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Department of Subways - Proposals/Ideas


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....but why, on so many levels?

  • Rational human beings within walking distance of the (J)(M)(L) will walk to those trains and head to Midtown rather than taking a scenic route through LIC
  • Rational human beings south of Bedford-Nostrand will probably head to the (A)(C) 
  • A nontrivial fraction of the remainder will likely transfer at Lorimer/Broadway/Court Square to services whose Midtown catchment isn't half parkland

Circumferential routes like the (G) should be permitted to act as circumferentials; I would hope that much had been made clear by the IND's underprovision of Manhattan capacity to the (radial) Queens Boulevard line. If you need to extend the (G), run it up 21 St, where its utility as a circumferential can be enhanced with the (F) connection/where it can capture a relatively busy bus corridor. Moreover, I find it...questionable that we're trying to give the (G) a Manhattan tube before dealing with real system capacity issues like the shortage of subway service in Central/Eastern Queens; that's where tunnels are actually needed. 

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1 hour ago, RR503 said:

....but why, on so many levels?

  • Rational human beings within walking distance of the (J)(M)(L) will walk to those trains and head to Midtown rather than taking a scenic route through LIC
  • Rational human beings south of Bedford-Nostrand will probably head to the (A)(C) 
  • A nontrivial fraction of the remainder will likely transfer at Lorimer/Broadway/Court Square to services whose Midtown catchment isn't half parkland

Circumferential routes like the (G) should be permitted to act as circumferentials; I would hope that much had been made clear by the IND's underprovision of Manhattan capacity to the (radial) Queens Boulevard line. If you need to extend the (G), run it up 21 St, where its utility as a circumferential can be enhanced with the (F) connection/where it can capture a relatively busy bus corridor. Moreover, I find it...questionable that we're trying to give the (G) a Manhattan tube before dealing with real system capacity issues like the shortage of subway service in Central/Eastern Queens; that's where tunnels are actually needed. 

I’ll admit I may have underestimated how busy the 21st St bus corridor is. I’m not very familiar with the bus routes in Northwest Queens. I focused more on having another crosstown in Manhattan, and we really could use another Queens-Manhattan connection. But maybe as an extension of the (G) might not be the best way.

Would a 57th St crosstown corridor really have parkland as half of of its catchment area? I’m a bit surprised to read that. Even with Central Park just a few blocks to the north, it still seems like a really busy corridor, even post-Covid.

 

Edited by T to Dyre Avenue
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47 minutes ago, T to Dyre Avenue said:

I’ll admit I may have underestimated how busy the 21st St bus corridor is. I’m not very familiar with the bus routes in Northwest Queens. I focused more on having another crosstown in Manhattan, and we really could use another Queens-Manhattan connection. But maybe as an extension of the (G) might not be the best way.

However, it would be way better to extend the (G) and X trains to western Astoria than to settle for the building of a superfluous and useless BQX Streetcar which is not only overpriced, but doomed to become a white elephant after just a few years in service. Big waste of scarce state (and federal) funds and likely to only serve as a catalyst for real estate development at the expense of improving transit access for more people.

Needless to say, if the Crosstown Line is ever extended to Astoria, it would more or less mimic the originally proposed BMT routing between Queens and Brooklyn, with the planned segment connecting with Franklin Avenue more or less paralleling my X proposal.

Edited by Armandito
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12 minutes ago, T to Dyre Avenue said:

Would a 57th St crosstown corridor really have parkland as half of of its catchment area? I’m a bit surprised to read that. Even with Central Park just a few blocks to the north, it still seems like a really busy corridor, even post-Covid.

No, I was being dramatic. 57 is probably a bit further north than is best, though; job density in Midtown is strongest between 57 and 34, with the last few blocks approaching the park much more residential. 

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2 hours ago, RR503 said:

No, I was being dramatic. 57 is probably a bit further north than is best, though; job density in Midtown is strongest between 57 and 34, with the last few blocks approaching the park much more residential. 

50 is a better corridor from a density standpoint, though the problem there is most of the 50 stations except Rockefeller Center are totally local stops.

At 57 you have easy connections to every express stop save the West Side IRT. Columbus, 57-7, 57-6, and Lex-59 are all spitting distance. 

That being said, I wouldn't route such a line north after traversing on the west side, I'd send it south to Hudson Yards. And I'd do it as a double-deck L9/L10 Barcelona situation, so that eventually the (L) could also use a separate pair of tracks to head into Queens. And neither Queens end would be the (G). 

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I think both the 50 St and 57 St crosstown lines need to be built, and it comes down to what is more important - offering a large catchment to 50 St, or offering better transfers to  downtown and uptown express lines, namely the (A)(4)(5) since the (2)(3) don't stop at either 50 or 59 St. I personally favor the former (YMMV), and the missing transfers aren't as a big deal to me, because all the uptown/downtown lines have platforms that touch 50 St, compared to Columbus Circle and Lexington Ave / 59 St. As a bonus 50 St has the better alignment through the growing business district in LIC, and if connected to a brand-new Northern Blvd line, the line could be built with 21st century-standard full automation and platform screen doors.

The (G) shouldn't be running into Midtown; any East River tunnel into Queens is better off continuing east towards the seriously underserved parts of the borough. In a fantasy world, the current terminal at Court Sq would be closed and the (G) would run up 21 St, stopping at 44 Dr and 41 Ave in a Phase 1 extension. In Phase 2, it'd stop at 36 Ave, Broadway, Astoria Blvd, and Ditmars Blvd. Lastly in Phase 3, it would turn west towards Randall's Island and become the 125 St Crosstown in Manhattan for those uptown connections.

The (L) should be extended up 10 Ave to 41 St for the (7) connection. In the past, I've argued that it should continue further up to 72 St (1)(2)(3) but it may be better to send it east along 57 St. The MTA would have its hands tied by a 50 St - Northern Blvd line, and the (L) along 57 St would certainly allow for phased construction. It probably makes sense for the (L) to become the QBL bypass and allow it to take over the eastern QBL local stations full-time so that it won't conflict with the (E)(F) in the future. 

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2 hours ago, Caelestor said:

 

The (G) shouldn't be running into Midtown; any East River tunnel into Queens is better off continuing east towards the seriously underserved parts of the borough. In a fantasy world, the current terminal at Court Sq would be closed and the (G) would run up 21 St, stopping at 44 Dr and 41 Ave in a Phase 1 extension. In Phase 2, it'd stop at 36 Ave, Broadway, Astoria Blvd, and Ditmars Blvd. Lastly in Phase 3, it would turn west towards Randall's Island and become the 125 St Crosstown in Manhattan for those uptown connections.

 

I do like this idea for the (G) .  A true circumferential line should meet each radial line in the system and provide a transfer to those lines at a reasonable distance from the CBD.  What this will be would be a closer (and probably more useful) version of the Triboro Rx line.

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12 hours ago, T to Dyre Avenue said:

 

I remember in high school reading in the Times and the Daily News about the back-and-forth between the neighborhood activists and the MTA over the Franklin (S)‘s future. It really was a miracle the MTA kept and rebuilt it, even though they didn’t rebuild it to be anything more than a two-car shuttle between Franklin/Fulton and Prospect Park. I think connecting the Franklin (S) to the (G) and renaming it the X is a good idea, though I do have mixed feelings about extending it to Brighton Beach via the (Q) because I feel it would take away capacity that could be used for additional (Q) service to Manhattan, though that does depend on fixing what ails DeKalb Junction.

I think this was a unique experience, but a product of its time.  As we all know, MTA was quite happy to get rid of underperforming lines in minority neighborhoods that would be too costly to modernize.  In the 1960's and 1970's, these were the Bronx Third Ave line, The Myrtle Ave el, and the eastern end of the Jamaica el.  So it is a testament to the changing times that MTA now has to consider impacts to minority communities.  This is why the Franklin el did not suffer the same fate as those other cancelled lines.

In its current form, the (S) has very little utility.  Hopefully, an extension along the lines of Armandito's plan could make it off the drawing board.

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1 hour ago, EvilMonologue said:

How easy would it be to convert 50th St on 8th Av into an express station, and have the (A)(C) as the 8th Av express lines? Thinking about this with regard to a 50th St line. 

 

Judging by what I’ve seen, it’ll be a hard job. It’s not like they can just move the local tracks and steel beams to make room for platforms. There is a lower level which has support structures to keep the upper level from coming down. 50 Street was originally not supposed to have a lower level when it was planned. It was added by community request. Otherwise, the (E) and (A) would have run express together with the (C) going to World Trade Center.

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49 minutes ago, CenSin said:

Judging by what I’ve seen, it’ll be a hard job. It’s not like they can just move the local tracks and steel beams to make room for platforms. There is a lower level which has support structures to keep the upper level from coming down. 50 Street was originally not supposed to have a lower level when it was planned. It was added by community request. Otherwise, the (E) and (A) would have run express together with the (C) going to World Trade Center.

Would it be possible to have the (A)(C) stop at the local platforms, and build a structure connecting those tracks to the express tracks before the (E) rises from the lower level? (If that makes sense) Alternatively, would it be possible to have the (A)(C) be local on 8th Av and have the (E) and another service be express? This would make 50th at least more palatable. My concern with 57th is just how Phase 3 SAS would connect, at least since I think there should be a station around 60th - 63rd Sts to connect the (F) with 59th St station complex, and the other station would then be around 50th St, connecting to the (E) at 53rd St. Though I suppose the station could be located around 55th, it would be very close to a 61st (ish) St station. Maybe that's preferable though and an argument for 57th St.

Also, regarding the (G), I've imagined the (G) going up Crescent St after Court Sq, connecting at Queensboro Plaza, and then turning West along Queens Plaza N, then turning North to connect to the (F) at 21st St - Queensbridge. If you were to continue the (G) up 21st St and then into Manhattan, I think it should go along 86th St rather than 125th St. I think 125th St could be served by the Triboro.

 

 

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9 minutes ago, EvilMonologue said:

Would it be possible to have the (A)(C) stop at the local platforms, and build a structure connecting those tracks to the express tracks before the (E) rises from the lower level?

The lower level is visible just south of the upper level's southern end. On top of it, there are slopes in very close proximity, and the gaps between the upper level's tracks aren't designed to handle that kind of stress (and I wouldn't advise doing anything to initiate such stress, anyway).

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12 minutes ago, Armandito said:

If the (G) and X could possibly benefit from an Astoria extension via 21st Street, why not extend them further east to LaGuardia Airport too?

Because it would be better to invest that money into building a Manhattan connection (to/from LGA). 21 St and LaGuardia Airport are two different corridors that require their own respective routing.

Edited by Bay Ridge Express
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4 minutes ago, Bay Ridge Express said:

Because it would be better to invest that money into building a Manhattan connection (to/from LGA). 21 St and LaGuardia Airport are two different corridors that require their own respective routing.

In that case, have Crosstown trains terminate at the current (N)(W) terminal at Ditmars while the latter two services continue eastward via 19th Avenue toward LGA. If the BMT Astoria Line extension to the airport benefits more people, we can't let NIMBYs interfere with such plans. It's called public transportation for a reason.

Edited by Armandito
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On 8/12/2020 at 4:56 AM, Caelestor said:

I think both the 50 St and 57 St crosstown lines need to be built, and it comes down to what is more important - offering a large catchment to 50 St, or offering better transfers to  downtown and uptown express lines, namely the (A)(4)(5) since the (2)(3) don't stop at either 50 or 59 St. I personally favor the former (YMMV), and the missing transfers aren't as a big deal to me, because all the uptown/downtown lines have platforms that touch 50 St, compared to Columbus Circle and Lexington Ave / 59 St. As a bonus 50 St has the better alignment through the growing business district in LIC, and if connected to a brand-new Northern Blvd line, the line could be built with 21st century-standard full automation and platform screen doors.

The (G) shouldn't be running into Midtown; any East River tunnel into Queens is better off continuing east towards the seriously underserved parts of the borough. In a fantasy world, the current terminal at Court Sq would be closed and the (G) would run up 21 St, stopping at 44 Dr and 41 Ave in a Phase 1 extension. In Phase 2, it'd stop at 36 Ave, Broadway, Astoria Blvd, and Ditmars Blvd. Lastly in Phase 3, it would turn west towards Randall's Island and become the 125 St Crosstown in Manhattan for those uptown connections.

The (L) should be extended up 10 Ave to 41 St for the (7) connection. In the past, I've argued that it should continue further up to 72 St (1)(2)(3) but it may be better to send it east along 57 St. The MTA would have its hands tied by a 50 St - Northern Blvd line, and the (L) along 57 St would certainly allow for phased construction. It probably makes sense for the (L) to become the QBL bypass and allow it to take over the eastern QBL local stations full-time so that it won't conflict with the (E)(F) in the future. 

Going by what you and @RR503 posted about density/catchment, that does make a stronger case for a 50th crosstown, which could make landfall in Queens at 45th Ave and would put the line in a good position to connect with the lines serving Court Square. That also puts it in a good position to go further east, like onto Northern Blvd. 

23 hours ago, CenSin said:

Judging by what I’ve seen, it’ll be a hard job. It’s not like they can just move the local tracks and steel beams to make room for platforms. There is a lower level which has support structures to keep the upper level from coming down. 50 Street was originally not supposed to have a lower level when it was planned. It was added by community request. Otherwise, the (E) and (A) would have run express together with the (C) going to World Trade Center.

I guess this means something has to skip 50th St on the upper level then. Unless both the (A) and (C) run fully local (CPW and 8th) and the (E) runs express below 42nd. Then 50th/8th would be an express stop by default. But then you’d have both the (A) and (C) going to WTC. Or you’d have the (C) and (E) merging at Canal and the (E) going to Brooklyn instead of the (A).

Edited by T to Dyre Avenue
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6 minutes ago, T to Dyre Avenue said:

I guess this means something has to skip 50th St on the upper level then. Unless both the (A) and (C) run fully local (CPW and 8th) and the (E) runs express below 42nd. Then 50th/8th would be an express stop by default. But then you’d have both the (A) and (C) going to WTC. Or you’d have the (C) and (E) merging at Canal and the (E) going to Brooklyn instead of the (A).

For my ideal QB/6th/8th deinterlining, I would just have the upper level of 50th not served by any train during the daytime whatsoever. (A) and (C) trains would be the express on the whole 8th Avenue Line, and assuming that the 8th Avenue service is the main Queens Blvd Local, the (E) would be the sole 8th Avenue Local operating at 24 trains per hour, with all service at 50th Street redirected to the lower level (upper level service will still be available overnight).

 

To cope with this, I am also proposing that additional elevators and escalators be added between the Lower Level and the upper level area, which should accommodate additional crowds. I also know that direct access would be cut off between the upper 8th Avenue Local and 50th Street, so for those people, it is recommended that they take the (B) or (D) (now the Central Park West/Upper 8th Avenue Local) to 7th Avenue-53rd Street and transfer to the (E) route for 50th. Alternatively, they can use alternate stations in place such as 50th Street on the (1) or 7th Avenue-53rd Street by transferring at 59th Street-Columbus Circle.

Thats just my take on it.

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11 hours ago, JeremiahC99 said:

For my ideal QB/6th/8th deinterlining, I would just have the upper level of 50th not served by any train during the daytime whatsoever. (A) and (C) trains would be the express on the whole 8th Avenue Line, and assuming that the 8th Avenue service is the main Queens Blvd Local, the (E) would be the sole 8th Avenue Local operating at 24 trains per hour, with all service at 50th Street redirected to the lower level (upper level service will still be available overnight).

 

To cope with this, I am also proposing that additional elevators and escalators be added between the Lower Level and the upper level area, which should accommodate additional crowds. I also know that direct access would be cut off between the upper 8th Avenue Local and 50th Street, so for those people, it is recommended that they take the (B) or (D) (now the Central Park West/Upper 8th Avenue Local) to 7th Avenue-53rd Street and transfer to the (E) route for 50th. Alternatively, they can use alternate stations in place such as 50th Street on the (1) or 7th Avenue-53rd Street by transferring at 59th Street-Columbus Circle.

Thats just my take on it.

Is that necessary?  Let's say that all CPW expresses run to 8th Ave and all CPW locals run to 6th Ave.  Starting from Columbus Circle, heading south, once the (B)(D) migrates onto 53rd, can the (A)(C) merge onto the upper level local track to then serve 50th street and then along the upper tracks merge back to the express before 42nd so as not to interfere with the (E) train.  There may not be switches for this operation right now, but if you are going through the trouble of a new crosstown subway at 50th, you might as well add some switches if it will allow for transfers to the 8th Ave express.

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2 hours ago, mrsman said:

can the (A)(C) merge onto the upper level local track to then serve 50th street and then along the upper tracks merge back to the express before 42nd so as not to interfere with the (E) train.  There may not be switches for this operation right now, but if you are going through the trouble of a new crosstown subway at 50th, you might as well add some switches if it will allow for transfers to the 8th Ave express.

Not possible. The upper and lower level platforms are offset because space is so tight. The curve from 53 Street is just north of the station, so the lower level is offset south relative to the north. Going south, the lower level rises immediately to meet with the upper level. The upper level is offset north relative to the lower level, but the local tracks veer away from the express tracks to make way for the ramp from the lower level. You can see down into the lower level through the widening gap, meaning there is no support to carry the weight of trains crossing between the local and express tracks, not to mention all the support columns there.

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There's been talk about a new subway line along Utica Avenue for decades, but rather than create a new trunk line for it, why not just connect it to the (L) in Williamsburg and have it run to the Eighth Avenue terminal? This could be an ideal way to reroute rush-hour short-turns at Myrtle-Wyckoff Avenues, too.

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1 hour ago, Armandito said:

There's been talk about a new subway line along Utica Avenue for decades, but rather than create a new trunk line for it, why not just connect it to the (L) in Williamsburg and have it run to the Eighth Avenue terminal? This could be an ideal way to reroute rush-hour short-turns at Myrtle-Wyckoff Avenues, too.

Demand on the (L) is extremely heavy; adding more people onto already-crowded trains moving through some of the few NYC neighborhoods that are legitimately growing is a recipe for lots of pain down the line. We're better off doing a connection to Eastern Pkwy. 

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