Caelestor

100% agree. Its a damn shame that the comprehensive plans were thought of second, and then had the worst luck in being proposed first, months before the Great Depression and second, months before World War II broke out...

 

Nevertheless, it is my personal opinion that the IND was the best planned out of the three "companies" taking into account the spacious stations, flying junctions and the design of curves along the routes, unlike the IRT in particular and the BMT somewhat.

The original IRT subway was supposed to be run completely under Broadway, but was diverted to GCT and Park / Lafayette Aves to better serve the East Side due to complaints from property owners on Broadway south of 34 St. Had the entire line stayed under Broadway, I think the NYC subway would be better off as a whole today. The IRT did fix this inefficient route with the H system, and I think its only major mistake was building Rogers Junction without flying junctions.

The BMT's major design flaw was having all lines go through DeKalb Ave while not building it as a massive express station for transfers to all lines. In Manhattan, the Broadway line had to deal with the existing IRT system, both elevated and subway, which lead to the circuitous Lower Manhattan route. Then they got screwed by the IND building its own 8 Ave line instead of extending the Broadway Line express tracks up CPW.

The IND had a clear design language: only express services used the underwater tunnels, and local (double-letter) routes stayed mostly within their own boroughs, with some exceptions as the . In hindsight this did not actually reflect passenger behavior, especially for the Fulton and Queens Blvd lines. I also think building the 6 Ave subway instead of just doing a (albeit politically-challenging) takeover of PATH incurred too much debt on the system that has been the root of slow expansion post-WWII.

Is it known how many TPH the and trains would run during the shutdown?

The is planned to be on 8 minute headways, so most riders will probably avoid the . 

The estimated maximum capacity of the Williamsburg Bridge is 24 tph. At peak hours, expect 12 trains and 12 trains.

No. The and run out of different yards. The , however, swaps with the all the time...

To add, the is internally a branch of the . It makes sense, since the is really just a truncated version of the overnight local .

UTICA AV SUBWAY

 

Kosciusko St (Change for J)

Gates Av (Malcolm X Blvd

Halsey St (Malcolm X Blvd)

Fulton St (Change for A,C)

Eastern Pkwy (Change for 3,4)

Empire Blvd (Utica Av)

Winthrop St (Utica Av)

Church Av (Utica Av)

Av D (Utica Av)

Av H (Utica Av)

Flatlands Av (Utica Av) OR Av K (UTICA Av)

Av N (UTICA Av)

Av U (Flatbush Av)

I thought the general consensus was that the Utica Ave would be built first as an extension of the and then linked up with a potential subway through Williamsburg in the long term.

NOSTRAND AV EXTENSION

 

Av L (Nostrand Av)

Kings Hwy (Nostrand AV)

Av U (Nostrand Av)

Av X (Nostrand Av)

Shore Pkwy (Nostrand Av)

Emmons AV (Nostrand Av)

Knapp St (Emmons AV)

Get rid of the last three stops, and terminate the extension at Voorhies Ave. Otherwise, sounds good.

Work is now happening 24/7 to make it to the New Year's Eve deadline.

 

https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20161114/upper-east-side/second-avenue-subway-work-deadline-december-31

The article was posted 11/14 and work was supposed to be done 11/30. Any updates?

It all looks very average to me, going by modern international standards. I can't think of anywhere that builds new stations any smaller.

 

It's just that very old stations like we have in NYC tend to be woefully under-sized by modern standards. 

One analogy is that old stations were built like underground bus stops. They were placed less than half a mile apart in most cases, since stations often only had one entrance. Some stations were even local-only!

Nowadays, subway stations are considerably more costly but provide a lot more amenities and an expanded service reach through multiple entrances. 

I have a feeling the 4 Avenue express tracks have a capacity much lower than the rule-of-thumb 30 TPH for a pair of tracks. The combined and couldn’t be more than 21 TPH, but trains frequently struggle around DeKalb Avenue, 36 Street, and Atlantic Avenue–Barclays Center. CBTC along the interlined stretches (like Manhattan bridge to 59 Street) would remove some of the performance-killing restrictions put in place to guard against train operator error and it would close the generous braking distance closer to the physical limits.

The run 20 tph (3 min combined headway) at peak. I think the primary constraint is Dekalb Junction, which is in a similar situation to Camden Town: two merge points where trains are switching from Fourth Avenue to the north side of the bridge and from Brighton to the south side of the bridge, simultaneously. Only through separating the lines can capacity be increased, and then the Manhattan Bridge poses a possible constraint.

The MTA also believes that the Bay Ridge terminal suffers the same constraints as the Astoria Ditmars Blvd, so 10 - 15 tph max.

It's absolutely possible to extend the into Brooklyn. If Bay Ridge can't handle the traffic, send it to Sea Beach, since the is already basically a branch of the anyways. The yard and/or an extension to Staten Island (pricy) are some other options to improve service at Bay Ridge. Certainly I'd take it over extending the , which has already been cut back in the 1980s due to route length reliability concerns.

Is this a good use of existing resources though? Phase 3 of SAS is probably going to cost $10 billion, and I'm sure there are other lines which are higher up in the priority queue for subway cars.

So the current SAS plans require no suspensions of service for existing lines, right? Because a suspension of service cannot be justified unless it's a matter of public safety, as with the ?

The only lines that have been suspended in recent memory have been due to bridge reconstruction, 9/11, and Hurricane Sandy. So pretty much no.

Why are we proposing the Chambers - Grand St connection via Canal St again? If that's happening, it makes most sense to extend it via Park Row s.t. Chatham Square is still served and SAS doesn't make two sharp turns.

Another trans-river tunnel would be unthinkably expensive, especially after already draining funds just to get phases III and IV built. If any tunnel should be built for the SAS (or in general), it should be for the Bronx extension of the or . The Montague Tunnel has been underused since the neutering of the Nassau Line, so if you don't believe that sending one of the two sub-63rd SAS services through the Nassau corridor is a good idea, then you should at least appreciate the benefit of finding some way to send it through the Montague Tunnel.

The last two subway underwater tunnels to be built were Rutgers in 1936 and 63 St in 1989, so we're due for a new tunnel in 25 years. I'd argue that the new Hudson River tunnels take priority over anything in the East River, though.

Due to how many existing crossings there are, I actually don't think a new Brooklyn - Manhattan tunnel is necessary either. Rutgers and Montague are still at half capacity, and there's an easy way to increase service through the latter. I'd reserve Montague for an extension of the . It's harder to increase service through Rutgers since the is taking up capacity, so I'll table that for now.  As for the IRT, reconstructing Rogers Junction is the obvious way to increase apacity without shelling out the money for a new East River tunnel. Overall, there's really no need for SAS to run into Brooklyn in the short or medium term, actually. The one thing I'd fix is to construct some sort of transfer between Seaport / Fulton St or Hanover Sq / South Ferry, so that the south portion of SAS isn't a complete dead end.

On the flip side, Queens badly needs more subway service. I argue that after Phase 3 extends SAS to Houston St / Grand St, Phase 3.5 should extend the 63 St to a temporary terminus at Woodside or Northern Blvd / Broadway to add a second service along 2 Ave / 63 St. This allows for the turquoise to add 10 - 15 tph of additional service at probably $1 - $2 billion, a fraction of SAS costs.

None of us are denying this.

 

There just simply is not a market for a Bay Ridge-Lower Manhattan subway route.

Technically, it already exists. The real issue is that service is unreliable, which is probably because there's no yard at Bay Ridge for trains to be dispatched during service disruptions. I'd rather boost the existing service somehow rather than introduce a new line, especially since most 4 Ave customers transfer to the anyways.

For your information, I was the pioneer in the forum who (first) envisioned a Second Avenue service to Queens as a super-express route between Jamaica and Hanover Square. I purposely chose as the designation primarily because it is the closest letter to in the English alphabet, and just like all original IND services go from to in alphabetical order, and are a perfect match (since you can't use the letter U due to its confusion with the word <<you>>).

Lots of people have proposed the  via 2 Ave and 63 St in this forum. People differ on the eastern end though. I personally wish for the to be the superexpress to Forest Hills and  the full-time Northern Blvd local, but the general consensus is that Forest Hills and eastern Queens needs all the service it can get.

Too bad there's not enough political will to get all these extensions built...

Neither have I. I personally don't have a problem with reusing for the third SAS service, but I also don't see any problem with using another letter other than I or O because of the similarities between them and 1 and 0. Likewise, I don't think U should be used because of you...no, not you personally, but now you can see why U may not be such a good choice for a subway line name. Same goes for Y because of "why". But I really don't see a problem with reusing K or P. I prefer P because it's also close to T (although V is closer and would be a nod to its heritage as a former Queens Blvd service), because I feel that if you keep the route letters as close together as possible, you won't have to skip all over the alphabet when you make the station signs or display the route bullets on the map. I guess it's mostly for aesthetics. I'd have no problem with using H or X either, but is currently still in use internally as the Rockaway Park Shuttle. And if I'm not mistaken, I think X is used internally for non-revenue runs. Although someone on here posted a link to a fantasy map that showed the SAS built as far as Houston St with H and T as the two services south of the 63rd St Tunnel and the H running via 63rd St, the Queens Blvd Local and the Rockaway Beach Branch to/from Rockaway Park, eliminating the Shuttle.

Someone here commented that the (P) is reserved for an emergency service to Penn Station during an LIRR strike. I think bringing back the feels the nicest since the has recently been restored. I'd imagine the new  will be much more favorably looked upon than its old incarnation.   aligns with and as well.

Along that reasoning, I think the should be reserved for a BMT-type service.

Why not just run the as a Manhattan express 7 days a week?

The N is express on weekdays to add capacity and to reduce merge points from 2 to 1. On the weekends, the MTA understandably doesn't want to run 4 services on one line. With only 4 additional stops between Times Sq and Canal St, the Broadway express doesn't save that much time compared to the local anyways. Having 5 minute headways at the local stops instead of 10 on the weekends is a good tradeoff.

What would be the purpose of switching the and back to their pre-2001 routes in Brooklyn? Especially given that the runs only on weekdays, and that both the Brighton and West End locals need a full-time service.

 

The only way I could ever see a point in returning the to the Brighton Local is if the remains as the Brighton Express and the gets rerouted to the West End Line. This would be to minimize switching delays at Gold St Interlocking and possibly run trains more frequently on the , , and . But then you would have swarms of people transferring at Atlantic or DeKalb (especially Atlantic), completely overwhelming those stations. That would not be acceptable. But there's really no reason to go back the pre-2001 and .

 

As for the , what do you mean by "extending it back to Brooklyn?" Doesn't it already serve Brooklyn?

I agree that no changes are needed. The were swapped because Brighton riders wanted full-time access to Broadway and West End riders were okay with full-time Chinatown access via Grand St. The merged the two weekday CPW local and Brighton express services together to optimize service.

Running the down Brighton and the down 4 Ave to increase capacity would actually be an interesting proposal if Brooklyn crowding was on the level of the IRT lines. If Dekalb Ave was hypothetically an express station with an appropriate cross-platform transfer, I think it could work.

The used to short-turn at Bowling Green middays, but service was extended in 2008. I don't think Brooklyn service is needed on the weekends anymore since the now has 50 percent more service. The often also gets messed up by the weekend service changes anyways.

The first day of the was literally the day after the last day of the . Even so, didn't the become the abruptly the next day anyway? Regarding the use of the letter 'Z' specifically, I assumed that the made it a customary practice to place skip-stop services all the way at the end of the alphanumeric sequence (hence after ).

The   was supposed to be replaced by a extension, but board members and the general public wanted to keep the . 

The was an 8 Ave service when it ended; otherwise it probably would have supplemented the instead of .

That sounds like a pretty good reason, then. So I guess we have a consensus in this forum that the should run between Hanover Square and Jamaica–179th Street, while the should run between Hanover Square and Third Avenue–149th Street (with extensions below and above someday)?

SAS should have 3 services, each running on 4 minute headways:

• running the full length of the line
• north of 63 St
•  south of 63 St

I am personally interested in a SAS Phase 3.5 that gets the  running between Woodside and Houston St - 2 Av ASAP, which should solve the overcrowding on the . The will get its relief iff the  reaches 179 St, allowing current riders to not transfer at Kew Gardens for Midtown East.

Terminating trains at Forest Hills, which is a bad terminal since the local tracks are split apart and no crossover exists, is not an option imo. 

The is actually affected by the chokepoint of the Cranberry tunnel. If you move all Fulton trains to the express and have only SAS to the local, then having all SAS trains use Fulton won't be such a big deal. (Whether or not there is terminating capacity is an entirely different question.)

 

The relationship with distance and reliability is at best just a correlation. You only really want to minimize shared sections with other trains.

I agree that increased interlining generally decreases overall capacity and reliability, because trains that don't merge onto tracks when they're supposed to can generate cascading delays. Highway traffic is always bad during rush hour mainly because there's too much merging going on.

Distance is less of a factor than the number of stops, as well as the popularity of those stops. Delays often come when riders hold the doors and cause trains to stop for too long at the stations. From my experience, express trains making fewer stops are generally more reliable than local trains, except for the ones on the overcrowded lines which are always going to be delayed.

I take it you haven't read the FEIS. Running the under Nassau Street would reduce the capacity of the much more than a second service splitting off from Phase 3.

Ignore what I said about Nassau St then. What I was trying to get at is that there is no good reason to connect the Culver Line and SAS, especially since Houston St - 2 Ave will be the transfer point. It's much easier just to run the entire line downtown.

I don't think the here needs service to Brooklyn. I would have a layup track built just south of the platform at Hanover Square for terminating trains instead. That way, in case any service through the tunnel needs to be suspended, trains can short-turn there. By the way, there's no space at Hoyt-Schermerhorn Streets for trains to terminate, since the layout of the outer platorms the route would use would prevent them from being used as a terminal.

I thought we were sending the to Euclid Ave? I guess the could just terminate in Lower Manhattan, but that leaves a lot of unused capacity in the new East River tunnel.

If the ever gets extended to Brooklyn, should a from Queens along Second Avenue be extended there too? I would rather keep the terminating at Hanover Square.

If the East River tunnel is built, all services will be extended, since Hanover Sq is only going to be a 2-track station unlike Whitehall St.

I'd have the go along Culver in Brooklyn, so the can become the Culver Express, and so that Culver gets East Side service as well as Midtown service (and it would reduce the load on the coming from both Queens via the and Brooklyn via the ). I am also of the opinion that the current 15 trains per hour along Culver isn't enough. By running the express and local, you can effectively double the number of trains per hour running to Manhattan (15 currently; 15 and 15 under this proposal)

This proposal would effectively reduce the capacity of SAS Phase 4 and a future East River tunnel by half. Might as well just run the under Nassau St if that happens.

If one station had to be delayed, it would be 86 St, which lies between the terminal and the southernmost stop on the new line. If 72 St and 96 St aren't open, it's not worth opening the line.

Honestly they should do away with the confusion and have trains skip 49th Street when they run express on Broadway. The station does not need three lines serving it.

The serves 49 St because every train from Astoria needs to serve that stop.

A new  service could also alleviate crowding on the Brooklyn side, if a spur via Avenue A were built, connecting with the train just north of Delancey Street (a junction similar to Bergen Street could do). The can become Culver Express with the  becoming the Culver Local to Kings Highway, providing the same TPH throughput as the current at local stations.

If that's going to happen, might as well send the down Nassau St, since half the capacity provided by a new Downtown tunnel can't be used.

Random Route Idea: How about extending some lines to South Ferry? The 6th Ave Line and the 2 AV Subway seem like good choices. Also we need more stations on the sixth ave line and a 9 AV Subway. Maybe a third avenue Subway too. We need lots of service

 

 

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South Ferry doesn't really need more lines. If you look at a heat map of ridership, the most crowded segments are in Midtown, the Upper East Side, and Queens. The current plans for subway expansion are:

• extension to 96 St - 2 Ave
• extension to Lex Ave - 125 St
• service from Lex Ave - 125 St to Houston St
• extension to Hanover Sq

I think that a new  service between Houston St / Grand St and Woodside via Roosevelt Island, with provisions for extension to Forest Hills, would do more to alleviate crowding than Phase 4 of SAS. 

At the moment, we don't need a 3 Ave or 9 Ave subway. An extension to 72 St - UWS via 10 Ave is possible in the long term.

How was the ridership on the to Bay Parkway before going thru 6 Av?

It was estimated that the served 10k riders from South Brooklyn, 17k riders from North Brooklyn, and 22k riders to Midtown Manhattan via transfers at Canal St and Essex St.

Although I usually don't care for pessimism, I had an epiphany of pragmatism. Although it's possible that the won't be extended until 2017, let's say that the keeps its promise and opens all four (three and a half?) stations just in time for the New Year's Eve rush between the Upper East Side and Times Square. I'm inclined to believe that the will then pat itself on the back and rest on its laurels for a while. Let's also say, however, that they work some political magic, secure full funding for Phase 2, and begin construction in the not-too-distant future.

 

Does it not seem probable that the will have been exhausted by the completion of Phase 2, consequently shelving phases 3 and 4 indefinitely? It's quite possible that serious budget issues will arise again over the next decade, not to mention natural and/or man-made disasters, and there are other projects that might demand a greater chunk of a potentially shrinking budget. I reckon that it will be well over a decade before we see service, and longer yet for the to complement it.

 

During this hiatus, perhaps we can convince the to more seriously consider a Bronx connection. In fact, if they can't get Phase 2 off the ground any time soon, we'll have an even stronger position to request a terminal shift from Lexington Avenue to the Bronx.

Phase 3 and the will be built if the developers, the city and state government, and the economy wish it to. A lot can get done if there's the political will to do so exists. Phase 4 and the  are just hypotheticals at this point, dependent on the state of affairs in Lower Manhattan and Queens.

To send SAS into the Bronx, developers need to be onboard, and a new EIR needs to be drafted ASAP.