R10 2952

@checkmatechamp13 Yeah, the direction things are going with cost-of-living in NYC, you'll either have to be a millionaire to afford the prices, or a rock-bottom crackhead to qualify for help.  It's f**king stupid.  

6 hours ago, B35 via Church said:

I never cared for when they pose disingenuous alternatives to routing changes... They do that to as a means of highlighting how much better they deem the initial option/main routing change to be.... In other words, the initial option is the only serious option on the table..... It's like having a beauty contest & having __________ (*some model you deem to be physically beautiful*) go up against Sasquatch, King Kong, and some 40 year old retarded virgin neckbeard that does the short bus clap every time he hears his name... Like, you know who's goin win that god damn contest.... Who are we trying to fool here.....

That, and sometimes I get the impression that pedestrian casualties have gone up not in spite of Vision Zero, but because of it.  All the flurry of excessive traffic-control measures that have been added (beyond what already was in place in the mid-2000s) seem to be making everybody angrier and more prone to road rage.  I don't remember it being this bad 15-18 years ago.

Yeah, I can understand wanting to keep public transit affordable, but free transit? Not realistic.  Call me 20th-century, but the bus or train just isn't the same thing as a school or a library.

Even in communist countries, people still had to pay a transit fare.

3 hours ago, YankeesPwnMets said:

The solution is out there, people just don't want to acknowledge it: involuntary institutionalization. Somehow, we've deemed it "compassionate" to let mentally ill homeless people choose to rot away on the street or subway.

Boils down to mental/drug issues and two others- affordable housing and crime recidivism.  Heard someone once say that of all the transient people on the streets, 'a third need public housing, the next third should be in involuntary treatment for mental health or substance abuse, and the remaining third belong in jail or prison'.  

Probably the most astute observation I've seen made by anybody on this problem in the last 20 years- some need basic help, other need more specialized help, and some can't be helped at all because they've become incorrigible.

11 minutes ago, paulrivera said:

Good luck with the Manhattan portion. I don't think the cops are gonna be willing to put their necks on the line with that quack of a D.A. on the job...

Ultimately, Bragg's lackadaisical approach is probably going to be the catalyst Adams needs to call for both:

a) consolidation of all City boroughs into a single county instead of five

b) a referendum initiative to make the DA an appointed position instead of an elected one

Both overdue changes, in my honest opinion.

I lived in Triboro Coach and Queens Surface territory growing up.  QS buses were arguably in the best shape of all the PBL buses; TC was hit-and-miss because their suburban-seat Orion Vs were great but their TMC RTSes were raggedy.

GL and JB always seemed on their last legs with those patched-up GMC RTSes and MCI Classics.

Command, Liberty Lines, and New York Bus Service I never rode, so no idea what those were like.

3 hours ago, GojiMet86 said:

Why, I don't know. But the 1150-1189 series has them, and that Jamaica one was a former Green Lines from this exact series. I had to use my Imgur, can't seem to directly insert the photo's url from BusTalk.

3853 was former GBL 1189.

Interesting; I definitely remember the Jamaica Bus units from their last days, when they were transferred after the MTA takeover to ex-Triboro routes to bump off some older '85-'86 models.

From the link, it looks like this one-off series of units were all built from late 1993 to mid-1994; I'm guessing perhaps they were part of a larger order placed by another agency somewhere else in the country.  Wouldn't be surprised, seeing how not long after this Green Lines got those WMATA-reject Orion Vs with the annoyingly narrow rear door and tacky vinyl bench seats.

What's funny is how NJT also had vertical tail lights on their RTSes, but not in the same configuration; yet another variation from the standard version- well, that and those weird flush-styled rear doors, anyway:

Question, anyone recall why some of the RTSes from Green Lines and Jamaica Buses had vertical tail lights, instead of the standard horizontal ones?

For reference:

21 minutes ago, rbrome said:

Better leadership would look at how it's done elsewhere in the world. And what they would find is that the MTA's global peers usually have a large in-house team of full-time engineers and management for capital construction. When you can design these projects yourself, that greatly reduces overhead, and gives you the competency to choose cheaper alternatives and keep costs under control. The MTA should only be contracting out the actual construction. 

THANK YOU!   In fact, the MTA used to do a lot more work in-house in the past than they do now.  Before the mid-to-late 1990s, it was not uncommon for station rehabs (Franklin and 225th on the) and yard projects to be done in-house by the agency with its own workers, at lower cost.  Not to mention GOH, a bunch of car classes were rehabbed in-house of course; arguably the quality of some of those rebuilds was questionable (R42 CI rebuilds), but in all fairness, some of the rebuilds done by outside contractors were pretty questionable as well (R38 GE rebuilds, and that series of R36s rebuilt by Amtrak).

Not everything needs to be done by outside firms, not every cost needs to be artificially inflated (as they often are).  What you see today with the MTA and a lot of other state entities is the result of construction industry lobbying efforts in Albany.  For example, anytime politicians want a bridge replaced outright instead of repaired (Tappan Zee, Pulaski, Goethals), who do you think stands to benefit the most?  The consultants who manipulate the numbers to make a replacement look cheaper than a repair, and the guys who win the construction bids. 

5 hours ago, CenSin said:

Don’t worry. Plenty of other threads seem to be getting a pass for being off-topic.

Well there's that, but I'd also go a step further and argue that the points being made about fare evasion and the prosecutorial side of the issue, are very much on-topic here in this particular discussion. 

6 minutes ago, Trainmaster5 said:

I'm still waiting for the subway stops at Utica and Empire Blvd and Church Avenues. I think BrooklynBus and I have been looking for those stops for 60 + years now 

Similar scenario as the folks who live along Webster in the Bronx, waiting for that long-promised SAS replacement for the Third Avenue El.  If ever there was a glass-half-empty situation, it would be that one for sure.

What I don't understand is why proof-of-payment with multi-door boarding has taken so long to implement in North America (especially in cities that are bus-only, without subways).

Most of Europe started proof-of-payment in the 1950s and 1960s; people would buy paper tickets at a booth or something, board the bus, validate the ticket in a stamping machine onboard, and roaming transit inspectors would get on and off at various stops to conduct random ticket checks- and all this was done without any computers or gadgetry.  Was the norm on many systems out there until the 1990s and 2000s, before they switched from paper tickets to electronic.

Why its taken the Western Hemisphere forever to warm up to this basic concept, is beyond me.  Imagine all the minutes that would taken off boarding times at busy bus stops like in East Midtown or Brooklyn Heights.

In this Queens plan of theirs, Jackson Heights is only the tip of the iceberg.  The sheer dumbf**kery that they had planned for the Maspeth-MiddleVillage-Glendale area, was something to behold in its own right....  I'm surprised the MTA spin doctors weren't greeted at those meetings by angry mobs with the proverbial torches and pitchforks.

Dafuq? Any idea what prompted him to do this; a corruption investigation or something?

No, @Bill from Maspeth does have a point- the circlejerking without new information tends to get old real fast.

Lot of people bumping things just for the sake of bumping things are noobs trying to up their post count, but have nothing substantive to contribute to the discussion.

1 hour ago, m7zanr160s said:

Honestly, trains aren't even loud anymore. Especially with continuous welded trail and concrete ties.

The  crossing Broadway Bridge, the MNRR P32s with their horns, and the CSX SD40s with their jet-engine sounds at full throttle paint a very different picture on my end...    

1 hour ago, N6 Limited said:

The homeowners interviewed in the article live near the Montauk Line, not the proposed route of the Triboro RX. Though, I suppose they could study the feasibility of a branch to use the Montauk Line.

Yes, this is something I've agreed with over the years.

In the '80s, there was a plan to tie the 63rd Street Tunnel into the Lower Montauk Branch and convert it to subway use, but the Archie Bunkers made a big stink about it.  About 10 (I think?) years ago, there was a plan to convert the Lower Montauk to lightrail/streetcar- the NIMBYs struck out again.  Personally, I reckon the path of least resistance in those neighborhoods would simply be to reactivate LIRR passenger service along the Lower Montauk.

At the end of the day, they're not going to be able to argue with commuter rail service that regularly ran through there from the mid-19th century until 1998, which in the case of one of the complaining residents, was already after she purchased her home.

On a side note, one of the local politicians interviewed made a point about how they opposed the privatization of LIRR's freight operations in the '90s- valid point actually, in that the MTA would probably have to take the lease back from NY&A RR before they could potentially restore passenger service (amongst other prerequisites, anyway).

9 minutes ago, YankeesPwnMets said:

Has anyone noticed the MTA's ETA to restore service to Coney Island has slipped? The original reopening date was January 3 - that has come and passed with nary a whisper from the MTA. Now they're saying "through January 2022"...

Sadly, that seems to be par for the course with this ass-backwards agency.  It was the same shit when they were doing work on the Livonia Avenue section of the . Things got pushed back continually on the down-low, without so much as a peep from the corporate suits. 

...Someone in another topic brought up a point about the nouveau-yuppies that wanted the LIRR terminal in Long Island City shut down a few years ago, and it gave me a good laugh.

These people paid outrageous money for what looks like a glorified NYCHA project built on the site of an old industrial warehouse, across the street from an active railyard, downwind from one of the most polluted industrial waterways in the entire country, and then have the nerve to make demands.

And for what it's worth, LIC terminal does have its uses.  When visiting people at SUNY back in the day, used to get trains that went direct to Stonybrook from LIC; otherwise we'd be stuck at Huntington for an eternity waiting for the transfer in all sorts of shitty weather.

Seems LIRR does way too much these days to neglect the utility of the non-Manhattan terminals within the City Zone.

The irony is that most of those folks were probably only able to afford those houses, because they were next to a rail line.  Although I remain a skeptic of Triboro-RX, I don't condone the NIMBYism of these residents; in Southwest Queens, Archie Bunker lives eternal it seems.

Having said that, as someone who grew up next to the Bay Ridge Branch in that area of Queens myself, the heavy-duty diesel engines used by CSX on that route are slow, loud, smoky, and made my place and several others in the vicinity vibrate a lot.  It's frustrating because back before the late 1960s, the Bay Ridge Branch actually had overhead catenary, and the locomotives were electric.

Regardless of whether the branch gets revitalized for cross-harbor freight or FRA heavy-rail passenger service, I think re-electrification would be the right way to go.

Any word on whether they've considered bringing back #11 service to Route 23 north of Willowbrook? 

5 hours ago, 553 Bridgeton said:

Not everyone wants to go to New York, Philadelphia, Atlantic City, and New York to transfer to a outbound bus. This is literally a waste of money.

Exactly; I been saying for years now that on the bus side, PABT is overused while GWBT and Lower Manhattan destinations are underutilized by the decisionmakers at 1 Penn Plaza East.  To say nothing about how much of a Herculean task traveling within Jersey can be, on public transit anyway..

On the rail side there's also a handful of unexercised options, and missed opportunities outright.  I'd say NJT execs are even more out-of-touch with their ridership than the MTA bigwigs are.  That and many of the local Jersey politicians are no help in that regard, either.  There's been days in Trenton that frankly, have made Albany look competent by comparison.

Frankly, a lot of problems could be solved in that regard if NYC had:

a) one DA and court as opposed to five (but that would require consolidating all 5 boroughs into a single New York County)

b) the DA was an appointed official as opposed to a separately elected one (but that would require at the very least, a referendum or ballot initiative)

Most other cities are covered by a single prosecutor as opposed to multiple ones, and in Europe, most prosecutors are appointed officials, not elected.  Takes a lot of the political bullshit out of the process.

2 hours ago, Eric B said:

I would have something else swing over from the LIE to Eliot; something heading out that way, so it wouldn't be out of the way. Again, extending the 24 further out (maybe replacing another route in the Forest Hills area, like on Yellowstone) would replace the Eliot riders. I think the current route deters riders, because it's so circituous, and says on the crowded LIE longer.

Agreed, Eliot east of 69th definitely should be split off into a different service.  Only question in my mind would be where such a service could start/end; getting through the Woodhaven-LIE-Queens Boulevard intersection by road can be a major pain in the rear end during rush hours.  Only way I could see that being avoided is if some sort of future Eliot Avenue express bus had its terminus at the intersection of Eliot and 86th, or Eliot and Wetherole on the other side if DOT ever got around to reconfiguring that intersection (which I'll always doubt).