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Wrong-way, rush-hour service

by Benjamin Kabak

I know the MTA isn’t wondering why their trains keep receiving terrible grades. In fact, NYCT President Howard Roberts admitted last week that delays during morning rush hour are increasing. But still, there is nothing more infuriating than standing on a crowded subway platform during rush hour for 10 minutes while three nearly empty Coney Island-bound trains go by on the other tracks. The third train picked up a whopping two passengers. Fix this problem already.

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13 comments

Todd November 29, 2007 - 12:42 pm

This might be totally wrong, but don’t the trains run back and forth? I mean, might those be trains from earlier in the rush-hour that are now going the other way?

I’m in favor of increasing service altogether.

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Benjamin Kabak November 29, 2007 - 12:44 pm

Well, you’re right, Todd. It is fairly short-sighted of me to be complaining about it from an outer borough because these trains were running through Manhattan during rush hour. But that doesn’t mean trains shouldn’t be running toward Manhattan at 9 a.m.

Anyway, who really takes the Q from Manhattan at rush hour? It starts at 57th St., which is a destination for most people, and then makes only four other stops before hitting Brooklyn. Until that train is running up Second Ave., it will be fairly empty heading south during rush hour.

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Avi November 29, 2007 - 12:54 pm

I think what Todd meant to imply was that those trains probably ran into Manhattan at 7am and are now returning back out.

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Marc Shepherd November 29, 2007 - 2:46 pm

I think the problem is that trains headed in the peak direction are much more likely to be delayed, due to switching conflicts and highly variable dwell times.

Obviously the MTA isn’t running any more reverse-peak Q trains than it needs to. Generally, an uptown Q train must turn around at 57th Street, because there’s no where else for it to go (aside from a small amount of storage space inside the hidden station shell at Lexington Avenue).

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Benjamin Kabak November 29, 2007 - 2:47 pm

No switches there, Marc. The Q turns around at 57th because that’s where the switches are.

This post is just me complaining about a bad commute this morning. Nothing too serious. It happens now and then.

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Carla November 29, 2007 - 2:49 pm

This happens all the time on the 7 between 8:20 and 8:45. I figure it must be from those much earlier trains returning from the city, but then it seems like the MTA must be off in their scheduling. If I catch a 7 before 8:15, it’s full but not packed, whereas after that I have to wait fifteen minutes for two trains to go by before I can get on one that’s not too crowded. All the while, five empty trains going to Flushing have rolled by.

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Kevin November 29, 2007 - 4:20 pm

I think you should be asking not why there’s so many trains going in the reverse-peak direction but why can’t the TA turn trains around fast enough at the terminals.

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Marc Shepherd November 29, 2007 - 5:21 pm

Ben, the switches I’m referring to are where the Q merges and splits farther south on its route, not at 57th Street. For instance, there’s the well known bottleneck between 49th Street and 42nd Street where the N switches between express and local. A similar thing happens in Brooklyn, as the N splits to the Fourth Avenue Line, while the Q goes to Brighton.

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Avi November 29, 2007 - 5:36 pm

Carla, I believe the 7 line is running close to or at capacity. The MTA can’t add any more trains after 8:15. So all it can do is try and get trains back out to Queens as quickly as possible to be ready for the late rush hour crowd.

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Todd November 29, 2007 - 9:04 pm

The Q line fascinates me. Why the awkward stop and turn around at 57th? Was the plan really to just make due with that until The SAS was completed? That’s incredibly shortsighted.

Don’t worry about complaining about a bad commute. I do that almost every morning!

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Marc Shepherd November 29, 2007 - 9:18 pm

57th Street has been a terminal station since it opened. A midtown terminal made plenty of sense. The Sixth Avenue Line was originally built that way too.

Currently, there’s nowhere else for the Q to go. The SAS hasn’t been built yet, and there’s no room for the Q in Queens without displacing some other service. I believe the northward extension of the Q to Second Avenue has been on the books for many decades, but while we wait for that, there’s nothing awkward about a midtown terminal.

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Steve B November 30, 2007 - 12:54 am

Actually, Marc, the BMT’s original plan was to extend the Broadway line north from 57th St. under Central Park, then west to and under 8th Avenue to Morningside Heights. When this failed to come to fruition for political reasons, 57th remained as a terminal for those BMT lines that did not go to Queens.

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Second Ave. Sagas | Blogging the NYC Subways » Blog Archive » Complain, and ye shall receive November 30, 2007 - 10:29 am

[…] out of frustration, I complained about a long wait during my morning commute. Today, in what I can only assume is a sheer coincidence because I […]

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