The Need for Better Bus Service

[Cait Sith]

Uh... As someone whose made frequent use of the Seventh Avenue Subway the has never been as unreliable as some make it out to be on here...

 

^this.

 

My only gripe with the 2 is that it's brutally long from The Bronx to Manhattan.

[Trainmaster5]

^this.

 

My only gripe with the 2 is that it's brutally long from The Bronx to Manhattan.

I gotta agree with you there. Unfortunately there were times I had to make 2 trips from New Lots to 241 St. in the late evenings.At least back then I ran express in Manhattan although my last round trip was with a 5 car train. That was "the Beast".

[BrooklynBus]

To Trainmaster 5:

 

" I will state that I've been a subway and bus rider for almost 60 years and I've never had to let a train go by before I could get on. Buses maybe but never a subway or railroad train. Guess I've been lucky. "

 

Guess you weren't a rider of the Lex during rush hours. During my 4 years of using that line daily when I went to Hunter College in the sixties, there were many occasions when I either had to let an express go by because it was too crowded (usually around Grand Central) , or else run down the platform for two or three cars to find one I could get in. Sometimes I even took the local because the expresses were too crowded and then boarded a few stops later. I got on the first stop at Utica Avenue going o school so I always had a seat, but would often see passengers who could not get on at Franklin or Atlantic if the train was late.

 

Even not every 6 passenger could get on at Grand Central on occasion and had to miss one or even two trains to be able to board, but this happened less frequently with the local than it did with the express.

 

When I started using the Brighton Line during rush hours, when it was late, passengers would be left at 7th or Atlantic Avenues too.

[Trainmaster5]

To Trainmaster 5:

 

" I will state that I've been a subway and bus rider for almost 60 years and I've never had to let a train go by before I could get on. Buses maybe but never a subway or railroad train. Guess I've been lucky. "

 

Guess you weren't a rider of the Lex during rush hours. During my 4 years of using that line daily when I went to Hunter College in the sixties, there were many occasions when I either had to let an express go by because it was too crowded (usually around Grand Central) , or else run down the platform for two or three cars to find one I could get in. Sometimes I even took the local because the expresses were too crowded and then boarded a few stops later. I got on the first stop at Utica Avenue going o school so I always had a seat, but would often see passengers who could not get on at Franklin or Atlantic if the train was late.

 

Even not every 6 passenger could get on at Grand Central on occasion and had to miss one or even two trains to be able to board, but this happened less frequently with the local than it did with the express.

 

When I started using the Brighton Line during rush hours, when it was late, passengers would be left at 7th or Atlantic Avenues too.

Luckily for me I entered the subway system at New Lots Avenue, Broadway-East New York, or Prospect Park going toward the city. Always non-rush hours. Coming back toward Brooklyn I entered at 59th and Lex or 57th-7th and used the BMT for the most part heading toward home. Again, non rush.I never really experienced the joys of Lexington ridership in the rush hours like most people did. I know what you've described is true because I've seen it from the vantage point of a C/R's or M/M's cab. I never had to ride rush hour trains on a regular basis which makes my experiences atypical I guess. Even working for NYCTA most RTO jobs do not start or end during rush hours. I think my experiences can be summed up in 2 words, luck and timing. Remember our 3 NYC blackouts? First one in '65 I was working after school at Alexander's 58th and Lex. Took a bus down to Brooklyn Bridge, walked across, and took the B41 home to Flatbush. In '77 I was working for a non-profit in Brooklyn and used a bus to go home. The last one I was operating a train and ended up at President St at 4:10 pm heading s/b. Point I'm getting at is at no time was I a part of the Manhattan rush hour ridership crowd in my personal experience. I would point out that there are some railfans out there who can probably tell even experienced riders where to stand at certain stations to increase your chances of getting on a crowded Lexington Avenue train. I've seen Grand Central, Union Square, Bowling Green, Franklin Avenue ,Flatbush Avenue and Utica Avenue in the pm rush so I know what the average rider goes through daily.

[Cait Sith]

I gotta agree with you there. Unfortunately there were times I had to make 2 trips from New Lots to 241 St. in the late evenings.At least back then I ran express in Manhattan although my last round trip was with a 5 car train. That was "the Beast".

 

Just curious, how long is a round trip on the from Flatbush Avenue or New Lots to 241st?

[Trainmaster5]

Just curious, how long is a round trip on the from Flatbush Avenue or New Lots to 241st?

Back in the day an average from Flatbush to 241 St was about 95 minutes. In the rush hours I'd add another 5 minutes or so. trains to/from New Lots are about 5 minutes longer because they are all basically rush hour trips. Today's trips may be longer than that but I doubt the running time has decreased any.

[NYSubwayBuff]

There are definitely more timers and from taking the 2 from FB to Wakefield and it was like 100 mins I cant imagine what its like from New Lots

[biGC323232]

Back in the day an average from Flatbush to 241 St was about 95 minutes. In the rush hours I'd add another 5 minutes or so. trains to/from New Lots are about 5 minutes longer because they are all basically rush hour trips. Today's trips may be longer than that but I doubt the running time has decreased any.

 

Wow..That a long trip

[Via Garibaldi 8]

Uh... As someone whose made frequent use of the Seventh Avenue Subway the has never been as unreliable as some make it out to be on here...

Uh... Just because you don't have problems doesn't mean that others don't.  It all depends on when you are riding and where you are going.  

Perhaps I should have made my point clearer. I've operated the during those hours I specified. From what I've seen the line runs trains approximately every 8-9 minutes at times during middays and 10-12 minures later on after the rush since my retirement. Any RTO employee from the , , or in the Bronx can hear everything that happens on the over our radios and will tell you that a 15-20 minute wait between trains is not a normal thing. Aside from trackwork I can't see delays of that magnitude happening frequently on any line. I will give you some basic pointers on dispatching though. If a line is scheduled to run on 8-10 minute headways and trains are being delayed for whatever reason you do not bump up service on that line. That only increases congestion and delays. Is there anything posted on the countdown clocks or the web site indicating a cause of these delays? We do have some active RTO employees on these boards and perhaps they can shed some light on the situation up there. Maybe the ridership on the north of East 180th St has increased greatly in the last four years, I don't know. I'll leave that to AndrewJC and the others who focus on those stats. I will state that I've been a subway and bus rider for almost 60 years and I've never had to let a train go by before I could get on. Buses maybe but never a subway or railroad train. Guess I've been lucky. Carry on.

And this is precisely the problem.  The needs more service and has been problematic for years, so what can be done to squeeze in more trains? CBTC?

 

Funny you mention the BxM11..... I was gonna make a post last night asking this so & so how so much of a "horrible duplicate" the BxM11 is, since it also parallels a subway like the BxM4 does..... But why the f*ck bother with this guy anymore...

Well I can tell you right now that anyone who lives in the Pelham Parkway area, those are the folks using the BxM11, and I don't blame them.  it's MUCH faster than the , though past Pelham Parkway is debatable as it can get stuck along White Plains Rd due to the narrow streets.

[GojiMet86]

Uh... Just because you don't have problems doesn't mean that others don't.  It all depends on when you are riding and where you are going.  

And this is precisely the problem.  The needs more service and has been problematic for years, so what can be done to squeeze in more trains? CBTC?

 

Well I can tell you right now that anyone who lives in the Pelham Parkway area, those are the folks using the BxM11, and I don't blame them.  it's MUCH faster than the , though past Pelham Parkway is debatable as it can get stuck along White Plains Rd due to the narrow streets.

 

I think Trainmaster made it the point that the doesn't need anymore trains. With all the delays it has, adding more and more trains will only make things worse.

[BrooklynBus]

Back in the day an average from Flatbush to 241 St was about 95 minutes. In the rush hours I'd add another 5 minutes or so. trains to/from New Lots are about 5 minutes longer because they are all basically rush hour trips. Today's trips may be longer than that but I doubt the running time has decreased any.

When you say "Back in the day", I don't know what " day" you are talking about, but I will tell you this. Around 1978 when I was doing a study at the Department of City Planning to see if buses and trains could be better coordinated at the Flatbush Avenue station during the evening rush hours we obtained MTA records for three random weekdays. Don't remember if it was the 2 or the 3 back then, but any Lex or 7th Avenue train leaving its northern terminal only had a 50% chance of reaching the terminal at Flatbush Avenue. Most were taken out of service due to door problems. The rule back then was if both leafs of any door in any car became inoperable, the train was to be removed from service. (75% of the cars had only one operable leaf per door.)

 

That meant that half the passengers were kicked off the train somewhere along their trip home. Some were kicked off two or three times! That was when some passengers revolted and refused to get off. I remember being one of them. Most of the time, the train was put back in service if hundreds of passengers refused to get off. You can imagine the frustration of being kicked off at Grand Central, having to wait for the next train or the train after that, only to be kicked off again at Union Square or Brooklyn Bridge.

 

Sometimes, passengers ended up in the yards. No one was ticketed back then. All that makes today's problems seem trivial.

[Via Garibaldi 8]

I think Trainmaster made it the point that the doesn't need anymore trains. With all the delays it has, adding more and more trains will only make things worse.

And my point was that more service IS needed (the overcrowding on some trains makes this a necessity that has to be addressed at some point, but more service CAN'T be added unless they use CBTC or some system that allows them to add more trains accordingly.

[bobtehpanda]

Uh... Just because you don't have problems doesn't mean that others don't.  It all depends on when you are riding and where you are going.  

And this is precisely the problem.  The needs more service and has been problematic for years, so what can be done to squeeze in more trains? CBTC?

 

Well I can tell you right now that anyone who lives in the Pelham Parkway area, those are the folks using the BxM11, and I don't blame them.  it's MUCH faster than the , though past Pelham Parkway is debatable as it can get stuck along White Plains Rd due to the narrow streets.

 

The 7th Avenue Line is actually projected to get CBTC by the 2020s once funding has been secured in the next Capital Plans (and, of course, once we prove that CBTC is actually doable on the trunk lines).

[Via Garibaldi 8]

The 7th Avenue Line is actually projected to get CBTC by the 2020s once funding has been secured in the next Capital Plans (and, of course, once we prove that CBTC is actually doable on the trunk lines).

2020s... Mamma mia.... 

[Trainmaster5]

When you say "Back in the day", I don't know what " day" you are talking about, but I will tell you this. Around 1978 when I was doing a study at the Department of City Planning to see if buses and trains could be better coordinated at the Flatbush Avenue station during the evening rush hours we obtained MTA records for three random weekdays. Don't remember if it was the 2 or the 3 back then, but any Lex or 7th Avenue train leaving its northern terminal only had a 50% chance of reaching the terminal at Flatbush Avenue. Most were taken out of service due to door problems. The rule back then was if both leafs of any door in any car became inoperable, the train was to be removed from service. (75% of the cars had only one operable leaf per door.)

 

That meant that half the passengers were kicked off the train somewhere along their trip home. Some were kicked off two or three times! That was when some passengers revolted and refused to get off. I remember being one of them. Most of the time, the train was put back in service if hundreds of passengers refused to get off. You can imagine the frustration of being kicked off at Grand Central, having to wait for the next train or the train after that, only to be kicked off again at Union Square or Brooklyn Bridge.

 

Sometimes, passengers ended up in the yards. No one was ticketed back then. All that makes today's problems seem trivial.

From 1978 to mid 1983 the and serviced Flatbush Avenue. Both lines ran equipment that was one step above scrap. You had a choice of a nine car 7th Avenue train or maybe during rush hours a Lexington would crawl through the Joralemon tubes and make it to Brooklyn. When I came back to transit in the early '80's I would pray to work the line rather than the . Door problems were part of the troubles. As you pointed out trains would be taken out of service from 149th St in the Bronx down to Bowling Green. The motors were shot on those cars and no one, from RTO or Car Equipment, wanted to be held responsible for giving the OK and then having that consist die in the river tube between Manhattan and Brooklyn. So between door problems where only 2/3 of them were fully operable and a 10 car train with 40% of the motors dead you end up with an "out of service" train. That's what happens when your equipment isn't maintained. I look back on those days and shake my head. I, too, remember picking up heavy passenger loads on the southern end of the Lexington corridor because of an earlier train(trains) discharging it's load and going out of service. I also recall trains adding up to stuck s in the river tube and pushing them into Borough Hall. Heck, the first time my mom rode my train we had to couple up to a that was stuck outside of Borough Hall. I think that's why so many of my older relatives were bus riders first and foremost. They rode the subway when there was no other choice. Even today when I venture into NYC my favorite mode of transport is a bus. This is the bus forum so let me stop my history lesson here. Sorry for the detour. Carry on.

[bobtehpanda]

2020s... Mamma mia.... 

 

The thing is, it would probably be earlier if we knew for 100% that there would be a trunk-line compatible CBTC system, but the MTA is one of the only systems that interline massively and require CBTC. Given that the very first time the MTA tried using automated signaling in the '50s, a train caught fire, it makes sense that MTA is moving very slowly on doing something new and never tried before.

[B35 via Church]

Well I can tell you right now that anyone who lives in the Pelham Parkway area, those are the folks using the BxM11, and I don't blame them.  it's MUCH faster than the , though past Pelham Parkway is debatable as it can get stuck along White Plains Rd due to the narrow streets.

Yeah, I know what group of riders use the route & to what extent.....

You make it sound like Pelham Parkway area riders are the main group of people that use the BxM11, which simply isn't the case..... I don't see what's so debatable about any benefit the express bus has over the up in that area of the Bronx either; WPR being narrow or not, it gets usage up there by those folks.... Moreso than Pelham Parkway.

 

As to the general point you're making with this.... Well tell it to ya boy QJT; This whole bullshit about horrible duplicates isn't my premise....

 

From 1978 to mid 1983 the and serviced Flatbush Avenue. Both lines ran equipment that was one step above scrap. You had a choice of a nine car 7th Avenue train or maybe during rush hours a Lexington would crawl through the Joralemon tubes and make it to Brooklyn. When I came back to transit in the early '80's I would pray to work the line rather than the . Door problems were part of the troubles. As you pointed out trains would be taken out of service from 149th St in the Bronx down to Bowling Green. The motors were shot on those cars and no one, from RTO or Car Equipment, wanted to be held responsible for giving the OK and then having that consist die in the river tube between Manhattan and Brooklyn. So between door problems where only 2/3 of them were fully operable and a 10 car train with 40% of the motors dead you end up with an "out of service" train. That's what happens when your equipment isn't maintained. I look back on those days and shake my head. I, too, remember picking up heavy passenger loads on the southern end of the Lexington corridor because of an earlier train(trains) discharging it's load and going out of service. I also recall trains adding up to stuck s in the river tube and pushing them into Borough Hall. Heck, the first time my mom rode my train we had to couple up to a that was stuck outside of Borough Hall. I think that's why so many of my older relatives were bus riders first and foremost. They rode the subway when there was no other choice. Even today when I venture into NYC my favorite mode of transport is a bus. This is the bus forum so let me stop my history lesson here. Sorry for the detour. Carry on.

That answers that.....

 

....and that bit about the bus being ya favorite mode of transit.... Same here.

Mid day usage on the subway in & out of Manhattan is starting to resemble rush hour usage... I can't be bothered much anymore.... (I) Just take a couple buses & be done with it... One reason why I miss being in a situation where I can't take the express bus to get to work.... Even now I don't bother taking the from Church to Atlantic in the morning anymore; Walk over to the B12 & ride it to the end for LIRR ENY.... Anything from the trip that reaches Church av @ 4:56am, onward into the rush, will have you standing when the train reaches Church.... the 5:12, 5:26, forget it....

 

Sad part is, things are only going to get worse on the subway - You can only force but so much shit into 5 pound bag......

 

....and my analogous use of the term "shit" with that, is referring to ridership, and TPH...

 

But yeah, When you have more people professing having/noticing local subway service getting to their destinations before express subway service does along a particular trunk line, that says enough.... Hell, even on these parts (the forums), you don't hear all that expressaholic talk regarding the subway like you used to! The best kept secret (lol) isn't so much of a secret anymore

[Via Garibaldi 8]

Yeah, I know what group of riders use the route & to what extent.....

You make it sound like Pelham Parkway area riders are the main group of people that use the BxM11, which simply isn't the case..... I don't see what's so debatable about any benefit the express bus has over the up in that area of the Bronx either; WPR being narrow or not, it gets usage up there by those folks.... Moreso than Pelham Parkway.

 

Actually they are on weekends.  It's them and the Bronx Zoo crowd that makes up the bulk of the ridership on weekends.  Weekdays is a different story as the folks up by the Mount Vernon area I'm sure come down to get that bus, similar to the way the folks in Yonkers come down for the BxM4 and the Riverdale express buses.  On weekends, after the Bronx Zoo stop the next two drop-off stops on the BxM11 are big and the bus can empty out considerably.  Further up along WPR (i.e. Burke and Allerton) more folks trickle off.  I have grabbed the bus as far north as Gun Hill Rd on weekends when tutoring and I was usually the only one on the bus until the last stop (Boston Rd & Thwaites Pl (Pelham Pkwy)) if we didn't make the Bronx Zoo stop.  That Boston Rd & Thwaites Pl (Pelham Pkwy) stop is probably the biggest stop on the bus at all times and I'd say that since it's the only somewhat "middle class" neighborhood along the BxM11 that can afford to the express bus (to some extent).

[BM5 via Woodhaven]

I think that there is a condierable amount of ridership north of Gun Hill as well. I've seen some BxM11's loads being half and half (Gun Hill being the divider), on Saturdays and Sundays.

[Via Garibaldi 8]

I think that there is a condierable amount of ridership north of Gun Hill as well. I've seen some BxM11's loads being half and half (Gun Hill being the divider), on Saturdays and Sundays.

True but that's more hit or miss and the later buses are pretty empty north of Gun Hill Rd on weekends.  On weekdays I've also boarded at Gun Hill and was surprised to see how crowded the bus was.  A lot of blue collar types on the bus going to work overnight I imagine.  I always got off on the Upper East Side to transfer to the Riverdale bus.

[qjtransitmaster]

I think that there is a condierable amount of ridership north of Gun Hill as well. I've seen some BxM11's loads being half and half (Gun Hill being the divider), on Saturdays and Sundays.

I guess it depends on time of day.

[BrooklynBus]

Final Part

 

http://www.sheepsheadbites.com/2014/10/commute-need-better-bus-service-part-3-3/

[RhythmNBlues]

My favorite bus is anything that is on time!!!

[BrooklynBus]

My favorite bus is anything that is on time!!!

What about if you just miss two buses, but there is still a third one right behind for you to catch?