Bill de Blasio considers raising funds for MTA through East River bridge tolls under congestion pric

[Daniel The Cool]

Bolded the part that addresses my post

 

I don't see where scheduling becomes an issue with what I recommended. You could have with in a given hour trains arriving at 8:00,03,06,09,12,15,18,21,24,27,30.33,36,39,42,45,48,51,54,57 with trains arriving at the same stop in said hour at 8:01,07,13,19,25,31,37,43,49,53,59. If you do the math that's 20 trains for the and 10 for the with no conflicts at this particular stop which could very well be where they merge at Franklin or Grand Concourse. If we look at the , pairing we could have trains coming in at 8:00,04,08,12,16,20,24,28,32,36,40,44,48,52,56,58 and trains at 8:01,09,15,22,29,37,45,53.

No

[bobtehpanda]

Bolded the part that addresses my post

 

I don't see where scheduling becomes an issue with what I recommended. You could have with in a given hour trains arriving at 8:00,03,06,09,12,15,18,21,24,27,30.33,36,39,42,45,48,51,54,57 with trains arriving at the same stop in said hour at 8:01,07,13,19,25,31,37,43,49,53,59. If you do the math that's 20 trains for the and 10 for the with no conflicts at this particular stop which could very well be where they merge at Franklin or Grand Concourse. If we look at the , pairing we could have trains coming in at 8:00,04,08,12,16,20,24,28,32,36,40,44,48,52,56,58 and trains at 8:01,09,15,22,29,37,45,53. 

 

You can't have trains arriving at :06 and :07. Minimum headway is 2 minutes on non CBTC lines, and this is before we account for the fact that dwell time has a habit of screwing things like this up. Even with CBTC headway is limited to 90 seconds, but no line has both CBTC and terminals that allow for this.

[Mysterious2train]

 

I get the idea that they're trying to turn NYC into a transit-centric town. Think about it: would you even think about driving your car to the Barclays Center (example)? Or how about to a Game at Yankee Stadium. I think this whole thing is like the Super Bowl at Met Life Stadium on a grand level

 

New York City has always been a transit-centric town. Or at least, a lot closer to "transit-centric" than anything else. It's definitely not a car-centric town, when only 44% (less than half) of the households in the city own a car and when 73% of people entering Manhattan below 60th Street do so using mass transit.  You're right that the city is planning new development around transit, but at the same time, city laws require that new housing developments include a certain amount of off-street parking spots for residents, which encourages driving, so it's not all bad for motorists. 

 

I would think about driving my car to Barclays since its direct and convenient for me. Most people, however, would only take the commuter rail or subway to those places because that's what the MTA pushes in advertisements.

 

Perhaps the subway and LIRR just happen to be direct and convenient for those people? 

 

Bolded the part that addresses my post

 

I don't see where scheduling becomes an issue with what I recommended. You could have with in a given hour trains arriving at 8:00,03,06,09,12,15,18,21,24,27,30.33,36,39,42,45,48,51,54,57 with trains arriving at the same stop in said hour at 8:01,07,13,19,25,31,37,43,49,53,59. If you do the math that's 20 trains for the and 10 for the with no conflicts at this particular stop which could very well be where they merge at Franklin or Grand Concourse. If we look at the , pairing we could have trains coming in at 8:00,04,08,12,16,20,24,28,32,36,40,44,48,52,56,58 and trains at 8:01,09,15,22,29,37,45,53. 

 

It could not very well be Franklin Av since you have 35 and trains all scheduled to arrive at Franklin Av during that hour. 

 

Don't forget that besides the trains from Utica and New Lots, all trains from Brooklyn on these three lines have to merge at Nostrand Junction. Right now, the three lines combined have 30 trains scheduled to arrive at Franklin during the 8 AM hour - 10 trains, 9 trains and eleven trains, one of which comes from New Lots Av and one of which comes from Utica Av. That means that there are 28 trains merging at Nostrand Junction during that hour. Adding more trains in would just exacerbate the delays. With your plan, you could schedule a greater number of trains coming from Utica or New Lots to balance out the increased service from Flatbush, although that just raises some more questions - is there storage space for these extra trains? If not, they'd have to come from the Bronx, which could exacerbate delays from trains turning around at Utica Av. 

[CenSin]

You can't have trains arriving at :06 and :07. Minimum headway is 2 minutes on non CBTC lines, and this is before we account for the fact that dwell time has a habit of screwing things like this up. Even with CBTC headway is limited to 90 seconds, but no line has both CBTC and terminals that allow for this.

To further drive home the point, let's envision a scenario where trains are scheduled down to the precise second.

 

You have an train arriving on the express track at 01:15:59, and a train scheduled to arrive on the same track at 01:16:00. They are different times, but it doesn't take much thought to figure out that it's an impossible goal. If schedules could be followed, then we wouldn't see any trains ever wait in the tunnel for another train to leave the track ahead.

[JubaionBx12+SBS]

To address both posts in response to me.... In practice 1 minute gaps already exist when you consider that you'll have and trains pulling in many times less than a minute after the previous train left. I'm basically scheduling service that already exists except allocating more of it towards the and away from the and . As far as the Franklin Av situation I would have some and trains short turn at Bowling Green as a few trains already do now. That way the amount of trains merging down there are kept the same as now. The doesn't have enough unique usage in Brooklyn to warrant equal service to the which has considerable usage in the Bronx. The Jerome Av has more usage than the Dyre Avenue . If we assume that 2 out of every 3 Bronx bound riders on the Lex express seeking the (which is about close to the reality) you're giving 66.7% of Bronx bound riders access to 50% of Bronx bound trains. Sounds like the analogy another poster made in regards to squeezing 16 Oz of fluid in a 12 Oz can. As far as the West Side is concerned 100% of Bronx bound express riders have access to 50% of Northbound trains. To me that's way too much deference to Manhattan only riders on the West Side. How many packed trains do we need before the idea of running more of them than trains make sense? As with the the Dyre doesn't lose service on that end since I would eliminate the trips that run to/from Nereid Av. In fact there's a slight gain in service for Dyre Av line riders.

[bobtehpanda]

To address both posts in response to me.... In practice 1 minute gaps already exist when you consider that you'll have and trains pulling in many times less than a minute after the previous train left.

 

And this is where I stop you. If a train pulls in at 11:30, takes a minute to load and unload passengers, and leaves, and another train shows up within a minute, that's a two minute headway. A train pulling in within a minute of another train pulling in would require two trains within the station itself at the same time, but signalling here does not allow a train to pull in as another pulls away. At this stage in time, a train cannot pull into a station a minute after the train before it has pulled into the station, even with CBTC technology; a train simply wouldn't brake in time.

[JubaionBx12+SBS]

And this is where I stop you. If a train pulls in at 11:30, takes a minute to load and unload passengers, and leaves, and another train shows up within a minute, that's a two minute headway. A train pulling in within a minute of another train pulling in would require two trains within the station itself at the same time, but signalling here does not allow a train to pull in as another pulls away. At this stage in time, a train cannot pull into a station a minute after the train before it has pulled into the station, even with CBTC technology; a train simply wouldn't brake in time.

The scheduling of said trains can be revised for there to be even 2 minute gaps. The goal is for there to be more trains than trains running along the East Side and more than trains on the West Side. If feasibility issues are all that has to be worked out here than it makes sense to work on/around those than just write it off as if there's no demand. At current service levels on the trains running southbound reach 95% of capacity (a.k.a overcrowded) at 149th-Grand Concourse. In other words there is enough usage within the Bronx alone to overcrowd trains and that leads to a lack of space available on trains for the Lexington Av passengers. The has to reach Manhattan (125th) before the average train hits that threshold. That indicates there's less usage coming from the Bronx and needs to accumulate riders who are indifferent between it and the to reach critical crowding levels. That doesn't justify running / service at equal service levels. The and don't have much of a unique coverage area and mainly exist to provide overlap between the and . If said services are running equally as frequent as the services they're overlapping that's not a aging infrastructure problem more than it is a poor network planning problem. When there's overlapping services along a main corridor the service with more ridership independent of the overlap runs more often. How the MTA manages to avoid such with the A division lines is plain ridiculous and is not a difficult problem to remedy.

[Mysterious2train]

To address both posts in response to me.... In practice 1 minute gaps already exist when you consider that you'll have and trains pulling in many times less than a minute after the previous train left. I'm basically scheduling service that already exists except allocating more of it towards the and away from the and . As far as the Franklin Av situation I would have some and trains short turn at Bowling Green as a few trains already do now. That way the amount of trains merging down there are kept the same as now. The doesn't have enough unique usage in Brooklyn to warrant equal service to the which has considerable usage in the Bronx. The Jerome Av has more usage than the Dyre Avenue . If we assume that 2 out of every 3 Bronx bound riders on the Lex express seeking the (which is about close to the reality) you're giving 66.7% of Bronx bound riders access to 50% of Bronx bound trains. Sounds like the analogy another poster made in regards to squeezing 16 Oz of fluid in a 12 Oz can. As far as the West Side is concerned 100% of Bronx bound express riders have access to 50% of Northbound trains. To me that's way too much deference to Manhattan only riders on the West Side. How many packed trains do we need before the idea of running more of them than trains make sense? As with the the Dyre doesn't lose service on that end since I would eliminate the trips that run to/from Nereid Av. In fact there's a slight gain in service for Dyre Av line riders.

 

That's not a good idea either. Right now during the 8 AM and 9 AM hours you have twenty-five southbound trains rolling through Bowling Green during both hours as well as two trains that terminate at Bowling Green (two during both hours). You want to increase the amount of trains to thirty and increase the amount of trains terminating at Bowling Green. Since trains have to spend time fumigating at Bowling Green, that's just going to cause delays worse than there are now. It'd just be taking delays from Brooklyn and moving them to Bowling Green. The IRT right now is just too poorly designed to handle a big increase in trains. I wish the MTA would fix up and extend the closed-off platform at Bowling Green, so that trains terminating at Bowling Green would have their own separate track, but that doesn't seem to be on their radar. Nostrand Junction (and ideally, something done about Flatbush Av too) also needs to be redesigned before we can add service.

 

The four lines only have exactly even service levels during midday. It's not like they're exactly the same during rush hour. Here, a count the express trains passing through 125 St/Lex in the morning:

 

7 AM hour: thirteen 4 trains and twelve 5 trains, one of which is going to Utica Av

8 AM hour: fourteen 4 trains and thirteen 5 trains (one of the 5 trains actually begins its run at 125 St, so that's only twelve trains arriving from the Bronx. Four trains are going to Bowling Green, and two are going to Utica Av.)

9 AM hour: eleven 4 trains and eight 5 trains, one of which is going to Bowling Green

 

Likewise at 125th and Lenox, during the 8 AM hour there are twelve 2 trains and eleven 3 trains scheduled. Although during the 7 AM and 9 AM hours they are scheduled evenly. 

 

Here's the PM Rush from 42 St:

 

4 PM hour: nine 4 trains and ten 5 trains

5 PM hour: thirteen 4 trains and fourteen 5 trains

6 PM hour: twelve 4 trains and ten 5 trains

7 PM hour: eleven 4 trains and seven 5 trains

 

And while I don't necessarily disagree that the 2 and 4 are busier than their counterparts, the 3 and 5 do serve in part to keep people off the 2 and 4 in the busiest areas - reducing 5 service to Flatbush Av and Nereid Av will just encourage some people who could take the 5 to take the 4 instead and transfer to the 2, which seems counterproductive if our goal here is to improve service for West Side and Jerome Av customers.