Power for the MTA: RPA, 1977

[GojiMet86]

Power for the MTA: An examination of future ridership, service, and electric power requirements for Metropolitan Transportation Authority facilities (1977)

 

I acquired this some months ago, but it was only a few weeks ago that I opened and looked at it. This was a look by the Regional Plan Association at future ridership, and electricity requirements needed by any future proposals, all within the context of declining ridership to the CBD and low oil prices. A lot of the  book is about electricity requirements. There were plans for both making new lines and getting rid of many elevateds. There is also some discussion of the very slow pace of construction.

 

I'll scan this at a later date, but here are the fun tidbits:

 

Subway Proposals:

FIRST Priority

• Archer Avenue (as it is, 121 St to Jamaica Center).
• 63rd Street (built).
• Queens Bypass (planned; never built).

 

Second Priority

• South East Queens (extending the IND Archer Avenue to SE Queens; never built).
• Second Avenue subway (sections were being built).
• Bronx Bypass (a little unclear just by looking at the map, but it was likely connecting the Pelham line to East 180th Street. If not, then the Second Avenue line).

 

Possible Future Expansions/Contractions:

1. Rego Park Spur (hooking up IND Queens Blvd to Rockaway line; Rego Park to Liberty Avenue).
2. JFK Airport Spur (IND Howard Beach to JFK Airport).
3. 101st Street subway (extension of IND Fulton line to 134th Street and Archer Avenue; getting rid of remaining Fulton El AND BMT Jamaica El east of ENY; have that be the lower level of the Archer Avenue subway).
4. Relocation of the Canarsie Elevated (moving it on the LIRR Bay Ridge line and extending it to Utica Avenue; getting rid of old elevated).
5. Replacement of McDonald Avenue Elevated (Church Avenue to 22 Avenue/Bay Parkway; getting rid of remaining Culver El).
6. Gateway NRA Spur (Spur of McDonald Avenue subway to Floyd Bennett Field).
7. Staten Island Link via Bayonne (Second  Avenue line; Water Street to St. George)
8. Replacement of IRT Broadway Elevated with IND 8th Avenue extension (207th Street to 240th Street).
9. Replacement of IRT Woodlawn/Jerome Elevated (above 161st Street to Woodlawn; new terminal at 161st Street and Harlem River).
10. Central Bronx route (replacement of IRT Wakefield line from 149th Street to East 180th Street with subway, presumably IRT, via 3rd Avenue).
11. Second Avenue Bronx extension via Penn Central/Amtrak from Bronx River to Co-Op City).
12. Replacement of IRT Westchester elevated east of 149th Street (new IRT subway extension to Westchester Creek).
13. Northern Blvd Subway (Spur off Queens Blvd line from Broadway to LaGuardia Airport).
14. New Jersey extensions:
    1. Extension of IRT Flushing line from Times Square to Meadowlands via Union City.
    2. PATH Extension to Patterson, via what is now the HBLR line from Hoboken to Tonnelle and via Erie Railroad's Newark branch.
    3. PATH Extensions south to Plainsfield.

 

 

Bus Proposal:

• Possible replacement of diesel buses with trolleybuses.

 

 

Railroad Proposals:

• Electrification extensions to Peekskill and Brewster; Port Jefferson, Ronkonkoma, and Babylon.
• East Midtown rail terminal.
• Possible joint LIRR and MTA Subway operation to lower Manhattan.

 

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[Union Tpke]

This is very similar to a 1986 report contracted by the MTA to the RPA I will upload. I had posted parts of the plan as shown in the New York Affairs Transit Issue. Great find!

[RR503]

Honestly,  to Flatbush isn't the craziest of ideas, provided you a) find some happy medium with  service on 6th and b) resuscitate Culver express... 

[bobtehpanda]

23 hours ago, RR503 said:

Honestly,  to Flatbush isn't the craziest of ideas, provided you a) find some happy medium with  service on 6th and b) resuscitate Culver express... 

Decomissioning Culver in favor of either a stub ending at the West End Line or more reverse branching is pretty insane though. 

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Super weird how they're using bits and pieces of the Bay Ridge Branch without actually engineering at the very least a Brooklyn shuttle from ENY to 62-New Utrecht. If you were to actually implement this plan there wouldn't be that many gaps left to fill in.

[N6 Limited]

Hmm, decommissioning the Jamaica and Liberty Ave El's and extending the Fulton Street IND to Jamaica and possibly Belmont Park. I can think of many trips where I wished that was the case.  

[LGA Link N Train]

12 hours ago, N6 Limited said:

Hmm, decommissioning the Jamaica and Liberty Ave El's and extending the Fulton Street IND to Jamaica and possibly Belmont Park. I can think of many trips where I wished that was the case.  

It wouldn’t affect me in any way to be honest. I wonder how current day service patterns would look under the RPA scenario. (The only ones that would be impossible though is that  extension in New Jersey and maybe that Northern Blvd Spur)

[LGA Link N Train]

15 hours ago, bobtehpanda said:

Decomissioning Culver in favor of either a stub ending at the West End Line or more reverse branching is pretty insane though. 

(Sorry for the double post) but. If you look more closely, the Culver Line is actually connecting to the Sea Beach Line. I wonder how different Coney Island would be if any of these proposals came to pass. 

[RR503]

16 hours ago, bobtehpanda said:

Decomissioning Culver in favor of either a stub ending at the West End Line or more reverse branching is pretty insane though. 

-------

Super weird how they're using bits and pieces of the Bay Ridge Branch without actually engineering at the very least a Brooklyn shuttle from ENY to 62-New Utrecht. If you were to actually implement this plan there wouldn't be that many gaps left to fill in.

Yes, that part is crazy.

I'm of two minds about RX. I've heard good arguments for using the corridor as a standalone circumferential service, but I've also heard arguments for taking the monetary/political hit and integrating the corridor into various extant subway lines. Not sure exactly where I stand. 

[bobtehpanda]

1 hour ago, RR503 said:

Yes, that part is crazy.

I'm of two minds about RX. I've heard good arguments for using the corridor as a standalone circumferential service, but I've also heard arguments for taking the monetary/political hit and integrating the corridor into various extant subway lines. Not sure exactly where I stand. 

Here's where I lay on the RX.

Separate circumferential service is better

• No worrying about integrations or track connections
• No dependency on other train lines' frequency or reliability
• Unlikely to be much through riding with, say, the (L), which is the most likely candidate for an extension of an existing service, especially from areas farther away from existing services
• Realistically, even a four car service every ten minutes would be significantly faster and higher-capacity than what we have today; a full eight or ten car service at existing subway frequencies would be a bit nuts
• A separate shuttle line would be a great testbed for ZPTO since the line is outdoors, it's relatively trivial to add a walkway the entire distance and it would be segregated and most likely run shorter, frequent trains
• The line is pretty useless if you have to transfer three or four times to use its whole length; London Underground is broken up and isn't a full circle, but that's not every two or three miles

That being said, it should be a subway service if only to avoid the thicket of FRA regulations that currently saddle PATH with extremely high operating costs. And personally, I think the line only really makes sense from Jackson Heights - 4th Av. The Hell Gate alignment is a crap alignment to run passenger trains on due to the relatively sparse population and the difficulty of constructing a station at Ditmars, and I haven't seen a good Bronx alignment for the line that doesn't miss vital transfers.

[Bay Ridge Express]

1 hour ago, bobtehpanda said:

Here's where I lay on the RX.

Separate circumferential service is better

• No worrying about integrations or track connections
• No dependency on other train lines' frequency or reliability
• Unlikely to be much through riding with, say, the (L), which is the most likely candidate for an extension of an existing service, especially from areas farther away from existing services
• Realistically, even a four car service every ten minutes would be significantly faster and higher-capacity than what we have today; a full eight or ten car service at existing subway frequencies would be a bit nuts
• A separate shuttle line would be a great testbed for ZPTO since the line is outdoors, it's relatively trivial to add a walkway the entire distance and it would be segregated and most likely run shorter, frequent trains
• The line is pretty useless if you have to transfer three or four times to use its whole length; London Underground is broken up and isn't a full circle, but that's not every two or three miles

That being said, it should be a subway service if only to avoid the thicket of FRA regulations that currently saddle PATH with extremely high operating costs. And personally, I think the line only really makes sense from Jackson Heights - 4th Av. The Hell Gate alignment is a crap alignment to run passenger trains on due to the relatively sparse population and the difficulty of constructing a station at Ditmars, and I haven't seen a good Bronx alignment for the line that doesn't miss vital transfers.

As a person who commutes from Bay Ridge to Midwood every week, because of the high ridership and crappiness of the B9, I seriously wish we had a route like this. Y'know, wouldn't help going into Manhattan all that much but commuting between different parts of the borough, definitely.

[GojiMet86]

The bare minimum should be a subway line between Bay Ridge to Jackson Heights with B division loading gauge (with ability to convert to heavy FRA/LIRR standard later if desired). A train yard could be built at the 65th Street float yard, which is really the only space on the line big enough for a yard, although it's next to the water, which is one of my fears.