CenSin

lol. The former IRT, BMT, and IND were prolific, granting us a bounty of provisions to use. The new entity called the MTA is much less so, and it’s squandered provisions on suboptimal works like the 21 Street connector.

The tracks are on the east side of Church Street though, and even if it were under the west side, the Oculus structure doesn’t encroach on the road. It’s perfectly doable. The Broadway-Boradway extension on the other hand…

The emoji series, of course. 🍩 — the doughnut train, sponsored by Dunkin 🌮 — the taco train, sponsored by Taco Bell 🍆 — the eggplant train, sponsored by the American Eggplant Council

More to it than that. There were more problems further down along Sea Beach. Pretty good speed: less than 30 minutes from DeKalb Avenue to Coney Island–Stillwell Avenue (diagonal line added by me). But the was certainly not 30 minutes behind the .

My is running via Brighton express to Coney Island… something is seriously wrong with 4 Avenue right now and there’s only the local tracks available to serve 3 routes.

Yeah, but you have a whole two decades in between the capacity need and the ever showing up. Might as well add another service—say a detour via 6 Avenue local to Lower East Side–2 Avenue—to fill the gap in the meantime.

It could have been a worse clusterf***—connecting it only to the express tracks. The original plan with a Northern Boulevard station (possibly plus a transfer to Queens Plaza) and the super express would have given what the funders wanted without the bottlenecks.

Not to/from Coney Island… I’m talking about rush hour and midday weekdays. Sometimes I wonder if a bunch of them just get put in at 86 Street directly from the yard.

At least this one was publicized. The service was quietly reduced a while ago. Trains are like 15 minutes apart sometimes. That was unheard of except on the , , or night time service.

That’s basically my situation. WFH shaves 2 hours off commuting per day. I go in once a week for the office culture and that’s about it. This is going to have ripple effects. If office works go in less, there isn’t enough business to prop up the population of restaurants in the CBD, and so those workers get reduced as well. Who know what the new equilibrium will be. Sucks for the though. Service between Kings Highway and Coney Island is already horrendous. If they cut anything, I hope it’s the short turns.

I read that as "that's all he'll ever do about this problem."

Good f***ing god. 3 consecutive trains terminating at Kings Highway. Has nobody noticed the shitty service in supervision?

I thought this was common knowledge. It’s not rare to hear a conductor announce that a train is being held because it was ahead of schedule or to maintain even spacing of trains. In some cases it was obvious to anyone doing the AM/PM commutes like when southbound trains were held at Bay Parkway or northbound trains held at 59 Street during the Sea Beach track reconstruction period. Basically reads to the layperson: “we do not intend trips to be that quick because the average trip does not meet those high standards, so we have to add minutes to pad your commute.” That’s a technicality. People riding the trains are only interested in shortening their commute. I’m not saying the system as it runs is unjustifiable, but from a marketing/PR perspective, this does not come off positively.

There are 4 tracks, and one train screws up the whole line? Since it’s CBTC now, could the tracks not be dynamically reconfigured for service using any of the remaining tracks?

I have not seen these proposals, but it does make sense from the perspective of causing the least disruption. The work to sink the tunnel to 145 Street disrupts only the ’s remaining two stations. The can continue running uninterrupted for the most part while the construction is ongoing with the final disruption being to shut down service for connecting the tracks at the new junction. On the other hand, if the southbound tunnel from the Bronx had to be sunk, then both the and would be disrupted. The would be disrupted by the Harlem River, and both would be disrupted again when the junction finally gets connected.

Makes sense somewhat. If the Lexington and 7 Avenue routes are going to cross/merge, the might as well do it so that they’re getting something out of the merge. In the case of the and red , they’ll be serving stations together to the end of the New Lots Avenue branch instead of crossing paths for no other reason than to get to the other side. Any merges that do happen will be easier: trains on the local track can be queued from Nostrand Avenue to Kingston Avenue where they don’t hold back trains headed to Flatbush Avenue. In the reverse, and trains don’t wait in the tunnel, but are platformed at Utica Avenue while waiting for a merge window.

If any trains use the expanded yard as their new “base,” it would be nice if they stayed in service to 9 Avenue (assuming the normal route doesn’t include 9 Avenue) like the s do along Sea Beach.

rolling into Atlantic Avenue from the bridge. Sign on rear end.

Looking at the RFW videos, it seems to me that there is quite more leeway for a southward extension than a northward extension. Immediately north of 145 Street is an S-curve. It could be severe enough for the northbound track that gap fillers would be required. Looking at the platform from the south, the junction doesn’t seem too close to the station.

To all the old folks lacking the sophistication to understand that an express train does not go faster when it skips 0 stops, and that it often stalls between stations if the next one is the last stop… 🤦‍♂️ This lady at Sheepshead Bay was facing the when both the and trains entered the station simultaneously. She turned around to get on the to Brighton Beach even though the opened its doors first.

Natural selection is cruel. Misfits don’t live. That’s just the reality of it.

IMHO, she did a lot of things I wished Cuomo would have done, and stopped doing things that Cuomo did do (e.g., the backwards Air Train).

2 days in a row now… the expresses were so backed up, the locals overtook them. On one of the s, the T/O managed to beat the to Brighton Beach—the same that was blocking the from entering DeKalb Avenue. lol

But will they work?

Shhhhhh 🤫! The horse is listening.