Comments on: Wrong-way, rush-hour service

By: Second Ave. Sagas | Blogging the NYC Subways » Blog Archive » Complain, and ye shall receive

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 15:29:54 +0000

[...] 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 [...]

By: Steve B

Steve B — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 05:54:06 +0000

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.

By: Marc Shepherd

Marc Shepherd — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 02:18:58 +0000

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.

By: Todd

Todd — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 02:04:30 +0000

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!

By: Avi

Avi — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 22:36:16 +0000

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.

By: Marc Shepherd

Marc Shepherd — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 22:21:03 +0000

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.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 21:20:55 +0000

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.

By: Carla

Carla — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 19:49:57 +0000

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.

By: Benjamin Kabak

Benjamin Kabak — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 19:47:30 +0000

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.

By: Marc Shepherd

Marc Shepherd — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 19:46:08 +0000

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).