R10 2952

43 minutes ago, Lawrence St said:

Yeah that's why nothing ever gets done at this agency. They set their own rules but then don't follow them...

More like the higher-ups set rules for everybody else to follow, and a different set of rules for themselves.  Just like any mismanaged, bloated, out-of-touch organization. 

On 12/13/2021 at 5:28 PM, MHV9218 said:

why we had to dox a PATH employee who's a decent guy and a former member here is, frankly, beyond me. 

This I agree with- there was absolutely no need for that.  Honestly, I'm beginning to see why him, SG, and Y2 all left...

On 12/13/2021 at 9:06 PM, R32 3838 said:

There's a few things that are going to change in the future, I heard a few things and got tips on a few things. Nothing is going to be the same anymore. 

Wouldn't be surprised.

2 hours ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

I'd add more Bx7 service before adding more Bx20 service. You want more service on the Bx20? Get more people to ride it. Been living here over 10 years. That bus Southbound is never crowded (I sometimes use it to get to Metro-North since the shuttle buses still don't have OMNY) and Northbound, it serves as a school shuttle. Extend it any further South and it would be even more unreliable than it is now.

Excuse me, but I lived there before you, and for a longer period of time than you.  Not to mention I was a regular local bus rider as opposed to a casual, occasional rider who, in your own words, rode the 7/10/20 "once or twice a year".  That and at no point in my post did I explicitly suggest extending the Bx20 further south- trying to put words in my mouth I never uttered.

The Bx20 got decent ridership before the '08 recession and the '10 cuts.  The ridership going down over the last few years has largely been the result of the MTA's chronic mismanagement of the line's schedule.  The 20 pre-2009 and post-2009 are like night and day.  If the MTA stops dicking around riders in South Riverdale, Spuyten Duyvil and Kingsbridge, then the old, fairly decent ridership levels will return.  It's that simple.  Maybe next you'll tell me all about the Q38/54/67 from back in the '90s when I lived in Queens?

I don't need someone from up north in Riverdale condescendingly preaching to me about my own damn neighborhood.  You've had a habit in the past of acting like the people in the southern part of the area don't exist, don't have needs that matter, or have simply thrown shade like when you made a snide remark two or three years ago about Riverpoint Towers (a building where I knew a lot of people) being "lower-end".  Not everybody in 10463 lives in hoity-toity luxury and rides the express bus, you know? Quite a bunch of us didn't.  Some of us worked, gasp, non-white-collar jobs for a living.  You're quick to go do battle with the MTA over the slightest hiccup in express BxM1/2/18, or HudsonLink service, but seem to gloss over any issue with the local Bx7/10/20, especially the 10 and 20.  Or insist on presenting your own narrative and negating the experience and suggestions of others who had different experiences from you.

When you're right, you're right, but when you're not, me, checkmatechamp, MHV, KnightRider and others have called you out not on a whim, but for actual reasons.  Imagine I moved to Staten Island tomorrow and started telling you "no, this is the problem with the S48, 52 and 61" ?

Jesus.

For what it's worth, I can recall several times at 211th when the northbound Bx20 failed to show up repeatedly and I ended up having to walk across Broadway Bridge, or through Inwood Hill Park and across the pedestrian walkway on Hudson Bridge.  The schedule issues with the 20 got significantly worse after the 2010 cuts reduced it to a glorified peak shuttle.  Something really needs to be done about that.  Not everybody on Kappock, Johnson or Irwin is trying to get the , not everyone there is an after-7-AM or before-6-PM worker, and the Bx10 alone can't handle all the demand. 

2 hours ago, Cait Sith said:

Yeah but again, that whole investigation has nothing to do with anything involving the current situation. I don't know why you're bringing all of this up because it's massively irrelevant and from what I recall, it's been dealt with a while ago with some of the parties involved getting suspended.

This might have to do with why they are not running(Video Link, expires in a few days).

Pretty much.  If anything, my money would be on that mechanical situation, the fallout from it, coronavirus in general, and the usual MTA concerns about litigation being the reason for the change.

21 minutes ago, NBTA said:

”Restore Bx20 service to operate outside of peak hours”

”Make various route extensions and alignment changes to the Bx1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 10, 11, 13, 20, 22, 32 and 34, and expand the service of these routes to run at all times”

Agree 100% with those sentiments.  That and something really needs to be done with the Bx9.  It's reassuring to see that there's still some riders in my old neck of the woods that know their stuff, as opposed to being a bunch of submissive sheep.

What about MNRR?

53 minutes ago, +Young+ said:

Unauthorized personnel being on the property, which includes the storage yards and having people around 3rd rails who are not Track Certified. If you need more evidence, I would encourage you to check out this and this link, which comes from this YouTube video. Should be self-explanatory.

But why would they cancel the whole thing over some random dude? That's what I don't understand.

Whatever happened to those New Flyer D45 Vikings that NYCT used to run on the X51? 

Yeah, that whole area of Monmouth County (especially around Freehold proper) has always struck me as a transit desert.  No southbound service on the rush-hour routes along US 9 in the AM, spotty service between Freehold and the shore (at best), and no westbound service at all.  One would think a case could be made for bus service to Princeton Junction or Trenton, but considering the local politicians around there can't even agree on reactivating that rail line that goes through the town center, I think things will stay as-is for the foreseeable future.

1 hour ago, +Young+ said:

Second, one of the many things which was posted on this Twitter page is the picture below, in which, you can see right above the star, the author posted a comment in which "Seeing this stuff run is a million times better than running that crap at work." Therefore, while the agency investigates this, especially with the older Nostalgia Trains, it would make sense to run the R32s in the meantime, especially since they don't have to go into a "relay" or anything to that nature. After all, according to TripPlanner, it takes an hour to get from Brighton Beach to 96th Street, so that should solve the problem while this investigation is underway.

Investigate what?

4 hours ago, trainfan22 said:

I wonder why they replaced the holiday train Arines with R32s? 

3 hours ago, trainfan22 said:

IMO it's an odd choice cause the Arines have more appeal to non railfans than R32s do. The non railfan photographers doing period pieces photoshoots with models, the bands, the ceiling fans, the unique seats, the "awe" factor from regular riders etc. R32s are quite bland in comparison. 

I'm pretty sure they're not doing the R1-9s because they want to limit crowding on account of concerns over this whole coronavirus thing.  Personally, considering how many people have already been fully vaccinated in NYC and the surrounding area, I think it's a bit ridiculous for the government and public sector more broadly to continue mandating all sorts of limitations, but politicians gonna politick, as usual.

Imagine the tsunami of foam if they ran it as an (brownM) to Metropolitan, or an  to Chambers.  Would be hilarious.

Either way, they will be missed. 

8 hours ago, paulrivera said:

I don't recall such a huge fit when all the NG's at Kingsbridge had the lettering on their corporate logo peeled off a few years ago. Maybe it's a bigger issue in Manhattan than in the Bronx because Manhattan's where all the bigwigs can see the buses themselves. With the  it's not so much "what's going on", it's more of "who catches it", if you will.

Around the same time, somebody kept pulling the  logos off the old cars on the  (R42s) to expose the old  decals underneath.  Must've been somebody real dedicated too, cause at one point well over a majority of the old J/Z fleet in 2011-13 was rolling around with the old decals.  Some dudes still be living in 1988 LMAO... 

22 hours ago, XcelsiorBoii4888 said:

Man I rode a College Point C40LF today, 619. When I tell you those buses are SOLID....they are SOLID!! Yoo those buses are by FAR the best built and highest quality fleet of buses in the MTA fleet. 10 years old?? Feel like they're just hitting their 1 year mark

I haven't been on one in a few years, but after just riding the Q44 right before it was like night and day. I really wish the Xcelsiors were built like that...it's actually insane the difference. Idk if frame has to be built different to support the CNG tank but my goodness. I was really really impressed. I wonder if the JG buses are holding up the same. 

21 hours ago, trainfan22 said:

I feel the same way (C40s being the best built buses in the fleet) I think structurally they are built to CTA specs and not MTA specs which may have something to do with it. 

 

I ride the SC C40s regularly and I have yet to ride one that rattles. 

 

21 hours ago, NBTA said:

They refuse to rattle, even the WF buses. 

19 hours ago, SoSpectacular said:

They are overall solid buses to drive. You don't feel their weight much in their steering. Very light. I always make it a point to pull one out when given the choice but I'll take an XN40 here or there...

13 hours ago, NewFlyer 230 said:

I definitely agree with you! The C40LF’s are hands down my favorite fleet that the MTA has. They were build to last and I’m so happy I live right along the Q25/Q34 routes so I am spoiled with these buses lol. One thing I have noticed is that some units have a little roar to them when they accelerate now that they are older but that’s them showing their power lol. These buses were the well needed replacements for the old Orion V CNG’s which were beast in their own right. It’s hard to believe that the oldest units are already 10 years old. 

TRUTH.  Since the O5s retired, those C40s have been the only fleet I pay attention to anymore, hands-down.  New Flyer keeping the old design around for that long is a perfect example of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

But yeah, I agree with the points being made by posters above that a lot of these issues transcend the political divide in this country.  I've seen Democrats and Republicans alike do a shit job of running things, in NY, NJ, the rest of the Northeast and North America.  At the end of the day, red-blue, liberal-conservative, capitalist-communist, First/Second/Third World, it doesn't really matter what system you have if the people in charge suck multiple nuts.

5 hours ago, B35 via Church said:

Simplified.

Cuts are already/definitely happening.... On a large scale, they don't have to apprise the public of every paper cut - just the blatantly obvious slash wounds & deep stab wounds....

The passive/slick actions of theirs are what you're speaking to.... When the MTA gears commentary regarding cuts to the public on a large scale, they are speaking to making major/macro actions...

Right,.. While $$$$$ is the obvious catalyst/factor, public transit in general is political... Once you get into things that massively affects society (negatively or positively) - even if you don't use public transit, political involvement is inevitable.... I'd go as far as to say discussion spaces like these wouldn't really exist if the nuances that comprise public transit weren't ultimately political.... It would be myopic to believe public transit was as black & white as say, mixing kool aid in sugar & going OooOhH Yeah!!!!!!!! after ingestion....

In his defense though, he did say he'd rather have that part of the discussion on another platform (twitter).... Can't really blame him for sparing the forum here (basically) from a bunch of red vs. blue shit.....

There are definitely a lot of subtle cuts and shortchanging by the agency that don't get noticed, either by employees or passengers, unless somebody (activists, pols, investigative journalists) decides to call the MTA out on their BS.  For instance, I vaguely remember a number of short-turns and put-ins that got quietly dropped after the MTA took over the PBLs- and this was before they even came out swinging the axe for the 2010 cuts.  

4 hours ago, bobtehpanda said:

Right. The politics is not helpful, particularly when locally both sides basically don't admit the MTA has a spending problem, and if they do, they signed off on that every two years fare hikes thing and called it a day, maybe sprinkled in some good ol' "two books auditing" to make it sound like they wanted to do something. Uncle Sam cannot fix the fact that the MTA's financial problems are structural in nature.

Quite frankly, I don't remember the last time we had a Governor, State Assembly Speaker, or State Senate Leader who did not eventually have some federal indictment against them. I'm not holding out my hopes for Hochul, Stewart-Cousins, or Heastie either.

Last time the state government worked halfway-decent in Albany was probably when Carey ran the show back in the '70s.  And that's not saying much, because him and the legislature didn't have much of a choice.  Rockefeller left behind such a fiscal mess that NYS was basically in the same boat as the City at the time- staring defaults and bankruptcy in the face. 

1 hour ago, bobtehpanda said:

There is, and it's called the laws of physics.

The financial industry, particularly investment banking, is about executing transactions as fast as possible, because if you let someone in front of you go first they can snatch a better price before you can. They will literally spend billions of dollars laying new cable across the Atlantic to save 5 milliseconds. 5 milliseconds could be the difference between hundreds of millions of dollars in profit.

How that comes into play is that New York is

• the physical home of the stock exchange
• one of the closest big cities to London and Europe, which is why
• it's the landing point of nearly all major transatlantic cables

Any firm moving to another city to do financial transactions would have to add in the additional transaction time of the distance it takes to send information from wherever they are to New York and onwards. The speed of light is not instant, it still will be slower for messages to travel a longer distance. The only cities with shorter distances would be in New England or eastern Canada, neither of which is particularly appealing compared to New York.

I've heard people raise the specter of Boston every now and then when it comes to finance and large corporations more generally, which I find laughable.  Mostly because their infrastructure isn't too great and the people there are the rudest bunch I've ever encountered.

4 hours ago, R32 3838 said:

I felt that the R36ML retired too early. Very small fleet of cars but were in great shape when they retired them.

The R36 MLs on the were arguably in the best shape of all the Redbirds; I've heard this sentiment expressed both by personnel and enthusiasts alike.  Small fleet, decent build quality, didn't get worked overtime the way TA did with the R26/28/29s.   I remember the cars on the (2)/(5) being absolute garage towards the end.

1 hour ago, trainfan22 said:

In the IRT cars were assigned by propulsion, West Side was GE while the East Side was Westinghouse (or it made have been the other way around, I forget). That could have minimized the bucking. Not sure how they did things in the B div back then as I never seen that discussed. I know the R30 contract had both GE and Westinghouse cars IIRC.

Yeah, I hear they were very consistent in the A Division about that.  I know there was a brief period in 2001-02 or so when ML R33s got intermixed in consists with WF cars on the , but apparently that didn't last long.

B Division seemed to be the complete opposite, for whatever reason.  I remember being on a couple of R32/R38 and R40M/42 consists that bucked like crazy.

Yeah, those must have been wacky times LOL..  That said, mixing fleets was a long-running practice, probably going back to the early days in the 1910s.  Made sense for them in terms of operational flexibility, but as a passenger in the 2000s, I remember a lot of the mixed trains riding rough.  I don't think General Electric and Westinghouse propulsion were meant to go together in one consist.

5 hours ago, Lawrence St said:

I've taken the 748 as part of a redesign thing I'm doing and every 748 trip I've ridden out of Pompton Lakes has had 0 people. 

When a route is run so bad as to only have 2 trips a day, then of course people are going to use other options.  Factor in the coronavirus and that's how ridership can drop to zero.  This wouldn't be happening if the 748 actually ran regularly enough to actually incentivize people to use it.  Willful neglect on the part of NJT.

5 hours ago, Lawrence St said:

Then again, New Jersey Transit is short on bus operators so there are suppose to be 3 trips in total but only one runs each day.

If it's that badly run, then yes, of course it will drive potential riders away.  Nobody likes waiting for a bus that won't show up, especially in the cold weather.

5 hours ago, Lawrence St said:

The 748 also is just a weird route in general. Idk why the thing dosent short turn in Haledon instead of going all the way down to City Hall during late nights.

Goes back to NJT's history of poor route management practices in certain areas (Passaic and Morris being one of them).  They mismanaged the 75 into oblivion to the point nobody would ride it (winding routing, infrequent scheduling), and before they cut the 11 to Willowbrook from Bloomingdale back in the '80s I imagine it was the same thing.  No-show buses, shitty schedules, and/or slow speeds will ruin even the best route. 

If Jersey leaders really want to get residents to ditch their cars (and the truth is that there are many local NJ pols who don't), they need to improve service.  Forcing everybody towards NYC at the expense of cutting NJ-only service has not been a successful strategy over the last 20 years.  All it's done is make things worse. 

11 hours ago, Lawrence St said:

And who exactly is going from Pompton Lakes to Paterson?

Off the top of my head, I knew at least 2-3 people from the Pompton-Riverdale-Pequannock area who drove to work in the Paterson area.  Don't know what's so surprising about that.

15 minutes ago, paulrivera said:

Yup. This is exactly why PM rush headways went from 4 minutes to 5 minutes. The people do ride, but there are people that don't pay. In fact, I've seen the local Bx12 B/O's have more of an issue with people boarding with the SBS ticket than with actual farebeaters, go figure.

As for the eagle teams, at least pre-Covid I'd only see them along the Bx12 consistently in the AM. They were far more sporadic in the PM. Heck, one time I saw them out and about at 5:30 in the morning and were doing checks on the very first bus of the day 😄 (but that was ages ago)

To be fair, I used to see the Special Forces wannabes Eagle Team pop up semi-regularly on the eastbound Bx12 on the stretch from Third to Jerome Avenue, usually between 12 and 4 PM.

One time the bus got stuck in traffic and red lights at a point where passengers could see the Eagle dudes waiting at the stop, 100 feet ahead.  Some woman with two kids started crying because she had been caught before and hadn't paid the previous fine; was afraid of getting arrested this time around.  Just as the inspectors boarded, a guy gave her his SBS ticket and slipped out the rear door unnoticed before the Eagle people got to the back of the bus.

F**king irresponsible, if you ask me. 

1 hour ago, Lawrence St said:

The 748 is a regular route that goes from Pompton to Paterson (even though it should go Pompton to Willowbrook).

I meant regular in the sense of running more than a single AM trip to Paterson and a single PM trip to Pompton.  And as someone who's been in and out of that part of Passaic County for over 20 years and counting, sending everything to Willowbrook just isn't a genuine solution.  Not everyone is trying to get to a mall in a dead-end part of Wayne.

There's plenty of Passaic residents right now that are driving to work within the state (Paterson, Fort Lee, Hoboken, Jersey City, Newark) at least in part because NJT only gives them the option of going to PABT.  Not everyone works in NYC.  Much the opposite in fact.  Factor in the wait times at the mall, and it's no wonder that so many cars clog up the Jersey highways. 

Nobody wants to take public transit if it means making two transfers and taking three hours just to get across county lines. 

Although I'm generally skeptical to any initiatives that try to hold the MTA or the Albany bosses accountable (seeing how so many efforts have fallen flat on their face over the years), one thing I do feel very strongly about is that the ill-conceived mandate for biennial fare increases needs to be repealed, whatever amount of citizens' initiative or protest it requires.

If memory serves me correctly, it was a last-minute corollary that came up late in the 2008 MTA bailout negotiations, and was forced on the agency by Malcom Smith and his caucus cronies in the State Senate (the same prick that was imprisoned on corruption a few years later).  The relief turned out to be temporary anyway, because the state raided a similar amount in funding away from the agency not long afterwards, leading to the service cuts going through as originally planned.

Given the exceptional (even by NYS standards) amount of bad faith, smoke-blowing, water-muddying, horse-trading and other crap that surrounded that particular deal, I would say the bullshit biennial fare increases are a prime candidate for elimination.