T to Dyre Avenue

Not even to extend it for more than just the 50 minutes each morning and afternoon that the ran? I think that whatever usefulness it has is somewhat hampered by running it for such a short period. Where would the Broadway Line connect to the CPW line? The CPW line is double-decked better Columbus Circle and 110th St, so that’s not a good place to make such connection.

Well it is nice to see those expansions on their. How much or how serious the consideration they’re going to give to any one of them is anyone’s guess, though I would rather see them do the as a connection to the Fulton Local too. I like the idea of the zoned express, but I wonder how it can be done - especially in the northbound direction - without an express getting stuck behind a local .

Oh thank goodness they came to their senses and put 6th Ave CBTC in the 2020-24 budget! Without it, the and trains would be dead in the water if 6th Ave shits the bed. Likewise, I’m glad they’re deferring Astoria and Lex. Because, if they were to do Lex without doing 7th right after, then the and trains would likely suffer the same fate as the and if 7th Ave were to shit the bed. And doing Astoria without doing the main Broadway Line seemed just pointless, unless the MTA were planning to put narrow-bodied trains back on the Astoria Line for the first time since 1948 and run them into Manhattan via the . But it wouldn’t make very much sense to do that. What’s interesting is that they’re now looking again at the possibility of retrofitting existing cars to operate with modernized signaling, which they previously ruled out when they began modernizing the signaling system on the line, which sent its R62A trains back to the line.

They can start by not spending $30M on stairways and $61M on mezzanines. That’s definitely true. I lived in Boston from 2003-06 and even then, the Orange Line cars looked and felt old. This should serve as a cautionary tale to the MTA with the R46 and R44 cars.

I completely disagree with both of your posts. At the very least, the R211s have to be a priority. We can’t possibly expect the R46s and SIR R44s to last another 10 to 15 years in service. And you can’t tell me that the current signals are just fine. Not with all many times signal problems cause delays in the system. At some point it becomes more expensive to fix the old equipment as opposed to buying new. We are at that point now. Saying that modern signals and new subway cars are “completely unnecessary projects” is the wrong way. At the very least, we definitely need the option 1 order of R211 cars. The 46s and 44s aren’t getting any newer and to expect them to soldier on another decade or so without significant mechanical problems is too much to ask.

First I ever heard of someone using a drone to railfan.

That’s what I thought. Now I know,

Yes, I could see this as a pretty good way to get a good bit more capacity on the main Broadway with fewer days. And I agree with your long term proposal, though you either cut off the local stops west of Roosevelt’s access to LIC ( local via 63rd) or you risk running 8-car trains on the express ( express via 63rd). I presume the and routes would be unchanged in this scenario.

I meant over the past roughly 10 years. I might’ve deleted that before posting earlier, though I did mention the pre-R211 New Tech trains in my previous post as not having so many problems. R160B’s included. All of which have been in service more than 10 years. That’s why I was glad the MTA awarded Kawasaki the R211 contract and I really hope all of the problems Kawasaki is having with their more recent US car orders - namely the M8, M9 and WMATA 7000s - aren’t about to make Kawasaki into the new Bombardier. Perhaps with the R211s, Rona may very well be the main cause. But I’ve been reading that Kawasaki had been having trouble with its suppliers and employees on some of its other US orders well before the pandemic.

That and the WMATA 7000-series fleet. Although WMATA was worse off, because the need to sideline the 7000s practically paralyzed DC’s Metro. What happened to Kawasaki? They used to make such reliable trains. We never had these problems with the R62s, R68As or any of the pre-R211 New Tech trains. Can the MTA legally award the contract for the option order R211s to Alstom or another company?

Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Let’s hope the MTA and Kawasaki do all they can to make sure the R211s don’t have problem after problem like the R179s did (although they seem to be doing better now).

It did seem strange, but not all that surprising when you see the MTA’s long history of messing things up. It’s kind of sad really, because the R32s were sent to MK for rebuilding starting with the worst performing cars, which were not necessarily the oldest. So the worst cars went out as part of Phase 1 and many became the better performers post-GOH. All while many of the better performing pre-GOH R32s became the worse performers after being sent out as part of Phase 2. Not good at all for the Phase 2 cars and maybe it didn’t have to be that way. I can see why they might’ve sent the R32s out for rebuilding in two phases. It was a large car fleet. But why use different master controllers and brake packages in the different phases? Did the problems with the Phase 2 cars show up early on after GOH, or years later?

I will agree. I’m pretty sure 6th Ave will get CBTC before Astoria. Even if Astoria is back on the list. I mean, unless they plan to replace service in Queens with an 8 train that runs via the line between Queensboro Plaza and Hudson Yards. But that wouldn’t make much sense now, would it? Yes, so we’re probably going to see older and newer R46s scrapped together. No real way around that. I thought both Phase 1 and Phase 2 R32s were a mix of older and newer R32 cars. At least that’s what nycsubway.org’s R32 page says.

I assume whenever the time comes to equip Astoria with CBTC, there will also be plans to equip the main Broadway Line between 57th and Canal streets too, yes? Seems a bit odd to equip Astoria by itself since it the only B-Division trunk line it connects to is Broadway, no?

It’s possible. But it might buy us some time in the event the MTA really is broke a couple years from now, instead of “crying broke” like they’ve done so many times before, in spite of having a budget that almost every other North American transit authority/district can only dream of. I’ll be happy as long as the R211s are reliable and there are enough to replace all of the R46s and SI R44s. Because expecting the 1970s cars to last another decade in service might just be expecting too much. I’m not going to speculate about where they should be assigned, because there’s been more than enough of that in this thread already. But I will say that if some of the cars in the 640-car option order go to the line, then its R68s can be sent to CI, putting all of the R68s in one yard, which in turn ought be enough to send the CI R46s off to the big subway yard in the sky.

New York City Transit alone has a budget nearly every other transit agency across the country can only dream of - plus all that extra funding from the Feds over the past year - and they’re still going to fall off a fiscal cliff in a couple of years? Something about that is not adding up. Meanwhile, some of those other transit agencies are figuring out how expand their systems and fix what’s busted with their smaller budgets. While here, we just talk about cutting services, which will just chase off riders who will take to their SUVs and clog the roads even more.

Depends on how many trains they can turn at 121st Street.

The and lines also got screwed up earlier this morning when the 36th Street switch went belly up…again!

Well, no one at the wants/wanted the via 4th Avenue and the via Brighton because “that’s the way we’ve always done it.” But 20 years ago, the 6th Ave tracks on the Manhattan Bridge were shut down for structural rehab, so, except for the and the rush hour , everything in South Brooklyn ran in Manhattan via the Broadway Line. And all I kept reading on SubChat, SubTalk and the Straphangers’ message board back then was the return of the pre-2001 and service patterns once those tracks reopened. I seem to recall surprise from many posters on SubChat in 2004 (I used to go on that board a lot back then) when the chose to route via Brighton express and the via the West End. They were expecting the reverse. I’m guessing the never gave a deinterlined DeKalb junction any real serious consideration from the start. It just wasn’t (isn’t) in their nature to do it. With ridership still well down from pre-pandemic levels, it’s probably not worth considering now. But if ridership does bounce back to pre-pandemic levels, then it might be. Though the fact that they still stop you at the junction to ID the trains isn’t helping anything. Or somehow still manage to have s and s arrive there at the same time and run one right after the other followed by a long gap before the next two trains which also run one right after the other. In pm rush hours, no less.

Why would Astoria be on the CBTC list, but not the main Broadway trunk line from 57th to Canal? Astoria doesn’t connect to any other B-Division trunk line than Broadway. Wouldn’t it be kind of wasteful to equip the Astoria el for CBTC by itself? They’d have no choice but to retire at least part of the R68 fleet and run R211s or R160s on the and . That would leave the and the Franklin as the only lines where R68-series cars can still run. What were the MTA heads thinking here?

But CIY has had R68 cars right from the start. Why would they treat a car model they’ve always had poorly? I can understand the R46s, since they were forced by the higher-ups to take them because they could no longer be used on the QBL due to CBTC.

Wow, sounds like that was quite the mess there.

I remember Lexington Ave/59th St smelling like vomit for years, even after various projects that took place there. Somehow the smell always managed to stay behind.

Malcolm Smith! There’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time. Didn’t he get sent to prison? It’s just a damn shame that he didn’t use his pull when he was State Senate Majority Leader to push for an extension to Southeast Queens. That might’ve caused some of the complaining to die down. Can’t say I totally blame them. I’d complain too if I had to take a slow bus into crowded downtown Jamaica for an SRO train. That’s why I stopped taking the Q16 bus to the in Flushing. What’s interesting is that R46s were replaced with R32s on the not long after the R46s were overhauled in 1990-91. It was found that the 60-footers handled the crowds better than the 75-footers. R46s have run on the , but only on a sporadic basis ever since. And the R160s were purchased to replace the R32s and R42s. They would have all been reefed if it hadn’t been for the structural problems with the R44 cars. The R44s were supposed to last longer in service. However, they really should have ordered more R160s to bump off the R32s and R42s that had to be kept as a result of the R44 problems. Perhaps a group of people better at managing money and contracts than the MTA’s brain trust would have. But it is what it is and at least the and have new R179 cars now and will be getting the base R211 order, as they should. I wonder if that’s why we get so many people throwing cold water on any ideas to de-interline Broadway. That somehow, Astoria Line riders feel entitled to have both a Broadway Local and an express. Except they didn’t always. Prior to 1986, they only had the train. With 15 tph. Then from 1989-2001, they had just the . With 11 tph (some rush hour trains turned at Canal or Whitehall back then). It’s true that the R68 series are in better shape than the R46s. They’ve probably got another decade left in them. They have to run somewhere. But I think it’s a bit much to expect the R68 series to last as long as the 220-plus R32s that weren’t sunken off the coast did (58 years). Or any subsequent new car order.

Gonna agree with you there. Unfortunately the MTA’s money management and construction woes never seem to really go away, so none of those extensions will be quick, easy or cheap. Even the Rockaway Beach Branch advocates estimated rebuilding the branch will cost in the billions - $3.4 to 3.7, which is a far cry from the bullshit $8 billion-plus price the MTA and SYSTRA quoted - but still not a small amount of money.