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Light Rail in NYC?


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9 minutes ago, Deucey said:

I thought that got axed, or was that the 34th Street one?

The vision42 proposal is an independent thing which has never been officially brought forth by the city. The 34th Street transitway was the DOT's original M34 SBS proposal, and would have created a two-way busway across 34th Street, with car traffic flowing westbound west of 6th Avenue and eastbound east of 5th; 5th to 6th Avenues would be a pedestrian area and busway in the style of the Fulton Mall. That proposal was shot down, mainly by east-side community boards, which led to the implementation of M34 SBS as we know it.

Here's a link to the DOT presentation:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/brt/downloads/pdf/100503-brt-cb5-34th-street-transitway.pdf

and the vision42 website:

http://vision42.org/

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On 5/16/2018 at 7:22 PM, KK 6 Ave Local said:

For the Union Tpke one, could you extend it to the Jackie Robinson Parkway to, say, Alabama Avenue (J)(Z) or Bway Junction?

Why not have the residents of both sides of the ROW vote on your proposal ? It would be very interesting to say the least 😁 . Carry on 

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2 minutes ago, Trainmaster5 said:

Why not have the residents of both sides of the ROW vote on your proposal ? It would be very interesting to say the least 😁 . Carry on 

Given the way they reacted to using a railroad ROW in existence, and how much they hated the Lower Montauk, running a new one through Forest Park would probably be the end of days for those people.

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2 hours ago, bobtehpanda said:

Given the way they reacted to using a railroad ROW in existence, and how much they hated the Lower Montauk, running a new one through Forest Park would probably be the end of days for those people.

True. Why don't they like it tho? It's more service I guess unless they react to any service like the 20s-60s people reacted to those els

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8 hours ago, KK 6 Ave Local said:

True. Why don't they like it tho? It's more service I guess unless they react to any service like the 20s-60s people reacted to those els

Railroads and subways are loud as hell. They're scientifically proven to make your hearing worse. Light rail isn't much better on that front either.

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Light Rail Idea 

Jamaica Sutphin Bl to Vernon Bl 

Stops: 

Vernon Bl  Subway Connection (7)

Maspeth Av 

Eliot Av 

Metropolitan Av Subway Connection (M)

Woodhaven Blvd 

Lefferts Bl Subway Connection (J)

130 St 

Jamaica Sutphin Bl Subway Connection (E)(J)(Z) LIRR JFK AirTrain

Edited by A Former New Yorker
Needed to add emojis
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  • 10 months later...

I don't understand why they have to be different topics. They're both trains on a track, except the trains are different sizes and sometimes one run on the street.

The American way of pigeonholing different transit concepts has got to be one of the dumbest things. Trams in Europe can be, and often are, a mix of sections that you might call a subway, light rail, or a streetcar.

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18 hours ago, bobtehpanda said:

Trams in Europe can be, and often are, a mix of sections that you might call a subway, light rail, or a streetcar.

Even in the US they can be like that. I just went to Portland, and the MAX trains both run on the street in downtown, with fairly frequent stops, and also on dedicated ROWs outside of downtown, with further station spacing. I remember in San Francisco the Muni Metro also ran in a tunnel under Market Street, but ran on the surface like a streetcar route outside of downtown. I know the MBTA's Green Line also does this on one of the branches, with other branches running on dedicated ROWs

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  • 2 months later...

I think the Q10 and Q46 corridors would be good candidates for light rail, but they’d probably have to be put into a short subway in Kew Gardens to facilitate a transfer to the (E)(F) and avoid the madness that is the infamous Kew Interchange. The other two routes appear to piggy back onto existing subway lines (the Rockaway (A) and (M)). That could limit their frequency, as well as that for the (A) and (M). For those routes, you’d also need high floor LRVs that could possibly draw power from the existing third rail or erect overhead wires over the active subway tracks. 

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On 6/24/2019 at 6:39 PM, T to Dyre Avenue said:

I think the Q10 and Q46 corridors would be good candidates for light rail, but they’d probably have to be put into a short subway in Kew Gardens to facilitate a transfer to the (E)(F) and avoid the madness that is the infamous Kew Interchange. The other two routes appear to piggy back onto existing subway lines (the Rockaway (A) and (M)). That could limit their frequency, as well as that for the (A) and (M). For those routes, you’d also need high floor LRVs that could possibly draw power from the existing third rail or erect overhead wires over the active subway tracks. 

Nice ideas, but have you also considered having the Light Rail vehicles run on something I found called the Bombardier Primove system. The Bombardier Primove system is a system that eliminates the need to install hideous and ugly and unsightly catenary wires through the urban area and moves the power to underneath the tracks. For moer information, check out this link here: https://www.railway-technology.com/projects/bombardier-primove-light-rail-trams-germany/

I also recommend you check these old videos out about the technology in general:

And on that note, another corridor that I feel that is ripe for this is on Fulton Street in Downtown Brooklyn between Flatbush Avenue and Adams Street. Its simple. With a new bus terminal near Ashland and Lafayette, bus routes currently using Fulton and Livingston would terminate there, and in its place, primove powered vehicles (which would operate every 3 minutes) would travel via the Fulton Mall, then through Borough Hall Park past the Brooklyn Borough Hall to the Brooklyn Bridge Park. This corridor, while replacing bus service, would be ripe for light rail because the infrastructure for Primove and Light Rail is already there, as Fulton Mall is already closed to non bus traffic.

Ideally the Fulton Mall and Bus Terminal should be part of a larger plan for light rail/tram/streetcar in Brooklyn and Manhattan, with connecting routes to Red Hook and the Waterfront. The Navy Yard route should also tie into the Fulton Mall Bus terminal route by going south on Ashland Street from the Navy Yard and serving the terminal and Fulton Mall in one spur. The Navy Yard route also ideally serve the Dumbo as well. There should also be a light rail route that can serve Bay Ridge along 3rd Avenue (B37) and maybe one going into Manhattan via the Brooklyn or Manhattan Bridges. However, all for this is another day.

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3 hours ago, JeremiahC99 said:

Nice ideas, but have you also considered having the Light Rail vehicles run on something I found called the Bombardier Primove system. The Bombardier Primove system is a system that eliminates the need to install hideous and ugly and unsightly catenary wires through the urban area and moves the power to underneath the tracks. For moer information, check out this link here: https://www.railway-technology.com/projects/bombardier-primove-light-rail-trams-germany/

I also recommend you check these old videos out about the technology in general:

And on that note, another corridor that I feel that is ripe for this is on Fulton Street in Downtown Brooklyn between Flatbush Avenue and Adams Street. Its simple. With a new bus terminal near Ashland and Lafayette, bus routes currently using Fulton and Livingston would terminate there, and in its place, primove powered vehicles (which would operate every 3 minutes) would travel via the Fulton Mall, then through Borough Hall Park past the Brooklyn Borough Hall to the Brooklyn Bridge Park. This corridor, while replacing bus service, would be ripe for light rail because the infrastructure for Primove and Light Rail is already there, as Fulton Mall is already closed to non bus traffic.

Ideally the Fulton Mall and Bus Terminal should be part of a larger plan for light rail/tram/streetcar in Brooklyn and Manhattan, with connecting routes to Red Hook and the Waterfront. The Navy Yard route should also tie into the Fulton Mall Bus terminal route by going south on Ashland Street from the Navy Yard and serving the terminal and Fulton Mall in one spur. The Navy Yard route also ideally serve the Dumbo as well. There should also be a light rail route that can serve Bay Ridge along 3rd Avenue (B37) and maybe one going into Manhattan via the Brooklyn or Manhattan Bridges. However, all for this is another day.

How many times are you going to try to push that bullshit?

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In this day and age, light rail construction works best when a neighborhood is built from the ground up. I'm thinking of the Hudson-Bergan Light Rail. When it was built, Jersey City and Bayonne had the capacity (space) to build it w/o traffic or NIMBY concerns.

As for having light rail on the Q10 and Q46, it's not ideal. The Q10 corridor in Kew Gardens and Richmond Hill is too crowded. Also, what happens if the bus has to go off route due to construction or an accident? As for the Q46, they should stay with the 40 ft vehicles and assign more drivers and buses to the route. Also, I could see quite a bit of opposition to any additional road construction on Union Tpke...esp the further east one gets from Kew Gardens.

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