Department of Subways - Proposals/Ideas

[Around the Horn]

1 hour ago, subwayfan1998 said:

Every New Yorker would agree with my idea, Not some Rando on the internet.

Yeah no...

 

[SubwayFan3000]

17 minutes ago, Around the Horn said:

Yeah no...

 

what you mean Yeah no?

[R68OnBroadway]

12 hours ago, bobtehpanda said:

Lol you wylin with all this. Who's gonna take some slow-ass train from the county line?

Looks like Jeremiah has found a friend...

[JeremiahC99]

24 minutes ago, R68OnBroadway said:

Looks like Jeremiah has found a friend...

Chill dude. I don’t have a position on those proposals. What you talking about bro?

[MysteriousBtrain]

8 hours ago, subwayfan1998 said:

what you mean Yeah no?

You do know why the was cut to Forest Hills when it was extended to Jamaica briefly yes?

[R68OnBroadway]

3 hours ago, JeremiahC99 said:

Chill dude. I don’t have a position on those proposals. What you talking about bro?

I was joking since you guys both like to create long and unreliable routes.

[GreatOne2k]

Isn't a slow  train better than a slower bus ride? ,,, , , ,  and  riders are used to 'slow' rides in the outerboroughs.

[JeremiahC99]

3 hours ago, R68OnBroadway said:

I was joking since you guys both like to create long and unreliable routes.

Okay. I did not mean any harm there.

[Around the Horn]

33 minutes ago, GreatOne2k said:

Isn't a slow  train better than a slower bus ride? ,,, , , ,  and  riders are used to 'slow' rides in the outerboroughs.

Slow isn't the problem. Those other trains come more frequently and more punctually.

[SubwayFan3000]

6 hours ago, MysteriousBtrain said:

You do know why the was cut to Forest Hills when it was extended to Jamaica briefly yes?

No, is the most Longest Subway ride in NYC, People in Eastern Queens needs Transits than Slow Ass Bus.

[B35 via Church]

17 hours ago, subwayfan1998 said:

Every New Yorker would agree with my idea,.....

This New Yorker doesn't....So there goes that

[Lex]

19 minutes ago, B35 via Church said:

This New Yorker doesn't....So there goes that

I had the  do that on a fantasy map. In reality, I wouldn't even bother with it, as it's nothing short of bonkers.

[bobtehpanda]

6 hours ago, GreatOne2k said:

Isn't a slow  train better than a slower bus ride? ,,, , , ,  and  riders are used to 'slow' rides in the outerboroughs.

Outside of the congestion points of Flushing and Jamaica, the buses aren't that slow. Travel times from Springfield Blvd to the County Line, or even Francis Lewis Blvd to the county line, are very consistent.

[engineerboy6561]

9 hours ago, bobtehpanda said:

Outside of the congestion points of Flushing and Jamaica, the buses aren't that slow. Travel times from Springfield Blvd to the County Line, or even Francis Lewis Blvd to the county line, are very consistent.

Building off BobTehPanda's point, a good chunk of the value you get from extending subway lines deeper into Queens comes from decongesting the existing hubs like Flushing and Jamaica. If there was better subway coverage, then a redesign of the Queens bus network to support it would probably allow for more of a move away from hub and spoke-type service toward a gridded model because there would be more stations for buses to serve directly. For instance, if the  ran out to Springfield you could probably look at cutting the Q3/17 to a 188 St stop, the Q76/77 to Francis Lewis Blvd, etc. and then just leave the Q1, Q36, and Q43 providing service on Hillside.

A  extension down Northern Blvd also has a fair number of obvious restructuring opportunities despite the street grid weirdness around Flushing and the use of the Q25/65 as through routes from Jamaica to College Point, but the Q15/15A could be turned at 150 St, the Q17 could concievably be rerouted via Horace Harding/Utopia Pkwy/46 Av/Francis Lewis and send up into Bayside with a connection to the  at Northern/Francis Lewis and the Q27 could be sent along the current Q13 route and connect with the  at Bell Blvd, with the Q26 running full-time to QCC along the old Q27 route. You could also theoretically fold the northern bit of the Q65 into the Q26 and run the Q26 College Point-QCC while sending the Q65 up 162nd St to Northern and maybe Bayside. None of these ideas are necessarily the best, but they're just examples of the sort of bus redesign you could do to spread out the subway loading and bus traffic in Queens. 

At that point, instead of extending all the way to the county line you look at how far out you have to go to spread out the bus connections far enough to make life easier at the hubs, so for instance the  would probably want to go out to Bell so that you could provide spread-out connections to the Q15/17/27/31, I'd suspect the  has a breakeven point around Springfield/Braddock so you deal with the Q3/17/76/77, the  (assuming you head into Southeastern Queens via Merrick would probably be Baisley/Springfield, the Ozone Park  is about at its breakeven point, and any hypothetical SE Queens extension of the  four-track mainline via Rockaway Blvd would probably be around Brewer Blvd, maybe out as far as Springfield/140 Av. 

In a situation like that it might be possible to consider things like merging the Q76 and Q77 so that you had one bus from Brookville Park to College Point; that's not possible now because Hillside Av needs the extra bph to cover corridor traffic and nobody would want to transfer at Hillside to a Q36/43 that's probably already at least half full. 

I'd love to hear thoughts and proposals about how to optimize the Queens bus/subway network to get more efficient coverage with fewer packed hubs and supercorridors like Hillside

Edited May 1, 2019 by engineerboy6561

[SubwayFan3000]

On 4/28/2019 at 3:01 AM, Wallyhorse said:

As said before, I think it would be better to make the its own full-time, 24/7 line from Bay Ridge to Essex Street (with scheduled in-service yard runs that end and begin at Broadway Junction) in what essentially would be a 24/7 extended version of the old "Bankers Special"  trains.   This includes fully replacing the in late nights since anyone specifically looking for Whitehall can make a same platform transfer to the  late nights anywhere between 59th and Court.  This might require either a new letter or perhaps going to a J1/J2 setup for skip-stop service.  

As for the last point, yes they need to do something to get the WillyB up to 30TPH.  

it would be a good idea to make the full-time instead of Rush-Hours. Extend the to Rosedale-Laureton and along with the to Queens Village - Springfield Boulevard

BTW @B35 via Church, @Lex and @bobtehpanda, why are you opposing the Subway Extension to Eastern Queens?

[engineerboy6561]

54 minutes ago, subwayfan1998 said:

it would be a good idea to make the full-time instead of Rush-Hours. Extend the to Rosedale-Laureton and along with the to Queens Village - Springfield Boulevard

BTW @B35 via Church, @Lex and @bobtehpanda, why are you opposing the Subway Extension to Eastern Queens?

See my post above; it's not that we shouldn't send the subway to eastern Queens; having corridors like Hillside between 179th and Springfield that are carrying 6-8 medium to high-frequency bus routes is ridiculous. The thing is that you could probably get really good bang for your buck by going partway out instead of all the way to Little Neck/Floral Park/Rosedale and then reoptimizing the bus network to decongest the big hubs at Flushing and Jamaica; that also spares you some of the NIMBY bullshit you're gonna get if you try to build out to Little Neck or far Floral Park.

Also, to be frank, if you extend the  all the way out it would make the most sense to either convert the entire Jamaica el into a four-track line or at minimum convert the part from Broadway Junction to Parsons-Archer into a three-track structure with express stops at Cypress Hills and Woodhaven Blvd so that  trains can run express Sutphin-Marcy in at least the peak direction.  service even with the skip-stop setup takes 45 minutes from Jamaica Center to Fulton St, and 50 minutes during non-skip-stop service. The  takes about 45 minutes all the way to WTC, and if you're heading to Midtown it's the difference between 38 minutes (  to PABT) and 65 minutes (  to Fulton,  to PABT)) and the rest of Manhattan is no better; the  to the  for central Manhattan or the  to the  for the east side will beat the  to the  or the  to the  every time.

If you go with three or four tracks and add express stops at Cypress Hills, Woodhaven Bl, and Sutphin you could probably drive  times to downtown down into the 30-35 minute range, which would make the  competitive with the  and balance the loading on QBL better. If you don't do that then the 20-30 minute time difference will lead to the  emptying out at Jamaica and the  being basically unusable west of Forest Hills. In the three-track case the  would be crowded middays because of the time difference, but rush hour loads would be a lot better and I suspect midday loads on the  might still have some room; four tracks is best because you'd break up the funneling effect of basically everyone south of HHE onto QBL and could probably actually reduce  crowding altogether because the breakeven point for  vs  in Manhattan would probably land somewhere around 14th-23rd Sts and so lower Midtown/Villages traffic could be funneled onto Jamaica; furthermore, having an express stop at Woodhaven means that people south of Penelope Av may just take the Q11/21/52/53 down to the  because a  express would be faster than an  or  local to Jackson Heights followed by an  or .

Edited May 1, 2019 by engineerboy6561

[bobtehpanda]

7 hours ago, subwayfan1998 said:

it would be a good idea to make the full-time instead of Rush-Hours. Extend the to Rosedale-Laureton and along with the to Queens Village - Springfield Boulevard

BTW @B35 via Church, @Lex and @bobtehpanda, why are you opposing the Subway Extension to Eastern Queens?

Issa waste of money. Subway extensions are a billion dollars a mile. You got some money tree in the back of your house?

I used to live in Eastern Queens. It would be super overkill to go all the way to the county line, you don't need to cover every single inch of Queens in subway to call it an "extension". The further east you go, the less people live there, and quite frankly the bus is very quick east of Francis Lewis or Springfield.

Edited May 1, 2019 by bobtehpanda

[SubwayFan3000]

8 hours ago, engineerboy6561 said:

See my post above; it's not that we shouldn't send the subway to eastern Queens; having corridors like Hillside between 179th and Springfield that are carrying 6-8 medium to high-frequency bus routes is ridiculous. The thing is that you could probably get really good bang for your buck by going partway out instead of all the way to Little Neck/Floral Park/Rosedale and then reoptimizing the bus network to decongest the big hubs at Flushing and Jamaica; that also spares you some of the NIMBY bullshit you're gonna get if you try to build out to Little Neck or far Floral Park.

Also, to be frank, if you extend the  all the way out it would make the most sense to either convert the entire Jamaica el into a four-track line or at minimum convert the part from Broadway Junction to Parsons-Archer into a three-track structure with express stops at Cypress Hills and Woodhaven Blvd so that  trains can run express Sutphin-Marcy in at least the peak direction.  service even with the skip-stop setup takes 45 minutes from Jamaica Center to Fulton St, and 50 minutes during non-skip-stop service. The  takes about 45 minutes all the way to WTC, and if you're heading to Midtown it's the difference between 38 minutes (  to PABT) and 65 minutes (  to Fulton,  to PABT)) and the rest of Manhattan is no better; the  to the  for central Manhattan or the  to the  for the east side will beat the  to the  or the  to the  every time.

If you go with three or four tracks and add express stops at Cypress Hills, Woodhaven Bl, and Sutphin you could probably drive  times to downtown down into the 30-35 minute range, which would make the  competitive with the  and balance the loading on QBL better. If you don't do that then the 20-30 minute time difference will lead to the  emptying out at Jamaica and the  being basically unusable west of Forest Hills. In the three-track case the  would be crowded middays because of the time difference, but rush hour loads would be a lot better and I suspect midday loads on the  might still have some room; four tracks is best because you'd break up the funneling effect of basically everyone south of HHE onto QBL and could probably actually reduce  crowding altogether because the breakeven point for  vs  in Manhattan would probably land somewhere around 14th-23rd Sts and so lower Midtown/Villages traffic could be funneled onto Jamaica; furthermore, having an express stop at Woodhaven means that people south of Penelope Av may just take the Q11/21/52/53 down to the  because a  express would be faster than an  or  local to Jackson Heights followed by an  or .

I Understand Bro, You're Right really.

[SubwayFan3000]

1 hour ago, bobtehpanda said:

Issa waste of money. Subway extensions are a billion dollars a mile. You got some money tree in the back of your house?

I used to live in Eastern Queens. It would be super overkill to go all the way to the county line, you don't need to cover every single inch of Queens in subway to call it an "extension". The further east you go, the less people live there, and quite frankly the bus is very quick east of Francis Lewis or Springfield.

LMFAO, money tree in the back of my house?, Hell Nah I Don't, Money Tree exist in Sim City 4.

[LGA Link N Train]

15 hours ago, engineerboy6561 said:

I'd love to hear thoughts and proposals about how to optimize the Queens bus/subway network to get more efficient coverage with fewer packed hubs and supercorridors like Hillside

I’m intrigued by how much potential subway expansion has in coralation with Redesigning the Queens Bus Network. I’m currently working on a project to redesign the Queens Bus Netwrok without Subway expansions but I’ll definitely work on a Fantasy Map soon with the Subway, Rail Service, and the Queens Bus Network All being redesigned all at once. 

[SubwayFan3000]

Also I forgot Inwood - 207th Street to Reads Lane

[T to Dyre Avenue]

17 hours ago, engineerboy6561 said:

Building off BobTehPanda's point, a good chunk of the value you get from extending subway lines deeper into Queens comes from decongesting the existing hubs like Flushing and Jamaica. If there was better subway coverage, then a redesign of the Queens bus network to support it would probably allow for more of a move away from hub and spoke-type service toward a gridded model because there would be more stations for buses to serve directly. For instance, if the  ran out to Springfield you could probably look at cutting the Q3/17 to a 188 St stop, the Q76/77 to Francis Lewis Blvd, etc. and then just leave the Q1, Q36, and Q43 providing service on Hillside.

A  extension down Northern Blvd also has a fair number of obvious restructuring opportunities despite the street grid weirdness around Flushing and the use of the Q25/65 as through routes from Jamaica to College Point, but the Q15/15A could be turned at 150 St, the Q17 could concievably be rerouted via Horace Harding/Utopia Pkwy/46 Av/Francis Lewis and send up into Bayside with a connection to the  at Northern/Francis Lewis and the Q27 could be sent along the current Q13 route and connect with the  at Bell Blvd, with the Q26 running full-time to QCC along the old Q27 route. You could also theoretically fold the northern bit of the Q65 into the Q26 and run the Q26 College Point-QCC while sending the Q65 up 162nd St to Northern and maybe Bayside. None of these ideas are necessarily the best, but they're just examples of the sort of bus redesign you could do to spread out the subway loading and bus traffic in Queens. 

At that point, instead of extending all the way to the county line you look at how far out you have to go to spread out the bus connections far enough to make life easier at the hubs, so for instance the  would probably want to go out to Bell so that you could provide spread-out connections to the Q15/17/27/31, I'd suspect the  has a breakeven point around Springfield/Braddock so you deal with the Q3/17/76/77, the  (assuming you head into Southeastern Queens via Merrick would probably be Baisley/Springfield, the Ozone Park  is about at its breakeven point, and any hypothetical SE Queens extension of the  four-track mainline via Rockaway Blvd would probably be around Brewer Blvd, maybe out as far as Springfield/140 Av. 

In a situation like that it might be possible to consider things like merging the Q76 and Q77 so that you had one bus from Brookville Park to College Point; that's not possible now because Hillside Av needs the extra bph to cover corridor traffic and nobody would want to transfer at Hillside to a Q36/43 that's probably already at least half full. 

I'd love to hear thoughts and proposals about how to optimize the Queens bus/subway network to get more efficient coverage with fewer packed hubs and supercorridors like Hillside

Those  and  extensions would be such game changers for eastern Queens. We wouldn’t need so many bus routes and they could be refocused into providing local service between the neighborhoods.

[SubwayFan3000]

38 minutes ago, T to Dyre Avenue said:

Those  and  extensions would be such game changers for eastern Queens. We wouldn’t need so many bus routes and they could be refocused into providing local service between the neighborhoods.

What if runs from Newark-Elizabeth Airport to Little Neck - Marathon Parkway.

[engineerboy6561]

Just now, subwayfan1998 said:

What if runs from Newark-Elizabeth Airport to Little Neck - Marathon Parkway.

Newark Airport would be hard to swing because the PATH is already getting extended there, and swinging across through Secaucus probably isn't the best idea. I used to commute out to Newark and Secaucus is in the middle of bumf**k nowhere; the spot where you'd really want to send the  if you were going to extend it to Jersey (which would be jurisdictionally really complex to do and not super likely) would be through Hamilton Park and down JFK Blvd, either straight down to Danforth or with a turn west over Kearny to serve the Ironbound before hitting Newark Penn; again, the jurisdictional issues would make that really hard to pull off. As far as the eastern end is concerned you probably don't need to go all the way out; the sweet spot is probably Bell Blvd because it would let you reconfigure the buses around Flushing and Bayside.

[SubwayFan3000]

12 minutes ago, engineerboy6561 said:

Newark Airport would be hard to swing because the PATH is already getting extended there, and swinging across through Secaucus probably isn't the best idea. I used to commute out to Newark and Secaucus is in the middle of bumf**k nowhere; the spot where you'd really want to send the  if you were going to extend it to Jersey (which would be jurisdictionally really complex to do and not super likely) would be through Hamilton Park and down JFK Blvd, either straight down to Danforth or with a turn west over Kearny to serve the Ironbound before hitting Newark Penn; again, the jurisdictional issues would make that really hard to pull off. As far as the eastern end is concerned you probably don't need to go all the way out; the sweet spot is probably Bell Blvd because it would let you reconfigure the buses around Flushing and Bayside.

you're right, but there were plans prior to Gateway Project on Extending to Seacaucus