T to Dyre Avenue

But I'm not talking about that tunnel. I know exactly which tunnel is used by the . I was talking about the 63rd Street Tunnel under the East River that connects Queens and Manhattan. I was specifically addressing an earlier post by @ABCDEFGJLMNQRSSSWZ about how QB local riders cannot directly get to the 63rd St Tunnel without backtracking to Roosevelt Ave and transferring to the . I'm not really sure where all this confusion over tunnels is coming from.

The 63rd St Tunnel.

I agree with the first two paragraphs. The rest I don't and I'll tell you why. For one thing, local riders between 36th and 65th already can't directly access the 63rd St corridor without riding backwards to Roosevelt because neither the nor use that tunnel except in emergency reroutes (which aren't that much of a rare occurrence, thanks in some part to the current convoluted QBL service pattern). Now, if the were rerouted to the 63rd St Tunnel (as it was rumored the MTA was actually considering it back in 2019), then that wouldn't be an issue. Hillside express riders who want 53rd already have to transfer from the to the (they didn't have to prior to December 2001). As for a potential Queens-SAS service running express vs the , how would the 2nd Ave be on the "border" of Midtown any more so than 8th Ave? Large commercial real estate drops off significantly west of 8th Ave. Having a Queens-SAS service also mitigates the need for long and costly passageways that everyone speculates the will have in order to connect to any line that intersects it, other than the at 2nd Ave/Houston St and the at 14th.

If QB express riders from Jamaica specifically want the 8th Ave corridor, then yes, the should stay as is. Otherwise, I really don’t see why the Queens-SAS service shouldn’t be express in Queens. Making it local while running it alongside the in the 63rd St would create more merging in an area (36th St in LIC) that’s already got more than enough merge-related delays. And without building super-express tracks like in the 1968 MTA Program for Action, there is really not enough room for a useful fifth service on QBL.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again- there should be a Queens-SAS service south of 63rd St in addition to the . Either on its own line in Queens or via QBL, although the QBL option would give non- SAS trains a yard without having to deadhead there.

It makes sense to push back Astoria CBTC without also upgrading the Broadway Line in Manhattan to CBTC. What other lines can Astoria be connected to without doing a lot of extra work?

The would have likely been renamed with a completely different letter like , same as how the became the in mid-1985. I suppose they could have just merged the operations of the and into a single service right then rather than continuing to have the separate and services. Those two services eventually were merged in late 1988 into what has become the current train.

The are fine terminating at Broad, or no . Run the to Bay Ridge to supplement the . There’s no need for additional service via the Tunnel terminating at 9th Avenue or Bay Ridge via the , no matter what letter it has.

He and three other Bay Ridge pols suggested back in 2019 that Transit split the like so - Wonder if Brannan and Andrew Gounardes would want to have another go at it. Unfortunately Max Rose and Mathylde Frontus are out of office having lost to Republicans, at least one of whom is not quiet about her distaste for mass transit, especially for congestion pricing.

The R10 was a big departure from the R1/4/6/7/9 cars (aka the “Arnines”). And the R11 was a big departure from the R10, but only 10 of them were ever built.

Right. They might mix them to move them in the yard or if one train of type of R211s is disabled and they need another train to push it. But I can’t possibly fathom them running an R211A and R211T set in the same train in passenger service.

Honestly, I don’t really care. As long as it’s easy for riders to easily ID whether the train is a local, express or short-turning at Great Kills that’s what matters. If they want to do “SI” in a circle or diamond, I really don’t have a problem with it. I’m sure it’ll be better than the current cars which display the destination in tiny letters in the same place the route letter was displayed on the Transit R44s. I mean the new cars will display the train’s destination over the front door and have a second line to display Local or Express, if need be, same as the Transit R211s.

I still think it would have been better to just have a regular window there. This giant “SI” bullet will look silly and is pointless since there’s only one line.

If it weren’t for the big, bad Van Wyck, I’d suggest putting a station on the east side of Jamaica Yard near 77th Avenue that and trains can stop at, then loop around the yard to head back downtown. This is somewhat similar to what Broad Street Line trains do in Philadelphia at the Fern Rock station, but they loop around the yard first then stop at the station. Unfortunately, having to cross over the Van Wyck at 77th Avenue would probably not make such a station here in Queens.

I’m surprised they kept the round LED route sign like the Transit R211s have. I thought they were going to get a regular left-side window, like on the R142/142A series. I mean, it’s not like the SI R211s will operate on more than one line.

Wow. That IS a lot.

I think it would be worth it to fit a large electronic route sign up front on the older NTT’s where the insignia is, while refitting a destination display up top where the red LED route sign currently is. It would make it much easier for riders to identify their train from a farther distance.

The current DeKalb and CPW service plans put a limit on the number tph that can run on the and if half those trains ran peak express between Bay Pkwy and 9th Ave, the skipped stations would have very infrequent service. You’d have to run the more frequently for an express to be possible on the West End Line, but it’s just not possible under the current setup for the to run much more frequently.

The fact that the current proposal lacks a Queens service and doesn’t even plan for one definitely shows “tunnel vision” on the MTA’s part. With Utica, though, it’s really not easy to do it as anything other than an Eastern Pkwy extension, unless an entirely new line is built.

Yeah, looking back on what I wrote, I think a extension is probably the best for extending an existing line to Utica. You’d be able to provide more frequent service that way, even it is with smaller trains. This is true. Even with an extended replacing the , if the is in turn extended to Utica, you still have the issues with a bifurcated . While I don’t think this is necessarily a dealbreaker for a extension, it still won’t be able to run as frequently as a extension from Eastern Pkwy. But I don’t think a Utica line should be a one-borough glorified shuttle that terminates at Fulton St or Myrtle Ave.

So how many times per month can we count on 36th Street/Queens Plaza shitting themselves due to "network communications" problems? Twice? Three times?

Well, not exactly. Serious planning for the new tunnel started in 1963. (first at 61st, then 64th and finally 63rd - after objections from Rockefeller University over 64th). This would have been well after the Queens Blvd line was connected into the 60th St Tunnel in 1955. Supposedly, it was the 60th St connection that was meant to relieve the and (the NYCTA had also been experimenting with 11-car trains on both lines back then, which wasn’t hard to do with all single units). So I think they had planned for a 60th St connection all along and were finally able to do it in the 50s after they had simplified the service patterns into and out of nearby Queensboro Plaza in 1949. That was when the current pattern of through subway service between Astoria and the 60th St Tunnel. So there was excess capacity for another service in 60th. I was thinking the same thing about having a separate connecting platform on Utica for the while the and would stop on the existing Fulton St platform. This would also facilitate turning trains back if they were to run the as a shuttle during overnight hours.

The 63rd Street tunnel was not constructed to relieve congestion in the 60th St Tunnel. It was constructed to relieve overcrowding on the and lines, both of which were using the 53rd St Tunnel prior to 2002, by providing a super-express service through Queens on dedicated tracks located in the LIRR Main Line r-o-w, which largely runs parallel to the QB line. They started construction on the tunnel prior to the 1975 fiscal crisis, which put the kibosh on all but two of the MTA's Plan For Action projects (the 63rd St Tunnel and the Archer Ave extension). In the 1980s, the MTA made the decision to connect 63rd to the QBL, rather than leave a "Subway to Nowhere" dead-ending in Queensbridge. The could still serve 4th Ave, while the is diverted into the new connection. I'm not so sure Montague would become a bottleneck if this were to be done. I presume the , which would become a full-time service in this scenario, would run more frequently than the 6-7 tph currently provided by the , so there's your extra service if Fulton Local ever gains higher demand. Without the cutting onto the local tracks at 34th, the and can run more frequently, so there would be a more frequent for increased 4th Ave local service too. I'm not sure if using the existing upper-level station shell at Utica is feasible because that may require a sharp curve for northbound trains to join the Fulton Line. I'm no civil engineer, but you don't want to have tight curves because you want to avoid derailments in the tunnel. It's probably more likely they'd have to go under the existing subway to branch off to Utica.

Personally I like branching off from Montague because by having a third Fulton St service in the or would eliminate the need for the and to merge at Hoyt. This in turn could make it possible to have Utica Ave line branch off Fulton. Under the current plan, it’s not possible to do this because that would leave only the or serving Fulton east of Utica. But with the or running local in place of the , it can be moved to the express tracks and branch off Fulton at Utica, leaving two services on Fulton east of there - the and the or .

Those aren’t cab doors. They’re end doors or bulkhead doors. And the only ones I ever saw locked on subway cars shorter than 75ft are the ones at the very front and very end of the trains made up of pre-R44 cars, none of which had full-width cabs.