R10 2952

On 11/16/2021 at 4:30 PM, darkstar8983 said:

They should just order enough cars to outright replace all non-NTT cars in one go.

On 11/16/2021 at 8:46 PM, Around the Horn said:

They'll probably put out an order to do just that once the R262 bid gets back on track.

Where exactly do you expect the MTA to get the money to replace the R68/As early?  They've been having a difficult enough time getting sufficient federal funding as it is, and if Congress goes Republican in 11 months, the MTA can forget about more fed money coming down the line.  Absent that, I just don't see this financially over-leveraged transit agency or its overlords in Albany ponying up the cash on their own.  At this rate, the most they might be able to afford in a few years is a handful of flatcars from ACF...

Does nobody read the Washington DC section of the newspaper anymore? Have people not learned anything from all the Manchin-Sinema drama of the last few months? 

A previous termination that was involuntary will be used by any HR organization, public or private, to stack the deck against a candidate.  If they made you disclose the firing upfront on the job application and you didn't provide them with a satisfactory explanation, chances are they could be using that against you.

As to the civil summons you received for fare evasion, unless you disputed it and successfully beat that ticket, it counts as a Class A misdemeanor and most likely you will have to disclose it if asked for a background check, unless things have changed.  I know that I was required to disclose a similar offense (from when I was an adolescent, no less) when applying for many public-sector, civil-service type jobs, at least for the first few years after I became a legal adult.

In the alternative, have you tried applying for a similar job with NYPL, QPL or BPL (the public libraries)? They directly hire custodial staff- good benefits, steady environment. 

@jass A big part of the problem with NJT is apathy on the part of most riders.  Only a few people here and there will be vocal about service improvements, whereas the vast majority choose (for whatever reason) to suffer in silence.  Throw into the mix NIMBYs and suburban Jerseyites who are openly anti-transit, and that's how you end up with a system where people can get from Lakewood to PABT all hours of the day, but you won't find a single regular-service bus that goes from Freehold to Trenton, Pompton to Paterson, or Butler to Newark.

What drives me up the wall the most is that each of the random examples I mentioned above used to not just have bus options, but actual rail connections back in the day, some of which are still used for freight.  Unfortunately, although NJ has a lot of potential in terms of developing an all-inclusive bus and rail network, instead of 'build it and they will come', too often the Jersey modus operandi (outside of the hub connections to NYC and Newark) seems to be 'destroy it and push them away'.

Not the best use of public resources in my opinion, but par for the course, unfortunately.

1 hour ago, Trainmaster5 said:

I’ve been trying to point this out to the forum for years. If the business locations are Midtown East or West the quickest route is south from 125th to Grand Central. What happened instead is a sop, a useless bone, thrown into the project without any real justification. I’m guessing that only a few people think this idea was worthwhile. As one of my mentors called some fellow posters years ago “ your little Lionel’s” because they didn’t live in the real world according to him. A man known throughout the subway system as “ TA” . An Insider respected by everyone. Just my opinion. Carry on.

Yes, I just pointed the real-life aspect out in another thread today about the whole deinterlining fixation some of them have.  They got defensive 😆  "Lionel" is an accurate term for it, very much so.

If they took the time to scratch the surface, peel away the layers of the onion, they'd have a moment of reckoning and realize how backwards, corrupt and non-changing the public transportation state of affairs really is, not just in NY or the Northeast, but the US in general.  The fact that most small towns in America were better-connected by rail 60 or 70 years ago than they are today, speaks volumes.

At this point, the only way I think I'll ever see better transit is by moving.  To Europe.

The entire 125th Street section to connect with Metro-North is an unnecessary spur that was forced on the MTA by the suburban Westchester members of the Board.

The original plan for the Second Avenue Subway was always to go north into the Bronx, not west along 125th. 

On 11/10/2021 at 5:21 PM, Metro CSW said:

Is this still a thing? I feel like no updates has surfaced about a "Split (R)" for years now.....

It's not a thing at all anymore.  No updates from the pols, just Wally beating his horsemeat about a fantasy revived <R> train...

14 hours ago, Eric B said:

It's not being afraid of change, but on the other hand, it looks like I'm dealing with wild ideas of change just for the sake of change, as this just fits right in with everyone talking about "deinterlining" everywhere which seems to be the new fad. There's a cost-benefit ratio, and deinterlining might just move the problem of traffic convergence somewhere else. If they thought it would really solve delays much they would have done it. They already deinterlined the  and  uptown, because the extended  was only a rush hour service anyway, and historically, the local to 168 was always 8th Av. with it turning into the  rush hours; so they could get away with complete deinterlining, and apparentely, not many people complained. It also helped consolidate the districts, since they regrouped it "North" and  "South", and the equipment is to some extent shared on both pairs of lines.

All this other deinterlining people talk about, like the lines going into Coney Island won't have that benefit since the lines are already sharing a terminal and yard. And more people want direct access to more than one trunk line. Remember when they "deinterlined" local/express service on Hillside Ave. by sending the  to 179 so the  could stay on the express with the (which looked like it made sense on paper). The people on four local stations were loud enough to get the service pattern changed back. 
So using the subway for LGA access as another occasion for these deinterlining schemes I don't think is worth the trouble. With the Cuomo plan, most people leaving the airport wouldn't be thinking "Oh, we're heading east instead of west"; they would hear on the train that the next stop is the transfer to the  and LIRR (and the latter would still be faster into the city than a local subway route), and I liked the idea because it made it possible to connect LGA to JFK, eventually.

Agree 100 percent with your take on the whole deinterlining thing.  It's really refreshing to see actual transit personnel provide solid counterpoints to the transit-planning wannabes on these boards.

Simply put, the trips aren't happening until the dust settles from the ongoing situation.  They're not bringing anything back until they get the free-and-clear from the politicians in DC and/or Albany.  Read any newspaper and you'll see that public officials are in no rush to relax coronavirus restrictions anytime soon. 

Yeah, I wouldn't count on fantrips coming back anytime soon.  Not as long as all the current restrictions on everything remain in place.

23 hours ago, paulrivera said:

I don't know why they didn't do something like this to get rid of all the circuitous business involving the Bx10 and Bx28.

17 hours ago, Gotham Bus Co. said:

Which is why the route looks like an electrocardiogram. 

I would have suggested streamlining with a slight extension for better connectivity:  Current path into Sedgwick, then right Goulden, left Bedford Park, left Jerome, right Van Cortlandt Av East, left Bainbridge, right Gun Hill, to White Plains Rd.

16 hours ago, Lawrence St said:

I'm sorry, but all these communities who don't want routing change screw up the redesign for everyone else.

At this point, is only 20% of the original draft plan being implemented? That's ridiculous.

16 hours ago, BrooklynBus said:

Buford's Revision plan a not making only a few tweaks. Guess once he left, someone was too lazy to do a real redesign. 

13 hours ago, BrooklynBus said:

Doesn’t mean it is not possible to design competent plan that helps more than it hurts. Or is the MTA not capable of that?

If a community is opposed to a change, the MTA should develop alternatives to accomplish the same purpose, not just say, okay we will just leave the route as is. 

13 hours ago, Lawrence St said:

Exactly. There was a reason why they changed those routes in the first place.

Just because a community is opposed to change doesn't mean you just don't change the route at all.

5 hours ago, Lawrence St said:

The community strongly apposed cause they don't want anything to change.

With that mentality we'll never get anywhere with these redesigns, needs to toughen up honestly.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who sees through the MTA's bad-faith excuses, smokescreens and outright bullshit regarding the Bx1/2/10 routing in the Jerome Park area.  In it's current form, it doesn't work and frankly never has.  You would think with all the people ditching mass transit for cars in droves now, the agency would be trying to attract people to its services, not push them away.  Choosing to fix something that is very much broken is not progress- it's malaise.

@Via Garibaldi 8@MysteriousBtrain I don't know where you two get off lecturing me on a route that I rode nearly every day, east of Broadway, for over 10 calendar years.  The vast majority of the riders who stayed on the bus past Broadway were trying to get to the , or employees of the medical facilities east of Jerome.  Having the Bx10 go straight to Mosholu station instead of making that awkward detour to Bedford would have made the morning commute a lot easier for us working folks.

A bunch of AARP busybodies and helicopter parents shouting at a hearing is not representative of the entire community.  You think the rest of us sat tight and did nothing? You have any idea how many of our letters received canned responses or were flat-out ignored? Or the turds the agency was squeezing out when people in Spuyten Duyvil were practically pleading with them to fix the Bx20? 

Same nonsense as when I was growing up in Queens.  The Q38 sucked performance-wise and made no sense routing-wise (two very related issues).  The only people happy with it were senior citizens with too much time on their hands.  Everyone else hated dealing with it, but had no other choice.

2 hours ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

Listen, my Assemblyman proposed splitting the Bx10 into two routes because of the complaints about it being unreliable, but ultimately the people that use the route spoke and this is what they want, and they don't want to lose access to anything, including places like Lehman College and Bronx HS of Science. I personally don't use it with any regularity, save maybe once or twice a year if I hop on it a few stops along Henry Hudson Parkway and then get off and walk to Metro-North, but I do realize how slow it is. 

Personally, I was surprised that basically the line was left untouched, but even the one stop they proposed to eliminate is being kept (2735 Henry Hudson Parkway) and that's because I believe that stop serves a doctor's office. There are always people waiting there, so I'm sure people complained. There are also many elderly people that use the Bx10 and so they are concerned about stop spacing, etc. That's why looking at a bus passing by doesn't tell the whole story.

This press conference mentions crosstown local routes and complaints riders had about proposed changes to some lines. I believe the Bx28 and Bx34 are mentioned. 

Hell, even when I attended a meeting a few years ago, there were a section of people there specifically for the Bx34, mainly seniors.

Except Dinowitz was proposing increasing the Riverdale-Broadway short turns, not fixing the circuitous Bx1/2/10 routing mess near the reservoir, east of Broadway and west of Jerome Avenue.  Also, his absence at that press conference tells me all I need to know.  Not that 30 minutes of political windbags stroking their own egos makes much difference, in the grand scheme of things.

And what exactly are you trying to say about people not wanting to lose access to the schools? Bronx Science is one block from Mosholu Parkway, Lehman College is two.  The under-30 crowd can easily walk that distance; what would senior citizens have to do with it?

If some people are resisting change solely for resisting change, that's another issue.  What I do know is that as someone who rode the Bx10 every day for over a decade, most regular riders were pissed about the winding, non-direct route to the , as well as the delays the poor routing helped create.  I didn't see anyone shouting to keep that route as-is.

3 minutes ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

The Bx10 wasn't changed because people that use the route want that connection, so they kept it. That's all it comes down to. Many people want that connection to have access to the hospitals such as Montefiore. We also have a lot of seniors here in Riverdale that are served by people that live east of Broadway. East-West connections are something that was discussed in general and the need to improve them, and it's difficult because of the topography, but the  promised that they would not sever access to things like hospitals, etc.

Except nobody from west of Broadway would be losing access if the Bx10 went to Norwood via Mosholu from Sedgwick- it would actually make the route faster and more direct. 

On 11/3/2021 at 11:41 AM, Lex said:

I'll reiterate that the Bx10 and Concourse buses exist.

On 11/3/2021 at 3:50 PM, NBTA said:

Yeah I don’t know why they continue to run the buses down there. I passed a couple today, bucket empty.

That whole area southwest of Gun Hill Road, east of Bailey Avenue, and west of Jerome-Concourse has always been a paragon of poor planning.  The   roundabout route to Bedford Park Boulevard, and the  and  duplicating each other makes a person think the routing was just drawn up at random.  If anything, the Bx10 should be serving the  at Mosholu, and either the Bx1 or the Bx2 should be heading south down Sedgwick and Reservoir to Bedford Park.

He was on these boards? What was his handle?

Ah, CBTC.  Wave of the future, my ass.

On 10/25/2021 at 4:37 PM, Lex said:

Something tells me the reason for not doing this is the short stretch around Fordham Road (yes, I know that's a boneheaded reason, but we're not exactly talking about the best and brightest here).

Amen to that.  In a similar vein, I applied for a civil service job once where I met both minimum qualifications, but was rejected because they said "you need to meet either qualification, you can't meet both".  In their world, 1+1 doesn't equal 2, it equals 0.  Narrow-minded, petty bureaucratic idiots. 

21 hours ago, Future ENY OP said:

One of the best OG shows. The year I wanted to intern for Transit Transit production ended.  Would of been a good foot into NYCT and it’s production team.  

I feel that.  Especially now when a lot of the public-sector jobs list minimum qualifications, but emphasize "preferred qualifications".

Personally, I wonder what will happen up north across the border; Greyhound Canada went under several months ago and nobody has stepped in yet to fill the void.

Going to have to disagree with you on those points.  There are regular heritage steam operations elsewhere (England, Germany, even Poland) and they have no problems with access to usable coal.  Likewise, they don't attach diesel locomotives to the train, not for braking, not for anything.  In other places, it's a non-issue.

Only in America do people hem and haw about this stuff.  The heritage railroading scene in this country is a joke compared to Europe.  The fact that nobody in the government has had the nuts to challenge CSX on their steam ban is case-in-point to me.

https://blockclubchicago.org/2021/10/20/7-years-after-laquan-mcdonald-was-murdered-chicagoans-protest-rahm-emanuel-as-he-vies-for-ambassadorship/

"CHICAGO — Seven years ago, police officer Jason Van Dyke shot 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times on the Southwest Side. It was more than a year before footage of the teen’s death became a global flashpoint for police violence and nearly four years before Van Dyke was convicted for murdering him.

To mark the anniversary of McDonald’s murder Wednesday, organizers rallied Downtown to honor the slain teen and protest former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, whose administration tried to block the release of videos showing Van Dyke shooting McDonald.

Speakers from progressive and abolitionist movements spoke near a poster of McDonald’s high school graduation photo. Many said they’d woken up on the anniversary of his killing feeling unwell and disturbed.

Hours before their demonstration, Emanuel sat before senators in Washington, D.C., in hopes of being confirmed as the ambassador to Japan. If he’s confirmed, it will be Emanuel’s first major government role since he decided not to run for re-election as mayor in the wake of the McDonald scandal.

For some Chicagoans, the former mayor’s attempt to return to a high-profile role is hard to swallow — particularly as their fight against systemic racism and police violence continues. Organizers said Emanuel is being “white washed” by a Democratic White House.

“He failed our city. He covers up the murder of a 17-year-old,. He closed 50 schools on the South and West sides. He closed mental health clinics throughout the city of Chicago,” Calloway told the crowd. “You think that’s the best qualified candidate to represent the United States as an ambassador? Say that ain’t right.”

Here's a random thought: in the beginning, I was skeptical about Penn Station Access for both Hudson Line (via West Side) and New Haven (via NEC) trains, but after coming around to the idea of Hudson trains running down the West Side into Penn, I now also realize New Haven trains to Penn make sense because it would take pressure off of the Harlem Line, especially during rush hour.

Perhaps getting New Haven trains off the Harlem Line would open up the door for restoring commuter service to Chatham?

Only other major issue I can think of is what would become of the New Haven stub between New Rochelle and Wakefield.  Maybe a case could be made for extending that westward somehow, either to the Hudson Line or the Putnam Branch...

I was thinking the other day about how the MTA's tunneling costs are so out of control, and how full elevated line construction over residential areas is a political non-starter in NYC, which leads me to the question: has the MTA produced any in-depth studies at what the Bronx extension of SAS would look like? Specifically, was the NYW&B right-of-way north and south of East 180th ever looked at as a potential route for a Second Avenue extension?

I was looking at a map and came around to the notion that the path of least resistance for a Bronx extension would simply be an el connecting the Eastchester Line south from 180th, over the New Haven railroad tracks (similar to how the Culver El ran above SBK freight tracks), to the Pelham Line north of Whitlock Avenue.  That would limit tunneling to an SAS Phase 2 connection from Third-138th under the Harlem River to Second Avenue in Manhattan.  The Pelham Line west of Elder Avenue could then be extended six blocks west and tied into the /.

5 goes to 241st or 238th, T goes to Dyre, 6 runs along Westchester all the way to 149th-Grand Concourse.

Perhaps a case could even be made for a short trunk line branching off and running along the old Port Morris right-of-way?

Sure, it's all just a pipe dream, but even so, I think it's no more hare-brained than MTA Capital Construction's budget-busting, deep-bore tunneling projects... 

They get what they pay for, I guess.  When corners are cut, there are certain effects.

If anything, this would actually vindicate the practice agencies had back in the day of splitting up orders into multiple contracts, with different manufacturers.  Placing a large order with one manufacturer is essentially putting all your eggs in one basket. 

Few years ago, the Access-A-Ride services started auctioning off their retired Crown Vics.  Extended wheelbase, just like the yellow cabs, but a lot less beat up than the regular taxis.  Had an opportunity to get one at the public auction for a great price, but ultimately didn't act on it. 

Idiotic that I didn't, because at this point (10 years after the car went out of production) the chances of me finding a deal like that (on the LWB version, no less)  are next to none.  

Time will tell; until then, who knows...