Home Asides R160s make their F line debut

R160s make their F line debut

by Benjamin Kabak

Last week, New York City Transit rolled out some new rolling stock along the F line. Riders from Jamaica to Coney Island-Stillwell Ave. will now enjoy the clean, sterile comfort of the new R160s and the crisp announcements that come along with it. The Straphangers message board pinpoints the rollout as happening last Wednesday while Subhcat commenters figure one of these new cars to be the 1000th R160 in the system. Investments and improvements such as these are exactly why the MTA needs to find its dedicated funding. Now if only we could do something about that whole F Express plan too.

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7 comments

Anon April 1, 2009 - 6:46 pm

R160s also had a 1,000,000+ (1 Million!) MDBF for month of February.

This is *not* an April Fools.

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Alon Levy April 1, 2009 - 8:51 pm

Do you have a link? It’s fascinating and I’d like to see if there’s a source that gives you these statistics for all train types and all months.

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Matt April 2, 2009 - 9:17 am

I rode an R160 F train to work yesterday. Not all the announcements were working right and when we got to Bergen St, the display system suddenly claimed we were at W 8 St – NY Aquarium.

I’m sure they’ll get the kinks worked out in good order though.

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Gary Reilly April 2, 2009 - 3:38 pm

I’ve ridden a couple of times already, and these cars are far better than the old ones. Much brighter, and it eliminates the old perpendicular seating arrangement that I have always hated. Plus the clear signage on upcoming stops, and clearly audible announcements are a major plus.

Two thumbs up.

And the Daily News says they are testing 11 car configurations . . . my sense is this is not the best option, but we’ll see where it goes. Better to upgrade signaling to reduce headways, than to do major platform expansions at multiple stations, I would imagine.

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_.....ans_o.html

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Alon Levy April 3, 2009 - 8:01 pm

They’re already upgrading signaling to reduce headways. Headways on the F are constrained by the QB Express line, which is third in line to receive CBTC after the 7 and L.

The truth, though, is that reducing headways to less than 2 minutes is really hard. It’s been done before, but usually there’s a tradeoff between headways and train length. For instance, Tokyo’s most frequent subway line, the Marunouchi Line, has headways of 1:50, but its trains have only 6 60-foot cars. As well, I believe New York ran trains at sub-2:00 headways in its early years, before platforms were lengthened.

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Kevin Xie July 30, 2009 - 4:17 pm

I like The New F train. It was hard catching one. until i rode on one at 2 Avenue on the F/V lines.

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