like LRT because of it leaving the ROW and running on the streets with three turns around MET. Though being able to run via the street to the Roosevelt hub wuld be good. But I think it would better be extended via the other BQE spur, to LGA. (I thought DMU was the best idea, but that was ruled out for some reason).

Yeah, cheapest option I could see them doing (cheapest as in the most likely to come to fruition) would be hourly, peak-time, LIRR-style service using something similar to Budd RDCs, and double-tracking as well as reopening the closed, previously-existing passenger stops.  Anything beyond that, I just don't see getting off the ground.

2 hours ago, BM5 via Woodhaven said:

think about who sets the limits, the eligibility guidelines. More likely than not, it's gonna be someone who gets PAID and is out of touch with what people need (financially) to survive with just the basics.

This right here, is the root cause of the problem.  It's what happens anytime an organization (public, private, educational, charitable, whatever) becomes too big for its own pants.  You end up with people in charge who are so out of touch with the ordinary, that they practically live in a bubble.

Overly-complicated solutions to problems, a lack of ability to answer questions directly, and an inability to use everyday vernacular language; all symptoms of this that we see all the time with 'leaders' across all of the social-political-economic spectrum nowadays.

It's like those damn "Medicare Supplement" commercials that keep running on TV now to manipulate and pander to boomers.  TF a retiree need 100 simultaneous plans to pay one co-pay? Like seriously, this country can't at least do single-payer healthcare for its senior citizens? Complete mess, like every other major problem the U.S. faces currently....