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Caelestor

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Everything posted by Caelestor

  1. Station lengthening isn't as effective because there are just so many stations in the subway, even if it's only IRT division. Better signaling, select deinterlining, and better passenger distribution at chokepoints such as GCT would go a long way to achieving 30 tph, which is the practical limit of a heavily branched subway system.
  2. Lengthening one station and getting a 11.25 percent capacity increase on the sounds like great ROI. Getting the additional 11 percent capacity for the 10th car is frankly not worth it, seeing the more pressing capacity issues on Lex Ave and QBL that need to be addressed. I do see the appeal of a new Williamsburg tunnel for the so the don't get disrupted. The question now is how would the new reach Brooklyn? Presumably via the express platforms at 2 Ave, but in that scenario I can't imagine any part of the Chrystie St connection would survive. That might not be a necessarily bad thing though, as auxiliary connections between major trunk lines are a net capacity decrease and should be removed from normal service.
  3. I'm also of the opinion that another East River tunnel to Brooklyn shouldn't be built until the runs at least 26 tph - a 30 percent capacity increase is achievable with only electrical upgrades and no new tracks. As for the via Williamsburg Bridge, I've seen this diagram proposed but I'm not certain if this is actually buildable as drawn. My guess is that the existing tracks between Broadway/Lafayette and Grand St wouldn't be entirely removed, so some creative engineering is required to get the SB 6 Ave express track running towards Essex St. Nonetheless, sending Grand St trains up 2 Ave is probably the most feasible way to change SAS Phase 3 into an actual new two-trunk line that can actually relieve Lex Ave. After 55 St, the would take over upper SAS and the would be rerouted to new lower-level 72 St platforms. Then in the long term, the could be extended via 79 St into Queens under Broadway / Northern Blvd.
  4. As many have pointed out, the needs to stay on the express tracks and run up 2 Ave. Merging onto the local tracks, whether at 34 St or 57 St, is undeniably a theoretical capacity decrease for the entire Broadway Line because one train effectively occupies both tracks as it uses the switch. Also, if the isn't on time, it would only delay the if it stayed on the express tracks vs the as well. That said, changing the also requires changing the , which is currently scheduled as a branch of the . Basically the trains have two different northern terminals at 96 St and Astoria, two southern terminals at Whitehall and 86 St / CI, and even two different routes through Manhattan (Broadway local vs express). What really should happen is that the should be scheduled together, as they would share the same trunk line (Broadway Express tracks) and terminals, albeit along a different branch in Brooklyn. Then the from Forest Hills and the from Astoria could be scheduled together down the Broadway local tracks, with varying southern terminals at Whitehall, Bay Ridge, or Gravesend during peak hours if the other 2 terminals can't turn 25 tph. If DeKalb deinterlining becomes a reality, then the could even share the 4 Ave express tracks while the get Brighton to themselves, and route consolidation can propagate throughout the entire B Division. Long story short, deinterlining reduces the effective number of services that conflict with each other and potential delays, benefiting operators and riders alike.
  5. Extending the QBL locals to 179 St benefits mainly the MTA by improving service reliability, which indirectly benefits the riders too. If deinterlining is implemented and QBL local tph increases above 20, then the 179 St extension has to happen because FH can't handle any additional trains. The tradeoff is the additional train sets and crews associated with them. Do the benefits outweigh the costs?
  6. Most relevant to NYCS, Seems way more confusing than just routing one of the down the RBB.
  7. The issue is that scheduling express trains during the peak of rush hour overcrowds the adjacent s because Bergen St to 7 Ave have headways double. I understand why the is a thing, and it honestly could work, but it requires combined to be more than the 15 tph it is today. That would only be possible with the replacing the , hence all the talk about reconstructing Chrystie St (again) in the other thread.
  8. There's no good reason to abandon Nassau St in any proposal. It can relieve the since it runs straight through the heart of Lower Manhattan and it hasn't been used to its full potential. If the Jamaica Line is routed onto the 6 Ave express tracks, then Nassau St has to be rerouted to SAS. There's two options to Houston St, via Grand St and the old ROW used by the Nassau St loop, or via Canal St and a new tunnel to Houston St. Bowery is abandoned but honestly Grand St is a reasonable replacement because it goes to uptown, downtown, and Brooklyn.
  9. Long-term I think SAS should be a 4-track line. Effectively it will be the last new NYC subway trunk line, with a future 10 Ave line being only an extension of the existing 14 St line. After that it will be more effective to build regional mainline trunks because the subway coverage will be very thorough around Manhattan. However, upper SAS local being an extension of the BMT Broadway express tracks complicates matters. Eventually, new construction needs to be done that turns 79 St into a 6-track transfer station with the being redirected into Queens via 79 St. This frees up the SAS local to run entirely down 2 Ave and into Brooklyn via the Manhattan Bridge. With the Williamsburg bridge tracks rerouted onto the 6 Ave express and the Broadway local tracks connected to the Fulton St local tracks, Nassau St can be reconstructed and sent up SAS as the express line. Water St in my opinion is redundant with the Nassau St as underutilized as it is today. All of this is super expensive of course - but it's the only way to maximize the existing Brooklyn - Midtown subway capacity.
  10. FWIW I do think the service can become viable in the future. In the long term, the QB (local + express), 63 St, 6 Ave local, and Culver lines can form one highly frequent trunk line with 15 tph between Forest Hills and Church Ave and the between 179 St and Coney Island. All the stops have quite high ridership, and BMT Culver has been designated for redevelopment (gentrification) by the city. The main impediment now is the - don't think it should return to Nassau St, but the ideal scenario of sending it to 6 Ave express and sending Chrystie St up 2 Ave is a serious reconfiguration project that would probably impose a decade of endless construction.
  11. Perhaps a simple light rail line between Woodhaven Blvd QBL and Howard Beach - JFK could be built in the ROW. This would also reduce the cost of the entire project, since light rail stops are way cheaper than subway stations these days.
  12. Sea Beach has two top 150 ridership stations at 59 St and 8 Ave compared to none on West End. Past that the lines are comparable in ridership, though Sea Beach is the faster train to / from Coney Island. That said, 59 St - Bay Ridge has more ridership per station than either West End or Sea Beach, and all 4 Ave local trains should stay on the local tracks.
  13. These ideas are great and all, but here's a proposal that's probably really pressing - stop running trains every 12 minutes because no one is willing to wait around that long. The solution is a bit harder to pinpoint but probably involves overhauling the existing work and flagging rules.
  14. Honestly, no service is better than poor service. At least with no service, there's some expectation that normal (relatively good) service will return. An eternal state of poor service just forces people onto the rideshares permanently. Also, a 4-track line with 15 tph has 25% the capacity of a normal line. That's almost as bad as the weekend (3 tph = 20% of normal 15 tph service) and everyone is calling for that to be shut down. As for outer lines such as QBL, LIRR + MNR have a lot of capacity and riders should be allowed to ride on them at much more discounted rates.
  15. One issue with the is that the and the LIRR Atlantic branch do a much better job at getting riders to Lower Manhattan and especially Downtown Brooklyn. However, what the can do is capture the latent ridership between Broadway Jct and Marcy Ave, which is relatively high given the low frequencies the non-transfer stops receive. But back to the point, a (brownR) train is a pretty good solution for Bay Ridge riders, given the spare capacity along the Bay Ridge + Nassau St lines. I don't have much else to say. According to the L train shutdown, the Bridge can handle 24 tph. Hence why I suggested 7.5 tph on the each.
  16. The real purpose of skip-stop is to run fewer train sets at the peak, but short-turning trains and providing more service, especially west of Broadway Junction, is a much better solution. The should all run on synchronized 8 minute headways at the peak. I'm not certain if any of these trains should be running express - lowering headways, especially west of Broadway Junction, is a bigger priority in my opinion.
  17. line extension. However, the new South Ferry terminal wasn't build deep enough so the East River tunnel would have to branch off the main line south of Rector St. The has an upper limit of 26 tph, which isn't currently achieved because of the lack of electrical power. The could be ramped up to 30 - 36 tph if it got a terminal like Hudson Yards, and the consensus here is that the should be extended up 10 Ave to 72 St, stopping at 23 St, 34 St, 41 St, 50 St, and 57/60 St. The go to 96 St, the would run to Astoria and the would run take its place along QBL.
  18. IIRC the plan isn't to combine the and just yet, but have one full-time local service between Astoria and Bay Ridge and have the other part-time service truncated to Forest Hills - Whitehall. The remaining question is what should the weekend service plan be, assuming that Broadway will only run three services like every other trunk line. Agreed that the to QBL via 63 St is a non-starter. SAS needs more service and an option to route the via 63 St should be preserved for the future. You nailed QBL's fundamental design problem - the Queens Plaza - Roosevelt Ave stretch has practically no ridership and takes a longer physical route than the track, causing local-express transfers to and severe overcrowding on the . If trains could run local east of Roosevelt Ave but express west of that stop, the crowding would be significantly less. For ridership balance purposes, the ideal QBL service plan is to keep the the same as usual, reroute the via 63 St, and introduce a Forest Hills - Euclid Ave train (QBL local via 53 St, 8 Ave express, Fulton Local). This gives each tunnel a minimum of 2 express trains + 1 local train every 8 minutes. To offer a middle ground, convenient transfers should always be prioritized over one seat rides. Here are the places where deinterlining should be implemented with few to no questions asked: Rogers Junction IRT - Franklin Ave can easily accommodate local-express cross-platform transfers 8 Ave Canal St merge - Canal St is another cross-platform transfer Broadway 34 St merge - 57 St, 42 St, 34 St, and 14 St are all good transfer points and all 4-track local-express segments in general and here are the places where it's more questionable: DeKalb Ave: Neither DeKalb Ave nor Atlantic Ave have cross-platform transfers. QBL: There is a severe imbalance in ridership along QBL (see above) Columbus Circle: Interlining actually should be implemented, but it requires the to run local along CPW / 8 Ave, the to run express on CPW, and the to run express into Brooklyn. Some special cases where deinterlining results in so much extra capacity that it's probably worth it to bite the bullet: Retire 53 St / 6 Ave connection and 11th St cuts - the new train is basically half a line's worth of capacity Grand Concourse - 149 St: The should be running to Woodlawn and the would take over White Plains if Harlem-148 St didn't exist. The real question is how much does full deinterlining help QBL? QBL express can gain maybe 6 more tph with CBTC, but QBL local barely justifies 15-20 tph, let alone 30. QBL probably will need another capital project (beyond CBTC) to fix the fundamental design flaws of the line. Even the bypass line connecting to 63 St wouldn't actually increase Queens capacity since the 11 St cut wouldn't be retired, so another East River tunnel has to be in the works somewhere.
  19. Honestly I'm fine with service cuts after the evenings if it will save money in overtime costs and the savings could be redirected to capacity increases at other times.
  20. The real issue is that the MTA can run 50+ tph on weekdays on the busiest trunk lines but there's a hard cap of 20 on weekends. If 30 was the upper limit, every service could run on the weekends and the subway wouldn't be losing as much ridership to the rideshare companies. Fortunately, this will be a moot point once the is permanently taken off QBL.
  21. Assuming Broadway is still connected to the QBL, the line has three northern branches in SAS, Astoria, and QBL and three southern branches in Brighton, Sea Beach, and Bay Ridge. So the current weekend service plan is the optimal one. If I was in charge of the real-life Department of Subways, the would still run to 96 St. Instead, reroute the to Astoria due to QBL CBTC and give the reasonable 8-minute headways. The could terminate at 57 St if 96 St can't handle 3 services, then send it back to Forest Hills once capacity becomes available. I am uncertain but I would definitely keep the designation on Sea Beach where it's run for over 50 years. Astoria and Bay Ridge both have the letter and the is going to be retired once the runs 15 tph along the entire local corridor.
  22. Assuming the BMT trains are sent to Flushing instead, it's not a terrible idea because most Flushing riders transfer at Queensboro Plaza today. The major downside is that the wouldn't have a yard. At 3 blocks, 60 St to 63 St is closer than PABT to Times Sq and thus the transfer really should be built. Then Lex Ave express / QBL express riders can transfer to each other and SAS riders can access the until lower SAS is built.
  23. First proposal should be implemented because in practice Broadway gains ~7 tph plus reduced train delays along the entire corridor. Plus it's a prerequisite to the other plans here. Second proposal is not a great long-term solution because I'm not convinced that the can handle SAS by itself at its current frequencies. Third proposal gives 8 Ave the Broadway treatment and fully maxes out system capacity, but given that the can only run 8 car trains at the moment, a CPW-style interlining with express and local might be more feasible. Yep, the idea is that the Canal St merge kills capacity just like the 34 St merge on Broadway and both need to be retired. In order to preserve 8 Ave local service, especially at 50 St, the Fulton local should become a QBL train. However, the MTA has to not only add an additional service, but both the 53 St / 6 Ave and 59 St / Queens Plaza connections have to be retired so that might be more challenging to get public approval.
  24. No one advocates a along West End; the preference is for trains to be extended to Bay Ridge. Seeing as the conversation has shifted over to capacity on the B Division. I'm just going to say that the most realistic steps the MTA can take is to deinterline all express trains and local trains along the 4 track trunks in Manhattan. In practice this means Send the to 96 St and allow for more trains to run to Whitehall St / Bay Ridge Run the express to add more capacity through Cranberry and allow for a future local train to Queens With just these two changes, B Division can be broken up into "sectors" that can further increase reliability without any additional construction: Manhattan Bridge sector: Concourse / CPW local / 6 Ave express + SAS / Broadway express feeding into Brighton, West End, and Sea Beach. Further deinterlining can't be implemented because neither DeKalb nor Atlantic Ave have cross-platform transfers. Each service can run on today's 6 minute headways or possibly 5 minutes, 4 minutes after CBTC is installed. Cranberry tunnel sector: 8 Ave express / Fulton. With no upgrades, 24 tph with a 2:1 express:local split in Brooklyn should be doable. Queens sector: Astoria - QBL local / Broadway local / Bay Ridge + QBL express / 8 ave local + QBL / 6 Ave local + Nassau St / Jamaica + Crosstown / Culver. Every service here should be running on 4/8 minute headways so that they sync up. More aggressive deinterlining can further split this into Astoria + QBL sectors. Increasing frequency across all lines should be prioritized over local service reductions on outer branches.
  25. Adding on to my earlier point, the and already run express, just along 4 Ave. When viewed as the two branches of the 4 Ave express, West End and Sea Beach can only accommodate one service, and in general for any line there should always be robust local service in place before adding express trains. Adding additional 4 Ave local trains like the old is a bad idea for operational and ridership purposes unless they go to Bay Ridge. The runs every 4 minutes and the runs every 8 minutes. The current motivation for the express train, besides redeveloping the neighborhoods served by lower Culver, is so that trains terminating at Church Ave don't delay the . None of this is worth halving service to the stops along upper Culver. That said, if Bergen St lower level is reopened, then the could be reintroduced as the weekday local to Church Ave. The would be sent down Nassau St and Montague St to Bay Ridge. Then all trains run express between Bergen and Church.
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