T to Dyre Avenue

Exactly. The MTA got it right in 2004 when they decided to run the weekday-only down Brighton express and the down the West End Line. Going back to the pre-2001 and service patterns in Brooklyn would have been wasteful because there was and still is a preference for the Broadway Line over the 6th Avenue Line. Had the and resumed their previous service patterns, Broadway would have had only the and the on weekends and probably no express service. Broadway line ridership in Manhattan justified more than just those two lines (and still does). Meanwhile, the less busy 6th Avenue Line would have had two expresses in the B and D trains that it didn't and still doesn't need. And probably overcrowded trains because that probably would have been the only 6th Ave local (as it was from 1989-2001). If the ridership is there on Grand Concourse, I say run the to/from Bedford Park all day on weekdays. If the midday runs too frequently to risk causing delays at Bedford Park Blvd, then perhaps they should consider running the peak direction express if there's demand for midday peak express service. Or switch the and back to their pre-1998 northern terminals (i.e., all-day B to 168th St and all-day C to Bedford Park Blvd). But that would likely require a slight bump in the C's headways.

But the and currently run a combine 12 tph during rush hours. Factor in the and that seems like it would be over-serving the West End Line. The M never ran that much service when it ran on the West End or Brighton lines. Right. One problem is that so many pre-R46 cars were reefed or scrapped, so the MTA now has just enough to run the current service patterns. Hopefully, the upcoming R179 cars help solve that problem. They're very fortunate that the R160 cars are not lemons. My guess is that extending the to 9th Avenue would be sufficient; it would be there just to supplement the at the 4th Ave local stations above 36th St. The West End Line doesn't seem to have a pressing need for direct Lower Manhattan/downtown Brooklyn service, so the alone seems to be just fine from Fort Hamilton Pkwy to Stillwell. I do wonder if the Sea Beach Line might have such a need, especially given the increasing ridership on the , especially at 8th Ave and Fort Hamilton Pkwy.

So am I. I work in the courts in Lower Manhattan with a lot of people who live in southern Brooklyn who used to take the M train to Chambers, before it got rerouted up 6th Avenue. I'm definitely not in favor of bringing back the old M service; it would be wasteful to do that. But maybe by having either the run express at 8 tph between Broadway Jct and Marcy (because it would have to make all stops east of Broadway Jct) and the run local to/from Broadway Jct, one of those trains can provide the extended service into southern Brooklyn.

I agree. But I think the express's headways would have to be decreased. and trains run 6 tph apiece, so either increasing the Z's number of tph (the and would be two separate services under this scenario) or running some J's past Broadway Jct (like you suggested) would have to be done to give acceptable service east of Broadway Jct. I wonder if the Broadway/Jamaica Ave el can handle a running 8 tph without fouling up the flat junction at Myrtle Ave. And yes, it makes more sense to terminate the extended on the West End Line than at 95th St. But the should stay local south of 36th St. There's no need for express service on the West End Line.

I got on an train at 67th Ave. It was running between 71st Ave and 34th St. This was at 7:40 AM. The M was going via Queensbridge, so I had to change trains at Roosevelt. Tried to get on an train there, but it was going over the (yes, G) line, so I had to take the following train. Look what one water main break can do.

Lower Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn aren't CBDs anymore? Well, you could have fooled me with all the people with all the lunch crowds at the many restaurants on Broadway and Chambers St. Same goes for all the places located on Fulton and Adams Sts. Not to mention that, as far as 4th Ave/southern Brooklyn riders go, the and trains bypass these areas on the Manhattan Bridge, while only the serves them both. Just not very frequently. The is very likely to be reinstated once the is rerouted to 2nd Ave. The W will almost certainly come out of Coney Island Yard if it does come back. Rather than deadhead between CI and Whitehall St, just run those trains in service. Why not?

Now, see, that's something I'd be in favor of - a restored train running to/from Bay Pkwy. But I wouldn't want it to run express on the West End line. It should supplement the on New Utrecht Ave, the same way the supplements the between Nereid Ave and East 180th St in the Bronx.

I think the via Brighton Express and via West End in Brooklyn work just fine. There is really no reason to return them to their pre-1986 service patterns. And I really don't think there's a need to return the to the Nassau Street Line or to bring back the (unless it functions as a part-time express in Brooklyn and/or on Hillside Ave in Queens). to Jamaica Center is unnecessary (especially because it duplicates the ) and there's no room for it on the Queens Blvd express tracks, unless you want to cut back and service. Not to mention the fact that JC already can't turn all rush hour E trains. And you want to turn the Q there too? By the way, if the late-night B is running to/from 168th St Manhattan and the late-night D is running to/from 145th St Manhattan, then what's operating on the Concourse Line during late nights?

Interesting that LIRR says they're going to run the Atlantic Terminal shuttles on 7.5-minute headways - 8 tph. That's a subway-like frequency. I wonder if the railroad will have enough cars to do that, even with the upcoming M9 fleet. I also wonder how much it will cost to provide this service, given that LIRR train crews typically have more than two members. NYC subway train crews (except shuttles) typically have just two members - an operator and a conductor. If that's how they're going to operate Brooklyn-Jamaica service, then maybe the MTA should strongly consider having LIRR turn the service over to the NYC Subway.

For sure. It's a hell of a lot faster from Jamaica to downtown Brooklyn on the LIRR vs. to or to . I still think the Atlantic Branch from Jamaica to Atlantic Ave should become part of the subway, given the LIRR's plans for it once ESA opens. If only it wasn't so costly to link it to one of the B-Division East River tunnels...

They can, but then you'd be left with a bunch of useless 4-car sets. No IRT line runs 8-car trains. Only the 42nd St Shuttle's middle track runs 4-car trains, but it doesn't need a whole bunch of 4-car sets to do that.

You're welcome. But I've always believed that CityTicket should fares should be in effect weekdays as well as weekends. One thing that should be included is one free transfer to the subway per CityTicket fare. Otherwise, it's still pretty costly to take the LIRR from eastern Queens or Metro-North from Riverdale into the city on CityTicket if you have to transfer to the subway ($4.00 CityTicket fare + $2.50 subway ride). Agreed. Now that I live in Forest Hills, I've never taken LIRR to Penn Station. With four subway lines at 71st Ave, there's really no reason to commute to Manhattan via LIRR from Forest Hills. If you travel to Long Island, well, that's a different story. I've done that before. I've taken the railroad from Lynbrook to Forest Hills a few times, when I didn't have access to my car and had doctor's appointments out there.

As it is right now. There's definitely no need for an express with the line ending at 179th. But if the is extended four more stops east to Springfield Blvd, then there may be a very good reason to provide some sort of express service between 179th St and 71st Ave. It can (and probably should) be a part-time express. The extension itself only needs to be two tracks. But then after serving all of the stations on the extension, trains should enter and leave 179th on the express tracks and only make express stops all the way on Hillside Ave and Queens Blvd.

Only on weekends. When I lived in Bayside and wanted to go to Manhattan on the weekends, I always took the railroad (Port Washington Branch) because of CityTicket. I wanted to use the railroad on weekdays too, but there was (and still is) no CityTicket fare on weekdays and a Zone 3 monthly pass was just way too expensive, so I took the Q12 or Q13 bus to Flushing for the . And judging from the crowds of people who pour off the buses and onto the trains every morning at Main St and vice versa every afternoon or evening, so do about a zillion other people.

We won't know for sure, but the barring another Sandy or R44 fiasco with the R142s, I can't see them putting SMEE cars on the unless they really need a set to make service. The only reason those couple of Westchester Yard R62A sets ran on the was because the Redbirds were not able to run OPTO. In 1997, the MTA made the late-night Dyre Ave and West End shuttle services OPTO, so they needed some cars on the and lines with full-width cabs. At the time, the B ran only R40 Slants and the 5 ran only Redbirds. Neither group of cars could run OPTO, so R68As were assigned to the B and R62As to the 5. In the 5's case, it was only 20 cars and Redbirds ran the rest of the service. Are they still using those stickers? They never put colored yard stickers on the R142/142As. I thought they de-emphasized the usage of colored yard stickers.

They couldn't have just gone with good old-fashion large front roll signs for the A cars? They worked for every subway car from R40 to R68.

I think you may be onto something here, especially given that MTA is already extending the to the 34th St and 11th Ave. It also looks like you want to run this 9 service via the existing line in Upper Manhattan. Piggy-back onto the and lines, then connect them build new construction between 42nd and 72nd Streets for the 9. This would be a realistic way to do a new West Side subway line. It would also have a side benefit of connecting the to the rest of the A-division.

They aren't going to be fixed because in order to run more trains, you'll have to cut service on the . No other way to do it without building Queens Blvd bypass tracks. Cutting service on the will not go well with its riders. A modest four-station extension to Springfield Blvd - without a park-and-ride - is not going to cause a major meltdown on the . The park-and-ride construction costs would be immense and I doubt the MTA would be able to recover those costs in any short period of time. But the subway extension itself would be very useful. The area on and around Hillside Ave is very busy, traffic is heavy and many well-used bus routes travel on Hillside as far as Springfield Blvd/Braddock Ave. East of Braddock is a different story because the development and density drop off significantly at that point.

Agree about how far LIRR ROWs are from commercial corridors - especially in the case of Hillside Ave. That's where the major commercial activity is in Hollis and QV and there is heavy traffic on Hillside - auto and bus. Between that, the already high number of trains already using the Main Line, and the shelving of the third track, there isn't room for subways trains on that ROW, extending the to at least Braddock Ave is the way to go here. As for PW, east of Bayside the ROW is far from Northern Blvd, so at that point it does make a lousy subway ROW. But west of Bayside station, it's not too far away. And Bayside station is located on a major commercial corridor on Bell Blvd. There's a clearing east of the station that used to be used for maintenance equipment. So maybe some sort of short-turn service at City Ticket fares to/from Bayside could be provided to service riders in Bayside and East Flushing who currently have to deal with the at Flushing.

Some of the trips you're looking at may involve changing at Jamaica. The system shows direct and transfer trips. It also doesn't tell you where the second train is coming from because most people looking at the schedules don't need that info.

Hempstead and Far Rock do. There's also limited rush hour service from (I think) Long Beach and West Hempstead.

The extended subway would serve present riders from Hollis and QV. Most of the folks want the subway anyway, so this would be a godsend for them. But the big issue here would be dealing with that textbook-example of bureaucratic over-regulation, the FRA. The FRA does not like it when transit and mainline rail run on the same tracks and even makes a stink over transit and mainline trains running too close to each other on the same r.o.w. - even if on separate tracks. They do allow waivers, but as far as I know, they require some sort of time separation. That's not possible as far as subways and LIRR sharing the same train line is concerned.

Isn't that why the MTA schedules track work? It's normal wear and tear and they are maintaining the tracks when they take them out of service from time to time. Derailments are not reasons to build more subway lines. Then you would have more tracks to maintain and periodically take out of service. Would you spend millions (or even billions) of dollars to build a brand new eight-lane expressway just because the current parallel one is full of potholes and cracked asphalt?

Do the , , and trains ring a bell to you? Are you looking at a subway map that's missing those trains? Don't tell me they don't count. They run parallel to (and help) the , and on the Upper West Side, Morningside Heights and West Harlem. The , and trains have no such help on the Upper East Side or East Harlem (or points south of the UES for that matter). That's where the comes in. Maybe also have a limited Upper 2nd Ave-to-6th Ave ( P ) service if the alone is not enough. Oh, one more thing - it's "there ARE no measures." Not "there IS no measures." "Is" is singular and "measures" is plural. Don't mix them up.

Right. This was why / skip-stop service had to go. There were too many busy stops to justify some of them being skipped. 157th was a -only stop and 145th and 191st were -only stops. But 191st was so busy that they eventually made it an all-stop station. All of the stations between 137th and 96th were always all-stop. They were (and are) too busy to be served with "half of a subway line."