MHV9218

1 hour ago, Cait Sith said:

From what I understand, they're going to be doing wildcat runs, so extra buses are needed.

Interesting. Sounds like wishful thinking in terms of demand... seems like half the Bronx is still trying to figure out what the hell happened. I know they announced everything online months ago, but half the riders on Bronx local buses are old people with flip phones who don't speak English as a first language. Announcing everything on Twitter doesn't exactly help them.

1 hour ago, Cait Sith said:

Saying this in advance.

There's a bunch of loaners going to The Bronx from Queens due to the implementation of the redesign. All of these buses are loaners. The buses are a combination of Next Gens and LFSs(8000s, 8400s-8500s and 8846).

They didn't plan out fleet changes in advance? Surprised they couldn't have just shifted beforehand with the pick.

10 hours ago, GojiMet86 said:

The open gangway R211T is complete:

[Pics]

 

This really is going to seem like such a no-brainer when we consider the endless number of passenger injuries over the years, and the fact that we gave up the operational flexibility of single, Protestant, and eventually Catholic-married sets so many years ago. When you have modern consists like the 188s that comprise so many B- and C-cars, really becomes silly to have the safety risk of chain-link car gangways.

On 6/22/2022 at 9:47 PM, CenSin said:

Gone are the days when the MTA planned for 80 MPH.

Hey, with the way the 211s are going, we could have the record-setting SIRT R44s and R46s for another 5 years. Never say never!

Has anybody figured out what the hell was happening with the C/R during this incident? This one seems almost as bad as that 8th Ave T/O letting his girlfriend operate... 

On 6/20/2022 at 9:06 AM, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

You are taking that definition far too literal. lol There are other factors to assess before proclaiming we're in a recession. Unemployment remains low and hiring last month actually outpaced what the street was expecting. There are also plenty of jobs, but some people are being choosy and deciding where they want to work and when. In a real recession, workers don't have the upper hand because there are fewer jobs.

Consumers are STILL spending. We just have less discretionary spending because consumers have less spending power due to inflation, but they still have money to spend and a substantial amount of savings.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/16/kevin-oleary-says-theres-no-evidence-of-a-recession-right-now.html

A company like Target over-purchased and is simply correcting their situation and tailoring what they buy to what the consumer wants. As long as the consumer is buying, which makes up a significant segment of the US economy, that is one of the key things to look at. From a commuting perspective, people are still taking discretionary trips. I took a trip yesterday into the City just to do some shopping. My express bus to and from had nice crowds, and from what I observed, people were also riding the local buses. That is something else to look at. In a true recession, we tend to see people take fewer discretionary trips, both via transit and via car.

Honestly, another remarkably astute analysis from VG8. What the hell is happening around these parts! 

Another note is that we're still seeing a massive correction in the divide between the goods economy and the service economy. Covid led to a total collapse in services-spending and a massive increase, particularly after stimulus checks, in goods-spending. That was true around the world, not just in the US, which is why every major developed country is seeing inflation rates just as bad as ours, if not worse. The supply chain has been thrown completely out of whack, and there's plenty of demand for say, the plates you eat your guacamole on, and the avocados you use to make it, but not so much for the Mexican restaurant downtown you used to go to. That's part of, as VG8 is saying, the shift in remote vs. in-person work and travel habits that's going to be ongoing for a while. This correction is going to take a little time, and it's clear we have a lot of companies that are, if not openly greedy, at least unbothered by the opportunity to make a few extra bucks of profit and chalk it up to inflation. Oil companies' profit margins are incredible right now, and they all feel they got burnt by the low price of oil a year or two ago, so they're not exactly going to discount barrels any time soon. And let's not forget the destabilizing of food and oil supply chains thanks to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. So you have all these factors coalescing at once, but given the general strength of the economy and historically low unemployment rate, we're definitely not in a true recession, or even that close to one – even if Powell has to keep hiking interest rates by a considerable amount for the next few months.

I do think we're going to look back on the period of relatively 'free money' and say, wait, why didn't we accomplish anything more ambitious during that time? Infrastructure projects, already expensive, are getting pricier by the second. There's a lot that we could, and should, have pushed to do when lending was so cheap. But that's another can of worms...

12 hours ago, Calvin said:

One of the 240 St  train cars having repainted bonnets and deep wash.

 

And it kept the old sticker on the door too. How about that...looks like it's the late 80s all over again.

7596 running the FARE REQUIRED P/R code on the 55 today. Wonder how many buses still have that. 

The 7th Ave really shit the bed today. At least I got block tickets for the next couple of days!

Do you still have to make ADAs on the buses with automatic announcements? I was riding a 55 today that clearly had a probie driving, dragging the line like hell, kneeling completely at every stop, stopping on green lights, and he was calling out ADAs even after the automated ones rang out.

On 6/4/2022 at 2:00 PM, trainfan22 said:

Today on the B103 I seen an ad promoting job openings for the Norfolk, Virginia PD, wtf! That's like an 7 hour drive from NYC.

These are on the subway too for the DC police. I heard the idea is to entice people who are tourists to NYC, and NYC gets lots of DC tourists/visitors/family members. Kinda convoluted if you ask me.

1 hour ago, Cait Sith said:

So, it turns out that only the 9400s were only supposed to be swapped with Manhattanville.....someone goofed up.

So they sent the 9500s and 9600s by mistake? That's uh...impressive. Would kind of check out since the 9400 swap happened while they were being delivered, whereas the 9500s and 9600s had been at Quill for a minute...

1 hour ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

Yeah, and that's the problem... Too many bad vendors are getting through the vetting process. Aside from their in-house project managers, do they ever hire consultants to help them oversee projects to manage things like cost overruns and other particulars on these projects?

Constantly, and then everybody complains that they wasted money and hired consultants lol...

Did anybody actually read the article? Typical know-nothing Post article churned out by some consultants getting seven grand an hour. The complaint here is that the system of redundancy exists, but they don't think the back-up generators are hypothetically strong enough? So they can improve them, big deal. It's good they looked into this having learned their lesson from the old system. Anyway, everybody knows the reason the transition to this new site has been slow has been because of covid. Take away the global pandemic, yes, things would have moved there. But generally speaking there's no reason not to invest in modernizing and centralizing DOB infrastructure. 

On 4/26/2022 at 4:39 PM, Lawrence St said:

How does 3522 have power?

Maybe a little juice left in the battery lights?

At what point are we accepting that the XDE40 and LFS HEV order assignments in Manhattan have changed and this isn't just a temporary re-arrangement for training crews?

15 minutes ago, KDGallagher said:

Why do y'all call Hale OF

Cause it's up on One Forty-Sixth St. And you've got Tuskegee on One Hundredth.

2 hours ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

The guy is being charged on a federal level, so he'll rot in prison for life assuming he's convicted. I agree with you... Calling for the death penalty for a person with a history of mental illness for the crime committed makes absolutely no sense. All this shows is that we continue to have a mental health crisis in this City, which has taken over the transit system as well, particularly with the subways.

Hey, even a broken clock makes a smart post twice a day! 

And again, re: those locked doors – R46s were delivered with passenger-accessible emergency bypass switches to open the doors. Those were removed and plated over. To me, that's a mistake.

"Most would just prefer to not take the subway."

Some people would prefer not to. 

Was wondering why I was seeing KB LFSes and such coming in off the Manhattan Bridge. Figured there was some sort of bustitution in the works.

3 hours ago, CenSin said:

That comment did not age well in retrospect. 😅

Eh, an awful isolated incident is, on a statistical basis, less damning than a larger number of individual incidents. But definitely isn't good for people's perception of the subway.

36 minutes ago, Mtatransit said:

Wait there is no way to even remotely unlock these car doors now? 

Isn't that a gigantic fire hazard? 

The C/R still has a remote switch, but given there's no emergency intercom, useless in a situation like this. The cars were delivered with a defeat switch at each end so that passengers could unlock in an emergency, but those were removed (as were the fire extinguishers).

28 minutes ago, Vulturious said:

75 footers for a good a very long time have always had the end doors locked. Only trains with end doors unlocked are pretty much NTT's.

Yeah, but removing the emergency switch was a really stupid idea.

Always thought it was dumb as hell to have the end doors locked on cars. There used to be a switch to unlock them but the brain trust at the TA removed that too. Now, people get trapped with a madman while he shoots the car up.

On 4/6/2022 at 2:00 AM, Trainmaster5 said:

Was reading a report that the  is considering cutting the amount of subway service in the rush hours. I also saw that off hour and weekend service may be increased somewhat. This seems to dovetail with the early pandemic days and the business forecasts of more WFH employment coupled with spreading out of the workday. I also see that they are indirectly answering one of the questions that my coworkers and I brought up when we were first heard about CBTC signaling. One of the public benefits was the ability to run trains closer together. Some of us saw that as nothing more than a PR issue and this seems to partially confirm that point to some of us present when the concept was bandied about in-house. No one disputed the need for a signal system upgrade systemwide . The signal problems are painfully clear daily. The theory of running trains closer together was great, on paper, but the general public took it to mean that more trains would be on the road. The  never promised more trains on the road. Even before the pandemic ridership losses. Since the rush hours always had the most service in the past please explain to me the benefits of running fewer trains closer together?  What am I missing ? Carry on.

My understanding of this was always that 'trains closer together' was supposed to suggest the optionality of running more trains, should needs demand. Of course, they never really increased the fleet enough or reduced the spare ratio to get to that point, but it seemed to me that was the premise. But to your point, did tph on the L or the 7 meaningfully increase since CBTC beyond the bounds of what was possible before? I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I would assume the answer to that, as you suggest, is no. And as you say, it seems like the peak demands during rush hour are going to be suppressed by a meaningful amount for at least another couple years. I remember the initial consultant estimates that the MTA would only reach 90% of ridership after a few years, and that seems borne out to me. 

Subways are not great now, but they're better than they were a few months ago, I'll say that. West 4th is a complete living hell after 8pm, and permanent Night of the Living Dead on the lower level at the ends of the platform, but besides that... Knock on wood, but I haven't personally felt unsafe, just disappointed and frustrated – stepping over people passed on the steps, etc. Now, I feel a little different about women on the train at night, I have some more concerns about them riding alone.

Generally thinking, the whole thing is just sad and a failure of strategic planning. Adams needs to have a plan to open shelters or SROs and provide housing before booting everybody out. Otherwise, he just shuffles them from station to station and wastes everybody's time. Same goes for the raids above ground. They accomplish nothing until there's housing to replace the street. Provide some safe beds, and we get somewhere. 

Not to mention that the drug problem is as bad as ever. I called in EMS/PD just on Sunday (street level) for two overdoses, dispatcher was asking me if I had narcan and I'm thinking no, lady, thank god my life is not at the point where I carry that... Young guys too, couldn't have been more than 20 or 25, midday afternoon.