Department of Subways - Proposals/Ideas

[youngblaze]

How about peak direction express service?

 

S/B

 

145 - 96

 

N/B

 

96 - 157

Edited September 13, 2013 by youngblaze

[Guest Lance]

Unless the idea is to add those express trains on top of the normal 1-line trains, which could be tricky with the track mergers, riders will simply be shuffled onto more crowded trains while the express flies by empty.

[realizm]

This is an interesting topic being discussed. It strikes a parallel with the question posed regarding the hypothetical   express option on the Culver Viaduct for similar reasons being that ridership demands of the local stations (which is steadily increasing apparently from annual ridership statistics) that the trains will bypass outweighs the benefits, the fact that only a few minutes will be gained as a time saving advantage, if any, and that the cars will be empty and the service underused. Which was exactly why the was discontinued in 2005.

[Guest Lance]

The difference here is, nobody's clamoring for the return of the 9, whether it's skip-stop or express. There are too many local stations with high ridership along the 1-line to warrant express service on upper Broadway. For example, you've got both City College and Columbia University with "local" stations serving both campuses.

[realizm]

I think that's understood. What I meant by how the two threads strikes parallels is strictly in terms of conceptual ideas that were intelligently considered. I don't think the intention of my post as I wrote it was to imply that this discussion was going on as a debate as you may be unintentionally insinuating. Key word, unintentional.

 

As for your point regarding local stations with high ridership that was exactly what I stated in my previous post. Which was why I alluded to the express theory as a parallel even though we are talking about skip/stop service and not a straight shot express, either way many high passenger ridership stations will be under-served. I mentioned already I looked at the annual ridership patterns previous to my response and clearly saw that there has been steady increases in ridership since 2005 when the was discontinued as I was saying.

Edited September 14, 2013 by realizm

[overclocked]

On top of that, there are terminal capacity limits on both ends of the line (esp. 242nd), which would prohibit any sensible service increase to counterweight the increased wait times at local stations. 

[Quill Depot]

Lance and Pond are right on point.

[Airplanepilotgod8888]

I got an idea! why not recommission the train to run express from south ferry and terminate at 96 street station and back. And to solve to crowding before 96 street have the or trains run local and when they get to 96 street they switch back on to there normal tracks and go on there way. Does any one agree with me?          

[realizm]

And I never questioned it.

I was reinforcing their points.

[Fresh Pond]

Besides, all those trains became extra trains during rush hours...

[Grand Concourse]

I think that's understood. What I meant by how the two threads strikes parallels is strictly in terms of conceptual ideas that were intelligently considered. I don't think the intention of my post as I wrote it was to imply that this discussion was going on as a debate as you may be unintentionally insinuating. Key word, unintentional.

 

As for your point regarding local stations with high ridership that was exactly what I stated in my previous post. Which was why I alluded to the express theory as a parallel even though we are talking about skip/stop service and not a straight shot express, either way many high passenger ridership stations will be under-served. I mentioned already I looked at the annual ridership patterns previous to my response and clearly saw that there has been steady increases in ridership since 2005 when the was discontinued as I was saying.

At least with the F, it was designed with full express service in mind. The express tracks on the 1 are useless and need to merge back on the local to serve a station. But the analogy isn't that far off and true to a point.

[realizm]

Now that you mention express tracks I think the original idea with the IRT engineers as to why they designed the West Side line that way with three tracks between 145th and 96th Street when it was built in the very early 20th century was as feeder lines out of the underground 137th Street yard. The H system was not yet in place when the original IRT subway was in full force by 1908 on the West Side Line and we had local and express service running express south of 96th Street from the West Side, requiring provisions that can be used to quickly put trains in service.

 

Another popular theory is that the middle tracks was only considered late during it's construction as the UWS and Inwood/Washington Heights neighboorhoods at the turn of the 20th century experienced an explosion of growth. Since the groundwork, benchwalls etc was already in place the IRT engineers could not convert the West Side line what was originally designed to be built as a two track line into a full blown four track line at the last minute to compensate for passenger demand, at the time, so they simply made it three tracks.

 

Of course this is not revelant to the current population of New York today as the local stations' passenger demands are completely the opposite and necessitates all the train frequency possible negating any consideration whatsoever for even a hint of express service along the West Side IRT, let alone skip stop / service but it is interesting to think for a minute historically why the IRT built those tracks in the first place.

Edited September 14, 2013 by realizm

[Snowblock]

The Upper Broadway line was not built for express service. The middle track is there for flexibility, NOT for running express trains. That's why there aren't any express stations north of 96 St. Last I knew, the worked fine how it is. Nothing needs to be changed over there.

[4P3607]

There's no point in bringing it back unless you have the skip major transfer points. It would be ideal if a few of the stations along the Broadway line that had 3 tracks were built as an express station (So trains on the middle track could stop at one of those stations), but there are no stations like that which render the middle useless for regular service. 

 

Not only that, but since 2005 alot of the stations along the Broadway line have gone up in ridership. If they were to run the again as it ran in 2005, it would be skipping alot of busy stations and then you've have people starting to complain. Also, the during rush hour has headways of at most 5 minutes, so if the were to come back, trains would be backing up on each other with such small headways. Say you have a at 207 St, and there's a leaving Dyckman. The would have to wait for the to clear, then skip 207 St anyway, thus not saving any time at all. It's not like the / which have a greater headway at Rush hour (Every 7 minutes? Something like that). 

 

There would be no point in skipping stations between 96 St and 145 St, since all of those get very busy during rush hour. 157 isn't that busy, which could work with trains skipping. But then you'd have everything stop at 168 St again, since that gets very busy. 181, 191, Dyckman & 207 are all also very busy as well. 215, as far as I see it, has pretty low ridership. 225 has connections to Metro North, so both would have to stop at that station. 231 is also very busy with all those bus routes. 238 has low ridership too, and 242 is the last stop.

So basically, the only stations you can skip is 157 St, 215 St & 238 Street. That's 3 stations. If any more were to be skipped, people would start to complain since there would be less service.

[Vistausss]

How about we determine where the students of aforementioned local stops are heading and based on that make the a true express service for students up to the station where many students are heading? That way students have a fast express ride and the becomes less crowded.

[Airplanepilotgod8888]

How about we determine where the students of aforementioned local stops are heading and based on that make the a true express service for students up to the station where many students are heading? That way students have a fast express ride and the becomes less crowded.

Grate idea! We can call the "the student express". The is always crowded with students . Or the can use special buses to transport students...  

Edited September 14, 2013 by Airplanepilotgod8888

[Grand Concourse]

No. The express of any kind will not work on the 1. It's been explained already. Why have special bus service for them? If they need faster service, then their campus should provide it for them.

[Vistausss]

No. The express of any kind will not work on the 1. It's been explained already. Why have special bus service for them? If they need faster service, then their campus should provide it for them.

 

 

And if their campus doesn't someone has to fill the gap. In this case the but that makes it crowded so the could bring relieve.

(also, if your so fond of that opinion then please come to the NICE section and tell everyone that NICE should stop serving NCC because they need to arrange their own service)

[Via Garibaldi 8]

There's no point in bringing it back unless you have the skip major transfer points. It would be ideal if a few of the stations along the Broadway line that had 3 tracks were built as an express station (So trains on the middle track could stop at one of those stations), but there are no stations like that which render the middle useless for regular service. 

 

Not only that, but since 2005 alot of the stations along the Broadway line have gone up in ridership. If they were to run the again as it ran in 2005, it would be skipping alot of busy stations and then you've have people starting to complain. Also, the during rush hour has headways of at most 5 minutes, so if the were to come back, trains would be backing up on each other with such small headways. Say you have a at 207 St, and there's a leaving Dyckman. The would have to wait for the to clear, then skip 207 St anyway, thus not saving any time at all. It's not like the / which have a greater headway at Rush hour (Every 7 minutes? Something like that). 

 

There would be no point in skipping stations between 96 St and 145 St, since all of those get very busy during rush hour. 157 isn't that busy, which could work with trains skipping. But then you'd have everything stop at 168 St again, since that gets very busy. 181, 191, Dyckman & 207 are all also very busy as well. 215, as far as I see it, has pretty low ridership. 225 has connections to Metro North, so both would have to stop at that station. 231 is also very busy with all those bus routes. 238 has low ridership too, and 242 is the last stop.

So basically, the only stations you can skip is 157 St, 215 St & 238 Street. That's 3 stations. If any more were to be skipped, people would start to complain since there would be less service.

Part of the reason for that is that you can only board the at 238th going Downtown.  There is no way to board the at 238th going towards 242nd and the reason is that supposedly 242nd is close enough that the doesn't feel the need to allow people to board going Northbound. Also, that area is not very dense.  When I have taken the I've gotten on there a few times to avoid 231st. It's a bit more civilized since it's mainly people from Riverdale or the Riverdale boarder getting on there.

[Vistausss]

Somehow I had a feeling before reading your post that it would end with something related to Riverdale 

[Kingsbridgeviewer382]

There's no point in bringing it back unless you have the skip major transfer points. It would be ideal if a few of the stations along the Broadway line that had 3 tracks were built as an express station (So trains on the middle track could stop at one of those stations), but there are no stations like that which render the middle useless for regular service. 

 

Not only that, but since 2005 alot of the stations along the Broadway line have gone up in ridership. If they were to run the again as it ran in 2005, it would be skipping alot of busy stations and then you've have people starting to complain. Also, the during rush hour has headways of at most 5 minutes, so if the were to come back, trains would be backing up on each other with such small headways. Say you have a at 207 St, and there's a leaving Dyckman. The would have to wait for the to clear, then skip 207 St anyway, thus not saving any time at all. It's not like the / which have a greater headway at Rush hour (Every 7 minutes? Something like that). 

 

There would be no point in skipping stations between 96 St and 145 St, since all of those get very busy during rush hour. 157 isn't that busy, which could work with trains skipping. But then you'd have everything stop at 168 St again, since that gets very busy. 181, 191, Dyckman & 207 are all also very busy as well. 215, as far as I see it, has pretty low ridership. 225 has connections to Metro North, so both would have to stop at that station. 231 is also very busy with all those bus routes. 238 has low ridership too, and 242 is the last stop.

So basically, the only stations you can skip is 157 St, 215 St & 238 Street. That's 3 stations. If any more were to be skipped, people would start to complain since there would be less service.

I live near 238 Street station and its pretty busy especially during rush hours since the Bx9 doesn't help a lot and there are a lack of transit options where I live. And I used to live near 157 Street station and it is pretty busy and that's where the crowding issues starts.

[Airplanepilotgod8888]

I live near 238 Street station and its pretty busy especially during rush hours since the Bx9 doesn't help a lot and there are a lack of transit options where I live. And I used to live near 157 Street station and it is pretty busy and that's where the crowding issues starts.

The is going to get R188 cars. So the extra R62A cars can be used on the as surplus trains. 

[RollOver]

@4P3607

 

The combined runs every 5 minutes. All of the "skip-stop" stations on the BMT Jamaica Line get service every 10 minutes.

[paulrivera]

The line needs as much service as it can get. Besides, a skip-stop service optimized for current ridership wont be able to skip too many stops in the first place. IMO only 238th, Dyckman (maybe), and 145th would be effective skip-stops today. 215th would end up like Alabama Avenue on the and where its only skip stop on paper but due to the nearby employee facilities all trains would stop at 215th too. All the other stops are just too busy.

[realizm]

To clarify, I was not alluding to the fact at all that there needs to be an express service, first of all. It makes no sense, and is not applicable to today's needs. I was only wondering why the line was built with 3 tracks, that's it! Some sources states that it was a last minute change in construction by the IRT from articles published at the turn of the century  (we are talking about over 100 years ago, historically before the H system was complete) which was where I was getting at here. 

 

Snowblock confirmed my other guess that it was indeed for flexibility purposes, which was what I was thinking as the track runs into 137th Street yard, and most likely served as a feeder line for the IRT West Side, very likely at some point in time during the 20th century. I don't recall if T/Ds actually arrange for use of that middle track even for put ins, never seen it, let alone actual express service, which is a moot point. Historically? Probably.

Edited September 15, 2013 by realizm