T to Dyre Avenue

You wouldn't be able to run this train at more than 6 tph, so it wouldn't be very attractive to Rockaway riders who currently have more frequent service on the existing bus routes. Even at 6 tph, you'd be getting dangerously close to maxing out track capacity on the 6th Ave local. And if the and have problems in Lower Manhattan, Brooklyn riders on those lines would be SOL, because you'd no longer be able to reroute them via the Rutgers St tunnel, because they wouldn't be able to fit with the F, M and V trains on the tracks between W 4th and 2nd Ave. Now if a Rockaway V ran via QBL local and 63rd St tunnel to 2nd Ave, instead of 6th, then it could run more frequently and not impact , and rerouted / service. But not too frequently, because it would have to coexist with the and on the QB local tracks and merge with the express en route to the 63rd St tunnel.

Forgive me for analysing a nutty Wallyhorse plan, but my guess is the would be the new 4th Ave local and the would become express in its place, so West End riders would still have an express, but I still don't see any real reason to switch them.

A express in Brooklyn will be about as popular as the peak-direction express in Astoria was. Which means it wouldn't be. Same goes for a (J)/(Z) express on the West End Line. Just extend 6-8 trains between Broad and Bay Pkwy during 7:30-9 am and 4:30-6 pm during the rush. Fully local to supplement both the and . Skip-stop service runs only an hour each rush period and only in the peak direction to/from JC, so it won't be messed up by this extended J.

Man, you will not give this one up, will you?

That's where the hassle is. That's why Transit doesn't want R62As on the and/or and I don't blame them. Same goes for R68s on the and/or because those two lines have the same issue at Ditmars Blvd that the 2 and 5 have at Flatbush Ave. If so, then didn't they have to do that when they installed the digital front route signs on the R32s and 38s during GOH? I really don't like those tiny digital route signs. They're much harder to see than the front roll signs the R32s and 38s had pre-GOH and they ruined the classy look of those cars up front. Anyone know why the Redbirds got to keep their front rolls and marker lights after GOH, while the R32s and 38s had to lose theirs?

The IRT Jerome Ave line can also fully handle B-Division cars, but it would require building a new platform at 149th-GC because the existing upper level platform where the stops is much too close to the junction where the joins in, so making a connection to the SAS with trains stopping at the existing upper level platform would be impossible

The combined and run on 5-minute headways from Parsons/Archer to Broad St. But that's only for about an hour during rush hours and only one way (Manhattan-bound in the morning and Jamaica-bound in the evening). And it's only at the "all-stop" stations, so the "skip-stop" stations only get 10-minute headways. Are you saying skip-stop service needs to run more often? In both directions? Maybe more put-ins from Broadway Jct might help once there are enough R179s in service.

Budget cuts (from what I remember hearing) are what cut the late-night into a shuttle between 36th and 95th. They also turned the late-night shuttle train into a shuttle bus at the same time (and even that eventually got cut). The became express on Broadway and 4th Ave via the Manhattan bridge at this time as well, except during late-night hours when it substituted for the . Unfortunately, restored Broadway/4th Ave express service was short-lived because DOT inspectors found cracked beams on the bridge and the N went back to being fully local (express on 4th Ave again starting in 1994), while the R remained a late-night shuttle to this day. As for the being local in Queens, it has been done before. Late-night service ran local in Queens from 1980-87. Before 1980, the (or GG as it was then known) was cut to Queens Plaza and the F took over as local, while the continued to run express. When the R came to Queens Blvd in 1987, it replaced the F as the late-night local, while the late-night F was rerouted to 57th & 6th (then, 21st St/Queensbridge from 1989-2001). The present late-night E local/F express set-up began when the 63rd St Tunnel was connected to the Queens Blvd line.

It's so weird seeing those R68As back on the . It's a blast from the past.

Interesting how that R16-38 sign had a on it, yet no or any other unused letter in a colored circle. Since the rollsign's date is October 1, 1984, I'm guessing the decision to go to all single letter routes on the B Division had already been made and the new letters already chosen. Obviously replaced (AA), < Q > replaced < QB > and the remaining double letter trains became single letter versions of themselves. But that Avenue of the Americas Local sign remains a bit of a mystery. Prior to the 1986-88 shutdown of the Manhattan Bridge north side tracks, there were two services. One ran rush hours only from Coney Island to 168th St-Broadway as a 6th Ave express. The other ran from Coney Island to 57th St-6th Ave seven days a week via 6th Ave local, except rush hours when it also ran express and late nights when it ran as a shuttle from CI to 36th St-4th Ave. In mid-1985, they began using the new single letters, but the 168th St and 57th St services were both still designated as trains and remained that way until April 1986, when the B was cut back to 34th St and it only ran during rush hours. The 6th Ave service that ran from 57th & 6th to Grand St while the north side tracks were shut down was never called the V. It was called the . Who knows what they had in mind for that V sign back in October 1984?

But do Brighton Line riders necessarily want a through service to the Nassau St Line? The ( M ) last ran on the Brighton Line in April 1986 when it was rerouted to the 4th Ave/West End Line due to major rehabilitation on Brighton that required removal of tracks from service and the implementation of ( D )/ skip-stop service (the Brooklyn sections of the and trains ran via the Broadway Line and Manhattan Bridge south tracks at the same time). When that work was finished and the Manhattan Bridge north tracks re-opened in December 1988, M service was never restored to Brighton and remained on the West End Line. Instead, they implemented a local/ ( Q ) express setup, which was then replaced in June 2001 by a local/ < Q > express setup when the north side bridge tracks closed for the second time, then finally the current local/ express setup in February 2004. The M has not operated in regular service over the Brighton in 28 years and no one over there seems to be asking for it back. The only thing I've been hearing is that there are some riders in southern Brooklyn bound for Lower Manhattan who aren't happy about the loss of the M, but they aren't necessarily Brighton riders. They may come from the other southern Brooklyn BMT lines and prefer not to have to ride up to crowded Canal St and backtrack southbound on the or for Chambers, Fulton or Broad. Or they would prefer not to have to jam onto the already-crowded and trains at Atlantic Ave. If the issue is having a route from southern Brooklyn to the Nassau St Line during rush hours that might relieve crowding on the 4 and 5 and the crowds transferring at Canal St, then perhaps it's worth considering extending a few trains (like 6-8 J trains) into southern Brooklyn to/from the 4th Ave line during the most crowded times of the rush - roughly 7:30-9:00 AM and 4:30-6:00 PM. As for the , why would you want it to go from express to local after Newkirk Ave? Given that there are no switch tracks north or south of Newkirk, what would be the point in doing that?

I take the QBL every day to work. The only time riders pass up an M in favor of the R is if they want a direct transfer to the 4 or 5, because the R is the only QBL line that connects directly to the 4 and 5. So you would also pass up the E or F for that direct transfer. Or if you want a QBL express. But then you'd also be getting off the R if you want an E or F express. I can see Queens-bound riders on 6th Ave passing up the M in favor of the F because the F is express in Queens and goes further than 71st Ave. But guess what - they did exactly the same thing when the V was around! And they would still do that if the V were brought back. Sea Beach riders can already easily travel between their home line and Chinatown via the N train. Unless you're talking about a service that starts/ends at the Bay Pkwy stop on the Sea Beach Line, bringing back the pre-2010 Bay Pkwy ( M ) won't be useful to them. That service terminated on the West End D line and it didn't seem to be of much use to D line riders. And even so, that service would have to run via the 4th Ave express tracks to keep people from passing it up in favor of the N. Really, the only reason to bring back a Nassau St service that serves southern Brooklyn would be to supplement the R train at the 4th Ave local stops. Depending on who posts here or who you speak to, there may or may not be a reason to bring back that type of service. Lastly, people coming from Bushwick, Middle Village and Williamsburg who want Manhattan can (and do) get to Manhattan on the current service. They do not transfer from the M to the J or Z at Essex St. Why would they? The only reason to transfer there is for Lower Manhattan now. Yes, there are M line riders who want Lower Manhattan, but they are not the majority of the line's riders. And they weren't even the majority of the line's riders when the M was still serving Lower Manhattan and southern Brooklyn during its last years of operation. Before the M was rerouted to Midtown Manhattan, Essex-Delancey was quite the madhouse with people transferring from the J, M and Z trains to the F. Now, it's still busy, but not as bad as it was just five years ago.

No they can't. You can't run the to Brooklyn via Culver. Neither the Cranberry ( ) or Rutgers ( ) tunnels would be able to handle the 15 tph of the in addition to the existing services in both of those tunnels. Not to mention the switching problems that would occur, either at West 4th St or Jay St.

It would be a damn shame if we don't make it to 125th by 2029. Unlike Phase 1 which had to be built entirely from scratch, Phase 2 has the advantage of the two existing tunnel sections. It seems like the most difficult part would be turning west over to Lexington Ave to connect to the , , and Metro-North trains at 125th St due to the double-deck set-up of the Lexington Ave line platforms. With two sections of currently-unused tunnel existing for a total of 16 blocks under 2nd Avenue in East Harlem, there's no reason not to be able to get at least Phase 2 up and running by then. The only way that wouldn't happen is if the usual NYC and NYS political shenanigans are allowed to get in the way. If that's allowed to happen, then it will time to do the political equivalent of "slut-shaming" City and State politicians who drop the ball on continuing construction of the 2nd Ave Subway beyond Phase 1. I can understand if we can't get Phases 3 and 4 up and running by 2029. Given the history of this project and the usual political garbage we deal with in the city and state, it is over-promising to get the full 2nd Ave Subway up and running 15 years from now. Like Phase 1, almost all of the construction for those phases will have to be done from scratch and they will have to tunnel over and under existing subway lines as well as the Amtrak/LIRR and Queens-Midtown tunnels - not an easy task. But if it takes more than 15 years to get a part of the project that has much of its tunneling already done, well, that will be the usual state/city political shenanigans rearing their ugly heads again.

Camelback? How can a train route "camelback"? Sorry, that one kind of just sticks out. But seriously, how is the current service only useful to people riding between QBL stops? How is it not useful to people riding along 53rd St, or 6th Avenue, or people headed from Myrtle Ave or Williamsburg to Midtown Manhattan? For that last group of people, the was useless because it dead-ended at 2nd Ave. And you really want to bring that back? Why? And really, you also want to bring back the equally-useless Nassau St ( M ) service, dead-ending at Chambers St and running empty in southern Brooklyn like it did before it was eliminated in 2010? Again, why?

That's exactly why you DON'T bring back skip-stop. You will reduce service to the "skipped" stops, which will make trains MORE crowded, not less.

If they had stuck with left-window front rollsigns on the NTTs, this wouldn't be an issue. Every car fleet from R40 to R68A and the R110B all had left-window front rollsigns that showed the train's letter in a big colored circle or diamond and it worked well enough. They should have left well enough alone and they didn't. At least they should have stuck with front rollsigns until it becomes feasible and cost-effective to put in a digital route sign in place of a front left-side rollsign (if it hasn't already).

The R33s that ran on the never had their yard stickers changed from black to green when they moved from the to the and the R26/28/29 "salad trains" that moved over to East 180th Yard retained their green stickers until the end of their service lives. Why even go through all the trouble changing the yard stickers? They never did it when the R62s moved over from the to the and the R142s/142As never got them at all. I think it's time to just phase them out completely.

And no on extending the onto the Queens Blvd Line, bringing back the and reverting the back to its pre-July 2010 route. The current route is more popular than the old one was and is going to be extended to Essex St on weekends, eliminating the need to transfer to the at Myrtle for Manhattan service. If it was still running the old route, you'd never see this happen. Why would you want to mess with that? I don't disagree with bringing back the . The W should - and most likely will - come back when the is rerouted to 96th St and 2nd Ave. If the is not enough and it is not possible or efficient to increase R service, and the loss of the old ( M ) is really that much of a loss, then perhaps resurrected the W should operate in Brooklyn to supplement the R at the local stops between 36th and Pacific (I will not call it "Atlantic Ave - Barclays Center"). And because the W will almost certainly be based out of Coney Island Yard, perhaps at least rush hour W trains can go into service at Bay Pkwy. At least then, they can cut down on deadheading and line riders can have the option of direct service to downtown Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan again. Midday W service can run from Astoria to Whitehall; there's probably no need for the extra service in Brooklyn during midday hours.

There are a lot more R143s and there will be a lot more R188s than there will be of 5-car sets of R179s. Neither of those fleets are oddballs. The 40 R179s in 5-car sets will be, especially if they get assigned to CI or Jamaica. Best place for them to go is Pitkin or 207, where at least there they will be able to run alongside other R179s, even if never in the same trains with the 4-car sets.

Agreed. Either the R179 order should have consisted exclusively of four-car sets to finish off the R32s and 42s completely or the cars should have been ordered as married pairs, so they could be assigned anywhere within the B-Division. This decision could potentially come back to bite them on the butt, especially if the five-car sets are indeed sent to CI or Jamaica yards. Only 40 out of the 300 cars are going to be configured that way and if they can only run in trains by themselves, they will be orphans "within an order of orphans" (300 cars is a relatively small order of cars by NYC Transit standards). Having spare parts for just 40 cars is not practical. And what if the cars end up being "shop queens?" That shouldn't be a problem with the four-car sets because there will be a lot more of them.

The going back to 57th & 7th full-time is not happening unless the comes back (perhaps even before SAS opens if Gov. Cuomo doesn't get his wish to divert $40 million from the MTA to pay down the state's general debt). And forget about the Q going express in Astoria. They already tried that once before in 2001 when the W debuted and it failed. It saved very little time and the trains were empty while trains were overcrowded. The N cannot handle Astoria alone. And what exactly would sending the down the Brighton Line accomplish, given that it only serves Lower Manhattan and runs less frequently than the ? (Remember, it's combined J/Z service that runs 12 tph, not just the J or Z). The doesn't need to be (and should not be) rerouted via the or lines. You would have another failed W-express-in-Queens situation. Why would you want that? Not to mention that there are plenty of Brighton Line riders who want service to 6th Avenue (at least on weekdays). As for Culver, the alone isn't going to cut it, not even if it leaves Church every time an arrives. It's been explained many times before why that's a non-starter.

The is a long way off from the , and lines. And the does not cross any border to get to Dyre Ave; it stays entirely within the Bronx. The railroad line the 5 uses to get to and from Dyre did used to continue into Westchester County as the New York, Westchester and Boston Railway, but it has not done so since 1938. The Bronx portion of "the Westchester" was acquired by the City of New York in 1940. Sadly and unfortunately, the Westchester County portion was abandoned and demolished. Virtually no trace of it exists today. The IND originally planned to extend the line east toward what is now Co-Op City (it did not exist at the time those plans were drawn up), but once the City acquired the Westchester line from the City line (just north of Dyre Ave) to East 180th St, they simply incorporated that into the existing subway system and abandoned the plan to extend the D eastward.

That's because previous threads about extending the to Lefferts were about extending the LOCAL there. No one wants that; they want an express. In this case, Lefferts riders would still have express service, only under a different letter. I don't see why that would be a reason to lock this thread and we shouldn't presume that will happen here. The Franklin Shuttle cannot continue onto Fulton St because the shuttle platform is elevated and the platform is underground. It's not feasible to build a track connection between them. Right. Maybe with a more direct connection to the East Side, the Fulton Street IND (which parallels the very busy Brooklyn IRT) might see a real increase in ridership that would justify three services. It's also a good answer to the question of "Where do we run the in Brooklyn?" Part of the problem with most T in Brooklyn proposals on these message boards is that much of Brooklyn isn't too far from a subway station and extending the T onto any of the existing routes would require duplicating, shuffling around or outright elimination of an existing service, which all of the "T via Montague Tunnel" proposals would do. Although this proposal does that too (either the duplicates the or shifts it onto the Fulton St express tracks), and it does require a new tunnel to connect Hanover Sq to Court St, it would relieve the crowding on the and trains between Brooklyn and Manhattan, which there surely is. The Fulton St IND line mostly runs parallel to the Brooklyn IRT line and many bus routes serve connect with both lines. If Fulton St had more subway options, we might see some riders shift from IRT to IND. But there is one part of Wallyhorse's proposal that I like. That's putting the on the Fulton Express tracks to/from Lefferts and running the alone as the Fulton Local. The reason for this is that the unused outside tracks at Hoyt-Schermerhorn are the Fulton Local tracks and the currently has to switch from the local to the express tracks between Lafayette and H-S in order to continue to Manhattan. That merge on between the and slows trains down and limits the number of trains each line can run. But if the T were to become the new Fulton St local, that merge between the A and C can be eliminated, minimizing delays at Lafayette. Fulton express service would go to Jay St, the Cranberry St Tunnel and 8th Ave and Fulton Express service would go to Court St, the new East River tunnel and 2nd Ave.

If you're going to split the into two services that terminate so far away from each other, then one of them should have a different letter. Perhaps use U or V for the Co-op City service. I know at one point MTA and/or City planners considered using all or part of the Northeast Corridor r-o-w in the Bronx (then operated by the New York, New Haven and Hartford RR) for 2nd Avenue service to/from Co-op City. The 1968 MTA plan called for 2nd Avenue service to/from Dyre Ave and Pelham Bay Park using the existing and lines up to the points where they got close to the Northeast Corridor and shaving back the platform edges so the existing stations could platform B-Division trains. I thought that was a good plan, but I'm not sure how feasible it would be today, especially considering the MTA tore down the old el structure that would have been used to connect the Dyre Avenue line to the Northeast Corridor r-o-w and built an expanded bus depot in the path of the el's r-o-w (which had been used by New York, Westchester and Boston interurban trains until 1938, then later used for storage after subway service started on the portion of NYW&B r-o-w from Dyre Ave to East 180th St).