Mysterious2train

Had this fun ride on the earlier today. So we get to President St and the conductor announces the next stop will be Church Av followed by Flatbush Av (skipping Sterling St, Winthrop St, Beverley Rd and Newkirk Av; this happens sometimes when or trains are delayed). We skipped Sterling St and Winthrop St like normal, but the train skipped Church Av too without any warning. I'm guessing the crew realized they made a mistake, since we stopped at Beverley Rd (which is great for me, since that's my stop). A lot of people who seemed to normally get off at Church Av got off there and seemed so confused. Some of them just waited on the platform, some of them got off and got back on on the Manhattan-bound side, and some just resolved to walk to Church Av. Must have been unchartered territory for them.

I was getting off the a few minutes ago, and I saw a magical sight: not one, not two, but three B44 locals running together to Sheepshead Bay. I really wanted to take a picture, but I had turned my phone off and couldn't turn it on in time. I'll have to leave this screenshot from BusTime instead.

I think qj is saying to put the Bx33 on 145th, so 145th St has additional bus service (2 bus lines serving it instead of one), and put the Bx1 on 135th St to replace the Bx33, so there will be more frequent service on 135th St.

No. The B44 local still terminates at Flushing Av during the day, as it has before SBS started. At night, when there's no SBS service, the local runs to Williamsburg Bridge Plaza. The MTA and DOT considered extending B44 locals to WBP during the day, but they (wisely) declined to do so because ridership between Flushing Av and WBP is pretty low compared to the rest of the route, also Lee Av can get congested at times. - Maybe this is what you're thinking of? But B35 really hit the nail on the head about SBS service causing local service to worsen. Huh, how did the B44 come up in this topic anyway?

The distance the M42 covers is a bit of walk, isn't it? Walking from 12 Av to Times Square is almost a mile, from 12 Av to Grand Central is over a mile. It's certainly doable, but I don't think people should have to walk that long of a distance, or have to walk, get on the train and then walk some more.

I got caught in that, it was hellish. Got on the at 14 St; to get to Church Av normally takes half an hour or so, today it took 58 minutes. I should have looked up the status of the trains beforehand and went to the Broadway line.

The really weird thing is that only trains from the Pelham Bay Park are running express from Hunts Point to 3 Av-138 St. Trains from Parkchester are running local like normal. I don't understand this at all.

The X32 was an express route that ran between eastern Queens and Bronx Science High School. It was eliminated in the 2010 service cuts. It had 3 round trips each day. One trip started from 165 St Bus Terminal in Jamaica, one started from Springfield Blvd and Union Turnpike Oakland Gardens, and another from 23 Av and Bell Blvd in Bay Terrace. A lot of kids commute from eastern Queens to the specialized high schools and the X32 served those kids going to Bronx Science. The X32 was a fast alternative to the otherwise long commute from eastern Queens to Bronx Science HS: a local bus out from eastern Queens to the in Flushing or the or in Jamaica, then taking those trains to Midtown and transferring to the or to Bedford Park Blvd in the Bronx. If you lived near the X32 but far from the subway, the X32 would get you to Bronx Science High School in a little over an hour, compared to going through Manhattan which would take over 90 minutes. Just some trivia: In 2008 or so, a counterpart to the Q44 route, the Q94, was proposed. This Q94 would run between Flushing and Fordham Plaza in the Bronx, but some weekday trips would be extended to serve Bronx Science High School, just like what the Bx22 route does today. The Q94 would replace the X32 in providing service between Queens and Bronx Science High School, but the route was never created. http://web.mta.info/nyct/bus/schedule/xpress/x032cur.pdf <-- Most recent X32 schedule from 2010 https://web.archive.org/web/20100214171039/http://www.mta.info/nyct/maps/busqns.pdf <-- An old Queens map showing X32 service https://web.archive.org/web/20100215213053/http://mta.info/nyct/maps/busqns2.pdf <-- An old Queens map service guide listing the X32 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/nyregion/12bus.html?em&ex=1202965200&en=06f44f04dcaa04af&ei=5087%0A <-- New York Times article from 2008 about the X32 bus

web.mta.info/mta/news/books/docs/r_179_staff_summary_March_2012.pdf Apparently 2nd Ave service can basically be managed with the amount of cars we have now.

Speaking of the Man do I wish the Franklin Av shuttle could be connected to the Crosstown. It would primarily benefit people on Brighton and Eastern Pkwy and Fulton St that backtrack at Hoyt-Schmerhorn. Assuming that a train travels from Franklin & Fulton to Bedford-Nostrand in 2 minutes you could get from Prospect Park to Court Square in only 22 or 23 minutes. At least during AM Rush, a direct Franklin-Crosstown route to Court Square would save 7 or so minutes on average over walking from Atlantic-Barclays to Fulton St on the and 10-15 minutes over going into Manhattan and transferring to the to get to Lorimer St or Court Square. At 0.7 miles, the distance is shorter than any of our current capital projects, but there are important projects out there unfortunately. I just think it's fascinating how this would save a nice amount of time for the aforementioned riders for such a relatively short distance.

I guess not. Presumably the handful of R179s on the would cause a few R46s to be sent to Jamaica which would in turn cause a few R160s to be sent to Coney Island to be used on the for SAS service, which would accomplish the goal of restricting the R179s to only a few yards. Unless I'm missing something.

I saw those checkers along the B44 week before last.

Very random thought: I was just glancing at the schedules for all the local buses that serve 179 St on the train in the peak direction during rush hour (Q1, Q2, Q3, Q17, Q36, Q43, Q76, Q77, Q110, N1, N6, N22 and N24) and during the period where all those lines are at their busiest, from around 7:40ish to 8:10ish in the morning, you have about 60 buses altogether from all those lines, running together between 188 and 179 St, headed towards Jamaica. 60 buses in half an hour, all 40 feet long (2400 feet total), is equivalent to 4 full-length trains, each one 600 feet long. In a span of around 30 minutes, that's equal to a train every 7 or 8 minutes. You have enough buses feeding to 179 St station to match one train every 7 or 8 minutes, that's pretty damn impressive (or unfortunate I guess, given the lack of train service in eastern Queens) For comparison, the M15 local and Select bus together have around 18 artic buses per half-hour at their busiest. 18 buses x 60 feet = 1080, so you'd need 1.8 full-length trains to match that amount of service, or one train every 16 or 17 minutes, roughly. I hope the gets extended east someday. (Jamaica Center and Flushing-Main St are both busier than 179 St, but I think 179 St is kind of an interesting case because all of the bus lines that stop at 179 St run together until 188 St, which is about half a mile away, or the perfect distance for a subway stop. 179 St is really only busy at all because it's the current last stop. If you built just one new stop, at 188 St, 179 St would probably see a huge decrease in ridership. At Jamaica Center and Main St, the bus lines there diverge in different directions immediately, and those stops are in the center of big hubs, so even if they weren't terminals, they'd still be fairly important and busy stops.)

I know there's a lot of untapped ridership, plus growth, plus transfers from the at 63 and Lex, but I can't help but wonder if the MTA's estimate of 200,000 people per weekday for Phase I is a little high. Glancing at ridership figures 59th, 68th, 77th, 86th, 96th, and 103rd on the Lex line altogether have almost 249,000 people a day, but this number includes people getting on the Broadway line at 59th, so the actual number is probably closer to 220,000-ish per day or something. The MTA themselves estimate that around 24,000 people per day would switch from the Lex line to 2 Av, so that leaves about 175,000 people each day who either don't ride the subway on the East Side now at all or would be transferring from the to get on the at its four new stops. Just for reference, 175,000 people per day is higher than than current daily ridership at 68, 77, 86 and 96 combined. So I do think the MTA is being awfully optimistic with their estimates. But we won't have ridership data for at least another 4 years, so who knows what will happen. Also, does anybody have a guess as to what will happen with train storage outside of rush hour? Right now, some and trains are laid up in Astoria. Where would excess trains be laid on 2 Av? Hopefully on the tracks beyond 96 St (although they could also be stored at City Hall) Also, what'll happen to the trains that terminate in Midtown during Rush Hour and are laid up on the 63 St tracks during midday?

Agreed. Plus, the DOT has already made clear which few routes are the next they want to put SBS on, and the Q113 ain't one of them.

I dunno, I always figured you could have the northern end run from 192 to 96 St, since that's right near Tuskegee Airmen Depot. While people traveling from below 96 St would have to transfer, there aren't really too many of them in the grand scheme of things, and a few of them might be able to take the M102 instead. The southern end could just be merged with the M103, so you'd have limited buses running from City Hall to 125 St and local buses from 8 St to 96 St (or 125 St, if it's warranted).

I see your point, but wouldn't the B103 becoming slower be less of a reason to extend it in the first place? I'm guessing you weren't very fond of taking the 41 to Empire Blvd for the subway? (At least, that's not quite as slow as taking the local all the way downtown) What, because of the 3 new stops? I don't think it's high. I would assume almost everybody on the 103 going to Manhattan would get off at the Junction and get the or . Unless the extra time spent at those stops causes widespread delays that hamper the reliability of the whole route, including the short-turns, I don't see much changing.

They don't really parallel each either. Heading downtown, they only serve 3 common streets - The Junction, Foster Av, and Cortelyou Rd, which the B41 Limited skips. B103 service Downtown is mainly used by customers coming from far out on its route. Besides, the B41 doesn't get much ridership from Avenue H and below headed Downtown (At least, relative to all its ridership) because it's faster to just take the train. Also, the B103 is essentially a Downtown Brooklyn version of the BM2 (and vice-versa) so why send it to Manhattan?

Seems to be a guideline used when editing the map. Doesn't seem it like should really be on the final version of the map. (notice how the railroad guidelines bleed over onto the Downtown Brooklyn inset, when they're obviously not supposed to?) E.g.

At least if the B46 ever gets SBS, it'll definitely get artics (at least, the Limited will)

About making the Red Hook-Navy yard one route: I assume the MTA considered making Red Hook B57 + Navy Yard B67 one route, but decided against it thinking it might not be strong enough as a route. If the Navy Yard part of the route would still be weekdays only, that means off-peak the route would only run between Downtown Brooklyn and IKEA, so it might not perform well. The B75 was somewhat of a weak route. The MTA probably found it better to extend the B57 and B67 since they were routes with established ridership. I agree that there should be a B71-esque route through the Battery Tunnel, but I wouldn't merge it into the B69. The two halves of the route wouldn't do much for each other. At least, somebody along Vanderbilt or Flushing wouldn't benefit from something going to Lower Manhattan like that. Today's B16 was created in 1931, according to Wikipedia. I can kinda get why it's routed the way it is, but if I didn't know any better, I would assume it runs on 13 Av to avoid Maimonides. I don't really like of a B27 route. If something was to run straight down 13 Av, I would rather it'd be a revived B23.

No, that's not what I mean. During the PM Rush, the Bx15 local and the Bx15 LTD are both scheduled to leave the first stop at the same time. (They're both running on 10 minute headaways). Once Limited service ends, the frequency of service stays the same, so instead of having 1 Local bus and 1 Limited bus leaving at the same time, there are now 2 local buses leaving at the same time. Limited service ends pretty arbitrarily (and notably earlier than on the Bx55) but I suppose it ends arbitrarily on a lot of routes.

Totally agree with this. What's the logic in ending Limited service so early and then having two locals leaving Fordham Plaza right at the same time?

The LIRR already uses CityTicket.

The M98 has its problems but that's not reason to involve the M15 and severely lengthen it. Taking a less prominent route and trying to merge it into a busy route with its own problems is not a good idea.