checkmatechamp13

You can submit your comment here: https://contact.mta.info/s/customer-feedback Also, submit another one here: https://contact.mta.info/s/forms/bus-network-redesign Also, submit a comment on the Remix map: https://platform.remix.com/project/98ad8e7f/line/5d35f7e2?latlng=40.71868,-73.91026,11&layer=hifi&dir=1 Reach out to your local representatives and community board with a copy of your confirmation number and see if they can pressure the MTA to change the route. (As noted, in the Queens Bus Redesign, the QM5 is proposed to take the LIE in both directions all the way out to 188th Street, but there's nothing preventing them from at least doing it to Queens Blvd now). My guess is that, since it runs up Queens Blvd coming from the Queensborough Bridge, it is easier to keep it on Queens Blvd rather than heading down Van Dam Street with all the traffic, only to get off a few exits later at Queens Blvd. And he has every right to ask that question as well...it should be the Queens-Midtown Tunnel in both directions, and buses should go down 5th/Lexington rather than making a whole extra loop.

I mean that is the definition of a reverse commuter...a traditional commuter goes from the suburbs to Manhattan in the morning, and from Manhattan to the suburbs in the afternoon. That being said, I think we agree that all classes of commuter should receive decent service. That includes peak, reverse-peak, off-peak, intra-island, and intra-NYC. I get that with limited infrastructure and limited resources, you can't serve everybody to the precise extent that they necessarily should (e.g. single-track areas), but no one group should be completely shafted. That being said, while somewhat better, Metro-North still has issues with random stopping patterns making intra-suburban trips difficult. (There is definitely a need for express service, but it should be consistent, similar to the Babylon Branch local/express split at Wantagh, where intra-island riders can transfer). It depends on which part of their shift they arrive late in. If it's at the end of their shift (and there's no "boost" built in to get them to the minimum 8 hours) then yes, they will get overtime, but if it's in the middle of their shift, they'll just have a shorter break before their next trip. Most of the people go to Manhattan because the service patterns are oriented around getting people to Manhattan. You don't estimate the need for a bridge based on the amount of people swimming across the river. I mean look at the Ronkonkoma Branch schedule. Mineola is one of the largest (if not the largest) job centers on the island, and there's a whole bunch of trains in a row that bypass Mineola and don't even stop at Hicksville for a cross-platform transfer. (After the 5:06am from Ronkonkoma, the next train that stops at Hicksville is the 6:29am, and the next train that actually stops at Mineola is the 6:50am). We have trains that kick people out at Jamaica and deadhead to Hunterspoint Avenue/LIC for a peak direction trip, rather than letting the passengers ride. We have a 37 minute gap to the busiest station in Suffolk County in the middle of the PM rush hour, which affects both intra-island riders and those coming from NYC. And when most Manhattan workers are working remote/hybrid schedules, and ridership is still way below pre-COVID levels, we can all scratch our heads and wonder why that is.

@B35 via Church Terminal A opened January 12th (though the new schedules didn't take effect until January 14th, so all of the buses ran late for the first two days). For the #71, what would you say a typical Saturday trip is like? Say, 10-15 people in the commercial section of West Caldwell/Caldwell, and then pretty much a nonstop ride to Essex Green, where you get some turnover, and then a nonstop ride to Orange, where ridership varies based on whether it's in front of/behind the #21? (For as much as I've used the Bloomfield Avenue routes heading towards Downtown Newark, I haven't rode them too often west of the namesake town...the only route I've taken on its standalone portion is the #11...and the #72 if you want to count that as a Bloomfield Avenue route) With the #70, do you know offhand when they added those Vauxhall trips? I know it was a while ago, but do you remember the year? I imagine they get decent ridership at that shopping center over there.

@B35 via Church Sounds like a fun trip...I'm going to guess it was #125 to JSQ - #2 to Secaucus - train to Newark - #70 to Livingston Mall - #73 to Newark Penn - walk to #29 to West Caldwell (Since Saturday buses don't start at Newark Penn until after 7pm) - #71 to Newark Penn - #67 to Toms River - #319 to PABT ?

For the Oyster Bay Branch, the 6:18am and 6:19am times are arrival times to Grand Central and Penn Station respectively. (So it arrives at 5:55am and connects to a Babylon - GCT train at 5:59am, or a Huntington - Penn Station train at 6:01am...technically that train arrives at 6:20am). In any case, I suspect it's just because there was a westbound train that stopped at 5:36am (coming from Ronkonkoma) so rather than stop at Mineola so that any early-morning riders can get to the hospital or other employment in the area, or connect to an eastbound train (e.g. the 6:07am to Mineola...or the 6:23am to Huntington with a Port Jefferson connection), they just said screw it and had the train bypass Mineola. For the eastbound Huntington train, I strongly suspect it's just a converted deadhead. Notice at Huntington, that train is scheduled to arrive on Platform A at 5:24am, and then a westbound train is scheduled to depart from Platform A at 5:27am. Unless they somehow shuffle those trains out super-quickly, it would make sense that it becomes the westbound train...the big question is why did they convert that particular deadhead? I'd like to think it's just a common-sense way of getting (roughly) hourly overnight service at the major stops on the Main Line, but I suspect the right person just so happened to need to travel at that time. (Also, I get that it's an electric train, but they should've published the connection from Penn Station, which is the 4:11am Penn - Babylon train)

I mean it takes something like 7-10 minutes from the LIRR station to the subway...I can see why people would want to keep their current commute.

Which report and which page? 3 minutes down and 3 minutes up? Maybe Broadway Junction, but not at the Fulton Street local stops.

The oversimplified thought process is what got us into this mess to begin with. The "old schedule" had barely any reverse-peak service, a bunch of 3-stop flyers, hourly off-peak Ronkonkoma Branch service, and had the West Hempstead Branch as a bihourly shuttle. They needed to generally shift the balance of service to be more in favor of Penn Station, leave some more of the Brooklyn service, and have more consistent service patterns.

Basically, there was no increase in service levels east of Jamaica, so they took about 40-50% of the Penn Station trains, diverted them to Grand Central, added some shuttles to Brooklyn, and called it a day. So Penn Station saw about a 40-50% service cut.

Part of it is the MTA barely made any changes compared to the draft schedules, so a lot of the issues that people predicted ended up coming true. I like that there's another option, but they overpaid greatly for it (think of all the improvements on the Long Island side that could've been bought for that money...electrification, double-tracking, upgraded signals, etc) Of course they're coming from weekday commuters...there hasn't been any weekend service yet. They should've specified that that's three extra trips (If it was three extra trains, that could potentially mean multiple extra trips).

The general expectation was for slightly more ridership to go to Penn Station, and so slightly more service was run there (for starters, all of the dual modes have to run to Penn Station due to the clearances issue, but that's only 5 trains, but in general there's still a few more trains towards Penn Station). In any case, the Ronkonkoma service was redistributed during those timeframes, but not reduced. The 3:07pm was shifted to Grand Central and slightly earlier at 3:01pm, the 3:14pm was shifted to 3:31pm, the 3:55pm was shifted to 4:01pm, and the 4:09pm was shifted to Grand Central. Also, keep in mind that some people going to Main Line stations can use the 3:09pm to Huntington, or the 3:23pm to Jamaica, and then transfer to the Port Jefferson train to Mineola and Hicksville.

Isn't the #178 already the Hackensack - GWB route?

In 2009, one of the sections that they focused on was eliminating routes that had 75% or more of the route within 1/4 mile of the subway. Then in 2010, they were a bit more precise in their methodology and released statistics on the performance of individual routes, and focused more on particular route segments that could be eliminated or restructured with other routes.

https://www.nicebus.com/Passenger-Information/NiceLink https://www.nicebus.com/getattachment/Passenger-Information/NiceLink/MINI-1-16-23-(1).pdf.aspx?lang=en-US It's dated 1/16/23, so it's been running at least since then (I thought I heard about it in June 2022 or so, so it might've started closer to then). EDIT: Also, I'm a bit confused, the map (shown revised 7/21/22) shows something resembling the old N36, but the description mentions something between the Meadowbrook and Wantagh, north of Merrick Road and south of Hempstead Turnpike. Are they adding a second zone for SE Nassau?

The proposed BxM11 via Bronxdale would've covered a stint of Boston Road. East of that (say past Laconia), you start heading into BxM10 territory.

It's not just wealthy people taking these routes. You have college kids and people who work at retail jobs in Manhattan who also take the express bus from Staten Island. Having lived out on Staten Island for 18 years, the ferry sucks...it's slow and infrequent and on top of that you usually have to transfer on both ends of the trip. (And the NYC ferry isn't much better...it's faster but it's even less frequent than the main ferry and doesn't accept free transfers)

I mean the marginal cost of off-peak service is not that much, and there should be more off-peak express routes running anyway. (The SIM2, SIM6, SIM26, possibly split the SIM1C and SIM3C/33C into some of their respective peak variants, etc) As far as the fare goes, I have no opinion.

Same reason.

Basically, they want to emphasize that once trains have passed Jamaica in either direction, they might run up to three minutes earlier than the scheduled time, because the majority of boarding passengers would already be on the train.

It would be around a mile or so to the Ampere station. For reference, the Broad Street station is a little under two miles from me (and this past Sunday I had the displeasure of having to walk the whole thing...weekend service, especially Sunday service out here is like night and day compared to weekday service...Monday mornings at 8am, the PATH runs every 5 minutes...Sunday mornings at 8am, it's every 35 minutes, and a similar situation for the Bloomfield Avenue buses). Anyway, my walking tolerance is high so I would consider it walkable. I'd add it to my rotation of options (light rail to Newark Penn, bus to Newark Broad, walk to Ampere), but it would likely be one of the back pocket options so to speak. On a side note, I'm shocked at how infrequently the #34 runs in the evenings. When I'm on the PATH, I usually check the MyBusNow app for the next buses to leave Newark Penn, and I'll see a bunch of #1 and #25 buses on the Market Street side, but very rarely any #34s (for either branch, Bloomfield or East Orange/Montclair). Hopefully that's something that changes as part of the redesign. They basically had off-peak round trip fares. (So a one-way would've been full fare regardless). The discount was something like 20-25% compared to two one-way tickets. (But nowadays, they have FlexTicket, which is almost the same thing: 20 tickets for the price of 16, but it's only valid for 30 days from the date of purchase). Here are some old schedules with the fares. https://web.archive.org/web/20030821235840/https://www.njtransit.com/pdf/rail/r0040.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20051124225032/https://www.njtransit.com/pdf/rail/r0040.pdf

That's only some Main Line trains stopping at those stations. They aren't adding extra physical trains to stop there.

Pretty sure it's officially 55 mph throughout Northern NJ (Garden State Parkway is 65 mph). But you're right, in practice most go 70-75.

Another video on the Ampere station restoration:

I see a car available 2 blocks away. I'll walk the two blocks, pick up the car, drive to the supermarket, drop my groceries off, and then drop off the car and walk back two blocks. Not the end of the world if it's not right at my door. My point is it's cheaper than round-trip cab ride to the supermarket (or whatever destination you are looking to reach).

You mean the #186? (Dumont - Bergenfield - Englewood - Fort Lee - GWB)