T to Dyre Avenue

Can’t end the at Prospect Park without either fouling up the or having to run the even less frequently than now, so relaying trains don’t get in its way. We’ve (collectively - not just us railfans, but also the MTA and elected officials) got to think about better ways than just cutting service.

It really didn’t (and still doesn’t) surprise me that their original 2009 plan was to eliminate skip-stop and have even MORE trains dead-end in Lower Manhattan. The decision a year later to combine the and into the current service may have been one of the few times in recent history (after 1975) that the thought outside the box. Agreed that the alone would be insufficient for the Brighton Line. I wouldn’t mind if the ran express there instead of the , but getting rid of the Brighton Express entirely should definitely be a non-starter. There is a whole swath of south Brooklyn east of the Brighton where people take buses to connect with the subway at Sheepshead Bay and Kings Highway and if the only option there is a not-very frequent local , that’s going to encourage even more people to drive. That’s the LAST thing we should be doing.

They’d do reroutes over the . They’d reroute the over the (in 53rd), then the to DeKalb. As for the, it was rerouted over the in the event of a disruption in the 53rd St Tunnel itself.

To be fair, the actually did it back in 1990. To Canal St, in fact. I mean, it was only on weekends and there was no Fulton Transit Center like today, but still. But I agree, cutting the back to Chambers is the wrong way. Because there aren’t other options for saving money besides cutting subway service back to dreaded 2010, 1990 or 1976 levels? Is there not enough money to be saved by streamlining operations or cutting back on managerial positions? I mean, it’s not by accident that the has a reputation for being known as an agency with “lots of generals and not enough soldiers.” Maybe if some of these “generals” could either retire or be made to leave the agency some other way, we could start making the most of existing infrastructure instead of taking the knee-jerk attitude of “cut cut cut” every time there’s a budget crisis (some of which were self-inflicted, like 1975-76, 1990 and 2008-10). Agreed. The is not a useless line. Maybe it doesn’t have the ridership it once had, but yes, it gets ridership. And it would do even better if we had a transit agency that would learn how to cooperate better with the City and learn from the best practices of other transit agencies.

So the same dual-ping PA chime is being added to the R179s? That is interesting. I wonder if it’s going to be added to the other NTTs too. Interestingly, in other US cities, they use a tone similar to the R44-68s door closing chimes for PA announcements. I’ve heard it in Boston (old Red, Orange and Blue line cars), Philly (Broad Street Line) and LA (Red and Purple line cars). Also, Boston’s Type 8 LRVs on its Green Line have the same single ping for the PA as our NTTs.

Just a personal preference. I’m sorry if you have a problem with it.

It would have been great if they introduced trains like this back in the 90s. They remind me very much of the X2000 train that was brought here from Sweden and was tested on the Northeast Corridor, then barnstormed the rest of the country, and parts of Canada too.

I've suggested running the local and the express in the past. With the running to/from 71st Ave and the replacing the at Jamaica Center. I seem to get crickets for a response every time I bring that up. Not sure why. I mean, it would clear up the three big choke points (36th St, QP, 11th St Cut) that kneecap QBL and Astoria service. To be fair, this topic has been really quiet since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, probably because the have been hemorrhaging money and riders for much of the past two years, so few people, if any, want to talk about expansion or revising current services in the face of the current circumstances. But it doesn't have to be the . It could be the or . I prefer the because from a communications standpoint, it wouldn't be so great if QBL had three services that sound alike (F (eff), M (em), N (en)). But if it's just easier to extend the since 2nd Ave riders are already used to the , then I'm fine with that.

I’d honestly like to see them try 9-car trains on the . If I’m not mistaken, the BMT ran 8-car trains of Standards (67’-6” long apiece), which were 540’ long, same as a 9-car train of 60 footers, so it should be possible with R211s (or even R160s).

Definitely they should test the pilot R211T train on the and . But since the R211A is planned to be assigned to the and lines, the 30-day test should be done there. The closed gangways on the R211A cars will mean those cars will get to crush loads faster than the R160s because all R211s will have wider doors and fewer seats versus the older cars. The R211T’s will have less of an issue with that thanks to their open gangways, so QBL is a fine place to test them.

The R211T seems like it handled those ENY curves good. And I like how they signed it up as an , even though R211-series trains will likely not operate on the or the other ENY Yard-based lines for anytime soon.

Agreed. Much of the weekend service is bad, but people often opt for - and crowd - the because it runs more frequently and consistently than the . On weekends, there should really be more of an attempt to run the more frequently. The and too, but as the sole weekend CPW local, the could really use more service.

The reduction of the BQE from six lanes to four is more of a maintenance issue than anything else. And it appears that the City now wants to reopen the two closed lanes to traffic, plus possibly add a shoulder lane in both directions, which would indeed be a widening - https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2022/12/13/city-may-restore-bqe-to-six-full-lanes-of-nastiness-sources-say/ Personally, I liked Scott Stringer’s proposal to restrict the BQE to just trucks on the lower level with a park on the upper level in the Heights while decking over the roadway in Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill with a park. Though I’d like to include express buses on the truck-only BQE combine that with expanded and extended service into South Brooklyn as alternatives to driving in cars on the BQE. Stringer’s proposal, interestingly is still on the Comptroller’s website, even though Stringer isn’t Comptroller anymore - https://comptroller.nyc.gov/newsroom/comptroller-stringer-proposes-new-vision-for-bqe-reconstruction/ So you’d want to kneecap and service by forcing all three of them onto the local tracks between Prince and 57th? And you’d still have delays at Prince and 57th, because trains would need to be split between the bridge and the tunnel at Prince and at 57th between Queens and 2nd Ave. Broadway is too popular of a route in Queens and South Brooklyn, so you can’t fit all of its branches on just the local tracks without substantially reducing service to each branch.

Nearly all, if not all, of them do. Whether it’s not receiving enough funding or completing spending money foolishly, I don’t think there’s a transit system that doesn’t have a problem with money.

It’s not like they didn’t try. The MTA’s predecessor agency, the New York City Transit Authority, tried to about 60 years ago… https://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/IRT_Times_Square-Grand_Central_Shuttle Scroll down to Section 5 for the details, including why it failed.

Running the weekdays only and closing 148 and 145 is a non-starter. Transit tried closing those two stations overnight and got blowback from the community over it and ultimately stopped closing the stations overnight (and extended the late-night to Times Sq - which even survived the 2010 "Doomsday" cuts). Plus, it will result in severely overcrowded trains on weekends. Just about the only way you could possibly get away with running both the and to Flatbush is if the plan to deinterline the Brooklyn IRT with CBTC studied in early 2020 were to be implemented. For more discussion, go here - https://www.nyctransitforums.com/topic/60024-8-train-coming-back I like the extensions into NE Queens (would one of them be the train?), but I've been angling for that ever since I moved there almost 13 years ago. Most of the Brooklyn stuff, I have to disagree with, as well as the replacing the to Dyre and having the replace the . I honestly don't think those will be very beneficial to most riders.

I’d rather the Prince St switches not be used either and leave the express. There always seems to be a delay when they are in use. Agree that the State needs to change how they treat the MTA. Because whenever they want to widen a highway - it’s, “Hey look! We’ve got money for that!”

But it was determined that it would be easier and more cost effective to convert the R142As versus the R62As on the . Otherwise, the R62As would have stayed on the .

Points 1 and 2, they should definitely consider. Points 3-5, not so much. Cutting midday and weekend service isn’t going to save much and it’s going to drive riders away…to their cars, if they have any. And cutting the will be a drop in the bucket, just as it was in 2010. And the Broadway Line was a real shit show from 2010-16, what with all the excessive merging it had.

That it is. You get views of the city from a train on the el that you just don’t get any other way. I like it very much.

That’s one reason why they don’t operate R142s and R142As in the same train. They briefly tried that in the summer of 2001 in both and service.

Then why don’t they get on with testing the R211 pilot train with passengers already? It’s been 15-16 months since those cars got here. What more tests or evaluation could they possibly need after all this time? How much more waiting truly is necessary before we really start seeing problems with the older cars? Get on with it already!

That’s sort of what I had in mind. With the new Hewes platforms located further east, it would put the station much closer to Lorimer , so you can close Lorimer. Or you can even relocate the Lorimer platforms further west, putting them very close to the at Union Ave and close the less-busy Hewes. This map shows how it could work. I also think the middle track should extend through Marcy Ave, with express trains bypassing the station, OR Marcy should be closed and replaced by a new dual-island platform station on the other side of Havemeyer St to better connect to the buses at Williamsburg Bridge Plaza.

There definitely should be a transfer between the and the . And I think it’s feasible to have it a Hewes St. But most of the platforms would have to be relocated further east to minimize the length of the transfer.

Those barriers look like they need a lot of height in order to raise and lower properly, especially the one in the top video. I get the feeling a typical underground station in NYC built pre-MTA isn’t high enough to accommodate those barriers. Outdoor stations may be able to, but even then, would they be able to fit on the covered segments of the platforms?