Fix & Fortify - 14th Street (L Train) Tunnels Closure

[T to Dyre Avenue]

It’s true! So close, yet so far away. But that’s what you get when you have what originally were three separate systems.

[bobtehpanda]

Yeah, another set of Atlantic platforms would've been preferable to the transfer setup at Hoyt-Schermerhorn.

The BMT and IRT were well-integrated. Honestly, in the 1920s the system should've just been consolidated under the BMT and the 5 cent restriction removed.

[Lance]

But then how would Hylan have gotten his petty revenge for being fired by the BMT?

[LGA Link N Train]

Is now a good time to re extended the

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9kzpxp/the-l-train-shutdown-is-bad-news-for-queens-too

[Wallyhorse]

4 hours ago, LGA Link N train said:

Is now a good time to re extended the

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9kzpxp/the-l-train-shutdown-is-bad-news-for-queens-too

Only way you can extend the is to extend the and to 179th.  Otherwise, no way.

This is why I would encourage riders to go the other way to Fulton Street for a new OOS transfer between the at Fulton and the at Atlantic-Barclays. 

[R68OnBroadway]

18 minutes ago, Wallyhorse said:

Only way you can extend the is to extend the and to 179th.  Otherwise, no way.

This is why I would encourage riders to go the other way to Fulton Street for a new OOS transfer between the at Fulton and the at Atlantic-Barclays. 

People are going to transfer ASAP, and they certainly won't to the  , so all that will do is have people get on the  /  a stop earlier. If the  should be extended, it should be to 18th Av or Kings Highway as it fumigating at Church backs up the  .

Edited March 14, 2018 by R68OnBroadway
fixed spelling error

[officiallyliam]

1 hour ago, Wallyhorse said:

Only way you can extend the is to extend the and to 179th.  Otherwise, no way.

This is why I would encourage riders to go the other way to Fulton Street for a new OOS transfer between the at Fulton and the at Atlantic-Barclays. 

The all terminating at 179th? That would be even worse than Forest Hills is today, and the and would all be running near empty past Forest Hills; the mostly carrying air past Court Square.

The is not coming back to Queens Boulevard, unless some way was found to turn it at Queens Plaza.

The should have a transfer to Atlantic Avenue, but it is a bit far for a transfer passageway to be useful, especially transferring to the 4th Avenue lines. One alternative to this, though this would just get you a transfer to the , would be to connect Hoyt-Schermerhorn to Hoyt Street IRT. Apparently there's a disused mezzanine from H-S to Livingston Street; this could be used as part of the new connection, meaning that new construction would only be under the short block from Livingston to Fulton.

[VIP]

The  should just assume the   route after Hoyt Street to manhattan via 8 Avenue. Unless there aren’t any switches from the crosstown line...

[Amtrak706]

4 hours ago, VIP said:

The  should just assume the   route after Hoyt Street to manhattan via 8 Avenue. Unless there aren’t any switches from the crosstown line...

Unfortunately there are not any switches from the crosstown line.

[LGA Link N Train]

12 hours ago, officiallyliam said:

The is not coming back to Queens Boulevard, unless some way was found to turn it at Queens Plaza

I was slightly joking when I said that

[RR503]

17 minutes ago, Vtrain said:

The B32 bus should be extended to Grand Central Terminal via the Queens Midtown Tunnel during the L train shutdown, why hasn't anyone looked into this.

Here. I'll look into it right now. 

...and done. Conclusion: no one wants to take a unreliable, meandering local bus through a congested tunnel at rush hour into Midtown -- especially not when one of the few subway alternatives (the  to ) covers the same market better than any bus ever would. 

[officiallyliam]

11 minutes ago, Vtrain said:

The B32 bus should be extended to Grand Central Terminal via the Queens Midtown Tunnel during the L train shutdown, why hasn't anyone looked into this.

In short, because it shouldn't be. Who would take a bus from North Williamsburg to Grand Central via the Midtown Tunnel? 

If any route would be extended to Manhattan, it should be the 62, because it carries far more, but even that I'm unsure of because the Midtown Tunnel can be a nightmare, the bus route is long enough as is, and the subway has far higher potential capacity.

[officiallyliam]

11 hours ago, LGA Link N train said:

I was slightly joking when I said that

Said what? It would be great for the  to go to Queens Plaza; you'd have a cross-platform connection to the rest of Queens on the QBL and a far easier connection to Manhattan via the  than Court Square can give you. And if any form of connection is ever built between Queens Plaza and Queensboro Plaza, the  will finally have a connection to Astoria that would be useful (and would basically then have created a two-seat BQX service for a fraction of the silly streetcar) as well as another way to Manhattan via 60th Street.

There's a relatively simple way to do this; @vanshnookenraggen has detailed this on his website. It would entail building a double crossover on Crosstown between Court Square and Queens Plaza, and converting the single crossover between local and express just east of QP in to a double, thus leaving the local tracks free for terminating  trains. 

[Union Tpke]

S47009/ S32398/ S32399
COMMUNICATION BASED TRAIN CONTROL (CBTC): TWO INTERLOCKINGS AND SIGNAL OVERLAY / CULVER LINE
MORE THAN $100M

To implement Communication Based Train Control (CBTC) Overlay on the Culver Line from South of Church Ave. to north of W. 8th Street. Avenue X (part of the Culver Yard interlocking) shall become a separate interlocking and will be modernized under this contract. Ditmas Avenue interlocking will be reconfigured and modernized with reduced number of switches. Church Avenue interlocking will receive the additional switches designed into the interlocking that were never installed. Work will include:

Modification of the Auxiliary Wayside System (AWS) to support CBTC operations.

Installation of Zone Controllers at each interlocking.

Modernization of the Avenue X, the Kings Highway and the Ditmas Avenue interlockings.

Duration of Contract 59 Months

 

Now they are publicly stating what we knew.

[RR503]

1 hour ago, officiallyliam said:

There's a relatively simple way to do this; @vanshnookenraggen has detailed this on his website. It would entail building a double crossover on Crosstown between Court Square and Queens Plaza, and converting the single crossover between local and express just east of QP in to a double, thus leaving the local tracks free for terminating  trains. 

I saw that plan. The issue with it is how do you get trains onto the right platform for the ? Because it'd be using the local tracks, the next  could be departing from the Jamaica-bound side just as well as it could be doing so from the Manhattan/Brooklyn bound side. Yeah yeah you could install indicators etc, but unpredictably sending people up and over stairways to access their connections just doesn't seem operationally expedient, nor user-friendly. 

Here's one that's *really* out there. All the talk about deinterlining (specifically taking the  off of QB) got me thinking. Would it be possible to reorient the 11th st cut to send trains down the Crosstown line? It'd do the trick in terms of Manhattan access (not for the shutdown, but for the future)... And yes, I know it'd defeat the whole purpose of deinterlining, and you'd get a weird looking/long route, etc, etc, but just thought I'd throw it out to the peanut gallery could weigh in. 

Edited March 15, 2018 by RR503

[R68OnBroadway]

1 hour ago, officiallyliam said:

Said what? It would be great for the  to go to Queens Plaza; you'd have a cross-platform connection to the rest of Queens on the QBL and a far easier connection to Manhattan via the  than Court Square can give you. And if any form of connection is ever built between Queens Plaza and Queensboro Plaza, the  will finally have a connection to Astoria that would be useful (and would basically then have created a two-seat BQX service for a fraction of the silly streetcar) as well as another way to Manhattan via 60th Street.

There's a relatively simple way to do this; @vanshnookenraggen has detailed this on his website. It would entail building a double crossover on Crosstown between Court Square and Queens Plaza, and converting the single crossover between local and express just east of QP in to a double, thus leaving the local tracks free for terminating  trains. 

Extending the  to Queens Plaza will do nearly nothing to help. Without a transfer to the  , riders will opt for crowded  and  trains that will be only a little less full than at Court Sq. I doubt riders would transfer to the  , a slow and unreliable three-borough local.

[officiallyliam]

1 hour ago, RR503 said:

I saw that plan. The issue with it is how do you get trains onto the right platform for the ? Because it'd be using the local tracks, the next  could be departing from the Jamaica-bound side just as well as it could be doing so from the Manhattan/Brooklyn bound side. Yeah yeah you could install indicators etc, but unpredictably sending people up and over stairways to access their connections just doesn't seem operationally expedient, nor user-friendly.

Yeah, that is one problem with the plan. You could elect to only use one track as the terminal track, but that combined with the fact that the crossover will be far from the Queens Plaza station will inhibit the capacity of Queens Plaza as a terminal. With the two-track setup, countdown clocks will eliminate the guesswork for people entering the station, unfortunately, though, not as much for people coming off of or trains.

1 hour ago, RR503 said:

Here's one that's *really* out there. All the talk about deinterlining (specifically taking the  off of QB) got me thinking. Would it be possible to reorient the 11th st cut to send trains down the Crosstown line? It'd do the trick in terms of Manhattan access (not for the shutdown, but for the future)... And yes, I know it'd defeat the whole purpose of deinterlining, and you'd get a weird looking/long route, etc, etc, but just thought I'd throw it out to the peanut gallery could weigh in

Physically, I don't see why that couldn't work. You could cut off and realign the 11th Street Cut so it creates a flat junction with Crosstown just north of Court Square. Of course, the problem is that you're sending trains through 60th Street, which is at capacity, then down Broadway Local but has no place to terminate trains until Whitehall. You could then build a complementary connection from the unused Montague-Brighton tracks just south of DeKalb to the Fulton Crosstown stop, creating a that runs in a perfect, uninterrupted circle - kinda cool to think about, but guaranteed operational nightmare.

At the end of the day, the shouldn't go to Manhattan, but should be improved into a proper circumferential. Building transfers to the IRT at Hoyt Street and to the BMT at Broadway (ideally with a new el station to replace Hewes and Lorimer) would be a good start - from there, we should work on completing one extension that should have happened: the connection from Bedford-Nostrand to the Franklin . This creates a better "crosstown" line, where going north-south doesn't mean detouring through Downtown Brooklyn.

1 hour ago, R68OnBroadway said:

Extending the  to Queens Plaza will do nearly nothing to help. Without a transfer to the  , riders will opt for crowded  and  trains that will be only a little less full than at Court Sq. I doubt riders would transfer to the  , a slow and unreliable three-borough local.

This proposal requires the to be removed from Queens Blvd (vanshnook's proposal sends the via 63rd, which I don't agree with) in order to allow the local tracks to be available. And the is crowded, yes, but the is underused during the morning rush because of the popularity of the and , so that hopefully will be able to absorb people who want 53rd to get to Manhattan who haven't changed at Court Square. 

[LGA Link N Train]

4 minutes ago, officiallyliam said:

This proposal requires the to be removed from Queens Blvd (vanshnook's proposal sends the via 63rd, which I don't agree with) in order to allow the local tracks to be available. And the is crowded, yes, but the is underused during the morning rush because of the popularity of the and , so that hopefully will be able to absorb people who want 53rd to get to Manhattan who haven't changed at Court Square. 

which brings us to de interlining. in my opinion, deinterlining is not possible for QBL without dealing with other corridors and SAS first. but we could do it like this

Pre-SAS QBL local to forest hills

               or QBL local 

and as QBL express via 63 with going to Jamaica Center. 

Now back to the . A pretty out of this world and MOST CERTAINLY not feasible is to re-arrange the track layout at Court SQ and Queens Plaza to have trains terminate in the Middle. but under a Pre SAS timeline, it'd screw up the and the  

[officiallyliam]

15 minutes ago, LGA Link N train said:

which brings us to de interlining. in my opinion, deinterlining is not possible for QBL without dealing with other corridors and SAS first. but we could do it like this

Pre-SAS QBL local to forest hills

               or QBL local 

and as QBL express via 63 with going to Jamaica Center. 

Now back to the . A pretty out of this world and MOST CERTAINLY not feasible is to re-arrange the track layout at Court SQ and Queens Plaza to have trains terminate in the Middle. but under a Pre SAS timeline, it'd screw up the and the  

It is possible, but keeping the and in the picture doesn't help. Pre-SAS, this whole thing is easier, because the and take 2nd Avenue while and take Astoria.

The would run 179th to World Trade Center, all local, via 53rd Street.

The and would run express via 63rd, to 179 and to Jamaica Center.

The problem with this is the terminal capacity at WTC - I'm not sure what it is exactly, I'm sure it's not high, but implementing new procedures such as T/Os being ready at the front end of the train to speed turnaround could help with this.

[LGA Link N Train]

Just now, officiallyliam said:

It is possible, but keeping the and in the picture doesn't help. Pre-SAS, this whole thing is easier, because the and take 2nd Avenue while and take Astoria.

The would run 179th to World Trade Center, all local, via 53rd Street.

The and would run express via 63rd, to 179 and to Jamaica Center.

The problem with this is the terminal capacity at WTC - I'm not sure what it is exactly, I'm sure it's not high, but implementing new procedures such as T/Os being ready at the front end of the train to speed turnaround could help with this.

but QBL needs a second local. I don't want to get stuck with 15 minute headways. OR the signal's and procedures at WTC could be improved and maybe you could get an extra train or 2 per hour

[officiallyliam]

15 minutes ago, LGA Link N train said:

but QBL needs a second local. I don't want to get stuck with 15 minute headways. OR the signal's and procedures at WTC could be improved and maybe you could get an extra train or 2 per hour

Well, come on - WTC and 179th can handle a lot more than a train every 15 minutes. With a proper deinterlining plan, the will have the Queens Blvd Local, 53rd St Tunnel, and 8th Avenue Local all to itself (as the will both be express). Removing the merges means that we should be able to run very frequent service, and QBL won't need a second local.

@RR503 said in a different thread that WTC should be able to handle about 15-16 tph, or one every four minutes. I'm not sure how much this could be improved by changing the terminal procedures so T/Os board the front end of the train as soon as the doors open. 179th can handle about 24 TPH on the local tracks; based on the numbers for both WTC and 179th, the sweet spot for frequency should be around 20 TPH if we could make that possible. This would make it the same scheduled frequency as the QB Local today, but far more reliable without any merges.

[RR503]

1 hour ago, officiallyliam said:

Physically, I don't see why that couldn't work. You could cut off and realign the 11th Street Cut so it creates a flat junction with Crosstown just north of Court Square. Of course, the problem is that you're sending trains through 60th Street, which is at capacity, then down Broadway Local but has no place to terminate trains until Whitehall. You could then build a complementary connection from the unused Montague-Brighton tracks just south of DeKalb to the Fulton Crosstown stop, creating a that runs in a perfect, uninterrupted circle - kinda cool to think about, but guaranteed operational nightmare.

At the end of the day, the shouldn't go to Manhattan, but should be improved into a proper circumferential. Building transfers to the IRT at Hoyt Street and to the BMT at Broadway (ideally with a new el station to replace Hewes and Lorimer) would be a good start - from there, we should work on completing one extension that should have happened: the connection from Bedford-Nostrand to the Franklin . This creates a better "crosstown" line, where going north-south doesn't mean detouring through Downtown Brooklyn.

I meant that the Broadway-QBL connection would be severed, and s rerouted down Crosstown. Loop idea is indeed fun to think about, but you lose flexibility and sanity by doing it. IIRC @vanshnookenraggen ran through a whole bunch of ways to make the  into a loop, mostly involving Nassau st.

I'm with you on the transfers and the  connection, but I don't think that running circumferential service and providing direct core access are necessarily at odds -- you could do the 11th st thing without precluding anything you mentioned.

11 minutes ago, officiallyliam said:

@RR503 said in a different thread that WTC should be able to handle about 15-16 tph, or one every four minutes. I'm not sure how much this could be improved by changing the terminal procedures so T/Os board the front end of the train as soon as the doors open. 179th can handle about 24 TPH on the local tracks; based on the numbers for both WTC and 179th, the sweet spot for frequency should be around 20 TPH if we could make that possible. This would make it the same scheduled frequency as the QB Local today, but far more reliable without any merges.

With some switch geometry changes, and assuming good service consistency, a well-operated WTC could probably make it to 24 tph. 8th CBTC will help, of course. 

Edited March 16, 2018 by RR503

[bobtehpanda]

On 3/15/2018 at 7:08 PM, officiallyliam said:

It is possible, but keeping the and in the picture doesn't help. Pre-SAS, this whole thing is easier, because the and take 2nd Avenue while and take Astoria.

The would run 179th to World Trade Center, all local, via 53rd Street.

The and would run express via 63rd, to 179 and to Jamaica Center.

The problem with this is the terminal capacity at WTC - I'm not sure what it is exactly, I'm sure it's not high, but implementing new procedures such as T/Os being ready at the front end of the train to speed turnaround could help with this.

When I proposed this, I also had the moved to the 8th Av express, so that the mess at Canal would now be a straightforward terminal with some run through tracks.

[Wallyhorse]

On 3/15/2018 at 10:32 PM, officiallyliam said:

Well, come on - WTC and 179th can handle a lot more than a train every 15 minutes. With a proper deinterlining plan, the will have the Queens Blvd Local, 53rd St Tunnel, and 8th Avenue Local all to itself (as the will both be express). Removing the merges means that we should be able to run very frequent service, and QBL won't need a second local.

@RR503 said in a different thread that WTC should be able to handle about 15-16 tph, or one every four minutes. I'm not sure how much this could be improved by changing the terminal procedures so T/Os board the front end of the train as soon as the doors open. 179th can handle about 24 TPH on the local tracks; based on the numbers for both WTC and 179th, the sweet spot for frequency should be around 20 TPH if we could make that possible. This would make it the same scheduled frequency as the QB Local today, but far more reliable without any merges.

There is one problem with the and both being express all the way through in Manhattan: Neither would stop at 50th Street, a local-only station.  There are a lot of people specifically looking for 50th/8th who either have to go to 42nd and take the  back up OR have to take the or  to 7th Avenue for the . 

[officiallyliam]

18 hours ago, Wallyhorse said:

There is one problem with the and both being express all the way through in Manhattan: Neither would stop at 50th Street, a local-only station.  There are a lot of people specifically looking for 50th/8th who either have to go to 42nd and take the  back up OR have to take the or  to 7th Avenue for the . 

That could be handled by extending the upper level platforms at 50th across the local tracks so they meet the express ones, making 50th Street an stop.

This of course only applies to people going from Central Park West to 50th and 8th, which I'd assume is a relatively small number to begin with, and either way, would involve a cross-platform transfer: either from the to the at 59th (if 50th is modified) or the to the at 53rd and 7th.