Bay Ridge area politicians call for split R train

[RR503]

3 minutes ago, Union Tpke said:

How many additional TPH could be run with CBTC through here?

You’d likely be able to get to 30, maybe more idk. CBTC allows for reliable closing in in these sorts of situations, which is key to them maintaining capacity. 

Edited August 14, 2019 by RR503

[Union Tpke]

Just now, RR503 said:

You’d likely be able to get to 30, maybe more idk. CBTC allows for reliable closing in in these sorts of situations, which is key to them maintaining capacity. 

Can Bay Ridge handle 28 TPH?

[Lawrence St]

35 minutes ago, RR503 said:

My point is that it’s difficult to schedule both Astoria and QB local onto Broadway local without signaling upgrades around City Hall Curve. 22tph isn’t enough for those two corridors, and Canal short turns are, at least in today’s operating environment, quite fraught. If we’re going to deinterline Broadway, I’d like to see an investment in City Hall Lower, a rigorous intervention in terminal ops, or better yet, cessation of 11 St cut service. 

Ok what about;

to 96th St

to Astoria

34th St/Penn Sta to Forest Hills-71st Av via Local?

[R68OnBroadway]

Didn't Byford mention some de-interlining plan at one of the meetings a few months ago? (It would be interesting to know whether or not transit would consider deinterlining Broadway right now).

 

Edited August 14, 2019 by R68OnBroadway

[LGA Link N Train]

2 hours ago, R68OnBroadway said:

Didn't Byford mention some de-interlining plan at one of the meetings a few months ago? (It would be interesting to know whether or not transit would consider deinterlining Broadway right now).

 

Who knows. I asked a question related to Deinterlining when it comes to Fast Forward back in June. The  was doing a panel (about Fast Forward and Improving transit in Queens). When the speaker asked my question (and I even used Broadway as an example too), Byford said he was in support of the idea, but it needed to go through community Input first. 

Either way, I hope that they seriously consider it if they want to improve the system. 

[RR503]

1 hour ago, Union Tpke said:

Can Bay Ridge handle 28 TPH?

Almost certainly not, though of course if you invested in high speed switches, CBTC, maybe even tail tracks...

1 hour ago, Lawrence St said:

Ok what about;

to 96th St

to Astoria

34th St/Penn Sta to Forest Hills-71st Av via Local?

I mean, if you're deinterlining 53 and 63 (which I assume you are given the existence of the , why not just run the  to Brooklyn or WTC and kill Canal while you're at it. 

[Lawrence St]

7 hours ago, RR503 said:

Almost certainly not, though of course if you invested in high speed switches, CBTC, maybe even tail tracks...

I mean, if you're deinterlining 53 and 63 (which I assume you are given the existence of the , why not just run the  to Brooklyn or WTC and kill Canal while you're at it. 

You need a secondary local for Queens Blvd. The only other way I see of doing it is running the as the Queens Blvd Local and having the run via 63rd St to only use one switch at 36th St.

[Union Tpke]

@Around the Horn You had asked about this at one point. Here are images of RR timetables someone had on eBay.

s-l1600-174 by Union Turnpike, on Flickr

s-l1600-177 by Union Turnpike, on Flickr

s-l1600-176 by Union Turnpike, on Flickr

s-l1600-175 by Union Turnpike, on Flickr

s-l1600-180 by Union Turnpike, on Flickr

s-l1600-179 by Union Turnpike, on Flickr

s-l1600-178 by Union Turnpike, on Flickr

 

Edited August 15, 2019 by Union Tpke

[Around the Horn]

I'll take a closer look at these later but thanks @Union Tpke 

[Union Tpke]

1 hour ago, Around the Horn said:

I'll take a closer look at these later but thanks @Union Tpke 

No problem.

[darkstar8983]

On 8/14/2019 at 6:54 PM, RR503 said:

My point is that it’s difficult to schedule both Astoria and QB local onto Broadway local without signaling upgrades around City Hall Curve. 22tph isn’t enough for those two corridors, and Canal short turns are, at least in today’s operating environment, quite fraught. If we’re going to deinterline Broadway, I’d like to see an investment in City Hall Lower, a rigorous intervention in terminal ops, or better yet, cessation of 11 St cut service. 

In the short term (providing enough cars are available), the Astoria/QB local to Broadway needs can be satisfied with the current signal setup around City Hall

7.5  from 71 Av (terminate at Whitehall St)

14-15  from Astoria (continue to Bay Ridge-95 St)

*Question: What is the capacity in the 60th Street tunnel between Queensboro Plaza/11th St Cut and 57 St-7 Av? Somewhere I saw only 23 trains per hour can be scheduled southbound on the . And can this capacity be increased?

 

Also, there was a study (I don't know where it is) about separating the  from the  to improve train flow from Astoria to Manhattan and reconfiguring the switches at Ditmars Blvd to allow ~19 TPH to operate to/from Astoria

Edited August 17, 2019 by darkstar8983

[R68OnBroadway]

17 minutes ago, darkstar8983 said:

Also, there was a study (I don't know where it is) about separating the  from the  to improve train flow from Astoria to Manhattan and reconfiguring the switches at Ditmars Blvd to allow ~19 TPH to operate to/from Astoria

https://www.pcac100daysandnights.org/

[Lawrence St]

23 minutes ago, darkstar8983 said:

In the short term (providing enough cars are available), the Astoria/QB local to Broadway needs can be satisfied with the current signal setup around City Hall

7.5  from 71 Av (terminate at Whitehall St)

14-15  from Astoria (continue to Bay Ridge-95 St)

*Question: What is the capacity in the 60th Street tunnel between Queensboro Plaza/11th St Cut and 57 St-7 Av? Somewhere I saw only 23 trains per hour can be scheduled southbound on the . And can this capacity be increased?

 

Also, there was a study (I don't know where it is) about separating the  from the  to improve train flow from Astoria to Manhattan and reconfiguring the switches at Ditmars Blvd to allow ~19 TPH to operate to/from Astoria

There should be switches at Astoria Blvd as well to allow some trains to terminate on M track, boosting capacity.

[LGA Link N Train]

1 minute ago, Lawrence St said:

There should be switches at Astoria Blvd as well to allow some trains to terminate on M track, boosting capacity.

If I'm not mistaken, it was discussed on this forum Months ago that installing a switch there is not feasible. I forgot who said that though. 

[Lawrence St]

34 minutes ago, LaGuardia Link N Tra said:

If I'm not mistaken, it was discussed on this forum Months ago that installing a switch there is not feasible. I forgot who said that though. 

How come? If you install it right after 30th Av it shouldnt be a problem.

[GojiMet86]

13 minutes ago, Lawrence St said:

How come? If you install it right after 30th Av it shouldnt be a problem.

 

Not on that 30th Avenue hump you can.

[Lex]

15 minutes ago, Lawrence St said:

How come? If you install it right after 30th Av it shouldnt be a problem.

That's a combination of a slope and a curve. The latter is bad, but would be manageable if not for the former (which extends beyond the curve far enough to leave little room between the tracks becoming more level and the tracks breaking away to make room for the platforms).

[darkstar8983]

1 hour ago, LaGuardia Link N Tra said:

If I'm not mistaken, it was discussed on this forum Months ago that installing a switch there is not feasible. I forgot who said that though. 

It was actually a reconfiguration of the switches at Ditmars Blvd that I'm referring to, in order to make the switch design similar to the one at 8 Av-14 St on the  . The center track merges into the two outer tracks, then you have a standard diamond cross-over between the two outer tracks with an increased speed limit

Edited August 17, 2019 by darkstar8983

[Lawrence St]

1 hour ago, Lex said:

That's a combination of a slope and a curve. The latter is bad, but would be manageable if not for the former (which extends beyond the curve far enough to leave little room between the tracks becoming more level and the tracks breaking away to make room for the platforms).

Isn't 167th St on the the same way?

[Lex]

1 hour ago, Lawrence St said:

Isn't 167th St on the the same way?

Nope.

[RR503]

Yes, hump switches are DOA for engineering reasons. Just make the Ditmars arrangement manageable. 

6 hours ago, darkstar8983 said:

In the short term (providing enough cars are available), the Astoria/QB local to Broadway needs can be satisfied with the current signal setup around City Hall

7.5  from 71 Av (terminate at Whitehall St)

14-15  from Astoria (continue to Bay Ridge-95 St)

*Question: What is the capacity in the 60th Street tunnel between Queensboro Plaza/11th St Cut and 57 St-7 Av? Somewhere I saw only 23 trains per hour can be scheduled southbound on the . And can this capacity be increased?

 

Also, there was a study (I don't know where it is) about separating the  from the  to improve train flow from Astoria to Manhattan and reconfiguring the switches at Ditmars Blvd to allow ~19 TPH to operate to/from Astoria

This is a totally defensible plan for the short term, though you're really pushing it with 22.5 tph through City Hall curve. 

60 St is capable of 27 or more. Dunno the exact upper limit -- likely depends on dwells at 59 and the garbage signal system between 5-59 and 42 St. 

[vioreen]

Why make the  end at Whitehall along with the , instead extend either the  or  or both to Bay Ridge.

[Vulturious]

9 minutes ago, vioreen said:

Why make the  end at Whitehall along with the , instead extend either the  or  or both to Bay Ridge.

Because people in Bay Ridge or mainly Ridgewood would rather have direct access to Midtown. Personally, I feel that would be a good call to do so because people on 4th Av would rather transfer to an express train either at 59th St(Brooklyn) or 36th St(Brooklyn). Not to mention, there isn't enough  in Brooklyn anyways, usually  trains get screwed in Brooklyn and are forced to run local on 4th Av and because of it, they run express on West End. The amount of times that has happened is not funny, I've had 3  trains running on the local tracks run express 3 times consecutively. I mean there was Vanschnook's idea by deinterlining Dekalb Av:

This was talked about a few weeks ago in improving service along every line in South Brooklyn by moving around a few trains.

New Switch between 36th St and 45th St would allow  trains to be a hybrid local and express which benefits 4th Av riders so much from this. The thing is that West End would end up getting all the problems that 4th Av would used to have, however this says otherwise.

If you want a link to the actual blog/article, here you go. Personally, I think the  should experiment with this idea for about a week to really see how well this kind of service would run.

http://www.vanshnookenraggen.com/_index/2020/10/deinterlining-with-one-switch/

[LGA Link N Train]

4 hours ago, Vulturious said:

If you want a link to the actual blog/article, here you go. Personally, I think the  should experiment with this idea for about a week to really see how well this kind of service would run.

Thing is, if they wanted to experiment with this service, they'd have to install Interlockings just north of 45th Street (which there's spece for), but I wonder how much of a hassle (political wise) it would be to get it installed. 

[Vulturious]

5 minutes ago, LaGuardia Link N Tra said:

Thing is, if they wanted to experiment with this service, they'd have to install Interlockings just north of 45th Street (which there's spece for), but I wonder how much of a hassle (political wise) it would be to get it installed. 

I don't think it would be a huge problem actually. For starters, it's just an interlocking that is being added which I don't think is all that complicating. It's certainly much cheaper than having to create new tunnels that's for sure. But think of it like this, this is Bay Ridge we are talking about, people over there will 100% have access to Express service on both 4th Av as well as service into Midtown. Regardless of politics, I'm pretty sure people will mostly be on board with this idea. The only people that would really not benefit as much is West End riders, I say this again because they are taking every problems that 4th Av local had. However, with people saying the benefits of having more trains running per hour on both West End as well as 4th Av in general, people might not mind having to transfer at 36th St. It wouldn't matter either if it was a  or  train either because it's going to be full time express. Hell, I think there can be full time express service on 4th Av because of this. Again, this whole idea is really debatable, but it isn't hurtful to at least try.