CenSin

The tracks to go to a separate level. It's in the plans already from the 2000s. The tracks are also supposed to fan out underground to provide about 6~8 storage tracks, 2 which are provisioned to continue to the Bronx. They end at 129 Street once built.

I've pretty much completed the basic map: it's the current system and service patterns with all the roads, routes, station markers, and labels for the stations. Any work will proceed from here. New_York_City_Metropolitan_Area_Map.pdf (7.71 MiB) The file opens in Adobe Acrobat X Reader (minimum).

By the way, Amtrak does not use all of its right-of-way. There's room for 6 tracks in the Bronx, but it has been reduced to 2 tracks. What do you do with the space for 4 more tracks? Work things out, and the subway will come really cheap—possibly cheaper than light rail. Of course, not every place has extra space just to plop a subway on top of. The Bronx just so happens to have this. Anyway, the reason subways are claimed to be cheaper in the long run is not the immediate monetary cost, but the effect on the surrounding ecosystem. By building lower capacity transportation, you physically cap the growth of a region to a certain level. Imagine replacing even a single East River tunnel between Queens and Manhattan today with a light rail or BRT line. The ridership was definitely not there when some of these lines were built, but had the city or companies operating the transportation went for cheaper options, Queens would not have grown so much. Stunted growth is a residual, ongoing cost that will make the community pay for a long time. That's why compromising on transportation is such a bad idea.

I think this might take the pressure off to build an actual subway. If light rail is in place, it won't improve transportation as much as a subway, nor integrate as well, and at the same time it will be used as an excuse to not build a subway for a long time to come. It's an all-or-nothing game. Southeastern Brooklyn is a bit more difficult to get subway service to. While the Bronx will have the opportunity to connect new branches to a brand new 2 Avenue line, Brooklyn only has 3 existing (and overcrowded) lines that can be extended to provide coverage (Nostrand Avenue, Eastern Parkway, and Canarsie). If there were a new Brooklyn trunk line (running through the Broadway station on the Crosstown line or via Atlantic Avenue) and a lot less NIMBYism, we'd have two of the prerequisite elements needed for a successful extension into southeastern Brooklyn.

I looked this up while drawing my geographically accurate subway map. There actually are 3 big gaps in the Bronx where coverage is solely by bus. The official map will have you believe otherwise.

According to the article, the tail end would be for the MetroNorth riders. The Lexington riders get the front end.

This is an article from about 2 months ago: Source: The MTA Wants to Deny the Bronx a New Subway | Suite101.com I was under the impression that a station at 125 Street and 2 Avenue wasn't possible due to the water or impediment to future extension to the Bronx. Any comments?

I've uploaded a PDF draft here: http://bayfiles.com/file/2eIN/txymnA/New_York_City_Metropolitan_Area_Map.pdf. It contains my own annotations and comments. (You can edit them.) See if you can draw on top of my map.

Where are you talking about? Name the regions if all the roads you're mentioning aren't in the same geographical area. I'm not really a fan of circuitous route though (like the ), hence soliciting ideas even though there are many obvious ones; I do read the threads here.

I mentioned making one a long time ago in this thread: http://www.nyctransitforums.com/forums/f22/accurate-scale-subway-map-18506.html So a few days ago, I started out with some map data from Open Street Maps and began plotting the lines and station markers. I haven't gotten to typing the station names yet, but I'm already thinking about soliciting good ideas (emphasis on good). Below is a thumbnail linking to a full-sized JPEG map of the subway system as it is currently built and operated. I've highlighted areas that need: faster service in yellow; any kind of additional service in gray; and a lot of service in red. (Click the thumbnail for a full-sized image.) You can probably tell by the image that I do not consider the gray areas very important, but there was empty space there, so if you've got a good suggestion, go right on ahead and mention it. Name the areas you are making a suggestion for and explain your reasoning; the areas are labeled by letter. Make the assumption that the outer borough populations and businesses have grown and places like Downtown Brooklyn have become comparable to Midtown Manhattan. (The is not useless compared to its Manhattan-bound brethren anymore.) There are a few obvious cases already (such as 3 Avenue, Bronx and 2 Avenue, Manhattan being served by a ). I've proposed some extensions already, but they're open for commenting before I commit to them. Here's a full PDF version: New_York_City_Metropolitan_Area_Map.pdf EDIT [2012-02-04]: There will be plenty of errors on the map like missing station markers or markers on the wrong streets. EDIT [2012-02-05]: A PDF with annotations is now available. You can read and add your own comments to it.

The last time I took a statistics and probability class was a year ago (and I've forgotten nearly everything), so I'm not going to go into detail, but: Trains have a schedule, but there are many many random factors that cause trains to deviate from the arrival and departure time including the train conductor and operators themselves. It's safe to say that the intervals between trains will be random and with a high variation since West 4 Street is pretty much many stations away from any terminal along the lines that serve it except for the . If trains arrived and departed instantaneously, #1 would not cause any problems. However, when a train arrives to make a stop at any station, it will always occupy the station for a certain amount of time greater than the time it would take to simply bypass the station. I would put the average dwell time at 1 minute. At around 30 trains per hour, that leaves a gap of 1 minute between trains ideally. And given that trains never arrive on-the-dot…

They should turn back the trains at 96 Street, and terminate the trains at Times Square or 34 Street. Between Times Square and 34 Street, there's effectively one track to turn around trains. At least Grand Central has two.

It's the only instance, and it's not used as much as Roger's Junction. :\

I recall the DeKalb Avenue junction used to be at grade. They changed it to flying junctions. At Chambers Street, the at grade Manhattan Bridge tracks are no longer in service.

The IRT also has the worst line designs of all three. Sharp curves that slow down trains are abundant. There are still useless tracks and switches from the long bygone era of short trains that decrease throughput. An at-grade junction slows down everything on the busiest line in Brooklyn.

The IND lines were theoretically designed for maximum speed compared to the BMT and IRT, though that's been taken away since the unnecessary addition of timers.

I'll stick with what's physically realistic and say… : Astoria/Coney Island; Broadway Express, via Manhattan Bridge, 4 Avenue Express, Sea Beach Local : Midtown/Coney Island; Broadway Express, via Manhattan Bridge, Brighton Express; this'll get me to Manhattan a hell lot faster than any other line

It'll be possible when we get bombarded by some weird particles from some cosmic event which will interact with the atmosphere to emit radiation which happens to appear purple to the naked eye. Such an event has never been documented, but when that happens, it'll probably not be the butterflies, flowers, and peace we so dream about (or so Ftrainfan thinks we dream about), but the end of the world.

The subway bullets use a custom font, so you won't be able to figure out what font it is just by looking there. Rather, you'll have to examine and compare to find the best match. For me, the looks closest to the one from Akzidenz-Grotesk; Arial will also make a fine substitute if you don't have the decades-old font.

Akzidenz-Grotesk and Helvetica I use a combination of them to reproduce the signages. The , for example, isn't Helvetica, but Akzidenz-Grotesk. You'll see the Helvetica R sometime, but that's incorrect, though the MTA makes this mistake often and people see it as a "sanctioned variant." I believe the used the Akzidenz-Grotesk form at one point, but it appears that all the bullets use the Helvetica form now.

In Inkscape, there should be a toolbar to the left (in the default configuration). Select the tool to draw Beizer curves and stright lines. It works identically to the pen tool in Illustrator. You might want to work on drawing it while the map is magnified to make the extension as seamless as possible. In Illustrator, you can snap the lines' end points.

Inkscape is the best free vector graphics editor you can get you hands on. I will have to warn you though: it's not as robust as Illustrator and will become laggy on huge PDF files such as the MTA map (and especially my fantasy map).

It's a shame I didn't keep a copy of the base map after cleaning it, but you can make one from the PDF provided by the MTA. You have to unprotect the PDF first though, and there are services online that do it for you. From there, however, it gets very messy because the lines, bullets, letters, and other graphics are mixed together into a soup and you have to pick out the useful pieces.