Department of Subways - Proposals/Ideas

[mrsman]

1 hour ago, bobtehpanda said:

Google is a large, profitable multi-billion dollar company that lives and breathes tech and relies on partnerships with DOTs, individual commuters, and millions of phones with their software. They didn't do this as a charity.

None of these things is true of the MTA.

Google already has partnerships with many transit agencies as well.  You can get transit directions and in many cases it can also provide you with schedule information.

[bobtehpanda]

2 hours ago, mrsman said:

Google already has partnerships with many transit agencies as well.  You can get transit directions and in many cases it can also provide you with schedule information.

Yes and there are currently zero dynamic transit maps operated by Google, so what's your point?

[danig1220]

Let’s make a train line, all of us here in this forum.

All additional stops are accepted so think wisely.
The line is a El.

The first stop is Coney Island-Stilwell Avenue, 

Edited June 29, 2020 by danig1220
Clarification

[CenSin]

39 minutes ago, danig1220 said:

Let’s make a train line, all of us here in this forum.

All additional stops are accepted so think wisely.
The line is a El.

The first stop is Coney Island-Stilwell Avenue, 

The second stop is Breezy Point. (Seriously, I can see it from the beach.)

Edited June 29, 2020 by CenSin

[danig1220]

1 hour ago, CenSin said:

The second stop is Breezy Point. (Seriously, I can see it from the beach.)

The next stop is Rockaway Park/Beach 116th Street. And then follows the shuttle to Broad Channel, and the A line to 80th Street.

[Enjineer]

So, San Francisco recently did a huge shake-up of their Muni Metro network. (You can see a summary of the changes here: https://www.sfmta.com/blog/big-changes-ahead-when-muni-rail-returns-august) 

Their general consolidation of through-routes in the Market Street Subway and slimming down the amount of interlined services through the tunnel, as well as replacing three lines terminating at Embarcadero with just one got me thinking about the rumors of the swap for the and on 53rd Street and 63rd Street. I feel like this should be revisited, especially as ridership picks up again, considering the crowding benefits on the and at Roosevelt Avenue with transfers to/from 63rd Street-bound trains. Of course, the real benefits here come from reducing the bottlenecks at Queens Plaza and 36th Street, which means you'd be able to improve service on the , , , and , just by virtue of cleaning up the merges alone. 

Curious as to what you guys think, especially when we now see another fairly large US transit agency reevaluating and changing the way it operates service to use their infrastructure more efficiently. 

[T to Dyre Avenue]

3 hours ago, Enjineer said:

So, San Francisco recently did a huge shake-up of their Muni Metro network. (You can see a summary of the changes here: https://www.sfmta.com/blog/big-changes-ahead-when-muni-rail-returns-august) 

Their general consolidation of through-routes in the Market Street Subway and slimming down the amount of interlined services through the tunnel, as well as replacing three lines terminating at Embarcadero with just one got me thinking about the rumors of the swap for the and on 53rd Street and 63rd Street. I feel like this should be revisited, especially as ridership picks up again, considering the crowding benefits on the and at Roosevelt Avenue with transfers to/from 63rd Street-bound trains. Of course, the real benefits here come from reducing the bottlenecks at Queens Plaza and 36th Street, which means you'd be able to improve service on the , , , and , just by virtue of cleaning up the merges alone. 

Curious as to what you guys think, especially when we now see another fairly large US transit agency reevaluating and changing the way it operates service to use their infrastructure more efficiently. 

But in Muni’s case, they will be ending service in the Market St subway on the J-Church, K-Ingleside and L-Taraval lines entirely. J riders will have to change for the through-routed M/T or the S-Shuttle services at Church and Market, while K and L riders will have to change for those services at West Portal. They will also be through-routing the K and L lines. I can foresee a lot of people being inconvenienced by this, especially L riders. I don’t know a lot about Muni riders’ habits, but given that the L is one of the routes still running (as a bus, as are the N-Judah and T-Third routes) and that it had an owl bus service, I think the new K/L service won’t be popular or convenient for riders. Though I have a feeling this will be temporary because once the Central Subway opens next year, the T-Third  line will be rerouted there and it won’t be able to through-route with the M-Ocean View line. Maybe some sort of long-term solution could be a crosstown light rail route or two that could allow J and/or K trains from southern SF to connect with the T and use the Central Subway instead of cramming into Market. My wife and I visited San Francisco in 2011 and I do remember trains stopping between stations a lot. 

Now, bringing this back home, at least the  swap won’t result in any shuttle routes like in San Francisco. It will do away two of the three merges in the Queens Plaza/36th St area that cause QBL service to get so messed up all the time. But it will result in a sharp service cut at 21st St-Queensbridge and Roosevelt Island, because  trains are limited to eight 60-foot cars and current run only 8-9 tph during rush. Either they run the  more frequently to make up for the shorter trains. Also you would now have all express service going via 53rd and potentially overwhelming Lex/53rd, which was the case in the past (pre-  train era). Though I do like the idea of doing away with the  merge at 36th and the  merge at Queens Plaza. Instead, there would be only an  merge at 5th Ave (aside from the  merge at Queens Plaza, which we’ve already got).

On the other hand, I’ve got to wonder if this swap will be scrapped entirely because Corona. I recall reading they were looking to start it in April, but with the ginormous Corona-related deficit staring the MTA in the face, I wonder if they’ll even bother now.

Edited July 1, 2020 by T to Dyre Avenue
Clarification

[JeremiahC99]

34 minutes ago, T to Dyre Avenue said:

But in Muni’s case, they will ending service in the Market St subway on the J-Church, K-Ingleside and L-Taraval lines entirely. J riders will have to change for the through-routed M/T or the S-Shuttle services at Church and Market, while K and L riders will have to change for those services at West Portal. They will also be through-routing the K and L lines. I can foresee a lot of people being inconvenienced by this, especially L riders. I don’t know a lot about Muni riders’ habits, but given that the L is one of the routes still running (as a bus, as are the N-Judah and T-Third routes) and that it had an owl bus service, I think the new K/L service won’t be popular or convenient for riders. Though I have a feeling this will be temporary because once the Central Subway opens next year, the T-Third  line will be rerouted there and it won’t be able to through-route with the M-Ocean View line. Maybe some sort of long-term solution could be a crosstown light rail route or two that could allow J and/or K trains to connect with the T and use the Central Subway instead of cramming into Market. My wife and I visited San Francisco in 2011 and I do remember trains stopping between stations a lot. 

Now, bringing this back home, at least the  swap won’t result in any shuttle routes like in San Francisco. It will do away two of the three merges in the Queens Plaza/36th St area that cause QBL service to get so messed up all the time. But it will result in a sharp service cut at 21st St-Queensbridge and Roosevelt Island, because  trains are limited to eight 60-foot cars and current run only 8-9 tph during rush. Either they run the  more frequently to make up for the shorter trains. Also you would now have all express service going via 53rd and potentially overwhelming Lex/53rd, which was the case in the past (pre-  train era). Though I do like the idea of doing away with the  merge at 36th and the  merge at Queens Plaza. Instead, there would be only an  merge at 5th Ave.

 

3 hours ago, Enjineer said:

So, San Francisco recently did a huge shake-up of their Muni Metro network. (You can see a summary of the changes here: https://www.sfmta.com/blog/big-changes-ahead-when-muni-rail-returns-august) 

Their general consolidation of through-routes in the Market Street Subway and slimming down the amount of interlined services through the tunnel, as well as replacing three lines terminating at Embarcadero with just one got me thinking about the rumors of the swap for the and on 53rd Street and 63rd Street. I feel like this should be revisited, especially as ridership picks up again, considering the crowding benefits on the and at Roosevelt Avenue with transfers to/from 63rd Street-bound trains. Of course, the real benefits here come from reducing the bottlenecks at Queens Plaza and 36th Street, which means you'd be able to improve service on the , , , and , just by virtue of cleaning up the merges alone. 

Curious as to what you guys think, especially when we now see another fairly large US transit agency reevaluating and changing the way it operates service to use their infrastructure more efficiently. 

At this point, we should just do some full scale deinterlining. More specifically:

 

: unchanged.

: Unchanged.

: Norwood-205th Street to Euclid Avenue. Concourse Local/Peak express. 8th Avenue Express, Fulton Local. No *overnight service.

: 168th Street to Coney Island. 8th Avenue Local, 6th Avenue Express, Manhattan Bridge, Brighton Local. *Overnight service to Norwood-205th Street.

: Unchanged**

: Unchanged**

: Unchanged

/ : All Service will operate as  trains. No skip stop service.

: 71st Avenue to World Trade Center. Queens Blvd Local, 53rd Street, 8th Avenue Local**. *No overnight service.

: Unchanged 

: Unchanged** except all *overnight service to Essex Street.

/: 96th Street to Coney Island. Broadway Express, 4th Avenue Express,  via Sea Beach,  via West End. *Overnights  to 96th Street vía Bridge,  to Astoria-Ditmars via Tunnel.

/: All trains operate as  trains. Astoria-Ditmars to Bay Ridge-95th Street. Broadway Local, Tunnel, 4th Avenue Local. *Overnight  service Whitehall to 95th Street.

The IRT would remain mostly unchanged, absent new switches on the Eastern Pkwy Line, as would the shuttles.

*1 AM to 5 AM subway service restored systemwide.

**This plan is unperfect due to the end to retain Queens Blvd local and express service to Queens Plaza on existing tracks.

This new subway service patterns would allow for more frequent and with less merging. However, as mentioned before, this plan is not perfect due to the pattern of the Queens Blvd services (the ), since it was based on preserving local and express access to Queens Plaza. However, I am willing to reevaluate this, and with some long term changes related to the Second Avenue Subway plans and the 63rd Street Tunnel, the pattern will definitely change. Though, with any deinterline plan, there’s going to be some controversy and negative feedback over the plan.

[mrsman]

2 hours ago, T to Dyre Avenue said:

But in Muni’s case, they will be ending service in the Market St subway on the J-Church, K-Ingleside and L-Taraval lines entirely. J riders will have to change for the through-routed M/T or the S-Shuttle services at Church and Market, while K and L riders will have to change for those services at West Portal. They will also be through-routing the K and L lines. I can foresee a lot of people being inconvenienced by this, especially L riders. I don’t know a lot about Muni riders’ habits, but given that the L is one of the routes still running (as a bus, as are the N-Judah and T-Third routes) and that it had an owl bus service, I think the new K/L service won’t be popular or convenient for riders. Though I have a feeling this will be temporary because once the Central Subway opens next year, the T-Third  line will be rerouted there and it won’t be able to through-route with the M-Ocean View line. Maybe some sort of long-term solution could be a crosstown light rail route or two that could allow J and/or K trains from southern SF to connect with the T and use the Central Subway instead of cramming into Market. My wife and I visited San Francisco in 2011 and I do remember trains stopping between stations a lot. 

 

 

5 hours ago, Enjineer said:

So, San Francisco recently did a huge shake-up of their Muni Metro network. (You can see a summary of the changes here: https://www.sfmta.com/blog/big-changes-ahead-when-muni-rail-returns-august) 

Their general consolidation of through-routes in the Market Street Subway and slimming down the amount of interlined services through the tunnel, as well as replacing three lines terminating at Embarcadero with just one got me thinking about the rumors of the swap for the and on 53rd Street and 63rd Street. I feel like this should be revisited, especially as ridership picks up again, considering the crowding benefits on the and at Roosevelt Avenue with transfers to/from 63rd Street-bound trains. Of course, the real benefits here come from reducing the bottlenecks at Queens Plaza and 36th Street, which means you'd be able to improve service on the , , , and , just by virtue of cleaning up the merges alone. 

Curious as to what you guys think, especially when we now see another fairly large US transit agency reevaluating and changing the way it operates service to use their infrastructure more efficiently. 

San Francisco should be an interesting case study.  But the general approach is to make it better operationally better for the trains so that the Market street tunnel can run efficiently.  But the cost of doing that is to force more people to transfer.

As stated by others, we can see if this works.  Certainly in some circumstances, you can employ some elements of deinterlining in the NYC subway system at the cost of increasing a transfer on the trip of some passengers.  Many threads in the past on this forum (including mine) have provided some suggestions on doing so.

I guess the lesson from SF is that you can't push five services down the same tunnel.  Some service streamlining is necessary.  NY should proabably do something similar.

[Union Tpke]

On 6/29/2020 at 5:00 PM, danig1220 said:

The next stop is Rockaway Park/Beach 116th Street. And then follows the shuttle to Broad Channel, and the A line to 80th Street.

The next stop is 76th Street and Pitkin.

Yes. I just did that.

[Caelestor]

12 hours ago, T to Dyre Avenue said:

But in Muni’s case, they will be ending service in the Market St subway on the J-Church, K-Ingleside and L-Taraval lines entirely. J riders will have to change for the through-routed M/T or the S-Shuttle services at Church and Market, while K and L riders will have to change for those services at West Portal. They will also be through-routing the K and L lines. I can foresee a lot of people being inconvenienced by this, especially L riders. I don’t know a lot about Muni riders’ habits, but given that the L is one of the routes still running (as a bus, as are the N-Judah and T-Third routes) and that it had an owl bus service, I think the new K/L service won’t be popular or convenient for riders. Though I have a feeling this will be temporary because once the Central Subway opens next year, the T-Third  line will be rerouted there and it won’t be able to through-route with the M-Ocean View line. Maybe some sort of long-term solution could be a crosstown light rail route or two that could allow J and/or K trains from southern SF to connect with the T and use the Central Subway instead of cramming into Market. My wife and I visited San Francisco in 2011 and I do remember trains stopping between stations a lot. 

Now, bringing this back home, at least the  swap won’t result in any shuttle routes like in San Francisco. It will do away two of the three merges in the Queens Plaza/36th St area that cause QBL service to get so messed up all the time. But it will result in a sharp service cut at 21st St-Queensbridge and Roosevelt Island, because  trains are limited to eight 60-foot cars and current run only 8-9 tph during rush. Either they run the  more frequently to make up for the shorter trains. Also you would now have all express service going via 53rd and potentially overwhelming Lex/53rd, which was the case in the past (pre-  train era). Though I do like the idea of doing away with the  merge at 36th and the  merge at Queens Plaza. Instead, there would be only an  merge at 5th Ave (aside from the  merge at Queens Plaza, which we’ve already got).

On the other hand, I’ve got to wonder if this swap will be scrapped entirely because Corona. I recall reading they were looking to start it in April, but with the ginormous Corona-related deficit staring the MTA in the face, I wonder if they’ll even bother now.

The J Church is probably gone from the subway forever because it runs only one car and doesn't serve half of the busy Market St / Twin Peaks Tunnel stations. Plus with the delays at Duboce Portal, transfering to the underground station at Church and Market isn't a huge time difference overall.

I can see the L Taraval returning to Market St when ridership rebounds because transfer volumes at West Portal may be too much. The K Ingleside, which runs only one car trains, really shouldn't be entering the subway but trains can't easily turn near West Portal; hence why the K and L will be interlined when really the J and K should be the ones combined.

The  swap is an interesting idea that I hadn't heard of, but it trades the problem of too many merges along Queens Blvd for a 40 percent capacity cut along the 63 St line, which really should be avoided. I think the only real solution is to take the  off QBL to add more trains through 53 St and 63 St. As for the , there's a deinterlined Astoria - Bay Ridge line (with QBL - Whitehall St short turns) just waiting to be used...

[danig1220]

3 hours ago, Union Tpke said:

The next stop is 76th Street and Pitkin.

Yes. I just did that.

Then follow the path of the Fulton El to Broadway Junction  . Express trains go straight to Atlantic Avenue , then use a viaduct to Broadway Junction  

[Union Tpke]

25 minutes ago, danig1220 said:

Then follow the path of the Fulton El to Broadway Junction  . Express trains go straight to Atlantic Avenue , then use a viaduct to Broadway Junction  

Did my joke just go over your head?

[danig1220]

14 minutes ago, Union Tpke said:

Did my joke just go over your head?

I did not realize it was a joke.

I will still accept that stop, and those after it.

[mrsman]

11 hours ago, Caelestor said:

The J Church is probably gone from the subway forever because it runs only one car and doesn't serve half of the busy Market St / Twin Peaks Tunnel stations. Plus with the delays at Duboce Portal, transfering to the underground station at Church and Market isn't a huge time difference overall.

I can see the L Taraval returning to Market St when ridership rebounds because transfer volumes at West Portal may be too much. The K Ingleside, which runs only one car trains, really shouldn't be entering the subway but trains can't easily turn near West Portal; hence why the K and L will be interlined when really the J and K should be the ones combined.

The  swap is an interesting idea that I hadn't heard of, but it trades the problem of too many merges along Queens Blvd for a 40 percent capacity cut along the 63 St line, which really should be avoided. I think the only real solution is to take the  off QBL to add more trains through 53 St and 63 St. As for the , there's a deinterlined Astoria - Bay Ridge line (with QBL - Whitehall St short turns) just waiting to be used...

I agree with your assessment on San Francisco.  I would hope that the J-Church could be combined with the F-Market to allow for the people on Church to have direct access to the surface trolley route into Downtown SF.  The J passengers could also still transfer to the underground lines for a faster trip.  [At crowded times, J passengers may avoid the subway and stay on the surface routing on Market.]  I could also see L-Taraval going back into the tunnel (and maybe replacing the S).  It would mean three tunnel services (instead of the old 5):  L-Taraval to Embarcardero, M-Ocean View/T-Third combination as proposed by SFMTA, N-Judah to Caltrain as currently exists (pre-COVID).  Perhaps the K-Ingleside can be bustituted.  Five services was simply too much for this tunnel, especially if three of them turned back at Embarcardero.

 swap can work if the number of trains servicing each line gets adjusted.  I agree that we do not want to cut service drastically on 63rd.  You can still run some trains to QBL, but perhaps fewer  and to allow more   and   and .  The extra   do not need to go to Brooklyn, they can go to 2 Ave/Houston and terminate there.  Alternatively, the extra  can be called  or  and provide extra Culver service.  The extra  can be full length trains if they do not go to the Williamsburg Bridge.

The idea is that the every QBL express will continue onto 53rd, and conversely every 53rd train continues onto QBL express.  This will eliminate significant merging delays for the express trains.  

I would say the following may work:

 18 TPH, 12 TPH to Jamaica Center, 6 TPH express to 179th

  12 TPH

  13 TPH, 10 TPH to Middle Village, 3 TPH to 2nd/Houston

   7 TPH

 (or local  ) to be increased by 4 TPH to maintain existing service on Broadway local.

If I were to address issues on Broadway as well, I would have  service, at 14 TPH, be the sole Astoria service.  R would terminate at Whitehall and W would continue to Bay Ridge.  Ideally, the service pattern on the Broadway local would be: W,W,R ,W,W,R.

 would be a Broadway express and go to 96th/2 Ave.

[CenSin]

On 6/25/2020 at 2:39 PM, bobtehpanda said:

On 6/24/2020 at 7:15 AM, mrsman said:

Stuff like this already happens on highways.  You can pull up Google Maps or waze and see that construction and accidents get reported and you can see the exact locations of such incidents.  No reason that something similar couldn't be shown on a digital map and on the MTA's website. 

Whether the MTA is interested in developing this (or working with a contractor to develop this) is another story.

Google is a large, profitable multi-billion dollar company that lives and breathes tech and relies on partnerships with DOTs, individual commuters, and millions of phones with their software. They didn't do this as a charity.

None of these things is true of the MTA.

But you see, the MTA is already doing a lot of this work:

Only the information is haphazard, inconsistently structured, and often only found on its Twitter feed.

It doesn’t need to be an all-or-nothing job, but incrementally upgraded similar to how well-designed web pages have progressive enhancement. This is work that the MTA is already doing that could be diverted to such a project:

• Subway schedules
• Text maps for subway lines
• The weekender ← The MTA can start here since it already exists and manages to keep it maintained.
• GTFS feeds
• Subway countdown clocks
• Interactive kiosks on platforms ← The MTA can roll out the new digital maps to them first (depending on whether that possess network update capability).
• NYCTSubway on Twitter

 

Edited July 2, 2020 by CenSin

[T to Dyre Avenue]

On 7/1/2020 at 9:47 AM, Caelestor said:

The J Church is probably gone from the subway forever because it runs only one car and doesn't serve half of the busy Market St / Twin Peaks Tunnel stations. Plus with the delays at Duboce Portal, transfering to the underground station at Church and Market isn't a huge time difference overall.

I can see the L Taraval returning to Market St when ridership rebounds because transfer volumes at West Portal may be too much. The K Ingleside, which runs only one car trains, really shouldn't be entering the subway but trains can't easily turn near West Portal; hence why the K and L will be interlined when really the J and K should be the ones combined.

The  swap is an interesting idea that I hadn't heard of, but it trades the problem of too many merges along Queens Blvd for a 40 percent capacity cut along the 63 St line, which really should be avoided. I think the only real solution is to take the  off QBL to add more trains through 53 St and 63 St. As for the , there's a deinterlined Astoria - Bay Ridge line (with QBL - Whitehall St short turns) just waiting to be used...

Agreed about the J-Church and K-Ingleside. One long-term idea I thought about is to combine them (they have been before, most recently during a 2018 Twin Peaks tunnel closure) and have them run crosstown via San Jose Avenue, Guerrero St and Cesar Chavez St, then merge onto Third St and operate into the new Central Subway alongside the T-Third. This would free up considerable capacity in the Market St/Twin Peaks Subway for the L-Taraval, M-Ocean View and N-Judah routes. The L and M would terminate at Embarcadero and the N would continue to 4th St/Caltrain as now.

As for the  swap, yes, I’m concerned about cutting service to Roosevelt Island and Queensbridge by 40 percent. Then again, it is just two stops. I think running the  Astoria-Bay Ridge and the  as a Forest Hills-Whitehall short turn (provided the  is not also still running to Astoria because that will suppress  frequency and still force merging delays at 34th) would be a big improvement over the current setup.

13 hours ago, mrsman said:

I agree with your assessment on San Francisco.  I would hope that the J-Church could be combined with the F-Market to allow for the people on Church to have direct access to the surface trolley route into Downtown SF.  The J passengers could also still transfer to the underground lines for a faster trip.  [At crowded times, J passengers may avoid the subway and stay on the surface routing on Market.]  I could also see L-Taraval going back into the tunnel (and maybe replacing the S).  It would mean three tunnel services (instead of the old 5):  L-Taraval to Embarcardero, M-Ocean View/T-Third combination as proposed by SFMTA, N-Judah to Caltrain as currently exists (pre-COVID).  Perhaps the K-Ingleside can be bustituted.  Five services was simply too much for this tunnel, especially if three of them turned back at Embarcardero.

 swap can work if the number of trains servicing each line gets adjusted.  I agree that we do not want to cut service drastically on 63rd.  You can still run some trains to QBL, but perhaps fewer  and to allow more   and   and .  The extra   do not need to go to Brooklyn, they can go to 2 Ave/Houston and terminate there.  Alternatively, the extra  can be called  or  and provide extra Culver service.  The extra  can be full length trains if they do not go to the Williamsburg Bridge.

The idea is that the every QBL express will continue onto 53rd, and conversely every 53rd train continues onto QBL express.  This will eliminate significant merging delays for the express trains.  

I would say the following may work:

 18 TPH, 12 TPH to Jamaica Center, 6 TPH express to 179th

  12 TPH

  13 TPH, 10 TPH to Middle Village, 3 TPH to 2nd/Houston

   7 TPH

 (or local  ) to be increased by 4 TPH to maintain existing service on Broadway local.

If I were to address issues on Broadway as well, I would have  service, at 14 TPH, be the sole Astoria service.  R would terminate at Whitehall and W would continue to Bay Ridge.  Ideally, the service pattern on the Broadway local would be: W,W,R ,W,W,R.

 would be a Broadway express and go to 96th/2 Ave.

Agree on the QBL related service changes. I’m flexible on the letters since Astoria riders are already familiar with the  and QB riders are already familiar with the . The  hasn’t served Astoria since 1987, although it has always served Bay Ridge. But so far, it seems that whatever idea Transit proposed is dealing solely with swapping the ‘s and ’s tunnels, and Broadway service would likely be dealt with separately, even though Broadway and QBL are interconnected. Though if there are extra  trains via 63rd that can’t go to Metropolitan because there isn’t enough capacity on the Willy B, call them  if they short turn at 2nd Ave and  if they continue onto Brooklyn via the . It would be very confusing to have  service via 53rd and  service alongside the  via 63rd.

For Muni, I was also thinking maybe the J-Church could join the F-Market line on the surface. But I don’t think Muni has enough historic trolleys for both the F and the full J line, plus the E-Embarcadero line. But I don’t know if the current Breda and Siemens LRVs can use old-school trolley poles to collect power on Market St. I seem to recall reading that in the Muni Metro era, PCC cars divert over the J to Balboa Park Yard for servicing. But I’ve only read of one instance where Muni ran an LRV on the Market St surface tracks with a trolley pole. It was a Boeing LRV (which probably used much less juice than the current LRVs do) and it was for some sort of special event. Maybe one solution can be to split the J route at 30th and Church, where the original Church portion of the route can run with PCC cars (there might be enough for that), while the San Jose segment is through routed with the K and turns onto Guerrero, Cesar Chavez and Third and runs into the new Central Subway. Guerrero and Cesar Chavez are wide “stroads,” which should easily be able to host dedicated LRV lanes. And it would be a shame to run just one service in the new subway, while five services cram into the existing subway, or having to turn two of those services into glorified streetcar lines 

Edited July 2, 2020 by T to Dyre Avenue

[bobtehpanda]

2 hours ago, CenSin said:

But you see, the MTA is already doing a lot of this work:

Only the information is haphazard, inconsistently structured, and often only found on its Twitter feed.

It doesn’t need to be an all-or-nothing job, but incrementally upgraded similar to how well-designed web pages have progressive enhancement. This is work that the MTA is already doing that could be diverted to such a project:

• Subway schedules
• Text maps for subway lines
• The weekender ← The MTA can start here since it already exists and manages to keep it maintained.
• GTFS feeds
• Subway countdown clocks
• Interactive kiosks on platforms ← The MTA can roll out the new digital maps to them first (depending on whether that possess network update capability).
• NYCTSubway on Twitter

 

The difference is that well-designed web pages are created by teams of people making well above median income, if not above six figure salaries, and the MTA is not paying people that much.

At least some of the work you're describing is actually being farmed out to contractors, which, one, contractors generally do not play well with each other and two, generally do not make their work reusable because then the MTA has to pay them more to fix work. Also contractor code is crap and working with it is equivalent to trying to read a book with dried up soda sticking the sheets together.

[Bklyn Bound 2 Local]

weekender dont got no M to 96 st tho

[T to Dyre Avenue]

It shouldn’t. The  doesn’t go there anymore. It hasn’t since the work was finished in the  train tubes. Weekends,  is cut back to Essex now.

Edited July 2, 2020 by T to Dyre Avenue

[Bay Ridge Express]

11 hours ago, CenSin said:

Text maps for subway lines

Wow! I just randomly clicked on the   one and it took me to the old site map...   have also not yet been updated. But yeah, I do expect them all to.

Edited July 3, 2020 by Bay Ridge Express

[LGA Link N Train]

1 hour ago, Bay Ridge Express said:

Wow! I just randomly clicked on the   one and it took me to the old site map...   have also not yet been updated. But yeah, I do expect them all to.

There was a certain period of time where the  website left it outdated to the point where you could view the  train route. 

[Bklyn Bound 2 Local]

19 hours ago, T to Dyre Avenue said:

It shouldn’t. The  doesn’t go there anymore. It hasn’t since the work was finished in the  train tubes. Weekends,  is cut back to Essex now.

Oh, I didn't know that. I haven't ridden the subway since the midway through the closure

[bobtehpanda]

On 6/30/2020 at 8:11 PM, mrsman said:

 

San Francisco should be an interesting case study.  But the general approach is to make it better operationally better for the trains so that the Market street tunnel can run efficiently.  But the cost of doing that is to force more people to transfer.

As stated by others, we can see if this works.  Certainly in some circumstances, you can employ some elements of deinterlining in the NYC subway system at the cost of increasing a transfer on the trip of some passengers.  Many threads in the past on this forum (including mine) have provided some suggestions on doing so.

I guess the lesson from SF is that you can't push five services down the same tunnel.  Some service streamlining is necessary.  NY should proabably do something similar.

You can push five services down the tunnel, but the issue is Embarcadero's terminal is crap (terminating trains get in the way of non-terminating ones) and they terminate three services at the same terminal. SEPTA has one loop that all the trains turn at and the Green Line in Boston has terminals separate from the through running tracks.

[engineerboy6561]

On 7/3/2020 at 1:59 PM, bobtehpanda said:

You can push five services down the tunnel, but the issue is Embarcadero's terminal is crap (terminating trains get in the way of non-terminating ones) and they terminate three services at the same terminal. SEPTA has one loop that all the trains turn at and the Green Line in Boston has terminals separate from the through running tracks.

Looking at the track map for that just makes me sad; it would make far more sense to have the Muni level have four tracks; trains on the outer tracks could turn at a loop that drops a level down between the BART tracks and tracks to the eastern portal, while trains on the inner tracks would continue on to the T third St. Alternately, that loop could also have connections to a few storage tracks under Bierman Park if you wanted to be able to lay trains up there.