Fleet Swap Discussion Thread

[Calvin]

This swap is like musical chairs but to routes. Got on an  train that was a R68A but started at 96 St/2 Av. Front said  and middle but rollsigns all have  with "Special" or only left as "Midtown" on top "Coney Island" on the bottom. Rear of the train is left stuck as  . 

Edited December 23, 2020 by Calvin

[MHV9218]

5 hours ago, R32 3838 said:

this is why the R46's are taking a nose dive. running 5 trains of R32's during the rush wouldn't hurt and they weren't supposed to retire until Q1-2 of 2022.

right now ridership is low so they can get away with reducing service but they need to do it right and not this backwards shit.

Fr, it's stealing from Peter to pay Paul. Or maybe it's just stealing from Peter. You let the R32s sit on the sidelines and cannibalize the R46 MDBF because you refuse to use them, and eventually you end up with an R46 fleet doing almost as badly as cars that are 11-14 years older. Also, it's not even apples to apples since that R46 average applies to over 700 cars, whereas the R32s are a tiny fleet at this point. Meanwhile, if they used the R32s as a targeted rush-hour only fleet, MDBF on those cars would be way above what they were when they ran 24/7 on the J/Z, and MDBF on the R46s would be above what is currently. 

[R10 2952]

3 hours ago, MHV9218 said:

Fr, it's stealing from Peter to pay Paul. Or maybe it's just stealing from Peter. You let the R32s sit on the sidelines and cannibalize the R46 MDBF because you refuse to use them, and eventually you end up with an R46 fleet doing almost as badly as cars that are 11-14 years older. Also, it's not even apples to apples since that R46 average applies to over 700 cars, whereas the R32s are a tiny fleet at this point. Meanwhile, if they used the R32s as a targeted rush-hour only fleet, MDBF on those cars would be way above what they were when they ran 24/7 on the J/Z, and MDBF on the R46s would be above what is currently. 

I would go even further and say the MTA robbed both Peter and Paul, while telling Mary 'the check is in the mail' when it clearly isn't.

Looking at their blatant mismanagement of the ticking time-bomb that is the R46 MDBF, I can't help but wonder why they simply didn't send the R32s to ENY and then send the R42s to the  as the rush hour put-in fleet.  Would've given the agency some breathing room- couldn't possibly be worse than what they're doing currently with the R46s. 

Edited December 23, 2020 by R10 2952

[R32 3838]

I could understand Covid being the reason why they don't want the R32's out (cases are jumping again) but 48 cars to ENY wouldn't hurt at all 6 sets with them using 4 to 5 sets on the

It's funny because an R46 took a shit again and i saw the stalled train at 34th st with a train right behind it, then I saw an r68A  on the local track when i was on the train heading downtown.

 

Also the MDBF improved on the R32's when they were at ENY at the tail end of september because they had enough to run them rush hours only.

The most logical choice is to run the R46's on the

 

I laugh everytime when i was told CI would do a good job with these cars, It's a f**king joke. I bet if this were normal times these would have been off the due to complaints and you know UES and the brighton are very political.

 

them taking cars from jamaica is only gonna wear those R160's out. The whole month of July and half of August ENY had to run more R32's on the because the R143's and R160's were worn out due to not taking any breaks due to the R179 issue in June with the running everything they had on hand until July when the R32's started to comeback.

[Lawrence St]

22 hours ago, R32 3838 said:

it's logical to you, we get it riders don't deserve new cars. 207th has the 8 car units, why take 13 sets Of R179's from them to bring them to another yard that has no experience with them. why do you think the r46's are doing bad? giving them the R179's would make it even worse.

I never said that. Your looking at it from a railfans perspective, regular riders do not care what train they get on, as long as a train is actually coming. If you choose to run R46's on the , then CIY would still have to train those crews either way, and now you start to affect riders cause of the MDBF on the R46's being as bad. 

The only logical solution is to put the R46's in a yard that actually knows how to maintain them, that being Pitkin. Not to mention that means the would now get the majority of the R211 order, so you would have even newer trains then the R179's.

[R32 3838]

9 minutes ago, Lawrence St said:

I never said that. Your looking at it from a railfans perspective, regular riders do not care what train they get on, as long as a train is actually coming. If you choose to run R46's on the , then CIY would still have to train those crews either way, and now you start to affect riders cause of the MDBF on the R46's being as bad. 

The only logical solution is to put the R46's in a yard that actually knows how to maintain them, that being Pitkin. Not to mention that means the would now get the majority of the R211 order, so you would have even newer trains then the R179's.

This isn't from a railfan point of view. If you make the 100% R46's again, you are gonna need a high spare factor like before meaning removing the R46's off the and putting the R32's back in service.

130 R179's at CI would be an oddball fleet, would cost more money and would probably worse than the R46's.

 

The is a Part Time line, Crews can operate the R46's without training and the point of putting the r46's on the is to reduce the amount of time these cars are used.

 

the reason why the CI r46's breakdown so much is because they dominate the 24/7 and with a low spare factor.

 

and yes riders will tell the difference, While everyone else got new cars, the got nothing but leftovers. The shouldn't lose their R179's because of CI not doing a good job with the R46's and even if you give CI the r179's, they'll still need the r46's so what is the point.

 

I'm starting to think alot of you don't like the fact the is getting new cars, It's very obvious.

when the was 100% R46's it sucked, dwell times were the biggest factor.

[Jchambers2120]

2 hours ago, Lawrence St said:

I never said that. Your looking at it from a railfans perspective, regular riders do not care what train they get on, as long as a train is actually coming. If you choose to run R46's on the , then CIY would still have to train those crews either way, and now you start to affect riders cause of the MDBF on the R46's being as bad. 

The only logical solution is to put the R46's in a yard that actually knows how to maintain them, that being Pitkin. Not to mention that means the would now get the majority of the R211 order, so you would have even newer trains then the R179's.

Just want to throw something out there. Train crews are qualified to operate any/all revenue equipment within their subdivision. If R46's were to be assigned to the  those crews are qualified to operate it in revenue service. As far as the R179's there's no separate qualification for those either. In the TA's eyes if you're qualified to operate an R160, then you're qualified to operate an R179.

 

[VIP]

5 hours ago, R32 3838 said:

This isn't from a railfan point of view. If you make the 100% R46's again, you are gonna need a high spare factor like before meaning removing the R46's off the and putting the R32's back in service.

130 R179's at CI would be an oddball fleet, would cost more money and would probably worse than the R46's.

 

The is a Part Time line, Crews can operate the R46's without training and the point of putting the r46's on the is to reduce the amount of time these cars are used.

 

the reason why the CI r46's breakdown so much is because they dominate the 24/7 and with a low spare factor.

 

and yes riders will tell the difference, While everyone else got new cars, the got nothing but leftovers. The shouldn't lose their R179's because of CI not doing a good job with the R46's and even if you give CI the r179's, they'll still need the r46's so what is the point.

 

I'm starting to think alot of you don't like the fact the is getting new cars, It's very obvious.

when the was 100% R46's it sucked, dwell times were the biggest factor.

The Former Jamaica R46’s are worn out due to running on long lines for so long with basic maintenance. Sending R46’s to Pitkin just because “they know how to maintain them” solves nothing, you’ll have the same problems with the same cars. Assignment of R46’s to the  solves nothing as well, because if these cars are failing Due to “poor maintenance” at Coney Island yard then those cars will perform poorly on the  and R46’s WILL STILL appear on the  and  as the way R68A’s make their appearance. Optimal maintenance of the cars are needed if they have the money for it, but they do not. And whether the  has new cars or not holds no bearing to what their customers  “deserve”. The R32’s could serve as spare service fillers but that’s it, even with that, there’s labor and maintenance. The Agency is cash strapped and consequently these cars are used to make 100 percent service.  

Edited December 23, 2020 by VIP

[1998NewFlyer]

8 hours ago, Lawrence St said:

I never said that. Your looking at it from a railfans perspective, regular riders do not care what train they get on, as long as a train is actually coming. If you choose to run R46's on the , then CIY would still have to train those crews either way, and now you start to affect riders cause of the MDBF on the R46's being as bad. 

The only logical solution is to put the R46's in a yard that actually knows how to maintain them, that being Pitkin. Not to mention that means the would now get the majority of the R211 order, so you would have even newer trains then the R179's.

You sound STUPID

[Calvin]

3 hours ago, VIP said:

The Former Jamaica R46’s are worn out due to running on long lines for so long with basic maintenance. Sending R46’s to Pitkin just because “they know how to maintain them” solves nothing, you’ll have the same problems with the same cars. Assignment of R46’s to the  solves nothing as well, because if these cars are failing Due to “poor maintenance” at Coney Island yard then those cars will perform poorly on the  and R46’s WILL STILL appear on the  and  as the way R68A’s make their appearance. Optimal maintenance of the cars are needed if they have the money for it, but they do not. And whether the  has new cars or not holds no bearing to what their customers  “deserve”. The R32’s could serve as spare service fillers but that’s it, even with that, there’s labor and maintenance. The Agency is cash strapped and consequently these cars are used to make 100 percent service.  

I say the  but they do get a break at that time. During the overnight shuttle service, there was back then 1 R46 and a R160 from on these days. On weekends, the 160s were used with the R46s but it's 1/2 the fleet. 

 

The  : what I've seen, they are mostly used during the rush hours. Weekend service, not so much. 

[Jemorie]

Aside from the pandemic (global wide) or lack of budget within the agency, retiring the R32s and R42s before the R211s arrive was a boneheaded move anyway. And don’t get me started on the R46 lovers/foamers who think their precious 45-year old cars would do well at Coney Island Yard in comparison to the 15-year old R160s. More often than not, the R46s’ LCD signs malfunction, leading to a lot of confusion among passengers along the Broadway Line in Manhattan. At least with the R160s, you don’t have to ask what train it is or play the guessing game.

And they need to add more countdown clocks on all of the lettered lines sooner or later.

 

Edited December 26, 2020 by Jemorie

[Lance]

Isn't the move from Jamaica to Coney Island a transfer of necessity over anything else? The 46s can't run on Queens Blvd once CBTC is fully activated there and we can't wait five years for a sufficient amount of 211s to be pressed into active service before switching over to the new signaling system. It's the same reason why the 6 now uses the older 62As instead of the 142As that used to hold down the Pelham line.

As for the diminishing performance levels on the 46s, and forgive me for making the obvious point, but the trains are 45 years old and it's quite expected that they will start to break down more frequently than they did in years prior. After a certain point, there's only so much preventative maintenance that can be done before it's time for the trains to be simply replaced. Even the replacement electronic signs are nearly 30 years old at this point. I seriously doubt Luminator expected those signs to still be in use longer than most of us have been on this Earth. Hell, even the signs on the newer 142s are starting to fail at this point. They're all up for replacement, but no one's obviously going to spend money to replace signs on trains that won't be around in a few years hopefully. And even if they did want to replace them, they'd likely have to replace all of the surrounding components because the system is so old and outdated at this point.

Circling back to the cars themselves, it doesn't help that the 46s are now the backbone of several primary lines and have been so since the transition from Jamaica. They are currently the primary fleet of the A, C, N and Q lines, whereas before, it was only the A and R, while providing secondary support for the F whenever needed. Of course, as mentioned above, it can't be avoided unless Transit delays implementation of Queens Blvd CBTC until the arrival of the 211s.

And to offer a rebuttal to the oft-mentioned suggestion here, the 32s are not the silver bullet some of the folks here like to pretend they are. The 32s were retired because they are consistently even worse performers than the other aging fleets in active service. The 32s have averaged 35K miles between failure for years now, whereas the 46s have only recently dropped below 60K MDBF. In my opinion, that's not bad for trains from 1975. That doesn't include the accommodations that need to be made for the 32s to even run these days. If by some miracle the 32s were pressed back into active service, they're pretty much limited to the Jamaica line or their HVAC starts overheating and they get taken out of service. Isn't that why the 160s were temporarily placed onto the A and C lines when the 179s were taken out of service last summer?

Right now, all we can really do is wish for the best and hope there are no further delays in receiving those new trains. There are ways to avoid putting unnecessary strain on these aging cars, like putting them on the secondary routes like the B. The problem in that lies in the fact there aren't enough applicable secondary routes to avoid having the cars continue to mainline full-time routes like the A, C and Q. It'd be better than the current operations though.

[R32 3838]

1 hour ago, Lance said:

Isn't the move from Jamaica to Coney Island a transfer of necessity over anything else? The 46s can't run on Queens Blvd once CBTC is fully activated there and we can't wait five years for a sufficient amount of 211s to be pressed into active service before switching over to the new signaling system. It's the same reason why the 6 now uses the older 62As instead of the 142As that used to hold down the Pelham line.

As for the diminishing performance levels on the 46s, and forgive me for making the obvious point, but the trains are 45 years old and it's quite expected that they will start to break down more frequently than they did in years prior. After a certain point, there's only so much preventative maintenance that can be done before it's time for the trains to be simply replaced. Even the replacement electronic signs are nearly 30 years old at this point. I seriously doubt Luminator expected those signs to still be in use longer than most of us have been on this Earth. Hell, even the signs on the newer 142s are starting to fail at this point. They're all up for replacement, but no one's obviously going to spend money to replace signs on trains that won't be around in a few years hopefully. And even if they did want to replace them, they'd likely have to replace all of the surrounding components because the system is so old and outdated at this point.

Circling back to the cars themselves, it doesn't help that the 46s are now the backbone of several primary lines and have been so since the transition from Jamaica. They are currently the primary fleet of the A, C, N and Q lines, whereas before, it was only the A and R, while providing secondary support for the F whenever needed. Of course, as mentioned above, it can't be avoided unless Transit delays implementation of Queens Blvd CBTC until the arrival of the 211s.

And to offer a rebuttal to the oft-mentioned suggestion here, the 32s are not the silver bullet some of the folks here like to pretend they are. The 32s were retired because they are consistently even worse performers than the other aging fleets in active service. The 32s have averaged 35K miles between failure for years now, whereas the 46s have only recently dropped below 60K MDBF. In my opinion, that's not bad for trains from 1975. That doesn't include the accommodations that need to be made for the 32s to even run these days. If by some miracle the 32s were pressed back into active service, they're pretty much limited to the Jamaica line or their HVAC starts overheating and they get taken out of service. Isn't that why the 160s were temporarily placed onto the A and C lines when the 179s were taken out of service last summer?

Right now, all we can really do is wish for the best and hope there are no further delays in receiving those new trains. There are ways to avoid putting unnecessary strain on these aging cars, like putting them on the secondary routes like the B. The problem in that lies in the fact there aren't enough applicable secondary routes to avoid having the cars continue to mainline full-time routes like the A, C and Q. It'd be better than the current operations though.

the R32's were doing better MDBF wise when they were on the recently, Not by much but still and improvement. The r46's are doing bad because they have barely any spares.

The R32's aren't retired, They are in storage and the only reason why they were taken out so fast was because the office of the governor requested the remove them off the road for bullshit reasons, This is why the r46's are starting to do so bad, they didn't need the R42's anymore or the whole R32's fleet. Right now there's no need for r32's due to service reductions but having 50 cars restricted to rush hours until the first R211's touch the property wouldn't hurt so this way you can give CI more r46's for spares. when you move 45 year old subway cars from 1 line to multiple other lines with barely any spares, you get massive breakdowns. I told people this and no one listened and now the R46's on the CI routes are doing bad to the point they had to borrow 80 r160's from Jamaica for service.

We all knew jamaica was losing r46's due to CBTC but at the same time no one knew all the R32's would be phased out this year instead of 50% of the fleet causing more problems with the r46's. Mixed length trains is very dumb, Lucky that ridership dropped because if this was normal, this wouldn't had lasted long, just like the first time.

On 12/26/2020 at 3:14 PM, Jemorie said:

Aside from the pandemic (global wide) or lack of budget within the agency, retiring the R32s and R42s before the R211s arrive was a boneheaded move anyway. And don’t get me started on the R46 lovers/foamers who think their precious 45-year old cars would do well at Coney Island Yard in comparison to the 15-year old R160s. More often than not, the R46s’ LCD signs malfunction, leading to a lot of confusion among passengers along the Broadway Line in Manhattan. At least with the R160s, you don’t have to ask what train it is or play the guessing game.

And they need to add more countdown clocks on all of the lettered lines sooner or later.

 

They Didn't need the R42's anymore, There's more than enough R179's to Replace all the R42's and 50% of the r32 fleet.

Edited January 3, 2021 by R32 3838

[Lawrence St]

1 hour ago, Lance said:

Isn't the move from Jamaica to Coney Island a transfer of necessity over anything else? The 46s can't run on Queens Blvd once CBTC is fully activated there and we can't wait five years for a sufficient amount of 211s to be pressed into active service before switching over to the new signaling system. It's the same reason why the 6 now uses the older 62As instead of the 142As that used to hold down the Pelham line.

As for the diminishing performance levels on the 46s, and forgive me for making the obvious point, but the trains are 45 years old and it's quite expected that they will start to break down more frequently than they did in years prior. After a certain point, there's only so much preventative maintenance that can be done before it's time for the trains to be simply replaced. Even the replacement electronic signs are nearly 30 years old at this point. I seriously doubt Luminator expected those signs to still be in use longer than most of us have been on this Earth. Hell, even the signs on the newer 142s are starting to fail at this point. They're all up for replacement, but no one's obviously going to spend money to replace signs on trains that won't be around in a few years hopefully. And even if they did want to replace them, they'd likely have to replace all of the surrounding components because the system is so old and outdated at this point.

Circling back to the cars themselves, it doesn't help that the 46s are now the backbone of several primary lines and have been so since the transition from Jamaica. They are currently the primary fleet of the A, C, N and Q lines, whereas before, it was only the A and R, while providing secondary support for the F whenever needed. Of course, as mentioned above, it can't be avoided unless Transit delays implementation of Queens Blvd CBTC until the arrival of the 211s.

And to offer a rebuttal to the oft-mentioned suggestion here, the 32s are not the silver bullet some of the folks here like to pretend they are. The 32s were retired because they are consistently even worse performers than the other aging fleets in active service. The 32s have averaged 35K miles between failure for years now, whereas the 46s have only recently dropped below 60K MDBF. In my opinion, that's not bad for trains from 1975. That doesn't include the accommodations that need to be made for the 32s to even run these days. If by some miracle the 32s were pressed back into active service, they're pretty much limited to the Jamaica line or their HVAC starts overheating and they get taken out of service. Isn't that why the 160s were temporarily placed onto the A and C lines when the 179s were taken out of service last summer?

Right now, all we can really do is wish for the best and hope there are no further delays in receiving those new trains. There are ways to avoid putting unnecessary strain on these aging cars, like putting them on the secondary routes like the B. The problem in that lies in the fact there aren't enough applicable secondary routes to avoid having the cars continue to mainline full-time routes like the A, C and Q. It'd be better than the current operations though.

While I understand your point, they should have postponed the QBL CBTC project when the pandemic first started. Since a majority of the ridership is working from home now, there is no rush to activate CBTC on Queens Blvd right now since the ridership isn't there for it.

[MHV9218]

1 hour ago, Lance said:

The 32s have averaged 35K miles between failure for years now, whereas the 46s have only recently dropped below 60K MDBF. In my opinion, that's not bad for trains from 1975. That doesn't include the accommodations that need to be made for the 32s to even run these days. If by some miracle the 32s were pressed back into active service, they're pretty much limited to the Jamaica line or their HVAC starts overheating and they get taken out of service. Isn't that why the 160s were temporarily placed onto the A and C lines when the 179s were taken out of service last summer?

Well, yes and no re: MDBF between these two cars. One is a specialty fleet that can be used for targeted service and the other is considered a mainstay. The R32 MDBF covered what, a few dozen cars over those months of emergency service? The R46s are about 700 cars in total. It's a much bigger problem to have the R46 fleet at 45k across the board than it is to have the R32 fleet at 30-35k in targeted capacity. The consequence of breakdowns on the R32 fleet affects only a small number of riders on an infrequent basis, whereas breakdowns across the R46 fleet affect many more people across many more lines. So if the MTA's goal is the remove the fleet with the most breakdowns, then yes, remove the R32s and it's job done. But if the goal is to provide the most consistent service possible, then all efforts should be focused on raising the R46 fleet's MDBF by any means necessary (which may, or may not, involve running older and less reliable cars in targeted fill-in service).

And by the way, since the R46 MDBF is on average so low, it stands to reason that there are ~150 R46s performing with MDBF worse than or equal to the R32 fleet. I'm fudging the numbers in my head, but that would be something of a standard deviation. That would mean there is an entire R32 fleet's worth of 46s doing as badly as the 32s, in other words.

[Around the Horn]

16 minutes ago, Lawrence St said:

While I understand your point, they should have postponed the QBL CBTC project when the pandemic first started. Since a majority of the ridership is working from home now, there is no rush to activate CBTC on Queens Blvd right now since the ridership isn't there for it.

CBTC on Queens Blvd was never about ridership. CBTC is now the defacto standard for signalling replacements which is why Culver is getting it.

[Calvin]

8313-8376 are on the for CBTC and bypass for the   , 8377-8608 are grouped units for the that'll be in the CBTC process tomorrow on Queens Blvd and 53 St,

8609-8652, 9943-9974 are on the at that time. 

Edited January 4, 2021 by Calvin
R160A out of ENY

[RR503]

7 hours ago, Around the Horn said:

CBTC on Queens Blvd was never about ridership. CBTC is now the defacto standard for signalling replacements which is why Culver is getting it.

There are real long term maintenance savings, too. There'd be more if we were less into AWS overlay, but it's still nontrivial.

[darkstar8983]

On 1/3/2021 at 4:20 PM, MHV9218 said:

Well, yes and no re: MDBF between these two cars. One is a specialty fleet that can be used for targeted service and the other is considered a mainstay. The R32 MDBF covered what, a few dozen cars over those months of emergency service? The R46s are about 700 cars in total. It's a much bigger problem to have the R46 fleet at 45k across the board than it is to have the R32 fleet at 30-35k in targeted capacity. The consequence of breakdowns on the R32 fleet affects only a small number of riders on an infrequent basis, whereas breakdowns across the R46 fleet affect many more people across many more lines. So if the MTA's goal is the remove the fleet with the most breakdowns, then yes, remove the R32s and it's job done. But if the goal is to provide the most consistent service possible, then all efforts should be focused on raising the R46 fleet's MDBF by any means necessary (which may, or may not, involve running older and less reliable cars in targeted fill-in service).

And by the way, since the R46 MDBF is on average so low, it stands to reason that there are ~150 R46s performing with MDBF worse than or equal to the R32 fleet. I'm fudging the numbers in my head, but that would be something of a standard deviation. That would mean there is an entire R32 fleet's worth of 46s doing as badly as the 32s, in other words.

Going back to the low spare factor:

Jamaica has enough cars to have seven spare trains for each route  , while the  and  have only four spare trains each (and that’s barely). On what planet does that make sense?! No wonder why Jamaica has had to loan out R160s to the  and most recently, the . I think the advantage we have currently is the low ridership because of the pandemic, so these spur-of-the-moment moves are possible because the  and  are each running reduced service. If we don’t want more breakdowns, I think else will need to keep this reduced service AND maybe do targeted minor service reductions so that more trains are in the yards, or allow these targeted car loans to allow more troubling cars to spend more time in the shops.

Edited January 4, 2021 by darkstar8983

[Jemorie]

On 1/3/2021 at 2:55 PM, Lance said:

the 32s are not the silver bullet some of the folks here like to pretend they are.

We're not. It's just that the R179 fiasco did more harm than good to the overall rolling stock fleet and that's why a few of the R32s had to be reactivated temporarily until the R179s came back. The same happen back in January last year when they had to temporarily reactivate the R42s, proving that sidelining the R32s and R42s before the R211s come wasn't totally a great idea.

On 1/3/2021 at 3:58 PM, R32 3838 said:

We all knew jamaica was losing r46's due to CBTC but at the same time no one knew all the R32's would be phased out this year instead of 50% of the fleet causing more problems with the r46's. Mixed length trains is very dumb, Lucky that ridership dropped because if this was normal, this wouldn't had lasted long, just like the first time.

They Didn't need the R42's anymore, There's more than enough R179's to Replace all the R42's and 50% of the r32 fleet.

I was skeptical about it because I thought that the Queens Blvd CBTC work would be delayed similar to how the Flushing CBTC and Canarsie CBTC were delayed for whatever reasons, even after the  became all R62As and the  all R142A/188s until a few years later when CBTC was officially activated on Flushing.

I disagree that they didn't need the R42s or half of the R32s, especially since the recent R179 fiasco proved otherwise. Either that, or the governor may have foreseen COVID-19, which may have contributed to the premature retirement of the R42s and the current contingency of the R32s. Could this also be why the governor reduced the now-former  project to half-ass only?

The only thing I agree with keeping the R32s and R42s off the rails is because of the pandemic (and of course, their breakdown rates as Lance pointed out earlier, but just to a lesser extent).

Edited January 4, 2021 by Jemorie

[Bay Ridge Express]

2 hours ago, Jemorie said:

Either that, or the governor may have foreseen COVID-19, which may have contributed to the premature retirement of the R42s and the current contingency of the R32s. Could this also be why the governor reduced the now-former  project to half-ass only?

Yes, Cuomo can see the future, which is why he said he wouldn't be running for President (spoiler alert: he will).

[T to Dyre Avenue]

On 1/3/2021 at 2:55 PM, Lance said:

Isn't the move from Jamaica to Coney Island a transfer of necessity over anything else? The 46s can't run on Queens Blvd once CBTC is fully activated there and we can't wait five years for a sufficient amount of 211s to be pressed into active service before switching over to the new signaling system. It's the same reason why the 6 now uses the older 62As instead of the 142As that used to hold down the Pelham line.

As for the diminishing performance levels on the 46s, and forgive me for making the obvious point, but the trains are 45 years old and it's quite expected that they will start to break down more frequently than they did in years prior. After a certain point, there's only so much preventative maintenance that can be done before it's time for the trains to be simply replaced. Even the replacement electronic signs are nearly 30 years old at this point. I seriously doubt Luminator expected those signs to still be in use longer than most of us have been on this Earth. Hell, even the signs on the newer 142s are starting to fail at this point. They're all up for replacement, but no one's obviously going to spend money to replace signs on trains that won't be around in a few years hopefully. And even if they did want to replace them, they'd likely have to replace all of the surrounding components because the system is so old and outdated at this point.

Circling back to the cars themselves, it doesn't help that the 46s are now the backbone of several primary lines and have been so since the transition from Jamaica. They are currently the primary fleet of the A, C, N and Q lines, whereas before, it was only the A and R, while providing secondary support for the F whenever needed. Of course, as mentioned above, it can't be avoided unless Transit delays implementation of Queens Blvd CBTC until the arrival of the 211s.

And to offer a rebuttal to the oft-mentioned suggestion here, the 32s are not the silver bullet some of the folks here like to pretend they are. The 32s were retired because they are consistently even worse performers than the other aging fleets in active service. The 32s have averaged 35K miles between failure for years now, whereas the 46s have only recently dropped below 60K MDBF. In my opinion, that's not bad for trains from 1975. That doesn't include the accommodations that need to be made for the 32s to even run these days. If by some miracle the 32s were pressed back into active service, they're pretty much limited to the Jamaica line or their HVAC starts overheating and they get taken out of service. Isn't that why the 160s were temporarily placed onto the A and C lines when the 179s were taken out of service last summer?

Right now, all we can really do is wish for the best and hope there are no further delays in receiving those new trains. There are ways to avoid putting unnecessary strain on these aging cars, like putting them on the secondary routes like the B. The problem in that lies in the fact there aren't enough applicable secondary routes to avoid having the cars continue to mainline full-time routes like the A, C and Q. It'd be better than the current operations though.

This is why the MTA would be foolish to cancel the R211 order. We need those cars. At least enough to retire the R46 and R44 SI cars. The time to replace them is approaching. Quickly. Their current line assignments is fine as a stopgap measure, but to expect this to last for five or more years is a lot to expect.

Edited January 5, 2021 by T to Dyre Avenue

[darkstar8983]

One thing I realized could be done is to run the R68As on the  weekdays, and have their rollsigns changed on some sets to the  for weekends, so that more R46s only run weekdays on the  line, since the trains assigned to the  have to run all day with only 1 or 2 trains max pulled from service between the AM and PM rush. 

[Calvin]

33 minutes ago, darkstar8983 said:

One thing I realized could be done is to run the R68As on the  weekdays, and have their rollsigns changed on some sets to the  for weekends, so that more R46s only run weekdays on the  line, since the trains assigned to the  have to run all day with only 1 or 2 trains max pulled from service between the AM and PM rush. 

There are specific number of trains that goes OOS during the night if that happens on Sunday. There's a reason why C.I, Concourse and Stillwell Yards have B's lined up in formation (affecting early morning put-ins). 

 

Trains cannot be organized and moved around at yards around 4 AM, that's when the  starts passenger service. 

Edited January 5, 2021 by Calvin

[JeremiahC99]

12 hours ago, T to Dyre Avenue said:

This is why the MTA would be foolish to cancel the R211 order. We need those cars. At least enough to retire the R46 and R44 SI cars. The time to replace them is approaching. Quickly. Their current line assignments is fine as a stopgap measure, but to expect this to last for five or more years is a lot to expect.

So how many would be enough to retire the R44 SIR and R46 cars? 1175 cars (this is assuming base order of 535 cars plus first option order of 640 cars)?

 

Also, can 440 to 460 60-feet cars alone be enough for the  and  Rockaway Park Shuttle alone or will they need more cars?

Edited January 5, 2021 by JeremiahC99