Department of Subways - Proposals/Ideas

[Around the Horn]

12 hours ago, RR503 said:

If you ever find yourself arguing that something is true because the way NYCT operates is special, you should a) delete your post and b) reconsider your opinion, for it's exactly that sort of thinking that made the subway into the chaotic mess that it is today. 

Sorry, what? We can't do maintenance overnight, or when trains are cycled out of service? You do realize, right, that cities like London and Paris maintain their cars too -- in fact, trains in London have to be inspected every 24 hours, or more frequently than in NYC. I really suggest that you read up on maintenance policies, foreign precedent, and NYC's current operational situation before you make claims like this.

Quoting this again because some of you aren't listening

[Harlem Crosstown]

LRT as a relief for the  is probably a good idea. We could build a Flushing terminal for the network and I think that would be pretty successful in Northern Queens. It would be able to take some ridership off the  and this allows it to be extended, which is huge for all of the city.

[Harlem Crosstown]

Would SAS Queens traffic best be used on Northern Blvd?

[T to Dyre Avenue]

On 4/6/2019 at 10:29 PM, R68OnBroadway said:

While I do agree the elimination of the  in favor of the  could be considered a step back; there are a few reasons for it:

• elimination of the  allows for a  which could allow the  to run express on Culver
• So long as the  and  are on QBL you will be unable to reconfigure it as Broadway service on QBL mucks up everything and the  cannot run express given it only having 8 cars
• A  would prevent the delay-prone Jamaica lines from afflicting the 6th Av ones
• A transfer between the  at Grand and  at Bowery would make be able to permit continued easy access to 6th Av

If Broadway service on QBL is messing everything up, then why not do something about the Broadway service, the ? How would separating the  back into the old  and  solve that?

The  was a Jamaica Yard line. If all those lines are delay-prone (and they are), then how does bringing back the  prevent delays on 6th Avenue?

I do like the transfer between Bowery and Grand. They should have done that decades ago and it would be useful, even without bringing back the old .

On 4/6/2019 at 10:38 PM, RR503 said:

Deinterlining Essex really comes down to a question of off-peak service quality, potential impact on the , developmental priorities (Culver express would unequivocally encourage development in South Brooklyn), whether or not we can rebuild Essex/Bowery/Canal to handle transfer loads, and whether or not QB express loads, after deinterlining, could be handled on 12 x 9 car s and 18 x 10 car trains. All of these questions are up for debate, IMO. 

With 18  trains per hour, wouldn’t that make it possible to have a Brooklyn  express even with the  still on 6th? What about splitting the full  service into 10  trains running local between Church and Jay and 8  trains running express? The headways would still be less than the current , but not nearly as bad as what the MTA proposed.

On 4/6/2019 at 10:48 PM, R68OnBroadway said:

I personally think that removing 6th-Metropolitan service would be best as it would encourage more development in south Brooklyn with a second service and remove all the service woes Jamaica inflicts on the  :

-frequent delays

-8 car trains

- robbing Culver of an express/ preventing the awful  from becoming quicker

-limited capacity 

 

 

Not necessarily; see above. Either an extended  or a Nassau St service separate from the  and  turning at Essex or Chambers could accomplish the same thing, without forcing riders to jam onto the  at Wyckoff or the  at Essex if the  were to revert back to the . But no, the  can’t run express in Queens. It shouldn’t, anyway.

Edited April 9, 2019 by T to Dyre Avenue

[R68OnBroadway]

3 hours ago, T to Dyre Avenue said:

If Broadway service on QBL is messing everything up, then why not do something about the Broadway service, the ? How would separating the  back into the old  and  solve that?

You can’t remove the  without replacing the  with a Culver-6th-QBL service as the  is limited to (IIRC) 10tph and can’t be increased due to limits on the Willy B and Myrtle. You could bring in a  service but that would force you to shift the  to 63rd which creates a merging nightmare at 36th. You’d also have to send the  express after 59th or 50th but that’s not really a problem.

[CenSin]

On 4/7/2019 at 3:47 PM, RR503 said:

I mean, the way to fix exorbitant subway construction costs is to fix exorbitant subway construction costs, not to switch to a less capable mode... We shouldn't give up on the mode that really is necessary for future development because we're bad at it now. And what's stopping us from messing up LRT, anyway?

Street running LRT would be great for corridors in the outer boroughs, Nassau, Westchester, and inner NJ, but I just think the capacity price that comes with LRT -- one that isn't mitigable even with the most intensive of separations or crossing treatments -- really does means that we need to work with subways. 

I find it quite worrisome that the often proposed solution to an abstract problem (corruption, costs too high, etc.) is to compromise physically. There's nothing physically insurmountable. This is all about humans and greed.

There should be no compromise on mode of transportation. Efforts must be turned towards the corruption and NIMBYs.

[KK 6 Ave Local]

For Northern Queens:

 would be extended to LGA, College Point, and Bell Blvd with a  extension to Clearview Expy. LRT would serve the Union Tpke, Kissena Blvd, and Northern Blvd corridors,  provisions would be made at 86th or 57th Street.

[RR503]

10 hours ago, T to Dyre Avenue said:

With 18  trains per hour, wouldn’t that make it possible to have a Brooklyn  express even with the  still on 6th? What about splitting the full  service into 10  trains running local between Church and Jay and 8  trains running express? The headways would still be less than the current , but not nearly as bad as what the MTA proposed.

This could be interesting to look at. I wonder if you could squeeze another 2tph out of QB express for 10/10/12... 

Re: LRT, I think the general idea that it’d be used to feed subways towards the edges of the city/serve corridors that have too little demand/too much complexity for subway construction is really sound. I’m toying with some LRT network ideas; I’ll post at some point. 

[T to Dyre Avenue]

They must be able to. I mean what do they do when they have to reroute  and  trains onto the express tracks if there’s a delay on the local. Would two more trains per hour really kill the signals? I guess the merging becomes more of an issue, especially at 36th St, where the northbound  almost always stops to let an  pass (at least whenever I ride it).

If several light rail services coming together under Northern Blvd can offer some relief to the overtaxed , plus break through the transit rail barrier that is Main Street-Flushing, then I’m all for it. I would’ve certainly welcomed it after the shit commute I had on the  this evening! 

Yes, it’s true that the upfront construction costs will be high - subway tunnels under Downtown Flushing, Northern Blvd from Flushing to LIC, and a crosstown subway at 57th or 59th streets (maybe the LRT services can use the Queensboro Bridge to cross between Queens and Manhattan?). But we would be significantly more coverage in Queens for the same amount of money as one or two heavy rail service under Northern, including heavily used corridors in eastern Queens. 

Edited April 9, 2019 by T to Dyre Avenue

[R68OnBroadway]

A "perfect-world" subway map I created (yes I know some plans may never happen); feel free to give thoughts on it.

 

[Lex]

1 hour ago, R68OnBroadway said:

A "perfect-world" subway map I created (yes I know some plans may never happen); feel free to give thoughts on it.

 

If that's a "perfect world", then I'm the president of Zimbabwe.

[R68OnBroadway]

23 minutes ago, Lex said:

If that's a "perfect world", then I'm the president of Zimbabwe.

It was in figurative terms and I meant a fantasy map with a bunch of extension and lines that would probably never happen but would be nice to have.

[JeremiahC99]

10 hours ago, R68OnBroadway said:

You can’t remove the  without replacing the  with a Culver-6th-QBL service as the  is limited to (IIRC) 10tph and can’t be increased due to limits on the Willy B and Myrtle. You could bring in a  service but that would force you to shift the  to 63rd which creates a merging nightmare at 36th. You’d also have to send the  express after 59th or 50th but that’s not really a problem.

An ideal way to increase  capacity is to increase  service to 14 trains per hour and have  service operate at 10 trains per hour. With recent changes to subway speeds, that could work. Lower Manhattan riders would not be impacted since they have ready access to the  and  lines. They could use that to go to Broadway-Lafayette and transfer to the . Don’t worry. There’s plenty of room on the  lines for extra passengers.

From there, the  could be rerouted to 63rd Street from the 60th Street Tunnel as well to reduce merging delays at Queens Plaza. The merging problems at 63rd are nothing compared to anything else.

[R68OnBroadway]

43 minutes ago, JeremiahC99 said:

An ideal way to increase  capacity is to increase  service to 14 trains per hour and have  service operate at 10 trains per hour. With recent changes to subway speeds, that could work. Lower Manhattan riders would not be impacted since they have ready access to the  and  lines. They could use that to go to Broadway-Lafayette and transfer to the . Don’t worry. There’s plenty of room on the  lines for extra passengers.

From there, the  could be rerouted to 63rd Street from the 60th Street Tunnel as well to reduce merging delays at Queens Plaza. The merging problems at 63rd are nothing compared to anything else.

How about this: 

 express between Van Wyck and Forest Hills

 179th- WTC via QBL express, 53rd and 8th local

 via QBL local and cut back to Forest Hills

 extended to 179th (to relive Forest and speed up commute times at 179th)

 to Astoria,  to 96th,  eliminated

While this problem does get rid of the merge issues and provides the 53rd corridor with two express services, you would lose the Broadway transfer (6th still has one at 7th-53rd). While it’s not really a major issue, I wouldn’t see that sitting well with riders. (maybe a QP to QBP transfer?)

Sending the  via 63rd is an awful idea. In doing this not only have you combined two unreliable lines onto one set of tunnels but have also added a merge at 57th and 63rd. Doing this with  would be a bit better but still an awful idea as that 63rd merge would unnecessarily interline and kill capacity.

[Lex]

2 hours ago, R68OnBroadway said:

How about this: 

 express between Van Wyck and Forest Hills

 179th- WTC via QBL express, 53rd and 8th local

 via QBL local and cut back to Forest Hills

 extended to 179th (to relive Forest and speed up commute times at 179th)

 to Astoria,  to 96th,  eliminated

While this problem does get rid of the merge issues and provides the 53rd corridor with two express services, you would lose the Broadway transfer (6th still has one at 7th-53rd). While it’s not really a major issue, I wouldn’t see that sitting well with riders. (maybe a QP to QBP transfer?)

Sending the  via 63rd is an awful idea. In doing this not only have you combined two unreliable lines onto one set of tunnels but have also added a merge at 57th and 63rd. Doing this with  would be a bit better but still an awful idea as that 63rd merge would unnecessarily interline and kill capacity.

How about no?

I don't know if you've noticed, but your 8th Avenue-related "proposals" already exist (under the same lone designation, no less).

The  is long and unreliable, but doing that addresses neither issue. Moreover, much of no one's looking to have stations east of Forest Hills served by a local train (hence why previous permanent patterns involving such died so quickly), and this will only be exacerbated by using 8-car trains that will run into potential conflicts with (still more frequent) terminating trains.

I won't even begin getting into the Broadway-related stuff.

[bulk88]

4 hours ago, R68OnBroadway said:

Sending the  via 63rd is an awful idea. In doing this not only have you combined two unreliable lines onto one set of tunnels but have also added a merge at 57th and 63rd. Doing this with  would be a bit better but still an awful idea as that 63rd merge would unnecessarily interline and kill capacity.

If trackbed was filled in so 63 broadway trains could reach local track at 57/7, R via 63 would fix N/W capacity/congestion problems for once, along with a switch south of Astoria Blvd to allow center track relaying. 63rd tunnel, Rutgers, and Montague are the only not maxed out East River tunnels.

[JeremiahC99]

8 hours ago, R68OnBroadway said:

 to Astoria,  to 96th,  eliminated

I’m not happy with this, since this leaves the  with no yard at all again, like pre-1987. If we are to revert back to the pre-1987  train pattern, the entire Broadway Line will be unreliable as the  will have no direct access to a facility where cars can be stored and maintained.

I’d rather make two merges by sending an  via 63rd than decrease  reliability for just about everyone who uses those lines. After all, the 63rd Street connector was not only built to allow for additional trains going into Manhattan, but to allow for an alternative river crossing in case the 53rd and 60th Street Tunnels are disrupted.

To accompany this, the switches at the locations in question, Times Square, 57th Street, Lex-63rd, and 36th would all be rebuilt to allow for faster speeds, speeding trips.

[LGA Link N Train]

1 hour ago, JeremiahC99 said:

I’m not happy with this, since this leaves the  with no yard at all again, like pre-1987. If we are to revert back to the pre-1987  train pattern, the entire Broadway Line will be unreliable as the  will have no direct access to a facility where cars can be stored and maintained.

If that's the Case, then you're better off keeping the and . Again, the Yard issue is no biggie, but keeping the  and together at Astoria would Allow you to alter between the two since some trains head via Sea Beach. Long term, we can build a Yard in Astoria. 

 

1 hour ago, JeremiahC99 said:

I’d rather make two merges by sending an  via 63rd than decrease  reliability for just about everyone who uses those lines. After all, the 63rd Street connector was not only built to allow for additional trains going into Manhattan, but to allow for an alternative river crossing in case the 53rd and 60th Street Tunnels are disrupted.

I see where you're going with this but in my opinion, connecting the Broadway Local Tracks to the 63rd Street Tunnel is better off being used for Emergency Reroutes and G.O.'s. Sending the via 63rd would reduce reliability for the and service, making about 2-3 Bottlenecks worse than they already are. 

 

1 hour ago, JeremiahC99 said:

To accompany this, the switches at the locations in question, Times Square, 57th Street, Lex-63rd, and 36th would all be rebuilt to allow for faster speeds, speeding trips.

Good Luck with that.

[JeremiahC99]

29 minutes ago, LaGuardia Link N Tra said:

If that's the Case, then you're better off keeping the and . Again, the Yard issue is no biggie, but keeping the  and together at Astoria would Allow you to alter between the two since some trains head via Sea Beach. Long term, we can build a Yard in Astoria. 

The yard issue is A MAJOR DEAL, as it allows for cars to be maintained and stored during off hours, including nights. Without one, then there would be no room for train storage or maintenance, and causes cars to be unreliable. Yes, we can build a yard in the long term, but Astoria residents might not like the idea of having an additional two block of elevated track near their homes. In addition, even if part of the con-Ed power plant was sold to the MTA, the rest of the plant would have to be fortified against another large scale explosion (like what happened in December) before building a new yard with walls to prevent service impacts that can impact the other nearby lines. I still believe the best short term plan is to send the  over to 63rd Street. Bay Ridge service needs to end somewhere, but right now, Astoria-Ditmars is NOT the right place.

29 minutes ago, LaGuardia Link N Tra said:

I see where you're going with this but in my opinion, connecting the Broadway Local Tracks to the 63rd Street Tunnel is better off being used for Emergency Reroutes and G.O.'s. Sending the via 63rd would reduce reliability for the and service, making about 2-3 Bottlenecks worse than they already are. 

The bottleneck at the 60th Street Tunnel would be removed as the  would no longer be using the tunnel, thus making room for additional  and . Yes there would be a merge at 36th Street, but given how the  runs at 15 tph, there’s plenty of room in the tunnel for another service. Coupled with Queens Blvd CBTC, and there’s your capacity increase at both crossings.

29 minutes ago, LaGuardia Link N Tra said:

Good Luck with that.

I’m not saying physically rebuild the interlocking. What I mean is that the signals by the switches need to be recalibrated so that diverging trains can take the switch at 25-30 mph, like the switch at Prospect Park . If we can raise the speed of diverging trains at Prospect Park, then it can be done at Times Sq, 57th Street, and Lex-63rd. The SPEED UNIT needs to come back into those areas and check if they are safe for speed limit increases.

Edited April 10, 2019 by JeremiahC99

[JeremiahC99]

27 minutes ago, Fredrick Wells 3 said:

Just send the  to Bay Ridge and have the  terminate at Whitehall.

If you are suggesting sending the  to Bay Ridge from Astoria, that is basically RECREATING THE PRE-1987 . A service from Bay Ridge has to terminate somewhere, and ASTORIA IS NOT THE BEST PLACE NOW!!!!!

 

Edited April 10, 2019 by JeremiahC99

[LGA Link N Train]

8 minutes ago, JeremiahC99 said:

If you are suggesting sending the  to Bay Ridge from Astoria, that is basically RECREATING THE PRE-1987 . A service from Bay Ridge has to terminate somewhere, and ASTORIA IS NOT THE BEST PLACE NOW!!!!!

 

I forgot to mention something in my last post. 36th-38th Street Yard will soon be converted so that it can store Passenger Trains. If you don't believe me, then look it up in the (MTA) capital Dashboard site. 

I'm aware about the purpose of a Train Yard and why its important, but it seems that you missed my reasoning as to why a Pre-1987 (R) works in the current day. I'll say it again just to make things clear, Say you have the (R) and (W) Terminating at Ditmars. You can switch the LCD/Rollsign thing between the (R) and (W) since they'll basically be the same route at this point, so therefore, you can still house these trains at Coney Island. 

If that's not enough, then maybe someone else can shed some more light on this topic.

[Lance]

On ‎4‎/‎7‎/‎2019 at 11:26 AM, Around the Horn said:

Just out of curiosity, does anyone remember the frequencies when the  all shared one track from DeKalb to Rockefeller Center?

Based on the early 1999 schedules from the MTA's archived site, all three lines ran roughly every 7-8 minutes each (or 24 trains per hour total) at the height of the rush hours. I'll link to the Archive.org pages later today as I'm currently working off my phone.

Re: Astoria service and yards

If the lack of direct yard access was a true issue, it would've been one back in 1920 when the Broadway line was extended beyond Whitehall St across the river. The fact that it only became an issue in the mid-1980s leads me to believe something else was in play beyond giving the a home yard. Remember the service operations in place at the time, especially during the overnight hours. Two of the four South Brooklyn lines, the Sea Beach and the West End , were both relegated to shuttle operations between 36 St/4 Av and Coney Island, while the 4th Avenue was the only direct service to Manhattan as something had to serve Astoria. Flipping the and back in '87 allowed for the elimination of one of the late night Coney Island shuttles while retaining the primary Broadway service to Astoria. Remember that for the first couple of years post-swap, the and ran 24/7 to their respective destinations, and it wasn't until 1990 when owl period service was converted to the shuttle to 36 Street.

The lack of direct yard access does add unnecessary mileage to the cars, but it shouldn't be considered such a prohibiting factor to altering service if needed. If it was such a problem, the and wouldn't run their present routes as they both currently have long relays to their home yards from their usual terminals.

[R68OnBroadway]

8 hours ago, Lex said:

How about no?

I don't know if you've noticed, but your 8th Avenue-related "proposals" already exist (under the same lone designation, no less).

The  is long and unreliable, but doing that addresses neither issue. Moreover, much of no one's looking to have stations east of Forest Hills served by a local train (hence why previous permanent patterns involving such died so quickly), and this will only be exacerbated by using 8-car trains that will run into potential conflicts with (still more frequent) terminating trains.

I won't even begin getting into the Broadway-related stuff.

Any extension to 179th to restore express service on Hillside is to speed up commutes for bus riders and 179th and eliminate the 75th merge. The transfer won’t kill you as you would be able to transfer to an express in at most two stops.

In addition to any QBL proposal involving the removal of Broadway service I would have a passageway between Lex-63 and Lex-59 to keep a transfer to few expresses.

[RR503]

I have half an hour to kill on an NJT platform, so here goes. I’m not gonna quote to save space. 

-Broadway/63: this is a fraught proposal. The sticking point with Queens reroutings is and always will be killing the . Once you’ve done that (and, hopefully, built a 59-63 passage) you really should just go for full deinterlining; there’s no really convincing reason to reduce capacity on 8th and create Yet Another Merge on the . There’s an operational impact here, too. Given that the  would interact with the  which would interact with the  which would interact with the  which would interact with the  which would interact with the  which would interact with the  again, you end up with a circular scheduling issue — how do you get a bunch of doubly tied high frequency services to mesh well. 

The one (dare I say only?) plus that this proposal brings is that it preserves  riders’ one seat ride onto 6th, which they’d lose under a full deinterlining scheme. This is certainly something to consider (especially when looking at investments that could facilitate deinterlining; a  extension to QBP or 21/Qbridge would fix this and have a massive impact on crosstown trips), but even without such a change, the combination of  and  gets you decent access to every 6th Avenue station save for 34th and 23rd, stations south of which you should be taking the  or catching the  at Broadway — provided that transfer is built, of course.

- line service in Brooklyn: I think it’s important in the short term. Looking to a 10-15 year horizon, though, it shouldn’t be the emphasis. The train’s ridership is (at least the plurality) folks who can’t fit on the . We need to serve them, but we can’t lose sight of the fact that the  could, with some traction power upgrades, take another 4-6tph (over the already planned 22) and with terminal upgrades, 30+ — provided dwell times are kept somewhere reasonable. Planning the  as if its reliever status is immutable is thus wasteful. 

There’s another side to this  problem which I believe bears more emphasis — the . Veterans of these sorts of conversations probably are tired of hearing me say this, but I think it bears repeating: the , really all the way from Myrtle to Jamaica, runs through some really good, really underdeveloped land — land, as we know, that can only be tapped for density with transit improvements. Killing skip stop would be a great start for the area, but doing so does have a good-sized runtime impact (+4-5 mins IIRC). This isn’t to say we shouldn't do it, but when doing so we do have to think about other ways to reduce runtime to Manhattan points, which is where I think investments in express service (Bway Jct-Marcy, or with a new 3rd track Crescent-Marcy) could come in. Thing is, expresses require frequency to have real impact both so that local stops don’t get screwed, and so that the express itself can actually get ahead of a local leader. This is where increased  service comes in — getting more than 12tph rush onto Jamaica unlocks a world of service pattern (and thus developmental) possibilities. 

-  and yards: what Lance said. It’s harder to operate, sure, but the benefits outweigh the costs here — and there are plenty of places to lay up trains along the corridor anyway. 

- Queens deinterlining generally: I truly believe that deinterlining should only be done where it has an appreiciable, operationally unattainable impact on capacity. So areas where interlining creates capacity shadows on core routes, areas where line-specific throughput restrictions overly complicate merge scheduling, and areas where deinterlining changes the effective capacity picture. Queens falls into that latter category. As much as I’d like to see something new be built in the borough, the probability of that happening in the next 20-30 years is exceedingly low, so we’ve gotta work with what we have. Examining the current situation, we see that Astoria is underserved, that 8th and 63 have ~15tph of spare capacity, and that Queens Boulevard Local is vastly less crowded than QB express — even at its comparatively low throughputs. For Astoria, we rebuild the terminal and send  there. 8th/63 you’re gonna want the classic deinterlining of 6th-63 and 8th-53. And for Queens Boulevard, you’re going to want a way to make local trains attractive under a 8th-53 6th-63 service plan, which means making them something more than local duplicates of expresses that just interline their ways into their respective corridors at 36. This essentially means 8th-53-Local and 6th-63-Express. The decision at Roosevelt thus becomes one of O/D and not just of speed, allowing you leverage local capacity — increasing effective capacity, in other words. Is this plan perfect? No, you’re sacrificing speed for 53 riders. But without investment in new tunnels, it’s what we’ve got — though this would require some analysis of the  length situation. 

Edited April 10, 2019 by RR503

[Union Tpke]

58 minutes ago, Lance said:

Based on the early 1999 schedules from the MTA's archived site, all three lines ran roughly every 7-8 minutes each (or 24 trains per hour total) at the height of the rush hours. I'll link to the Archive.org pages later today as I'm currently working off my phone.

Re: Astoria service and yards

If the lack of direct yard access was a true issue, it would've been one back in 1920 when the Broadway line was extended beyond Whitehall St across the river. The fact that it only became an issue in the mid-1980s leads me to believe something else was in play beyond giving the a home yard. Remember the service operations in place at the time, especially during the overnight hours. Two of the four South Brooklyn lines, the Sea Beach and the West End , were both relegated to shuttle operations between 36 St/4 Av and Coney Island, while the 4th Avenue was the only direct service to Manhattan as something had to serve Astoria. Flipping the and back in '87 allowed for the elimination of one of the late night Coney Island shuttles while retaining the primary Broadway service to Astoria. Remember that for the first couple of years post-swap, the and ran 24/7 to their respective destinations, and it wasn't until 1990 when owl period service was converted to the shuttle to 36 Street.

The lack of direct yard access does add unnecessary mileage to the cars, but it shouldn't be considered such a prohibiting factor to altering service if needed. If it was such a problem, the and wouldn't run their present routes as they both currently have long relays to their home yards from their usual terminals.

Graffiti was a major motivation. I can provide my source later.