Caelestor

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.

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.

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.

12 minutes. As you can imagine, there has been some serious overcrowding on the in recent years. This change gives the a 50 percent increase in weekend service and puts it on par with the .

Summary of major changes in the new schedule: New service late night service extended to Whitehall St service now express in Manhattan weekdays service cut back to 57 St, midday / weekend headways decreased to 8 minutes weekend headways decreased to 8 minutes

I would replace the Northern Blvd station with a stop at Woodhaven Blvd. Any service via SAS and 63 St should be full-time imo.

Assuming the Astoria line never gets extended to LGA and beyond, it's impossible to have more than 15 tph peak direction anyways due to terminal constraints. I don't think it's necessary to have more either - the overcrowding is between Queensboro Plaza and Lex Ave - 59 St, which can be relieved by a 63 St service via a transfer at Woodside.

Yeah, I expect the to be used primarily as a shuttle for riders to transfer to the express at Queens Plaza. service would be increased to approximately 15 tph to pick up the slack. Under the new service plans, each Queens East River tunnel would be running 30 tph peak direction.

I forgot to mention that I would make the the QBL express, increase service, and possibly bring the back to Queens Blvd, effectively restoring the pre-2001 service pattern. There's a risk of overcrowding between Queens Plaza and Lex Ave - 53 St, but the 63 St tunnel should hopefully reduce congestion significantly. The only downside is that local passengers west of Roosevelt Ave lose direct 53 St service, but with an express train arriving every 2 minutes, the transfer passengers can transfer at Woodside for 2 Av and 6 Av.

The only platforms closed late nights nowadays are the Times Sq - Grand Central shuttle platforms. It makes more sense to run the via the Bypass line to get the full 30 tph out of the line. East of Forest Hills, the track configuration is a mess, but ideally, the runs on the local tracks and the stays on the express tracks. In the mean time, I'd throw in a stop at Woodhaven Blvd, and leave provisions for future transfers to Triboro RX and Sunnyside LIRR.

From a practical standpoint, the Montague Tunnel can be restored to full usage by extending the . More problematic is that both 63 St lines can't run at full capacity due to design constraints.

One could argue that it makes more sense operationally to have the train run into Brooklyn and the train to turn at Whitehall St, especially since the Bay Ridge local now runs to Manhattan late nights. The only issue is that the train is limited to 8-minute maximum headways because of the terminal constraints at Astoria.

In general, you don't want lines that aren't radial or circumferential. A College Point line should probably be running under Northern Blvd, and the 125 St line should be linking up with the Triboro RX or SAS.

The is not even at 60% capacity at Union St, so I doubt the MTA wants to add capacity. Instead of adding another <R> service, extending the into Brooklyn seems more logical. You can access the Broad St stations via the anyways.

That's not a secret, considering all expansion projects in the last decade have been in Manhattan. The primary impetus derives from developers who want to redevelop WTC, Hudson Yards, and the East Side. In the current environment, the only potential candidate for a new subway line in the outer boroughs would be a Queens Bypass line for developing the Sunnyside Yards upon the completion of SAS Phase 3.

The branch can work, but it needs to run via 163 St and connect there. Area coverage > express service nowadays.

Just based on the infographic on Page 19, SAS Phase 3 and a potential V train via SAS, 63 St, and Woodside look like high priority to me. I don't advocate SAS having 3 branches, since each branch would be a bit too underserved during the peak. In any case, I think it'd be easier to build a University Ave line as an extension of the from 155 St, with a UES connection via a 125 St line, rather than a branch of SAS.

Just interested, what are the two branches of SAS that should be built? The busiest corridors are 3rd/Webster and Fordham/Pelham, which in theory could be accommodated by extensions of the and/or .

I mentioned that the best option for the 125 St line is to be part of the circumferential Triboro RX. This allows for 30 tph to spread all over the Bronx. The question is if the MTA will consider doing so - I lean towards no. Actually, the stop is the most important for access to Columbia. The station doesn't need to be connected to the elevated stop, as an out-of-system transfer should suffice.

A Bronx-bound would serve a very different ridership than the . The is for Midtown West riders, but I think the are still the go-to for Downtown passengers. Don't get me wrong, it will be extremely useful, but I just don't think it will relieve crowding on the Lex Express trains significantly. As for ESA, no one knows how it will impact the Lex Ave line exactly. I actually think the number of LIRR riders heading downtown on the are overrated, especially compared to the volume of transfers from the , which I expect to severely worsen due to current gentrification trends.

From my experiences, the most overcrowded section of the Lex is 14 St - 125 St, with 125 St having lots of riders transferring and Union Sq being the transfer point for riders and via Bleecker St. While the will take a circuitous but one-seat ride up to the UES, I consider SAS Phase 3 absolutely needed to divert riders from Lex Ave. Ideally, Phase 3 should end at Grand St for the transfer as well. On the other hand, one could argue that the LIRR riders are better off going to Atlantic Ave for Lower Manhattan, so I actually don't see considerably worse crowds south of 14 St. It might take some time for Phase 4 to ever come off the planing table.

Here are my thoughts on SAS: The line to 125 St should reduce the overcrowding on the . I still expect the to be fairly full, mainly because the and will continue to be overcrowded, and thus riders will eventually gravitate to the for a less crowded and more reliable ride. From a systemwide perspective, the 125 St line should be medium to high priority due to high bus ridership along that corridor. Building the link will allow for easier east-west side travel, and get rid of permanent standstill traffic on 125 St. In an ideal world, the line would be part of the Triboro RX, but it will still work as a branch of SAS. There's not many alternatives for a Bronx SAS extension since I expect trains to run under 125 St. There's two prevailing ideas on where such an extension should go. The high ridership, more expensive route would go to Coop City via 3rd/Webster/Park, Fordham Road, and Pelham Parkway. The lower-impact but much cheaper alternative is to send the line via mainline ROW to E 180 St, with a transfer at Hunts Point Ave, and onto Eastchester - Dyre Ave, with a potential branch under Pelham Parkway to Coop City. trains would be rerouted to Woodlawn and Nereid Ave to boost service on those lines, and / riders would almost certainly transfer to the , finally reducing the overcrowding on Lex Ave. If SAS ever makes it south of 63 St, a new line in Queens becomes high-priority to take advantage of the spare capacity that the leaves behind. Presumably the 63 St line is extended to Forest Hills with stops at Woodhaven Blvd and Woodside, with potential for infill stations later.

The issue is that the MTA doesn't want to run 3 late-night services on Broadway or 2 services in Astoria.

It should be the trains that arrive Times Sq at 7:23, 8:25, 8:49, and 9:09.

I expect SAS will be enough to accommodate any future Bronx subway, but on the East Side, the best place to build a line after SAS would be 3rd Ave. It could function as the express line to SAS, with its only stops as transfers to the crosstown lines: 125 St, 63 St, 53 St, 42 St, 14 St, Houston St. Not certain where it would go south of Houston St though.