QM1to6Ave

3 minutes ago, CyclonicTrainLookout said:

The MTA has announced the reopening of public bathrooms for the first time since the pandemic started at 9 stations across the four boroughs on Monday, January 9. Bathrooms will be open from 7 am to 7 pm, with a one-hour closure for cleaning from 12 pm to 1 pm. https://new.mta.info/press-release/mta-announces-18-public-bathrooms-will-reopen-monday-jan-9

I'm sure those cleanings will happen on schedule every day LOL

7 hours ago, 40MntVrn said:

At this point, and aside from 'ceremonial reasons', there's no need to open if it's not 100%. They should scrap the whole shuttle plan and just wait to open in its entirety vs a piecemeal that doesn't serve the target audience.

 

I can see benefits to the shuttle plan, so they can do a "soft opening" and catch problems before they have the full schedule going. Sort of like a new restaurant's soft opening. 

3 hours ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

They have over the last few years, at our behest.  They did so last year as well.  If they don't, I reach out and ask for them to be posted.  This year however, they were not as readily available, so I've asked for that to be addressed. They actually weren't sure where they were originally.  

  

Drivers taking off for the last days of the year... And yes, traffic was heavy today when I went in.  Coming back it was a zoo. I can't recall it being so busy in the early afternoon.  I think someone offloaded some tourist buses or something in the area.  Most places were mobbed... 

Haha those tourists better be spending $$$ to make it worth this traffic. At least it's light once the bus gets out of the city, but damn, it's taking longer than usual to go up 6th ave this week!

1 hour ago, BM5 via Woodhaven said:

Interesting, didn't know that they released timetables for the last week of December, for the NYCT express routes. Usually they don't, but it's a step in the right direction.

X27: https://new.mta.info/document/103106

X28: https://new.mta.info/document/103111

X63: https://new.mta.info/document/103116

X64: https://new.mta.info/document/103121

X68: https://new.mta.info/document/103126

A number of CP exp runs were missing this morning, but i wasn't really surprised by that. 

The afternoon traffic in the city this week has surprised me, it's been heavier than I remember past years on christmas week. But then again, tourism is back to high levels again this year

3 hours ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

My folks are on vacation until January. When I speak with them, I'll ask where things are with that, but there is a team that's been working on OMNY.  They've been having a lot of programming/software issues, which has continued to delay the next phases.  Just recently heard that the LIRR/Metro-North phase was pushed back again until 2025!  That was supposed to be ready in 2023 or thereabouts... Smh...

Thanks for following up! Wow, that is super disappointing to hear. Somehow I bet this programming team isn't the best and brightest from silicon Valley...

@Via Garibaldi 8 any updates on when the Express Bus Plus 7-day program (or any equivalent express bus savings program) will get added to OMNY?

I was thinking about this today as I cursed out the MVM that ate my metrocard as I was trying to add another 7-days EXP bus pass to it. One of those MVM repair workers, with the PPA agent in tow, happened to be there, but when I showed him the receipt saying "card not returned, add value failed" he said "I can't do anything, you have to buy a new card" in a tone suggesting that I was bothering him while he was performing delicate brain surgery.

So then I had to call the Metrocard number and file a complaint, which will take 4 weeks to resolve! I will also be challenging the charge once it posts to my credit card, but this is ridiculous and I had to lay out an extra $62 to buy a new card.

I know OMNY isn't perfect by any means, but at least my card can't get eaten up by a machine...

26 minutes ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

Well it's kind of like when BusTime/BusTrek came out. They would have drivers hold at certain locations and they were strictly enforcing it. They stopped that after a few weeks.  Problem is oversight varies from borough to borough and even line to line.

Problem is it's going to pour out (as it is now), then quickly turn to frigid cold temperatures within a few hours.  It's going to be very difficult to get anything down that won't be washed away before the cold comes. Some areas are already flooded, which further complicates things, as anything that doesn't dry out will be frozen over quickly.

My friends in the Rockaways said they are already massively flooded. I can't even imagine what happens to the standing water on Rockaway Tpke if it suddenly freezes and turns to a literal block of ice.

48 minutes ago, Lawrence St said:

Wasn’t that snowstorm that Andrew said wasn’t going to big and ended up gridlocking the whole city?

Probably LOL. It was such a mess. People sitting in cars for 8 hours. I remember getting on the express bus at 57th st, we went all of 1 block in 25 mins, and I had to argue with the B/O to let me out so I could take the subway instead. I couldn't believe the other passengers were willing to sit on that bus for god knows how many hours till they got to Queens.

2 minutes ago, Lawrence St said:

I get union rules and all but how did they let them get away with this level of laziness for the past 4 years?

I watched another MTA employee ask someone in the booth to open the gate because they couldn’t reach their pass but it was in plain view (they were holding a lot of stuff) and the agent told them to do it themselves and have an attitude.

Seriously, where is the management???

I spoke to a station supervisor once who said that it really depends on whether the station supervisor actually cares about supervising/disciplining the S/As in their stations.

But yeah, since covid, the S/As have had so little work to do and still give an attitude. Some have gotten good about getting NYPD to remove homeless folks sleeping on the floor, so that's a positive lol

I really hope DSNY is on top of sanding/salting all the roads today. I saw some salt spreaders out earlier, but the potential for black ice tonight is immense, and giving me flashbacks to Halloween 2018 (I think) when we had a huge ice storm and the whole city gridlocked because there was no salt on the roads.

On 12/21/2022 at 8:13 AM, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

There is no oversight. That's the real problem. In other cases, I've been standing at a terminal with dispatchers there and pissed off passengers and they'll say they can't do anything about it. Has to come from Command... Well what's the point of having dispatchers there if they can't make adjustments? 

There was some pilot program the MTA mentioned a while back where the GPS would be used to give B/Os instructions on a digital screen on whether to slow down or speed up to keep even pacing with their leaders and followers. I never saw any evidence this was put into action lol

2 hours ago, N6 Limited said:

Oh yeah! Did they silently end that program? Or was there an official announcement?

I don't remember ever reading anything official, those red jackets sort of just disappeared, and the SAs were back to sleeping in their booths lol

I remember they tried something similiar years ago, where the SAs were given these red coats to walk around in

13 hours ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

Yes, and I let the  know that it's better, but we'd like the overhead blowers circulating air, esp. now with COVID cases increasing again.

I got MCIs both ways today.  It was cold enough for me to eventually close the overhead vents.

Yes, please! I think the overheads are tbe ones connected to the HEPA filters, so they are so important!

13 hours ago, N6 Limited said:

I guess it will be convenient to buy a joint ticket from one’s home station, but the cost savings for them will be $0.25 during peak Metro North trips. Otherwise (outside of peak) City Ticket from Grand Central would be more economical.

——

The joint ticket seems to benefit “reverse” commuters more, since the first half of the trip is the off-peak rate, and the transfer fee is $8 regardless if it’s peak or not.

The $8 transfer fee does not introduce dual off-peak (weekends, midday) savings until origin-destination pairs are outside of NYC. Especially,  those going further distances, like trips between Suffolk and Northern Westchester/Hudson Valley/CT.  For trips between Western Nassau and Southern Westchester , the savings are $0.75-$1.25. (Which does add up, to be fair).

Does the Atlantic Ticket still exist?

The Prevosts' HVACs are definitely getting fixed slowly but surely. And now I know why those buses were almost creepily quiet when they first came out...the HVAC wasn't turned on properly! I can't believe no one in quality control realized this for almost a year.

1 hour ago, trainfan22 said:

An MTA Property Protection Agent shot someone at Union Street on the train tonight. First time I heard of those PPA actually shooting someone.

 

 

For those who don't know, PPA are the armed guards who guard the employees who work on the MVM. This shooting supposedly happened due to an argument, not an robbery.

 

 

 

From the articles posted so far, it sounds pretty justified to me. Guy (probably mentally ill) with numerous arrests threatens to hurt these guys, follows them, and then threatens to take the PPA's gun and shoot him. Sounds like reasonable fear of imminent harm leading to a justified shooting in self-defense.

1 hour ago, R32 3838 said:

probably more to the story, Just like how everyone jumped the gun on the NJT driver for shooting those animals. We will find out the real reason probably in the morning on what really happened.

What NJT story are you referring to?

3 hours ago, paulrivera said:

Metro-North/LIRR combo tickets incoming: https://new.mta.info/fares/combo-ticket

The only problem I have is there's no joint City Ticket...

I wonder how many people will use this ticket (or in other words, how many people are traveling from an MNRR station to an LIRR station? I can imagine that is a lot slower than driving in many cases.

On 12/16/2022 at 11:53 AM, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

Has anyone been experiencing leaks from the roof on the new Prevost express buses when it rains? I know this has been an issue on the older Prevosts, particularly those on the Staten Island lines. Ridiculous.

I have not personally seen that occur, but I still get MCIs a majority of the time, so my data may be skewed

21 hours ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

These buses are brand new.  Destination signage, poor HVAC and a host of other issues... Most of the drivers say that these buses are garbage and quite frankly, I have to agree with them.

Yeah, I have heard BOs say they will only take out an MCI from the depot 

The MTA really should have an employee in charge of quality control for each bus fleet. This is ridiculous. Or maybe that job does exist but the person doesn't care at all about it

3 hours ago, Jsunflyguy said:

That's because they haven't

The notice to cross honor wasn't posted until the weekend before it went into effect for the , I just looked now and there is no history of such a notice for the , in fact I have no idea what you're talking about. 
Typically for short term outages the stationmaster will inform the conductor as they are approaching Jamaica or leaving the western terminal. If you are in a car being serviced by a regular collector it is unlikely they were monitoring the radio to hear this and may not be aware until they see the conductor, if they ever make contact. But the company doesn't pay enough for employees to develop telepathy, they have to actually give the information.

So my takeaway is that there is a larger systemic issue of poor communication between supervision and front line employees, which is par for the course with the MTA, sadly 

13 hours ago, Trainmaster5 said:

I think it’s a little bit more complicated than that. A pre-planned cross honoring is one thing. An emergency situation is another thing altogether. That authorization has to come from the LIRR supervision via the  itself. The Conductor cannot take it upon themselves to make that decision. Even if it seems to be obvious to all involved you’d have to be one dumb person to put your job on the line before you get the proper authorization. Just my opinion though. Carry on.

Of course, that makes perfect sense. I was referring to these pre-planned weekend track work projects (such as with the ), some of which occur for numerous weekends in a row, and folks on here have posted repeated frustrations that C/Rs hassle them and act as if they've never heard of the cross-honoring plans!

11 hours ago, trainfan22 said:

Just show them the service change on your phone if they don't believe you. I always have the page loaded up before I board. It happened to me once, I just showed the C/R the service change on the MTA website and that cleared everything up.

It's ridiculous that you have to do this, but that is good advice! Those C/Rs get paid well enough that they should be on top of this stuff