When residents who live along the M line from Bushwick to Middle Village wake up on June 27, they will find their commutes drastically altered. The M will no longer travel down Nassau St. and into Southern Brooklyn. Instead, with a new orange bullet denoting a Sixth Ave. trunk route, the M will take the Chrystie St. Cut to Broadway/Lafayette and make local stops up Sixth Ave. to Forest Hills. It is a service cut with a purpose.
For thousands of commuters, this new service pattern will be a step up. Having a one-seat ride from Bushwick to Midtown while bypassing the need to switch to the crowded F train is a service improvement the MTA should have implemented years ago, and today, Metro explores how residents in the norther parts of Brooklyn are looking forward to the new service patterns.
“My roommate and I were thrilled when we found out,” Adam Thompson, whose nearest stop is at Central Ave. on the M, said to Carly Baldwin. “I hang out in the West Village a lot and this will be the first time I don’t need to take two trains to get there. I really think we’re the only community not getting screwed by the service changes.”
If only life in the post-service cuts era were as rosy as Thompson makes it out to be. It’s certainly true that Thompson’s weekday rides to the West Village will be vastly improved, but that’s about it. After 11 p.m. on weeknights and at all times during the weekend, Thompson will still be stuck with a three-train ride to the West Village. Futhermore, as the MTA explains, weekend headway increases and load guideline revisions means that trains will arrive less frequently and will be more crowded. A service cut is a service cut is a service cut.
At some point in the future, when the real estate tax revenues rebound, the MTA’s fiscal outlook will turn from red to black, and the agency may begin to explore restoring lost service. When it does, the M should still service Midtown via the Chrystie St. Cut, but until then, we can’t gloss over the reality that, on June 27, subway service will be worse for everyone in New York City. The new service patterns may sound alluring, but I’d prefer service to meet demand and not these cuts.
68 comments
those service changes you linked to do not seem to be saving that much money; ~$15 Million. We really can’t come up with that little bit to avert the cuts?
It’s part of an overall package of cuts that ostensibly are designed to spread the pain. That said, I agree with you: For such inconvenient service cuts, the savings aren’t very great.
They are making many small cuts, in order to make up a large deficit. Any one of those cuts, considered in isolation, is not that much money. It’s the impact of all of them, collectively, that matters.
One of my problems with the bus cuts, was that the savings for some of them was very minimal with a lot of people being inconvenienced, and those inconveniences minimized. The MTA still has not stated if anyone will have to pay extra fares because of these cuts. Past policy was no sevice cut will result in extra fares having to be paid. It looks like this time it will be different. Surprised no one has said anything about this. Guess they will find out when they see more money being deducted from their MetroCards.
I wonder if ridership is high enough to justify the M going to 71st Ave. What if it just went to Court Sq or Queens Plaza instead? A shorter route could mean the mta can keep the current train frequencies.
If the M did not go to 71st Avenue, then all of the local stations along that route would be left with only the R train, which is not enough.
In addition, Queens Plaza cannot serve as a terminal, because the trains turning around would block other trains, affecting every other service passing through that corridor.
The ridership in Queens is as strong as ever. This is really two routes joined together for efficiency: one running local from Queens to Manhattan, and one from northeastern Brooklyn to Manhattan relieving the L.
What many people are missing is that while the 4 and 5 have the highest passenger counts per track segment, they do not have the highest passenger counts per train or per car. Measured in terms of average floor space per standee, the most crowded lines are the A/D coming from Central Park West and the L; both have serious constraints on train capacity – the L is limited at the terminal, and the A/D has to deal with excessive frequency splitting – so they can’t run 30 tph, unlike the 4/5. The bottom line here is that those lines need all the relief they could get.
what’s “excessive frequency splitting?” the A and the D each share tracks with no more than one other train at a time, similar to the 4&5.
i thought the L could run 30 tph ever since they finished the new signaling system. the reason they don’t is because they don’t have enough trains (and they are cheap.)
The A shares tracks with the C further down the line, and the D with the B and then the N. This means the frequency to each destination is reduced, which makes it difficult to escape a crowded train by getting on the next train. The 4/5 share tracks for the entire CBD run, but the A/D split just as they head in. I think the split at Columbus Circle is part of what forces longer headways, but I’m not completely sure. It could well just be that the MTA doesn’t give a crap about A/D riders and is not serving them at full capacity.
The L can in principle run 26 tph, a little more than the 7, which has not been so upgraded. In practice it hasn’t worked really well. The real issue is always terminal capacity – on a through-track with all trains stopping at the same stations, 30 tph is normal.
I would guess that the A & D are only seriously crowded between 125th and 42nd, a small part of their overall trip. The rest of these routes’ long journeys are relatively underused. The A is rarely crowded in Brooklyn except between Bway-Nassau and Hoyt-Schermerhorn. I’ve always gotten a seat on the D between Herald Sq and Brooklyn. I think the MTA has to average out ridership to some extent when determining service levels. It’s similar to the L train. It’s not that it’s always packed, it’s that it’s always packed between Union Sq and Lorimer.
To clarify, the underlying data behind what I’m saying about crowding comes from the Hub Bound report, which measures crowding at the point of entry into the Manhattan core.
The A and D are overcrowded further north than 125th, but not much further north – it starts around 168th or 145th. My girlfriend used to take the line from 145th to 59th for work, and reported crush loads. For comparison, the 4/5/6 have seats until they hit 125th, and have their biggest overcrowding issues south of 86th.
A and D trains are certainly not normally crush loaded. They’re very crowded by the doors, but there’s room to move around between the seats.
Seats on the 4 and 5 fill up in the Bronx (I spent a few weeks commuting from Burnside, and I rarely got a seat; in my more limited experience on the 5, seats are all gone by East 180th). Seats on the 6 fill up in the Bronx and then empty out at 125th, where most passengers transfer to the express.
Schedules are keyed to the peak load point. Even if trains aren’t crowded for a long distance, the goal of scheduling is to try to keep peak loads within guidelines as much as possible.
The L can run 26 tph?!
Terminals are constraints, but so are are intermediate signals, especially where slow speeds or long dwells (that might not have been incorporated into the signal design) come into play. The only line that runs 30 tph is the E/F in Queens.
By “terminal” I assume you mean 8th Ave in Chelsea? I’ve always meant to poke around there and see if there are tail tracks west of the station or not, but if not… that’s kind of a haphazard terminal, even LA Metro has tail tracks and they don’t usually need them at the Koreatown and NoHo terminals. I haven’t been out on the Brooklyn end of the L before though; in Manhattan, however, as a wheelchair user, it certainly makes for a very nice escape valve in case of elevator outages on the Broadway BMT at Union Square (take the). Drives me nuts the people who think that baby carriages get priority over wheelchairs in those elevators at Chelsea though.
According to NYC Subway’s track maps, there are no tail tracks at 8th Avenue on the L. I’ve read that this is indeed the terminal that poses the capacity difficulties, but I don’t have a link right now.
(P.S. In case anyone here thinks this justifies the 7-block tail tracks on the 7 extension, reflect on the fact that the 7’s current western terminus has about a short block’s worth of tail tracks and can turn any number of trains the rest of the line can support.)
Yes, the fact that it’s accessible is nice – I’ve only used it once or twice, but I remember the long inclined planes there.
It once occurred to me that since they are making the tail tracks for the #7 extension so ridiculously long, why didn’t they make the new line also have a station at 23 St. and 11th Ave.? It would just mean extending it only a little bit past where they are having it end up anyway!
The point of the tail tracks is both train storage (six trains) and terminal capacity.
Extending it just barely to 23rd eliminates both.
Except for the part that even half a block is enough for terminal capacity…
Under conventional signaling, half of a north-south block is not enough to support the frequency the 7 will need once the line is extended.
Fortunately, the 7 is also getting CBTC, so the tail tracks can be shorter.
But half a block still isn’t enough space to store six 561-foot-long trains!
The 7 does fine with about a block today. Underground tail tracks a nice to have feature. They’re not crucial, which means they’re not cost-effective in a dense urban area, much less one with Manhattan’s construction costs.
The block from 7th to 8th is several times longer than the block from 34th to 33rd.
If the tail tracks aren’t long enough to allow a train to safely enter the station at full speed – that is, if the signal system has to slow the train down to ensure that, if it passes the red signal at the end of the station, it still won’t collide with the bumper block – then the terminal won’t be able to support the necessary frequency. I don’t know what that distance is, but I’ll trust NYCT’s signal engineers over you. They are absolutely crucial, unless 7 riders are willing to put up with the additional crowding they’d encounter with a sharp reduction in frequency.
And train storage is obviously crucial.
The tail tracks on the 7 aren’t a full east-west block. They’re about a north-south Manhattan block. You should check it on NYC Subway.
And I’ll trust JR East’s engineers over the rent-seeking consultants who drew the proposal for the 7 extension.
I’m not sure where you’re looking, but the tail tracks at Times Square are longer than a north-south block, even now that they’ve been cut back to accommodate construction of the extension.
The new tail tracks will have to accommodate more frequent service. They will also have to accommodate off-peak train storage, as I’ve pointed out at least three times in this thread already.
What do JR East’s engineers know about the NYC subway’s signal system? More than anything else, the signal system determines the capacity of a line; it makes no sense to debate terminal layouts without referring to the signal system.
I submit that anyone who tunnels deep underground in the CBD to make room for off-peak train storage is stealing money from the public. This is not how any other agency would do this. If you want to know why New York spends a billion and a half to tunnel 1 km and the rest of world spends 250 million, this is why.
And I’m looking at nycsubway.org’s track map. The tail tracks look about 100 meters long on that map. At 200, they’d hit the platforms on the IND. But the current plans for the 7 extension call for more than 500.
Thank you for finally addressing the train storage question.
Without storage tracks in the CBD, operating costs would be permanently higher, as six more trains would have to deadhead to Queens for storage every day (or twice a day?) – and back again. And Corona Yard would probably need to be expanded. How many years will it take to recover the additional costs of adding storage space in Manhattan? I don’t know.
Those track maps are not to scale!
The track maps are to scale, on the small scale. The scale on the Flushing Line platforms may be smaller than on the Queens maps, though. They point out to less than a train length’s worth of tail tracks. In addition, the signaling system considers a safe stopping distance – see, for example, trains entering station platforms just as the train ahead leaves.
There’s no need to deadhead trains to Corona Yard. The trains would do what they do today: drop off passengers at the Manhattan terminal, reverse, and take passengers back in the other direction. It works for the 1 and the 6. Relative to the cost of parking trains in Manhattan at about $1 million per meter of two-track tunnel, the extra operating costs are trivial.
The online track maps are certainly not to scale! There are plenty of geographic liberties taken to make the map easier to read. For instance, look at the junction north of Bergen St. on the F/G – in fact, the north-bound F diverges to the right (and ramps down to the lower level express track), but the map shows the G branching off to the right. Or look at the South Ferry loop – in fact, the inner loop platform is longer than the outer loop platform (10 cars vs. 5 cars), but the map shows the exact opposite.
I could be wrong about this, but I seem to recall that the old Times Square tail tracks were long enough to hold a 10-car (but not an 11-car) train – of course, at the expense of terminal capacity, since trains would no longer be able to enter the station at full speed.
The signal system can allow trains to close in on each other (or on a bumper block) – but at slow speeds only. The longer it takes a train to pass through the terminal interlocking, the lower the capacity of the terminal. For maximum capacity, the tail tracks need to be long enough so that the signal system can safely allow the train to enter at full speed.
Could they have stored trains b/t 23rd and 34th? MBTA has storage space for green line trains between North Station and Science Park.. if it’s like the MBTA setup, the trip from 23rd to 34th would’ve been saddled with speed restrictions, but it would’ve worked nonetheless.
I was always of the impression that they should’ve looped the 7 around to 14th/8th for a transfer to the L and to provide extra service to Chelsea, but… well, they never asked me :).
I would rather have the L extended to 34th or 23rd so the L could have a three-track terminal.
Three-track terminals are actually a capacity constraint – they increase train conflicts. The 7’s Main Street terminal is actually a bigger bottleneck than its Times Square terminal.
Industry best practice is that terminals are two-tracked, and have short tail tracks (the Chuo Rapid Line has about 50 meters, the 7 about 100) and a crossover located just outside the station. Such terminals can turn back trains every 2 minutes.
As for the L, I’d rather it were extended west to Hudson County. The 7 would be even better, but it would require either an awkward alignment with a tunnel around 23rd (detour) or a frequency split (capacity reduction).
Industry best practice? Different systems have different signal systems, different standards, different storage needs. Two-track terminals with tail tracks can be quite good. So can relay terminals. So can loops. It depends.
Yes, industry best practice. New York isn’t special. New Yorkers think it is, which is why they come up with all those hyper-expensive, globally unique wheel reinventions, but in reality what works in Tokyo and Paris and Zurich ends up working in any city that cares to learn.
I’m still waiting for your documentation of this supposed best practice. All of the papers and reports I’ve seen on the topic of terminal capacity have recognized that a variety of layouts can be appropriate, depending on local conditions.
I’d love to see all of your sources that boil everything down to a few words. Why bother thinking when you can get all your answers prepackaged?
Andrew and Alon, would your answers be the same for the 125th Street & Lexington Avenue terminal that would eventually serve two routes, the Q and the T?
Andrew, you’ve never quoted a single paper or report, on anything.
If you want documentation for my statement that Americans can’t be trusted to run this, read this. Or refer to the “3-6 times more expensive” bit in Walder’s Making Every Dollar Count report. There is a best industry practice and you can learn it from looking at track layouts in Switzerland and France and Japan.
And JPN, at current construction costs, Phase 2 of SAS will never be built. So your question is completely hypothetical.
Best practices are normally documented – and I’m asking for documentation of your claimed best practices. I’m not making any such claims – what would you like me to document?
I know you think that Americans are stupid, but that’s not the claim I’m asking for documentation for. (Various terminal configurations can be found across the globe.) I’m asking for documentation that “Industry best practice is that terminals are two-tracked, and have short tail tracks” – regardless of local conditions, such as the signal system.
Yes, there are plenty of terminal configurations. Thanks for telling me that. What I’m proposing isn’t ideal, and agencies avoid it when there’s space. However, in a constrained area, they default to the Chuo Line/Flushing Line arrangement. I’ll give you documentation for that, if you give me documentation that New York’s signaling system requires 500-meter tail tracks.
Oh. So industry best practice now isn’t that terminals are two-tracked, and have short tail tracks? Glad we’ve cleared that up.
That’s exactly where trains are going to be stored.
The 8th Avenue station was built in the 1930s. As with almost all New York subway and elevated terminals of that time, the notion of tail tracks to store trains or improve turnaround operations seemed to be foreign; rail yards were also located near the terminals.
That’s simply not true. The A and D are far from empty, but they’re not as crowded as the L and the 4/5, and probably the 6 and 2/3 as well. Are you ignoring the considerable variation in car size? Guideline capacity on an IRT car is 110 (so a 10-car train holds 1100); guideline capacity on an IND/BMT car is 145 for a 60-foot car or 175 for a 75-foot car (so a full-length 600-foot train holds 1400-1450).
Yes, it is true. Read the report’s tables about average floor area space per passenger.
Table 20? Table 20 assumes a fixed 602 square feet per car! That’s exactly the error I mistakenly attributed to you. (Sorry.) So the conclusions of Table 20 are all wrong.
Either recalculate Table 20 with the correct car sizes or use its passenger and train counts to compare volume-to-capacity ratios.
Ugh. No, you’re right…
the E and the F are there too, though I’m sure people would object to losing some of their express service. I’m just thinking maybe there is an alternate arrangement that would be more optimal.
I fail to see how this is a service cut. As it is now, the M doesn’t run on the weekends or after 11 on weeknights past Myrtle Avenue, so no change there. And the reduced weekend train frequencies are across the board, not just on the M, and by and large just make explicit what NYCTA already does during weekend construction service changes.
I have a feeling that should the MTA’s fiscal situation improve, full-time full M service will be first in line to be implemented, since I expect ridership to be very strong and to encourage more Manhattan workers to move to Bushwick and Ridgewood. A modest drop in L overcrowding is also possible (although that capacity will likely be quickly taken up by all the new condo dwellers in Williamsburg).
Too bad the MTA isn’t particularly forward-thinking. They should have replaced Hewes and Lorimer on the JMZ with a new station at Union with a transfer to the G instead of completely renovating them a few years back. They should also look into building a new station at Bedford (over the bridge roadway somewhat like Queensboro Plaza) since city planning is filling up the waterfront with thousands of new residents.
The car sets that make up the M are shorter than the V sets by approximately 120 feet. So in that sense, the service is cut as well.
Sure, but apart from that relatively minor change, there is actually no difference here, so it’s a stretch to call it a cut, I think.
Considering the V is never crowded in any direction, even at rush hour, shorter trains won’t really make a difference. No one will be left at the platform and most people who got seats before will still get them. The end cars, like on the C, will be crowded with those who don’t know to wait toward the middle of the platform. No big whoop.
As a regular F train rider between Brooklyn and Midtown, I can’t wait for this service change to be implemented. There’s nothing worse than pulling into Second Avenue in a packed F train (packed with many riders who transferred from the JMZ) only to see an almost completely empty V train pull out in front of the F, forcing the F to wait several minutes. When the V and M are combined, the F will still have to wait sometimes for a merging M, but at least I’ll know it’s full of people.
Each R46 car on the V seats 70 or 76 people; each R160 car on the M seats 42 or 44. So an 8-car train of R46s seats at least 560; an 8-car train of R160s around 340. You will lose 200+ seats per train on the Queens Boulevard end.
Crowding on trains tends to be relative to the location of station exits. Regular riders tend to board the car which will lead them closest to the exit at their destination station; many exits are at the ends of platforms. I know I do.
I totally agree with replacing the Hewes and Lorimer stops with one stop @ Union. Those existing stops are too close together and the transfer would be useful.
What about Beverley Road and Cortelyou Road along the Brighton Line?
ONE BLOCK apart!
Anytime there were proposals to close one of those stations or the other, the idea went nowhere, probably because of the dilemma about WHICH one to close.
Closing either station would result in crowding for the other, and the platforms for both of those stations are narrow.
I don’t know if constructing a combined Cortelyou-Beverley station would require ADA improvements. In addition, Beverley Road is on the National Register of Historic Places, so any modifications there would need to comply with that designation’s requirements.
+1 for a Cortelyou-Beverley station.
This is the typical short sighted-thinking tht the MTA engages in. It would result in a one minute time savings for the trains which it totally neglible while adding 5 minutes of travel time each for thousands of people daily. Why don’t you figure out what their time is worth?
Now if there were 30 similar cases where this could be done on the same line, it would be another story.
It’s a service cut because all the people who live in south Brooklyn and use the R or D just had their wait times increased.
A station at Bedford Avenue on the bridge is an intriguing idea. But I’m not sure there is enough clearance between the roadway and the track level at that point. The roadway at Queensboro Plaza station, however, is on land and there is plenty of clearance there.
I should also point out that the V currently does not run on weekends or after 11 (or so) weeknights, just like the M.
Late nights, Mr. Thompson should take the L train from the West Village to Myrtle-Wyckoff and change there for the M, instead of using the J. That’s only two trains.
As a Broadway J & M train rider, this is the best thing to happen in the subway in years! No longer will I have to go down a long set of stairs at Essex Street and board a packed F train that crawls to Midtown. The people who complain about this new route have no idea that 75% to 80% of the people on J,M & Z trains get off Essex Street for the F. Not only will this help relieve crowding on the L, but the F as well. June 28 can’t come here fast enough if you ask me.
Will M Train riders be able to transfer from the M to the J on the same platform at Essex Street or will transfers be made outside at Marcy or Myrtle.
Brooklyn-bound passengers will get to transfer cross-platform. I’m not completely sure about Manhattan-bound ones, but from the track map, it looks as if the transfer has to be same-platform or else the same track will be used for westbound M’s and eastbound J/Z’s.
The westbound transfer at Essex appears to be same-platform, unless a disruption in service would cause the westbound M to go to the island platform.
It’s the uptown M and uptown F that people will be keeping their eye on at Essex & Delancey.
From a systemwide perspective they’re service cuts, but that doesn’t mean that every rider encounters a service degradation, nor does it contradict the possibility that some riders encounter service enhancements. M riders who travel to Midtown on weekdays are without a doubt seeing an enhancement, while weekend and night M riders aren’t seeing any change at all, since the M shuttle isn’t changing (even the 10-minute headway is staying the same). The same applies to the bus changes – there are winners and losers. It is absolutely not the case that “subway service will be worse for everyone in New York City.”
I remain cautiously optimistic that the M reroute/combo will be successful. Since the last time the 6th Avenue – Williamsburg connection was used, on the KK in the late 1960s – early/mid 1970s, Midtown has become a better center of employment and shopping. Williamsburg had also become attractive to the so-called “hipsters”, many of whom continue to have a bond with Manhattan. The new M will meet the travel needs of all of these demographics, which are not insignificant. I would love to have lived in the time of the KK to observe the different travel patterns.
From my home station of DeKalb Avenue on the L, I can imagine fewer people using my station (b/c of Knickerbocker and Central Avenues), but not much; the same for other L stations to the west. The L will generally remain faster to most parts of Manhattan (including transfers) than the M. But I do observe the transfer at Essex/Delancey to be as others have said: a heavily used one between the J/M/Z and the F from the north. And I shouldn’t discount the 53rd Street access as well. If I see fewer people transferring at Myrtle-Wyckoff, I’ll be thoroughly convinced that the new M is doing its job. So in the end, it is a good deal.
I lived in those times, but not in that neighborhood.
I do remember when they started the KK, which later became the K sometime before being discontinued.
Some years later, when all the double letters became single letters, the AA became the K. That totally different new K must have confused at least some people.
After a while, that K was combined into the C line.
The end of Beverly road and cortelyou platforms are a block apart but the station houses are far ferther . They should be combined kepping both station houses open. The problem is that to do so you would need to encroach on private property and it would mean that riders at one of the stations would need to walk about a half train car to reach the front of the car