Department of Subways - Proposals/Ideas

[bobtehpanda]

5 minutes ago, P3F said:

Sophie's choice? Nah, man. You're the one under the illusion that the current setup is unbearable and cannot be modified to fit needs as ridership fluctuates. 

Let me put it this way. When was the last time you saw the subway dashboard all green with "good service" during the rush hour? Every single time a delay happens on the B-Division it can knock back into multiple trunk lines. Every week trains get rerouted because the current system is so brittle. If the current pattern is so easy to modify to increase reliability as ridership increases, why hasn't that happened? 

[bobtehpanda]

2 minutes ago, P3F said:

Just a random point...

Deinterlining certain places would cause more SOL situations and reduce alternatives.

I'm at Church Av on a  and the train stops. IND has gone to hell at 4th Street or somewhere. No problem... Take the .

I'm at Church Av on a deinterlined  and the train stops. Water main break at Grand Street. Guess what? That  across the platform is going absolutely nowhere. Maybe I'd take a hike to the  or B41. Or I'd think about how, way back in 2018, bobtehpanda from Seattle was arguing that this is a better service pattern.

Ooh, wonderful, personal attacks! I've been on the forums longer than you have, and for ~15 years of my life I took a bus to 179th St every single day. De-interlining would theoretically hurt me. But I'd accept it to have less delays and a more predictable commute, rather than shaking the dice on whether or not I'm spending 40 extra minutes in a baking train under Northern Blvd.

This is a bunch of hyperbole. Today when the craps itself in the Steinway tunnels, does everyone drop everything and frantically pay $40+ for an Uber to their destination? No, they triage the situation by stopping service between QBP and Times Square and people manage to find alternate routes at the various transfer stops along the way. If something were to happen to make that not possible to run limited service where you are, then it wouldn't help to have interlining either, because you'd be screwed either way.

On a side note, I feel like reroutes hurt more than they help, and they should just break service into two reliable parts like they did with the during the Montague closure. Reliable service on the remaining segments that are still serviceable is more important than a one-seat-ride knocking back delays as far as Fenway.

[bobtehpanda]

22 minutes ago, P3F said:

It wouldn't even increase service in all cases... Terminal capacity is limited, y'know.

So because a solution doesn't benefit 100% of people 100% of the time, we should just never do it? As someone who used to commute between the World Trade Center and Jamaica-179 St, why should we build the Second Avenue Subway? Nothing's in it for me.

[Coney Island Av]

Lmfao please, please don't get offended by the next post I'm gonna make. This isn't intended to harm you in anyway. And if it does, then I completely didn't mean it. Anyways, 

An  train derails at 28 St. Broadway is shut down in both directions. No worries, let's just take the  to 6 Av! 

A panda named Bob escaped from the Space Needle Zoo and revisited NYC. He went to 4th Av and surprisingly got stuck on the tracks at 36 St. Animal control shuts down all tunnels in the area, in order to return the panda back to its home. The  are holding in stations, going nowhere. Since Broadway is closed, let's just go to 6th- Oh wait, there is no 6th Av service because the panda named Bob wants de-interlining. @P3F and @Jemorie are both right. These are actual issues completely overlooked. 

Edited February 12, 2018 by Coney Island Av

[P3F]

12 minutes ago, bobtehpanda said:

Ooh, wonderful, personal attacks! I've been on the forums longer than you have, and for ~15 years of my life I took a bus to 179th St every single day. 

Nah man, it wasn't particularly an attack on you. I don't care about where you live whether it's Seattle or even Africa; everyone who has a brain is allowed to post their thoughts. The post in its entirety was a half-joke about what I theoretically may think if such a situation occurs in 20 years or so.

In all honesty, future ridership patterns could just make all of this discussion moot. It would be funny if a ton of people moved to areas near the Dyre branch and started using the . (Don't try to make something serious of this, it's once again just my thoughts.)

11 minutes ago, bobtehpanda said:

So because a solution doesn't benefit 100% of people 100% of the time, we should just never do it? As someone who used to commute between the World Trade Center and Jamaica-179 St, why should we build the Second Avenue Subway? Nothing's in it for me.

Because the Second Avenue Subway construction isn't harming your transit service.

Edited February 12, 2018 by P3F

[CenSin]

18 minutes ago, Coney Island Av said:

Lmfao please, please don't get offended by the next post I'm gonna make. This isn't intended to harm you in anyway. And if it does, then I completely didn't mean it. Anyways, 

An  train derails at 28 St. Broadway is shut down in both directions. No worries, let's just take the  to 6 Av! 

A panda named Bob escaped from the Space Needle Zoo and revisited NYC. He went to 4th Av and surprisingly got stuck on the tracks at 36 St. Animal control shuts down all tunnels in the area, in order to return the panda back to its home. The  are holding in stations, going nowhere. Since Broadway is closed, let's just go to 6th- Oh wait, there is no 6th Av service because the panda named Bob wants de-interlining. @P3F and @Jemorie are both right. These are actual issues completely overlooked. 

Except that is probably not how it will play out. That’s quite an exaggeration to show a point, if you ask me…

[officiallyliam]

16 minutes ago, bobtehpanda said:

Ooh, wonderful, personal attacks! I've been on the forums longer than you have, and for ~15 years of my life I took a bus to 179th St every single day. De-interlining would theoretically hurt me. But I'd accept it to have less delays and a more predictable commute, rather than shaking the dice on whether or not I'm spending 40 extra minutes in a baking train under Northern Blvd.

This is a bunch of hyperbole. Today when the craps itself in the Steinway tunnels, does everyone drop everything and frantically pay $40+ for an Uber to their destination? No, they triage the situation by stopping service between QBP and Times Square and people manage to find alternate routes at the various transfer stops along the way. If something were to happen to make that not possible to run limited service where you are, then it wouldn't help to have interlining either, because you'd be screwed either way.

On a side note, I feel like reroutes hurt more than they help, and they should just break service into two reliable parts like they did with the during the Montague closure. Reliable service on the remaining segments that are still serviceable is more important than a one-seat-ride knocking back delays as far as Fenway.

Agreed with regard to reroutes. Some of the complicated reroutes that Transit does during disruptions, while fun for us railfans, end up further torpedoing service.

29 minutes ago, P3F said:

I'm at Church Av on a deinterlined  and the train stops. Water main break at Grand Street. Guess what? That  across the platform is going absolutely nowhere. Maybe I'd take a hike to the  or B41. Or I'd think about how, way back in 2018, bobtehpanda from Seattle was arguing that this is a better service pattern.

And how different is this to today? That is likely going to get stuck in the two-track section north of Prospect Park behind the immobile s. This is the kind of disruption I deal with as an rider, but I'm willing to put up with it once in a while for 2-3 minute intervals in rush hour service that keep ticking when the rest of the B Division hiccups.

[Coney Island Av]

Snooze happily everyone. Have a good night.

Looks like we're gonna have to call in animal control to take care of this mess.

[Deucey]

3 hours ago, officiallyliam said:

So de-interlining, a purely operational solution that will cost next to nothing, is off the table because of its political in-feasibility and the uproar that it would cause...

That's democracy for you - the people, being the holders of sovereignty, tell the politicians that serve them to tell technocrats what to do, not the other way round.

But shutting down some of the busiest lines in the subway for long periods and tearing up Eastern Parkway and/or 149th St, and likely spending billions of dollars doing so, is the logical solution. Something here isn't adding up for me.

Or is the logical thing actually clearing the choke points and bottlenecks so the many are less dissatisfied instead of appealing to the few?

[2Line1291]

Doesnt commuters transfer from local to express trains at express stations anyways for example 96th St  125th St  and  East 180th St. In the case of detangling services I think renovating our express stations and transfer statioms to allow a better flow from one train to the other will be at ease. Ordering trains with wider doors like the R211 is a great start. I think we for the most is so used to oneseat rides that detanglng the system I s foreign to us like open gangway cars. How would we know till we really try it out

[officiallyliam]

3 minutes ago, Deucey said:

That's democracy for you - the people, being the holders of sovereignty, tell the politicians that serve them to tell technocrats what to do, not the other way round.

Or is the logical thing actually clearing the choke points and bottlenecks so the many are less dissatisfied instead of appealing to the few?

Rebuilding these junctions will not clear the choke points, only make them somewhat easier to navigate. Clearing the choke points entirely means eliminating the merging and reverse-branching that creates the choke points in the first place. I don't think that guaranteeing increases in the reliability of the subway system across four boroughs is appealing to the few - quite the opposite, in fact.

As for the democracy argument, I'm all in favor of direct democracy and generally favor more power being devolved to local communities. One area that I don't, though, is in the service planning of a massive and intricate rapid transit network. The priority, as I see it, should be providing everyone with a service that is as dependable as possible. That sometimes means sacrificing giving everyone the direct service they might prefer, especially when one transfer point makes an alternate possible.

[bobtehpanda]

45 minutes ago, CenSin said:

Except that is probably not how it will play out. That’s quite an exaggeration to show a point, if you ask me…

It's amazing what people will resort to when they've got nothing to say.

30 minutes ago, Deucey said:

That's democracy for you - the people, being the holders of sovereignty, tell the politicians that serve them to tell technocrats what to do, not the other way round.

Or is the logical thing actually clearing the choke points and bottlenecks so the many are less dissatisfied instead of appealing to the few?

Theoretically speaking, the government and the press also has the duty to inform the public. But this is applied selectively to pet priorities, like driving with cell phones and seatbelts, or willingly neglected as an abdication of responsibility. LA didn't push through the 405 reconstruction by strongarming local politicians.

Chokepoint relief has been talked about in the '60s, the '80s, the '00s. Given that there is no money and we have an unfunded priorities list, something has to be done in the interim. We can compare to the ideal scenario all you want, but that ideal scenario is a fantasy world in which we don't live.

Edited February 12, 2018 by bobtehpanda

[Deucey]

3 minutes ago, bobtehpanda said:

LA didn't push through the 405 reconstruction by strongarming local politicians.

Like all the LA freeways, they got expanded from 6 lanes to 10 lanes plus 24/7 carpools because Los Angelenos saw the benefit of wider freeways and carpooling. Simultaneously, they got politicians to overturn the bans on tunnelling through Fairfax and using sales tax on rail to expand the Purple Line and build Expo and Crenshaw Lines...

Lest we forget how many freeways LA strongarmed local and state politicians to stop Caltrans from building - with only the 105 surviving.

That is to say there are times when a Robert Moses is useful to the point of being a necessity, but outside those rare times, engaging in Moses-like behavior only forces the people to accept hell over heaven out of principle.

De-interlining could be politically feasible (since that was how the 8th Av subway was supposed to work), but it's gonna take a lot of convincing.

[RR503]

9 hours ago, Trainmaster5 said:

Suppose you resided in the Bronx east of Jerome Avenue and you wanted Lexington express service ?  Suppose you wanted any Lexington service ? Either I have an additional transfer or I find another means of transport altogether  ? Just asking. 

Yes, they'd lose their direct connection. But again, the suffering of a relatively low ridership branch needs to be seen in its larger context. Democracy is supposed to provide the greatest good for the greatest number, and in my opinion, increasing subway capacity into and out of the IRT Bronx lines by a third does just that.  You're absolutely free to disagree with me, but I think that in this age where our system is approaching its upper limit in terms of capacity, and where the zillion delays that riders face every day cascade across the network, we have to look at streamlining operations. Of course, rethinking operations culture at the MTA could add some capacity across the system (let me stress how important I think this is, and how wrongly underrepresented in dialogue around delays it is), but removing timers and changing switch geometries and encouraging T/Os and C/Rs to make decisions based on road conditions and not based on fear of discipline still will not change the fact that on lines like the Lex and Queens Boulevard, we're quickly reaching the point at which heavy ridership begins to -- no matter how well we learn to manage dwell -- hinder operations.

Getting rid of the veritable cornucopia of services that grace our tracks will isolate delays, and reduce capacity pinches at merges, while also profoundly relieving plaform crowding. Take Grand Cental. If I'm wanting service to Gun Hill Road, I'm not gonna hop on the first train that comes and then transfer. I'm gonna wait for a Nereid , so I can not transfer, and capitalize on Bronx Express service, thus increasing my impact on platform conditions many fold as I pass up three or four trains. While sending all Lex service up Jerome would undoubtedly inconvenience riders, it would eliminate this situation, as the only difference in  service patterns would be whether it took Jerome express or local, and whether it terminated at CHUA or not. 

3 hours ago, P3F said:

Sending the  to Chambers Street would remove its merge with the  and maybe allow for both lines to be more reliable as a result. Now why don't you go see how many  riders want their train to be rerouted to Lower Manhattan so they can transfer at Delancey instead of having their train run directly to Midtown?

Now for the antethesis of the above. I do not think that interlining should be done blindly. If the transfer stations that would be affected by such changes do not have adequate stair or platform capacity to handle projected crowds, or if the distanced traversed in transferring is greater than x amount, or if deinterlining reduces service to the CBD, then don't do it. On the flip side, if deinterlining isn't projected to add significant capacity (of any sort, not just track capacity) then don't do it. You're inconvencing riders for no apparent reason. One size doesn't fit all ever -- we need nuance folks, nuance. Where exactly one draws these lines, I don't know. I will not claim to have the comprehensive understanding of ridership patterns and capacity constraints necessary to make these calls with confidence. But that's what the agency must do -- understand. Understand both the local, and the regional, and learn to balence them. 

So let's take the above expample. Moving the  back to Chambers would eliminate a merge, yes, but it would reduce tph to the CBD on the Myrtle/Jamaica lines from ~10 to 0, would overload a station with woefully inadequate stair and platform capacity, and would not have all that great of an impact on  reliability, given that the s pinch point seems to be that bloody slow merge at 75th avenue. Therefore, it shouldn't be done. 

As for the claim that "oh, but riders from x branch want to go to y area of the CBD," I say the following: if the above criteria on the feasibility and impactfulness are met, go for it. Subway capacity management needs to be seen regionally, not through the lens of a constellation of neighborhoods. The MTA needs to serve the needs of riders, but also needs to balance that with the fact that the agency is running a railroad, not a car service.

1 hour ago, Deucey said:

That's democracy for you - the people, being the holders of sovereignty, tell the politicians that serve them to tell technocrats what to do, not the other way round.

Or is the logical thing actually clearing the choke points and bottlenecks so the many are less dissatisfied instead of appealing to the few?

That is indeed democracy. Thus, when making a proposal, technocrats need to explain to people why they're right -- and do it on an appropriate scale. Public engagement in New York is a disaster. Issues are reduced to the hyperlocal level when they frequently have regional implications, meetings held draw only a tiny -- and frequently non-representational -- fraction of stakeholders, and said technocrats are absolute sh*t at explaining themselves. We need change that. For once again, we are a city, an interdependent set of 8 million people, and thus we need to be treated as one, not as a spectrum of individual, siloed interests. Democracy is a social contract --one where individuals accept limitations of freedom to further a collectively agreed upon good. It's time planning was made aware of that. 

Edited February 12, 2018 by RR503

[T to Dyre Avenue]

1 hour ago, Deucey said:

Like all the LA freeways, they got expanded from 6 lanes to 10 lanes plus 24/7 carpools because Los Angelenos saw the benefit of wider freeways and carpooling. Simultaneously, they got politicians to overturn the bans on tunnelling through Fairfax and using sales tax on rail to expand the Purple Line and build Expo and Crenshaw Lines...

...

De-interlining could be politically feasible (since that was how the 8th Av subway was supposed to work), but it's gonna take a lot of convincing.

That all changed in 1940, when the 6th Ave subway opened and the BB, D and F trains began to piggyback off the 8th Ave subway’s branches. And it continued with the 11th St cut, the Chrystie St and the 63rd St-QBL connections. 

At least Angelenos got their politicians to overturn tunneling bans and voted to use local sales taxes to fund Expo, Crenshaw and other projects. I wish New Yorkers could show some courage and will to do things like this, instead of NIMBYing every single rail proposal to death, then whining about why the trains are so crowded and unreliable!

2 hours ago, Coney Island Av said:

Lmfao please, please don't get offended by the next post I'm gonna make. This isn't intended to harm you in anyway. And if it does, then I completely didn't mean it. Anyways, 

An  train derails at 28 St. Broadway is shut down in both directions. No worries, let's just take the  to 6 Av! 

A panda named Bob escaped from the Space Needle Zoo and revisited NYC. He went to 4th Av and surprisingly got stuck on the tracks at 36 St. Animal control shuts down all tunnels in the area, in order to return the panda back to its home. The  are holding in stations, going nowhere. Since Broadway is closed, let's just go to 6th- Oh wait, there is no 6th Av service because the panda named Bob wants de-interlining. @P3F and @Jemorie are both right. These are actual issues completely overlooked. 

Please tell me you gave this some serious thought before you posted it...

Edited February 12, 2018 by T to Dyre Avenue

[Deucey]

23 minutes ago, T to Dyre Avenue said:

At least Angelenos got their politicians to overturn tunneling bans and voted to use local sales taxes to fund Expo, Crenshaw and other projects. I wish New Yorkers could show some courage and will to do things like this, instead of NIMBYing every single rail proposal to death, then whining about why the trains are so crowded and unreliable!

It only happened because Metro proved it's reliable and responsive (and it doesn't hurt that 11 of the 13 on the board are local elected officials (all five LA County supervisors, the mayor of LA, one LA city councilperson, and four city councilpersons from other LA County cities) that can be voted out). The old RTD was so shitty an organization that ruined regional cooperation by thinking it was exceptional and had to force everyone to it's will, not to mention it botched having the Blue Line and Red Line opened before the '84 Olympics (1990 and 1993, respectively).

Those laws came about because RTD was like  - profligate with zero f**ks to give about opinions and oversight. It was only after Metro was created in '93, and fulfilled the terms of the Consent Decree and managed all the highway expansions (Metro manages highway reconstruction and planning ahead of Caltrans) that people started repealing laws and taxing themselves to get things done - but every rail and BRT project still has a separate construction authority building it instead of Metro just to prevent the messes that engulfed the Red Line, Green Line and Gold Line.

 and NY could use a lot of Californian decentralization IMO, but no one in Albany is going to let any part of NY actually srpf-govern and/or manage state money with the state having comment but no vote.

[kosciusko]

46 minutes ago, Deucey said:

 and NY could use a lot of Californian decentralization IMO, but no one in Albany is going to let any part of NY actually srpf-govern and/or manage state money with the state having comment but no vote.

I can't stress this enough. All of my socialist pals scream about how rail privatization is the death of modern transit, but the fact that the  is a public entity is the root of so many of the problems the system is facing today. Politicians in Albany (looking at you Andrew) love to stick their cocks in the management of the agency and using it as their bottom bitch for pet-projects that will help them get re-elected. Like that  (or whatever) to Redhook study, the Fulton st fiasco, and the infuriating bureaucratic and union inefficiencies that have choked the 12-billion dollar pit beneath GCT and the SAS (3 tracks at 72nd would allow for greatly increased service flexibility, don't even get me started on the mezzanines). In addition to this, mayors and governors have been siphoning funds from the  all throughout the 2000's as revealed in that New York Times video. Remember that time Cuomo forced the  to bail out a failing ski resort? Remember the Oculus? It's a fact that the  is abused by our elected officials, and something needs to be done about it. In the words of Nancy Shevell, "We're not building cathedrals here." Which should be taken to heart. 

Albany is the no. 1 reason why everything is so screwed up right now  and If we want to see real change, the  needs to be removed from politics.

Edited February 12, 2018 by kosciusko

[bobtehpanda]

41 minutes ago, kosciusko said:

I can't stress this enough. All of my socialist pals scream about how rail privatization is the death of modern transit, but the fact that the  is a public entity is the root of so many of the problems the system is facing today. Politicians in Albany (looking at you Andrew) love to stick their cocks in the management of the agency and using it as their bottom bitch for pet-projects that will help them get re-elected. Like that  (or whatever) to Redhook study, the Fulton st fiasco, and the infuriating bureaucratic and union inefficiencies that have choked the 12-billion dollar pit beneath GCT and the SAS (3 tracks at 72nd would allow for greatly increased service flexibility, don't even get me started on the mezzanines). In addition to this, mayors and governors have been siphoning funds from the  all throughout the 2000's as revealed in that New York Times video. Remember that time Cuomo forced the  to bail out a failing ski resort? Remember the Oculus? It's a fact that the  is abused by our elected officials, and something needs to be done about it. In the words of Nancy Shevell, "We're not building cathedrals here." Which should be taken to heart. 

Albany is the no. 1 reason why everything is so screwed up right now  and If we want to see real change, the  needs to be removed from politics.

"Privatization" usually just means privatizing the profits and socializing the losses. We had to bail out the IRT and the BMT. We had to bail out Larry Silverstein after they "privatized" the World Trade Center. The British have gotten about as far as you can get privatizing the trains, and every few years they have to seize control of a franchise or two because it gets run into the ground and the private companies run out of cash. And politicians can force private companies to do things; Con Ed had to foot the bill for all the so-called "electrical" problems. Privatization isn't a real solution to anything.

(And before you go on about "Oh Japan and MTR do just fine", both were essentially handed land for free at their inception. That's just government handouts by other means.)

[Trainmaster5]

Well it looks like everyone has their own opinion on speeding up subway service with solutions that cover the gamut of ideas. New car acquisition, major construction projects that would redo junctions that create choke points and new routing for existing lines. I make no secret of my disdain for one Bronx IRT proposal which stems from my own work experience over a 30 year period. Bear with me please. I was a C/R and a M/M on what was called the Lenox division of the IRT for over 25 years. That's what the , and the were called. You could only pick jobs on those three lines. As a rookie you'd probably be stuck on the Beast, the , 241st to New Lots most of the time. Gaining seniority meant a chance to work the Lenox or the Dyre . Real seniority to me meant picking a steady 5 days a week job out of Brooklyn. I normally worked PM tour but back in the day the had overtime jobs in the AM. That experience with the AM is why I am so against the Lexington Avenue-Woodlawn combo proposal. Regular riders and Bronx railfans who know the 149th Street- Grand Concourse station can already see the picture. Under my understanding of the situation all s/b trains on the lower level would be 7th Avenue bound, correct? All Lexington trains would be two levels up. Transferring between levels is problematic as it is during rush hours with s/b riders and some n/b riders too trying to get to 7th Avenue service as well as the reverse commuter. If you focus on the existing plant (station) , it's means of accessing the platform levels and the lack of sufficient staircases IMO you're going to have people backed up trying to get to the Lexington and Woodlawn trains upstairs. It happens during midday G.O.s now.I've been rerouted down the 7th Avenue line and discharged most people enough times and worked jobs when the started on the upper level and saw the conditions first hand. I am doubtful that forcing most Dyre riders and almost all present Nereid ridership to change trains at the Concourse speeds up their commute time and it's probably gonna slow down the s/b 7th Avenue bound trains too. The Lexington line is the slowest and most congested line yet we're going to speed up 7th Avenue service and extend the SAS westward along 125th and ignoring the Bronx folks who want East Side service. Wow. BTW does anyone believe that phase 3 or 4 of the SAS will ever see the light of day? I thought about the transit system a while back and I I realized that in my lifetime we've lost more services while gaining some improvements. Manhattan and Bronx Third Avenue El , Polo Ground Shuttle to Jerome, Lexington, Myrtle, Fulton, and Culver El service, outer end of the Jamaica line and Brighton-Franklin. All gone. As a Brooklynite we got full time IND express service along Fulton Street and full time IRT express service in the borough. We got subway service to the Rockaways and parts of the Plan for Action. We got new rolling stock throughout the system and AC too. Somehow even though things have changed we argue about train throughput, that's O&P territory, but have things really improved ? I think we're at a crossroads where technology and finance will determine the best way forward. A system with no dedicated stream of finance stands on shakey ground. Carry on.

Edited February 12, 2018 by Trainmaster5
Context

[Deucey]

1 hour ago, kosciusko said:

I can't stress this enough. All of my socialist pals scream about how rail privatization is the death of modern transit, but the fact that the  is a public entity is the root of so many of the problems the system is facing today. Politicians in Albany (looking at you Andrew) love to stick their cocks in the management of the agency and using it as their bottom bitch for pet-projects that will help them get re-elected. Like that  (or whatever) to Redhook study, the Fulton st fiasco, and the infuriating bureaucratic and union inefficiencies that have choked the 12-billion dollar pit beneath GCT and the SAS (3 tracks at 72nd would allow for greatly increased service flexibility, don't even get me started on the mezzanines). In addition to this, mayors and governors have been siphoning funds from the  all throughout the 2000's as revealed in that New York Times video. Remember that time Cuomo forced the  to bail out a failing ski resort? Remember the Oculus? It's a fact that the  is abused by our elected officials, and something needs to be done about it. In the words of Nancy Shevell, "We're not building cathedrals here." Which should be taken to heart. 

Albany is the no. 1 reason why everything is so screwed up right now  and If we want to see real change, the  needs to be removed from politics.

California transit isn't privatized. Transdev/Veolia or whatever they're called and Laidlaw may franchise some routes, but except for small Muni systems and Amtrak California between the Valley and the Bay, all transit systems employ staff directly.

The difference between the Northeast and California (and the West Coast at large) is that the state(s) doesn't control the systems - the localities do. The state may have a board member in exchange for providing funds, but the rest of the board is either elected by the cities and counties, or the city and county politicians are on the board ex officio, so their careers in their elected offices are affected by their efficacy in transportation planning - roads, transit, taxation, etc.

The fact that  , NJT and MBTA are state agencies doing local planning (ostensibly) means that doing what's right for the metro area takes a backseat to statewide priorities. It makes no logical sense that the guy who has to prioritize roadbuilding in Buffalo, Springfield or Trenton also has to day-to-day manage transit in NYC, JC or Boston. That "multitasking" does no one any benefit - but it was done I'm guessing to prevent an unelected Robert Moses from showing up again (notwithstanding the 5¢ fare). But instead of diffusing power like West coast libertarian progressivism did (which is a bipartisan thing), the "big boss" went from being a bureaucrat to being the governor.

Just like with schools and water, the West Coast runs public benefit corporations/districts via commission with locals on the commission - since locals are more knowledgeable about local needs. I wouldn't expect Jerry Brown or Führer Schwarzenegger to be intimately knowledgeable about traffic patterns on Crenshaw Boulevard or in San Diego and make smart decisions about what to fund just like the Duke of Albany wasn't regarding  capacity when he decided to build his AirTrain from Flushing to LGA instead of from LIC or Astoria. But I'd expect the LA and San Diego county supervisors and city council members to be - just like I expect Bill DeBlasio and the Borough Presidents to be - and that's reflected in the planning and lobbying.

It's not about privatizing - it's about local control and elected accountability.

[BreeddekalbL]

I agree with @Deucey they should repeal the home rule and change the governing ways cause why is it that if nyc wants to tax for funding subway projects yet they have to go and beg to albany

[AlgorithmOfTruth]

In the past, a member on here suggested renaming trains that serve Ozone Park–Lefferts Boulevard the , leaving trains that serve Far Rockaway–Mott Avenue designated as trains unchanged. (Since a relatively low number of trains serve Rockaway Park–Beach 116th Street, I'll omit them from this post.) At Rockaway Boulevard, C/R's always have to stress to passengers that they're either on an train bound for Ozone Park or Far Rockaway, as many of them don't read the destination signs on the exterior of the trains before they board. Also, there's always a crowd of passengers on the Queens-bound platform at Rockaway Boulevard; either they're waiting for their last chance to make their transfer or they've originated from the neighborhood where which the station serves. I can't say if it'll make any difference in reducing confusion amongst passengers, but assigning the to trains that serve the Ozone Park–Lefferts Boulevard station might make it a bit easier for them, considering the fact that the train has 3 separate termini in Queens.

[BreeddekalbL]

4 minutes ago, AlgorithmOfTruth said:

In the past, a member on here suggested renaming trains that serve Ozone Park–Lefferts Boulevard the , leaving trains that serve Far Rockaway–Mott Avenue designated as trains unchanged. (Since a relatively low number of trains serve Rockaway Park–Beach 116th Street, I'll omit them from this post.) At Rockaway Boulevard, C/R's always have to stress to passengers that they're either on an train bound for Ozone Park or Far Rockaway, as many of them don't read the destination signs on the exterior of the trains before they board. Also, there's always a crowd of passengers on the Queens-bound platform at Rockaway Boulevard; either they're waiting for their last chance to make their transfer or they've originated from the neighborhood where which the station serves. I can't say if it'll make any difference in reducing confusion amongst passengers, but assigning the to trains that serve the Ozone Park–Lefferts Boulevard station might make it a bit easier for them, considering the fact that the train has 3 separate termini in Queens.

I partially agree have the concentrate on far rockaway with every 5th train terminating at jfk, and extend Existing train full length to lefferts

[RR503]

2 hours ago, Trainmaster5 said:

Well it looks like everyone has their own opinion on speeding up subway service with solutions that cover the gamut of ideas. New car acquisition, major construction projects that would redo junctions that create choke points and new routing for existing lines. I make no secret of my disdain for one Bronx IRT proposal which stems from my own work experience over a 30 year period. Bear with me please. I was a C/R and a M/M on what was called the Lenox division of the IRT for over 25 years. That's what the , and the were called. You could only pick jobs on those three lines. As a rookie you'd probably be stuck on the Beast, the , 241st to New Lots most of the time. Gaining seniority meant a chance to work the Lenox or the Dyre . Real seniority to me meant picking a steady 5 days a week job out of Brooklyn. I normally worked PM tour but back in the day the had overtime jobs in the AM. That experience with the AM is why I am so against the Lexington Avenue-Woodlawn combo proposal. Regular riders and Bronx railfans who know the 149th Street- Grand Concourse station can already see the picture. Under my understanding of the situation all s/b trains on the lower level would be 7th Avenue bound, correct? All Lexington trains would be two levels up. Transferring between levels is problematic as it is during rush hours with s/b riders and some n/b riders too trying to get to 7th Avenue service as well as the reverse commuter. If you focus on the existing plant (station) , it's means of accessing the platform levels and the lack of sufficient staircases IMO you're going to have people backed up trying to get to the Lexington and Woodlawn trains upstairs. It happens during midday G.O.s now.I've been rerouted down the 7th Avenue line and discharged most people enough times and worked jobs when the started on the upper level and saw the conditions first hand. I am doubtful that forcing most Dyre riders and almost all present Nereid ridership to change trains at the Concourse speeds up their commute time and it's probably gonna slow down the s/b 7th Avenue bound trains too. The Lexington line is the slowest and most congested line yet we're going to speed up 7th Avenue service and extend the SAS westward along 125th and ignoring the Bronx folks who want East Side service. Wow. BTW does anyone believe that phase 3 or 4 of the SAS will ever see the light of day? I thought about the transit system a while back and I I realized that in my lifetime we've lost more services while gaining some improvements. Manhattan and Bronx Third Avenue El , Polo Ground Shuttle to Jerome, Lexington, Myrtle, Fulton, and Culver El service, outer end of the Jamaica line and Brighton-Franklin. All gone. As a Brooklynite we got full time IND express service along Fulton Street and full time IRT express service in the borough. We got subway service to the Rockaways and parts of the Plan for Action. We got new rolling stock throughout the system and AC too. Somehow even though things have changed we argue about train throughput, that's O&P territory, but have things really improved ? I think we're at a crossroads where technology and finance will determine the best way forward. A system with no dedicated stream of finance stands on shakey ground. Carry on.

Alright, then either add stair capacity, or don’t do the change. I will readily admit I’m not too familiar with that area of the system, so thanks for adding this to the discussion. 

That said, I think my larger point stands. We have reached a critical point, one in which reliability is gone, and the system is rapidly approaching its breaking point capacity wise. What’s more, given political hyperlocalization, decisions that have citywide implications are being presented and made on a scale unfit for their effects. And finally, the MTA’s obscene construction costs are strangling system expansion, forcing existing infrastructure to perform feats of ridership management that it was simply not  designed for.

Getting rid of some interlining, and more generally unifying service patterns, will profoundly increase capacity and reliability across the system, providing some modicum of relief to our ailing subway at little to no cost to the agency. I think that in this age, one where the MTA is running out of ways to match system realities to ridership needs, deinterlining must be looked at. What specific proposals are implemented is irrelevant — I don’t think many (if any) of us have the requisite operational and demographic knowledge or information to make these decisions — but the larger issue of reverse branching causing cascading delays and limiting capacity needs to be addressed on a scale appropriate for its implications for the betterment of our system — and our city. 

[kosciusko]

8 hours ago, bobtehpanda said:

"Privatization" usually just means privatizing the profits and socializing the losses. We had to bail out the IRT and the BMT. We had to bail out Larry Silverstein after they "privatized" the World Trade Center. The British have gotten about as far as you can get privatizing the trains, and every few years they have to seize control of a franchise or two because it gets run into the ground and the private companies run out of cash. And politicians can force private companies to do things; Con Ed had to foot the bill for all the so-called "electrical" problems. Privatization isn't a real solution to anything.

(And before you go on about "Oh Japan and MTR do just fine", both were essentially handed land for free at their inception. That's just government handouts by other means.)

Wasn't calling for full privatization of the , I was just saying it needs to be de-politicized, the fact that the governor is allowed to meddle so much in the agencies affairs and funding is ludicrous.  The  should be controlled at a local level, not a state one.

7 hours ago, Deucey said:

The fact that  , NJT and MBTA are state agencies doing local planning (ostensibly) means that doing what's right for the metro area takes a backseat to statewide priorities. It makes no logical sense that the guy who has to prioritize roadbuilding in Buffalo, Springfield or Trenton also has to day-to-day manage transit in NYC, JC or Boston. That "multitasking" does no one any benefit - but it was done I'm guessing to prevent an unelected Robert Moses from showing up again (notwithstanding the 5¢ fare). But instead of diffusing power like West coast libertarian progressivism did (which is a bipartisan thing), the "big boss" went from being a bureaucrat to being the governor.

 

That bay be true for NJT and MBTA, but for the  the governor and legislators in Albany have the final say into how the agency is run. Cuomo appoints the presidents and chairs, not the mayor, Cuomo was the one who was always showing up to the SAS worksites, not the mayor. What I'm saying is that the governor shouldn't be the big boss.