Second Avenue Subway Discussion

[ABCDEFGJLMNQRSSSWZ]

The more I think about it, the more I realize how much the  train as proposed really sucks. Barely connects to anything and doesn't really help outside a few very specific commutes. Any east-side line is going to suck to some degree, because at least far west side lines have a chance to cross over Manhattan from Brooklyn/Queens and make a connection with basically every north-south trunk. It's one of those situations that's just an unfortunate consequence of geography; the same way NYC geography naturally lends Brooklyn to being better served by transit than Queens and the Bronx since the Queens and Bronx have to split trains from Brooklyn. And you just get a bunch of stub-services terminating in lower Manhattan like the  and  

[engineerboy6561]

1 hour ago, ABCDEFGJLMNQRSSSWZ said:

If they actually are seriously interested in an 125th street crosstown, then it makes sense to do the curve, however, if they never end up building the crosstown it's a massive waste.

TBH I would love a 125 St crosstown, but I really think it would either be better as a shuttle or as Phase I of an -type line to Queens or NJ than as the primary endpoint for SAS; the Bronx needs the trains more, and it makes more sense to have crosstown be a separate shuttle with provisions for extensions to Randall's Island and Queens than to have it be part of 2 Av.

Edited February 28, 2023 by engineerboy6561

[ABCDEFGJLMNQRSSSWZ]

46 minutes ago, engineerboy6561 said:

TBH I would love a 125 St crosstown, but I really think it would either be better as a shuttle or as Phase I of an -type line to Queens or NJ than as the primary endpoint for SAS; the Bronx needs the trains more, and it makes more sense to have crosstown be a separate shuttle with provisions for extensions to Randall's Island and Queens than to have it be part of 2 Av.

I think this is a fair point, but tbh I don't think NJ is really dense enough to actually have a subway line, not to mention that line would prolly just dump tons of people onto already congested trains coming from the Bronx. Also just culturally it'll take time before that part of NJ would even be accepting of a high capacity transit line. Jersey City could use another under-river subway or PATH service though.

In an ideal world, I would send SAS to Bronx and have 125th street be a part of a giant outer borough connector train running into Queens and down into Brooklyn (like a mega QBX type service). In practice though, I doubt it would be built, and I worry a 125th street shuttle would just generally have low ridership. 

If SAS were to have 2 northern branches though; one crosstown and the other straight to the Bronx, you'd probably want service patterns to favor the Bronx. And while I support a 125th street crosstown generally, I wish the MTA would look into the Bronx extension first since it'd serve an actual transit desert, have higher ridership, and pull more riders off Lexington Avenue. What would suck is if you just get stuck with a Bronx branch and this random low ridership 125th street stub you still have to serve. For this reason, I actually think Phase II would be better off going to 3-Av 138 St with provisions for a connection to a crosstown service. That way the crosstown could be built connected or disconnected from SAS, and the MTA would have more incentive to continue SAS north along 3rd Avenue.

[engineerboy6561]

35 minutes ago, ABCDEFGJLMNQRSSSWZ said:

I think this is a fair point, but tbh I don't think NJ is really dense enough to actually have a subway line, not to mention that line would prolly just dump tons of people onto already congested trains coming from the Bronx. Also just culturally it'll take time before that part of NJ would even be accepting of a high capacity transit line. Jersey City could use another under-river subway or PATH service though.

In an ideal world, I would send SAS to Bronx and have 125th street be a part of a giant outer borough connector train running into Queens and down into Brooklyn (like a mega QBX type service). In practice though, I doubt it would be built, and I worry a 125th street shuttle would just generally have low ridership. 

If SAS were to have 2 northern branches though; one crosstown and the other straight to the Bronx, you'd probably want service patterns to favor the Bronx. And while I support a 125th street crosstown generally, I wish the MTA would look into the Bronx extension first since it'd serve an actual transit desert, have higher ridership, and pull more riders off Lexington Avenue. What would suck is if you just get stuck with a Bronx branch and this random low ridership 125th street stub you still have to serve. For this reason, I actually think Phase II would be better off going to 3-Av 138 St with provisions for a connection to a crosstown service. That way the crosstown could be built connected or disconnected from SAS, and the MTA would have more incentive to continue SAS north along 3rd Avenue.

Agreed; in an ideal world you could send the 125 St line via Ditmars Blvd, Grand Central Parkway, and Main St down to Jamaica, capturing the M60 and the southern half of the Q44 in one go. NJ actually is dense enough for a subway, at least along Bergenline Av and JFK Blvd south of Fairview, but that would probably be better left to a massively expanded PATH.

[T to Dyre Avenue]

16 hours ago, ABCDEFGJLMNQRSSSWZ said:

The more I think about it, the more I realize how much the  train as proposed really sucks. Barely connects to anything and doesn't really help outside a few very specific commutes. Any east-side line is going to suck to some degree, because at least far west side lines have a chance to cross over Manhattan from Brooklyn/Queens and make a connection with basically every north-south trunk. It's one of those situations that's just an unfortunate consequence of geography; the same way NYC geography naturally lends Brooklyn to being better served by transit than Queens and the Bronx since the Queens and Bronx have to split trains from Brooklyn. And you just get a bunch of stub-services terminating in lower Manhattan like the  and  

I fully agree that the  service as proposed really sucks. I honestly think the MTA haven’t really given much thought to building the line south of 63rd Street and that they drew a pretty blue line on a map to placate politicians who want(ed) a line down the entire length of Manhattan by the East River. And they haven’t given any thought to SAS service outside of Manhattan, even though a Queens-SAS service could address what will be the two biggest Achilles’ heels of the SAS below 63rd Street, namely its lack of connections and that it will operate well under capacity with just the  running there.

On 2/23/2023 at 9:52 AM, engineerboy6561 said:

Honestly yeah; my personal thought would be via SAS, Forest Hills-Whitehall St or 9 Av (would depend on how many trains can turn at 9 Av), and  Astoria-Bay Ridge or 9 Av (15tph , 15tph , 10tph , 20tph ) if we wanted to do this without adding any new tracks beyond SAS. The split on the  between Bay Ridge and 9 Av, with every third train going to 9 Av, would be if Bay Ridge couldn't handle 20tph on its own, and would also (alongside the conversion of 9 Av from solely a work yard to a storage yard) give the  direct storage yard access. Longer term, the SAS project kind of boxed itself into a corner by building only two tracks down the main corridor and then connecting them to Broadway express service; that basically either makes a  impossible with streamlined operations (or would require doing something weird where the lower half of 2 Av is served by a completely different set of trains than the upper half). Part of why I proposed quad-tracking a bunch of things and building out new trunks in the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn was to basically turn 2 Av into a mirror of 8 Av/Central Park West, where some trains ran the whole length of the corridor, others serve only the lower half before doing their own thing in Queens, and others serve the upper half before branching off to serve a different Manhattan trunk. It's not as clean or easy to operate as a setup without merges, but it should split the difference reasonably well between ease of operation, frequency, and minimization of transfers.

I’m firmly in favor of running both the  and  via SAS once Phase 2 opens. Because the current  plus the few  and  trains was a stopgap solution that just barely works for now with the current three stations. But I don’t think it will address the additional riders that will be using the three new stations. There’s got to be a better and more consistent pattern for when the line becomes longer than a stub. Doing what we’re doing now just isn’t going to cut it when the line gets longer and its northern terminal gets farther away from Queens. 

Now, if taking away the  express train out of Astoria is going to cause riders there to riot, well sorry, but I have no sympathy for them. No, they are not entitled to both a Broadway Local and a Broadway Express service. Especially given how that  express ties up the entire Broadway Line at 34th Street by switching from the express to the local tracks there and messes up the ride for everyone else down the line. 

On 2/27/2023 at 12:12 PM, Wallyhorse said:

As I would do it, the would permanently be moved to 168 with the if an SAS service ran up the Concourse with the .

In this scenario, if there ALSO was an SAS line that continued to the Bronx via the route of the former Bronx 3rd Avenue EL (that I would do as an EL OR Subway), I would look to do it like this:

via current route on the SAS, then via the former Bronx 3rd Avenue EL route to Gun Hill Road (includes transfers at 138th-3rd to the , 149th-3rd to the  and , 205th Street (possibly via MetroCard/OMNY) to the  and (see below) and Gun Hill Road to the and ). 

 to Bedford Park Boulevard at all times via the full SAS (at least from Houston), then via 125th Street to St. Nicholas Avenue (transfers at Lex-125 to the ) , Lenox Avenue for the  and St. Nicholas for the  before joining the 8th Avenue line at that point and using the middle tracks in each direction of the six-track setup, skipping 135th Street-St. Nicholas both ways before joining the Concourse line at 145th). 

I’m fine with the  running crosstown on 125th. I’m not fine with the  being connected into the St. Nicholas Ave and Concourse lines. Because all that will do is kneecap the existing  and  services. And it will force the  to run less frequently too. Not to mention, as @Kamen Rider already has, that Concourse barn isn’t large enough to service two full time lines. 

[ABCDEFGJLMNQRSSSWZ]

5 hours ago, T to Dyre Avenue said:

I fully agree that the  service as proposed really sucks. I honestly think the MTA haven’t really given much thought to building the line south of 63rd Street and that they drew a pretty blue line on a map to placate politicians who want(ed) a line down the entire length of Manhattan by the East River. And they haven’t given any thought to SAS service outside of Manhattan, even though a Queens-SAS service could address what will be the two biggest Achilles’ heels of the SAS below 63rd Street, namely its lack of connections and that it will operate well under capacity with just the  running there.

The original plan called (and still calls for) a connection to the 63rd Street tunnel which is relatively easy cause it was built with provisions to connect. Even if there's no formal service in the plans, my guess would be if they built SAS as is, they would run a service via 63rd to Queens Blvd.

[CenSin]

On 2/23/2023 at 12:40 AM, ABCDEFGJLMNQRSSSWZ said:

Usually, MTA is pretty good about doing provisions

lol. The former IRT, BMT, and IND were prolific, granting us a bounty of provisions to use. The new entity called the MTA is much less so, and it’s squandered provisions on suboptimal works like the 21 Street connector.

[ABCDEFGJLMNQRSSSWZ]

Fair enough; with the whole super-express project, it seems like the MTA really only included "provisions" for phases of that specific project that were just never built, and SAS so far has been pretty bad. We're working with a pretty small sample size though, and at least on the 7 train extension they made it so a 10th Avenue Station would be possible to add (though that should've never been cut). One good thing it seems the MTA has been doing is pretty long tail-tracks on new extensions, which means higher terminal capacity.

Now that so much subway exists, lines tend to be more how can you add to the existing system as opposed to how can you prepare for the future system.

With SAS though, the part that sucks is they're building it more as an independent line and not really a part of the entire system. The main provision Phase I misses out on is for express tracks, which is quite unfortunate.

[T to Dyre Avenue]

On 2/28/2023 at 7:54 PM, ABCDEFGJLMNQRSSSWZ said:

The original plan called (and still calls for) a connection to the 63rd Street tunnel which is relatively easy cause it was built with provisions to connect. Even if there's no formal service in the plans, my guess would be if they built SAS as is, they would run a service via 63rd to Queens Blvd.

That’s the alternative they chose ultimately. But there were other alternatives in the late 90s/early 2000s Manhattan East Side Access study which called for a subway only from 63rd to 125th with a connecting LRT or proto-SBS service continuing the rest of the way down 2nd Avenue, Chrystie St and Water St. Here is the summary report from October 2001 -

 http://web.mta.info/capital/sas_docs/final_summary_report.pdf

I do hope, at the very least, they do run that kind of service. Because a Queens-SAS service would likely have connections to the lines that main SAS would cross over or under and the Queens service would be able to connect with them while still in Queens. This in turn could potentially eliminate the need for long and costly connecting passageways from the main  line in Manhattan. 

 

1 hour ago, ABCDEFGJLMNQRSSSWZ said:

With SAS though, the part that sucks is they're building it more as an independent line and not really a part of the entire system. The main provision Phase I misses out on is for express tracks, which is quite unfortunate.

But even worse is that it’s planned to be reverse-branched above 63rd St, so it will have more service uptown versus in midtown/downtown. In the MTA’s planning maps, it appears to be some sort of appendage instead of the trunk line it’s supposed to be.

[engineerboy6561]

1 hour ago, T to Dyre Avenue said:

That’s the alternative they chose ultimately. But there were other alternatives in the late 90s/early 2000s Manhattan East Side Access study which called for a subway only from 63rd to 125th with a connecting LRT or proto-SBS service continuing the rest of the way down 2nd Avenue, Chrystie St and Water St. Here is the summary report from October 2001 -

 http://web.mta.info/capital/sas_docs/final_summary_report.pdf

I do hope, at the very least, they do run that kind of service. Because a Queens-SAS service would likely have connections to the lines that main SAS would cross over or under and the Queens service would be able to connect with them while still in Queens. This in turn could potentially eliminate the need for long and costly connecting passageways from the main  line in Manhattan. 

 

But even worse is that it’s planned to be reverse-branched above 63rd St, so it will have more service uptown versus in midtown/downtown. In the MTA’s planning maps, it appears to be some sort of appendage instead of the trunk line it’s supposed to be.

This sounds like the sort of terrible plan that's going to either be a giant waste of money or that we're going to wind up spending a shitton more later to fix. Reverse branching at 63 St only works if there are four tracks, and if there's a Queens trunk that's feeding lower 2 Av; that's why all my plans involve four services on 2 Av below 63 St, and then three services go to Queens and one continues up to upper 2 Av where it meets the for the run into the Bronx. If you do that, then 2 Av and Broadway work like 8 Av/CPW and 6 Av, you've fixed the merge at 57 St/7 Av, people traveling across the boundary at 63 St don't all have a compulsory transfer to continue, and you get good operational value for your money. What they're doing now is mostly wasting money on poorly thought-out plans that won't deliver anywhere near the ridership or aggregate time savings per dollar that a proper subway line ought to.

[ABCDEFGJLMNQRSSSWZ]

16 minutes ago, engineerboy6561 said:

This sounds like the sort of terrible plan that's going to either be a giant waste of money or that we're going to wind up spending a shitton more later to fix. Reverse branching at 63 St only works if there are four tracks, and if there's a Queens trunk that's feeding lower 2 Av; that's why all my plans involve four services on 2 Av below 63 St, and then three services go to Queens and one continues up to upper 2 Av where it meets the for the run into the Bronx. If you do that, then 2 Av and Broadway work like 8 Av/CPW and 6 Av, you've fixed the merge at 57 St/7 Av, people traveling across the boundary at 63 St don't all have a compulsory transfer to continue, and you get good operational value for your money. What they're doing now is mostly wasting money on poorly thought-out plans that won't deliver anywhere near the ridership or aggregate time savings per dollar that a proper subway line ought to.

I forget exactly who or where, but someone on this forum put it quite well a few days ago when they said the MTA's incentive isn't really to expand, only to make service better. The only expansions they take on are ones that directly contribute to that by allowing more tph and helping to fix overcrowding issues. Originally though, with the IRT, BMT, and IND, the goal was just to build a subway system so there were tons of connections and thought about how these lines would tie into the future system. The MTA doesn't really care about that today, and the only reason they're building SAS is because Lexington Avenue is really overcrowded; once they've built enough of it to fix that problem they'll move on.

Think about the super express project for instance; the 2 parts that were built were ones that directly added capacity and improved function in the current system (63rd Street tunnel and Archer Avenue). The parts that weren't built were the extension to Hollis and Laurelton which purely would've expanded the system. 

Something has to change in the incentive structure here, and perhaps that includes an elected body as you have suggested.

It's sad but I think in my generation, SAS will end up as a frustrating "branch" to deal with when it comes to service patterns, reguardless of if Phases III and IV are built. I also think they ruined a chance to use SAS to more broadly enhance the entire network.

[engineerboy6561]

15 minutes ago, ABCDEFGJLMNQRSSSWZ said:

I forget exactly who or where, but someone on this forum put it quite well a few days ago when they said the MTA's incentive isn't really to expand, only to make service better. The only expansions they take on are ones that directly contribute to that by allowing more tph and helping to fix overcrowding issues. Originally though, with the IRT, BMT, and IND, the goal was just to build a subway system so there were tons of connections and thought about how these lines would tie into the future system. The MTA doesn't really care about that today, and the only reason they're building SAS is because Lexington Avenue is really overcrowded; once they've built enough of it to fix that problem they'll move on.

Think about the super express project for instance; the 2 parts that were built were ones that directly added capacity and improved function in the current system (63rd Street tunnel and Archer Avenue). The parts that weren't built were the extension to Hollis and Laurelton which purely would've expanded the system. 

Something has to change in the incentive structure here, and perhaps that includes an elected body as you have suggested.

It's sad but I think in my generation, SAS will end up as a frustrating "branch" to deal with when it comes to service patterns, reguardless of if Phases III and IV are built. I also think they ruined a chance to use SAS to more broadly enhance the entire network.

That sounds about right; of course part of the problem is that making service better requires a fair amount of expansion if you think about it; otherwise you get a situation like eastern Queens where you have like two subway trunks and they're overloaded as f**k because a ton of people from all over Queens are descending on the first couple of stops during rush. The current subway system doesn't avoid taking people from certain parts of the city into the core; it just makes their trips longer and crowds everything badly enough that people's commutes become ridiculous. If you want service to run better, you have to spread trips out across enough different subway lines that no one trunk gets overwhelmed, but you can't just plop a bypass on the most congested bits of the network and call it quits (which is what the current SAS plan is trying to do). Like if you add a transfer but change very little else (average speed, number of stops, etc. stay roughly the same) then your commute gets longer rather than shorter, and since most of the crowding on Lex is basically crowding from folks on Jerome/Concourse/WPR trying to get to East Midtown you're not going to be able to get many of those folks to change at 125 St for an overall longer commute (which is what it seems like SAS is trying to get them to do).

Edited March 3, 2023 by engineerboy6561

[ABCDEFGJLMNQRSSSWZ]

1 hour ago, T to Dyre Avenue said:

That’s the alternative they chose ultimately. But there were other alternatives in the late 90s/early 2000s Manhattan East Side Access study which called for a subway only from 63rd to 125th with a connecting LRT or proto-SBS service continuing the rest of the way down 2nd Avenue, Chrystie St and Water St. Here is the summary report from October 2001 -

 http://web.mta.info/capital/sas_docs/final_summary_report.pdf

I do hope, at the very least, they do run that kind of service. Because a Queens-SAS service would likely have connections to the lines that main SAS would cross over or under and the Queens service would be able to connect with them while still in Queens. This in turn could potentially eliminate the need for long and costly connecting passageways from the main  line in Manhattan. 

 

But even worse is that it’s planned to be reverse-branched above 63rd St, so it will have more service uptown versus in midtown/downtown. In the MTA’s planning maps, it appears to be some sort of appendage instead of the trunk line it’s supposed to be.

Ngl, this report seems like something a bunch of high-schoolers pulled together for a project and then adults came in and made it look all formal.

Some of alternatives are quite quirky. A 42nd Street connection to the Broadway line? A 42nd Street crosstown connection to NJ? Converting Lexington Avenue to B-Division and making it a branch of the Broadway line? Of the listed alternatives, the option they choose is clearly superior, but that doesn't make it good when most of them are non-starters.

I actually think the current proposal was close to quite a good one, the main issues are the lack of easy ability to add express tracks, especially on the northern segment of the line and it was generally thought about how it could connect with the rest of the system to do something in Brooklyn rather than going all the way down to Hangover Square. The original plan actually called for a north-south config for 125th Street under the Lexington Avenue station which would make the 125th crosstown impossible, so I'm glad that's been changed (as long as they still allow for Bronx provisions). The plan will surely change again over time, though the project made fade out of favor after a certain point.

[engineerboy6561]

11 minutes ago, ABCDEFGJLMNQRSSSWZ said:

Ngl, this report seems like something a bunch of high-schoolers pulled together for a project and then adults came in and made it look all formal.

Some of alternatives are quite quirky. A 42nd Street connection to the Broadway line? A 42nd Street crosstown connection to NJ? Converting Lexington Avenue to B-Division and making it a branch of the Broadway line? Of the listed alternatives, the option they choose is clearly superior, but that doesn't make it good when most of them are non-starters.

I actually think the current proposal was close to quite a good one, the main issues are the lack of easy ability to add express tracks, especially on the northern segment of the line and it was generally thought about how it could connect with the rest of the system to do something in Brooklyn rather than going all the way down to Hangover Square. The original plan actually called for a north-south config for 125th Street under the Lexington Avenue station which would make the 125th crosstown impossible, so I'm glad that's been changed (as long as they still allow for Bronx provisions). The plan will surely change again over time, though the project made fade out of favor after a certain point.

Yeah, looking at this study about half their proposed alternatives were drawn with a crayon; I do wonder if that was somewhat deliberate, though. If you know what option you want to go with but you've been told to study all the options, then putting it up against a bunch of stupid ideas like converting Lexington Av to B division service in Manhattan or  running trains from downtown Jersey City to 125 St or contracting with jitney operators to run supplementary dollar vans along 2 Av basically guarantees that your preferred alternative gets chosen (because it's the only one that actually makes some degree of sense). Now granted, doing that also boxes out other ideas that might make more sense than what you're proposing, but if you're primarily interested in building a cool thing with your name on it that's a feature, not a bug.

Edited March 3, 2023 by engineerboy6561

[ABCDEFGJLMNQRSSSWZ]

4 minutes ago, engineerboy6561 said:

That sounds about right; of course part of the problem is that making service better requires a fair amount of expansion if you think about it; otherwise you get a situation like eastern Queens where you have like two subway trunks and they're overloaded as f**k because a ton of people from all over Queens are descending on the first couple of stops during rush. The current subway system doesn't avoid taking people from certain parts of the city into the core; it just makes their trips longer and crowds everything badly enough that people's commutes become ridiculous. If you want service to run better, you have to spread trips out across enough different subway lines that no one trunk gets overwhelmed, but you can't just plop a bypass on the most congested bits of the network and call it quits (which is what the current SAS plan is trying to do). Like if you add a transfer but change very little else (average speed, number of stops, etc. stay roughly the same) then your commute gets longer rather than shorter, and since most of the crowding on Lex is basically crowding from folks on Jerome/Concourse/WPR trying to get to East Midtown you're not going to be able to get many of those folks to change at 125 St for an overall longer commute (which is what it seems like SAS is trying to get them to do).

While I agree the 125th transfer prolly isn't worth it's price tag and won't peel tons of people off Lexington Avenue, it does help folks coming from the Pelham and Jermone lines trying to go to the center of Manhattan rather than taking the  all the way down to 59th or 51st street and transferring. If they build it so it's an easier and more direct transfer than 59th and 51st streets, it def could peel some off a significant chunk of people coming from the Bronx who would otherwise be on Lexington Avenue from 125th to 59th or 51st. It's not completely useless.

This gets on a bit of a sidetrack, but if Queens keeps growing, that's a disaster waiting to happen. SAS Phase 1 on it's own is at least somewhat effective in reducing crowding on Lexington Avenue Line, but for Queens as you state, most of the high ridership bus feeder stops are towards the end of the Flushing Line and Queens Blvd Line meaning in order for a reliever line to be effective, you'd have to build it all in one go. What's hard is it's hard to build a reliever line for both Flushing line and Queens BLVD at once unless you make 2 branches (which would likely require a very expensive and difficult 4 track portion into midtown). 

[engineerboy6561]

29 minutes ago, ABCDEFGJLMNQRSSSWZ said:

While I agree the 125th transfer prolly isn't worth it's price tag and won't peel tons of people off Lexington Avenue, it does help folks coming from the Pelham and Jermone lines trying to go to the center of Manhattan rather than taking the  all the way down to 59th or 51st street and transferring. If they build it so it's an easier and more direct transfer than 59th and 51st streets, it def could peel some off a significant chunk of people coming from the Bronx who would otherwise be on Lexington Avenue from 125th to 59th or 51st. It's not completely useless.

This gets on a bit of a sidetrack, but if Queens keeps growing, that's a disaster waiting to happen. SAS Phase 1 on it's own is at least somewhat effective in reducing crowding on Lexington Avenue Line, but for Queens as you state, most of the high ridership bus feeder stops are towards the end of the Flushing Line and Queens Blvd Line meaning in order for a reliever line to be effective, you'd have to build it all in one go. What's hard is it's hard to build a reliever line for both Flushing line and Queens BLVD at once unless you make 2 branches (which would likely require a very expensive and difficult 4 track portion into midtown). 

That's fair; it would beat the to the for the Pelham-to-core market, which would be nice. I don't think it would do much of anything for the Jerome-to-core market, because the entirety of Jerome already has a one-seat option into the core ( the and from 161 St up, and the at 149 St).

Re: Queens, that's why I keep repeating plans for a Northern Blvd 4-track trunk feeding into lower 2 Av, which in turn replaces the Jamaica Line with a four-track trunk offering 30 express tph from SE Queens into downtown/Midtown; it lets you knock out a whole bunch of birds with one stone. Now, actually doing that within 10-20 years without eating half the city's GDP is going to require a fair amount of organizational change at the MTA, and a whole bunch of neat tricks from abroad (which I've bought up in the proposal thread; the situation is unfortunate, but it's worth pushing for change).

Edited March 3, 2023 by engineerboy6561

[ABCDEFGJLMNQRSSSWZ]

On 3/2/2023 at 11:11 PM, engineerboy6561 said:

That's fair; it would beat the to the for the Pelham-to-core market, which would be nice. I don't think it would do much of anything for the Jerome-to-core market, because the entirety of Jerome already has a one-seat option into the core ( the and from 161 St up, and the at 149 St).

Re: Queens, that's why I keep repeating plans for a Northern Blvd 4-track trunk feeding into lower 2 Av, which in turn replaces the Jamaica Line with a four-track trunk offering 30 express tph from SE Queens into downtown/Midtown; it lets you knock out a whole bunch of birds with one stone. Now, actually doing that within 10-20 years without eating half the city's GDP is going to require a fair amount of organizational change at the MTA, and a whole bunch of neat tricks from abroad (which I've bought up in the proposal thread; the situation is unfortunate, but it's worth pushing for change).

That's a fair point; most people trying to get to West/Central midtown would take the . I'm honestly not sure why the Concourse line isn't more dominant relative to Jerome in terms of ridership, especially with the  "super-express" from 125th to 59th.

[engineerboy6561]

19 minutes ago, ABCDEFGJLMNQRSSSWZ said:

That's a fair point; most people trying to get to West/Central midtown would take the . I'm honestly not sure why the Concourse line isn't more dominant relative to Jerome in terms of ridership, especially with the  "super-express" from 125th to 59th.

I don't know; I'm honestly assuming that Concourse takes a lot the passengers bound for the west side in that area, while Jerome takes folks going down on the east side plus some going farther down; if I had to guess it might also a frequency thing; the runs something like 13-15tph during rush, while the and combined run about 16, and in the mornings ten of those tph are express from Tremont to 145 St. Then again, during rush the and the are timetabled to both take 41 minutes from Bedford Park to their respective 42nd St stations (though in practice the usually winds up slower), so it becomes a question of where pax are going and whether the frequency is an issue for them.

Edited March 6, 2023 by engineerboy6561

[ABCDEFGJLMNQRSSSWZ]

9 minutes ago, engineerboy6561 said:

I don't know; I'm honestly assuming that Concourse takes a lot the passengers bound for the west side in that area, while Jerome takes folks going down on the east side plus some going farther down; if I had to guess it might also a frequency thing; the runs something like 13-15tph during rush, while the and combined run about 16, and in the mornings ten of those tph are express from Tremont to 145 St.

Even the express stops on Concourse don't have any sort of notably higher weekday ridership than Jerome. One thing I will say is on the weekends the  (and frankly most of the BMT/IND) really suck and are unreliable with headways and stuff. Perhaps people have had more one-off bad experiences on the  on weekends? 

I would also think the  would be more attractive because it's underground, so you don't have to deal with bad weather.

You do make a fair point though in that the  goes directly to Lower Manhattan. 

[engineerboy6561]

10 minutes ago, ABCDEFGJLMNQRSSSWZ said:

Even the express stops on Concourse don't have any sort of notably higher weekday ridership than Jerome. One thing I will say is on the weekends the  (and frankly most of the BMT/IND) really suck and are unreliable with headways and stuff. Perhaps people have had more one-off bad experiences on the  on weekends? 

I would also think the  would be more attractive because it's underground, so you don't have to deal with bad weather.

You do make a fair point though in that the  goes directly to Lower Manhattan. 

That ridership discrepancy is weird, and yeah headway issues would make sense as a thing that keeps people away. On weekdays the is half an hour on the timetable from Bedford Park to Bryant Park, and probably 31-33 minutes IRL during rush, whereas the is 41 minutes on paper but probably closer to 45. Yeah, at night and on weekends the headways on the and could get weird and missing a train could be a serious issue, whereas there's always a coming. Like the fastest way for me to commute during rush back when I lived in the Bronx and worked in Newark would probably have been to get the Bx1/2 to the 7:25 at Bedford Park, which would let me make the 8:13 commuter rail train to the 1 bus to the job, but if I missed that train it would be a 10-12 min wait.

Edited March 6, 2023 by engineerboy6561

[ABCDEFGJLMNQRSSSWZ]

10 minutes ago, engineerboy6561 said:

That ridership discrepancy is weird, and yeah headway issues would make sense as a thing that keeps people away. On weekdays the is half an hour on the timetable from Bedford Park to Bryant Park, and probably 31-33 minutes IRL during rush, whereas the is 41 minutes on paper but probably closer to 45. Yeah, at night and on weekends the headways on the and could get weird and missing a train could be a serious issue, whereas there's always a coming. Like the fastest way for me to commute during rush back when I lived in the Bronx and worked in Newark would probably have been to get the Bx1/2 to the 7:25 at Bedford Park, which would let me make the 8:13 commuter rail train to the 1 bus to the job, but if I missed that train it would be a 10-12 min wait.

Could it be people are just tend to gravitate to the train that's the nearest even if the alternative is faster and only an extra block a way. I rmbr as a kid, my mom would always take the  because they were the closest, even when walking the extra block to the  may have lead to a quicker commute technically. More people live between Harlem River and Jerome Avenue than between Concourse Line and Metro North.

[ABCDEFGJLMNQRSSSWZ]

Ok so Biden is giving about 500 million dollars but the new cost is 7.7 billion for some reason. This is insane and I feel little empathy for MTA here.

[Lawrence St]

What’s the current status of Phase 2 today? Is it funded, under construction, review, etc?

[ABCDEFGJLMNQRSSSWZ]

2 hours ago, Lawrence St said:

What’s the current status of Phase 2 today? Is it funded, under construction, review, etc?

They are in the "engineering stage" right now.

The project is partially funded; Biden's new budget proposal gives nearly another half billion

This and the Gateway project seem to be the 2 highest priority transit megaprojects right now, so unless something goes really wrong the next year or two (which is def possible, COVID prolly delayed start of SAS Phase II), we should see construction "soon".

One thing that sucks is the MTA really hasn't seem to have learned any lessons from phase 1; the project may near double in cost to Phase I despite much of the tunneling having already been completed and slightly less robust stations at 106th and 116th street.  My level of anger around this is quite extreme, because it seems like there are relatively "easy" steps that could be taken to just chop off at least 2 billion without a reduction to the actual infrastructure for passengers.

It does seem like both the MTA, the Governor, and other state politicians have a genuine interest in making this happen.

[engineerboy6561]

14 hours ago, ABCDEFGJLMNQRSSSWZ said:

They are in the "engineering stage" right now.

The project is partially funded; Biden's new budget proposal gives nearly another half billion

This and the Gateway project seem to be the 2 highest priority transit megaprojects right now, so unless something goes really wrong the next year or two (which is def possible, COVID prolly delayed start of SAS Phase II), we should see construction "soon".

One thing that sucks is the MTA really hasn't seem to have learned any lessons from phase 1; the project may near double in cost to Phase I despite much of the tunneling having already been completed and slightly less robust stations at 106th and 116th street.  My level of anger around this is quite extreme, because it seems like there are relatively "easy" steps that could be taken to just chop off at least 2 billion without a reduction to the actual infrastructure for passengers.

It does seem like both the MTA, the Governor, and other state politicians have a genuine interest in making this happen.

I suspect part of the problem here is that the incentives local politicians have (maximize the coolness of the ribbon cutting, maximize money spent in their district, maximize money spent on contracts to their donors) just aren't aligned much at all with the incentives that the rest of us have (maximize ridership and infrastructure quality/flexibility per dollar). Like 96 St looks amazing in glamour shots in a way that West 4th St or Newkirk Plaza don't, but the glamor doesn't add anything real to efficiency or capacity, and in fact it detracts a great deal if it drives costs so high that we wind up getting 3-4x fewer track miles laid per dollar than a project built to older BMT/IND standards.

Edited March 10, 2023 by engineerboy6561