Station distances along Second Ave. doesn't bring the subway closer to certain areas. (Click to enlarge the map)
One of the key considerations in planning a subway — or bus — line focuses around distances between two stations. Planners want to space stations far enough apart to allow trains to build up considerable speed underground, but they also want to place stations close enough together to provide comprehensive coverage to previously underserved neighborhoods. As the city builds out the Second Ave. Subway, the MTA has a chance to improve subway coverage through station spacing.
Along Second Ave., a few key cross streets are missing their subway stops, but much of the empty space is covered through proper station construction. For instance, 79th St., a major crosstown street, won’t enjoy a subway station, but the exits and entrances at East 86th and 72nd Streets should make up for it. The south end of 86th St. will deposit people between 83rd and 84th Sts. while the north end of 72nd St. will leave them near 73rd St.
The problems arise elsewhere down the line. After 72nd St., the next stop on the theoretical T train would be at 55th St. and 2nd Ave. while the Q will stop at 63rd St. and Lexington. The seventeen blocks between local stations would be a system-wide high. Along the Q, Transit plans to construct a station entrace at 3rd Ave. and 63rd St., but those trying to reach the East River area with its numerous hospitals will have considerable walks.
On the Lower East Side, the same problem arises. After 14th St. and 2nd Ave., the T won’t stop again until Houston St. and 2nd Ave., a span of 14 blocks. Along other lines that stop at Houston St., the 6 next stops at Astor Place and then Union Square while the 1 stops at Christopher St. and then 14th St. The 14-block gap makes the T a semi-express along 2nd Ave.
Here, the real losers are those who live in Alphabet City. Currently, for someone who lives at, say, Ave. C and East 7th St., the nearest subway is the 6 at Astor Place, a walk of around 0.8 miles. The subway stop at 2nd Ave. and 14th St. will be a 0.9-mile walk from Ave. C and East 7th St. It won’t be any more or less convenient to have the Second Ave. Subway. In fact, for an area that once would have enjoyed a cup-handle extension of the Second Ave. Subway, the SAS will have profoundly little impact on a transit-starved area.
An idealized street grid leads to a diamond-shaped coverage area. (Via Human Transit)
What then is the proper distance for station spacing? Jarrett Walker at Human Transit tackled this topic back in November. Playing off of the news that San Francisco’s Muni is looking to improve both bus and subway travel times, Walker proposed an ideal solution for station spacing. The object, he says, is to minimize the overlap area while maximizing the coverage area.
For rapid transit stops, Walker proposes a distance of 1000 m between stops — or approximately 0.6 miles. That would correspond nicely to the 14-block distance between stations in the East Village, but it doesn’t solve the problem of Alphabet City. They are far away from the subway and will still be far away from the subway even when a new subway line opens. That doesn’t quite solve the city’s transit problems.
Ultimately, station spacing is less important for subway stations than for bus stops, and Walker is rightly critical of the American approach to bus stops. In Brooklyn where I live, the local routes stop every two blocks or around 500 feet. Buses are slowed by the need to stop constantly, and most healthy riders would choose to walk instead of ride.
For now though, we can see transit spacing in action along Second Ave. By and large, the distances are appropriate, but Walker ends on an intriguing question: “If you had two parallel transit lines, how might the stop locations on one of them affect the logical locations of stops on the other? And what’s the furthest apart that the lines can be (in terms of multiples of the maximum walking distance) for this consideration to matter?”
91 comments
The biggest problem I have with the location of the stops is the lack of any connection to buses coming off the Queensboro Bridge, and also to those coming off the Williamsburg Bridge.
and no connection to roosevelt island tram @ 60th either.
Bus ridership over the bridges is minuscule in comparison to subway ridership on similar corridors. Roosevelt Islanders can take the F to Lex to connect with the upper part of SAS. (Getting to the lower part will be more difficult unless something ends up running on the tracks connecting Queens to lower SAS.)
Interesting. This brings to mind what has always been my chief question about the SAS. I’m sure you’ve touched on this before, but why Second Avenue? Second Ave is really only 1.5 standard-length blocks from Lex, where we already have a subway line, whereas the areas that are really underserved by transit have always been further East: Yorkville, Alphabet City, etc. Shouldn’t we at least be building a 1st Avenue subway?
As for Lower Manhattan, no, this project really doesn’t help most of the currently underserved neighborhoods. Again, why not go further east where geography would seem to justify it?
Finally (not just trying to complain, just honestly curious), why create a new station at Hanover Square when Wall Street or Whitehall are both just a couple hundred feet away? Aren’t there opportunities to connect with existing lines (particularly from Brooklyn) that are being passed up here?
The SAS was always intended to both replace the 2nd and 3rd Avenue Els and to relieve the over-capacity Lexington IRT. Moving it to 1st Avenue would not relive the Lexington IRT as much and would dismiss the already-built portions prior to today’s Phase I, ultimately adding more to the cost. 1st Avenue also has a vehicle tunnel near the UN and is too close to the water table around 23rd Street, I think. But if geology wasn’t a problem, 1st Avenue would be a good alignment.
Historically, the SAS was meant to connect to either Brooklyn or Staten Island. In a previous post from the past week, connecting the SAS to Nassau Street (J/Z) is impractical, lots of engineering with little benefit and little flexibility in attracting riders.
John Paul N. already gave the historical explanation, but I’ll add that there’s a purely technical reason to use Second rather than First: namely, it’s closer to the center of Midtown. If the subway went under First in the 50s and 40s, then much of the station radius would be wasted on water, and most Upper East Siders would continue to use the Lex.
Even south of 14th, the only reason to use First rather than Second would be if you planned to have a stop in Alphabet City and the East Village. However, the obvious choice for a stop would be St. Marks, which is between Second and Third; again, Second looks better.
The only place where First is as good as or better than Second is on the UES itself. Second is the population center of the UES and has the highest population density, but First is equally important as a throughfare and serves the eastern end of the area better.
They made this plan for the Q before the Q took over the W, when the Q is re-rerouted, what do we think they will do for the N?
Probably just re-route the Q again and add the W or more service into Astoria somehow. We’re talking about something that is at least six years away. For comparison’s sake, six years ago, we barely had service over the Manhattan Bridge. I’m sure it’ll work out just fine.
What is the ‘barge’ facility that always shows on these SAS maps?
During construction the barge facility is supposed to hold material excavated by the TBM.
I wonder if we could convert that into an inter-modal transport. Container and Truck/semi-trailer on barge. Moving stuff around to and from Jersey, Bklyn Bx. Qns, Staten Is. and Manhattan on water while avoiding highways, bridges and tunnels. We have a highway, its called the NY harbor.
The Second Avenue line is being built primarily to relieve overcrowding on the Lexington Avenue Line. The Lexington Line is horrible during rush hours, and even on weekends its sometimes pretty bad.
As for it being close to Lexington, well, on the west side you have the 8th avenue subway, 7th avenue, and 6th avenue, so practically each avenue has its own subway in the center. There’s no subway service West of 8th, so what the MTA is doing on the east side simply mirrors the west.
I wonder how much it would’ve cost to bring the Lexington Avenue down to 90 second intervals.
I believe that such intervals are technically impossible given the current signal technology used on the Lex line. Someone with technical expertise– do correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the Lex signals/tracks can only handle 27 tph or something along those lines?
The signals can handle 30 tph, but this requires station dwell times to be very short.
Better signaling would allow 40 tph, but the MTA would have to spend a very large amount of money on it based on its previous track record at cost control.
Yes, so the question is how expensive it would be to install signal technology that would make that possible. Would probably also require some flyover junctions here and there, and additional exits.
Would the 2nd ave be necessary if Lexington had 45tph x 4 tracks? (transit geek blasphemy!)
There are a number of huge problems with that. First, it’s an all-or-nothing proposition. Since the Lexington has interconnections with all of the other IRT lines (except the #7), the whole IRT would need to be upgraded before you could see any benefits.
Second, because of the dwell times at certain highly crowded stations, you couldn’t reach anywhere near 45tph, even with the most modern signalling imaginable.
And third, the east side of Manhattan would still be very poorly served by transit, due to the long distances from Lexington Avenue.
True, but only partly.
– In the Munich S-Bahn System, only the downtown segment where all lines converge has ctc, with 30tph. The rest uses much more simple signalling. I.e. it is possible to not use the same signalling everywhere.
– You can relieve crowding by adding more plattforms (‘Spanish Solution’), and more exits – not cheap, but cheaper than a completely new line.
– 2nd Avenue is not even that much of an improvement over Lexington in terms of walking distance. a couple of cross-town SBS (BRT in the rest of the world) services could probably help more (and will probably be done eventually)
I understand that it’s hard to argue against the 2nd avenue subway, but I think in general, increasing operating efficiencies can be cheaper than replicating a whole line – especially given the ridiculous costs.
But if you actually look at how this system is laid out, there is no way you could get 45tph along Lexington Avenue without upgrades elsewhere. I mean, has someone with expertise actually suggested this is possible, or are you just assuming?
Adding platforms (it is not clear where you are suggesting to do this) is hugely problematic, because so many of the IRT stations are at shallow depths, and any construction around them would disrupt too many of the surrounding structures.
Adding a middle platform (between the express tracks) at Grand Central, with doors opening on both sides, might be enough to increase capacity a little bit.
Of course, rebuilding the station is infeasible, as you point out, so the point is moot.
You can get some increase in capacity out of moving block signaling (“CBTC”), which doesn’t have to be installed on the entire line; the RER A uses it to run 30 tph on the shared trunk line but then switches to fixed-block signaling on the branches. And that’s with more crowded stations and trains with worse circulations (narrower aisles, or double-deck) than in New York.
Or you can do whatever they do in Moscow to get 40 tph. I think the signaling is fairly primitive, but it’s not automated, and the system is much busier than New York’s.
Going above 40 is much harder – the only lines I know of that do are fully automated Parisian lines. That would have to be all-or-nothing on the IRT, and might not be cost-effective even at normal-world costs.
It’s all-or-nothing in that every car that runs on the Lexington Avenue line or might be rerouted to the Lexington Avenue line (i.e., the 2) has to be properly equipped. And most of those cars are less than ten years old, so the CBTC equipment would have to be added to existing cars. Certainly, you’re right that CBTC doesn’t need to be installed on the entire line.
From the little I’ve read about Moscow’s signal system, it appears to be a fixed-block system with very short blocks. Implementing it here would require adding lots of signals to the line and redoing all the signal logic. It would probably be cheaper in the long run to install CBTC.
As a resident of York Avenue, in the 60’s, it is infuriating to me that after all the waiting and hoping, the 2nd Avenue Subway will bypass my neighborhood completely. Spacing indeed!
After all the waiting and hoping? These have been the plans for years.
There’s going to be a station at 63rd and 3rd. (Well, there already is, but there’s no exit there yet.)
At a Community Board meeting hosted by Councilwoman Jessica Lappin last year I asked the MTA spokeswoman about whether the 3rd Avenue entrance at 63rd Street would open concurrently with the opening of the 2nd Ave. line. She gave me some runaround about how they needed to do planning for that and it the date was yet to be determined. The cavern for this entrance already exists–I was able to walk up stairs from the platform to the mezzanine level beneath the sidewalk on a Transit Museum tour. What planning!?
Planning for where exactly the exit will land at street level? (Otherwise known as lawsuit avoidance – see 86th.) Either that or maybe she didn’t know what she was talking about.
Part of the problem with the midtown spacing is due to the MTA’s desire to have a transfer point between the Second Avenue subway and the E/M at 53rd Street. Doing that means you can’t have a 600-foot station further north than 55th Street, because the south end of the station has to reach 53rd to allow for a (still kind of long) pedestrian walkway from 53rd-2nd Ave. to the east end of the Lexington Avenue station, which would also create a really, really, long transfer walk option to the No. 6 train in the process.
Logic, and East Side traffic patterns for retail and commercial office space wouldn’t put the station at 55th Street; it should go between 57th and 59th streets, a move that would make even more sense if the MTA does hook up the Second Avenue line to the 63rd Street tunnel. Do that and the E/M transfer becomes redundant if you also have a Queens Blvd. line serving lower Second Ave., and now the gap south of the 72nd Street station is narrowed to only 11 blocks.
Of course, that also would widen the gap between 57th and 42nd streets, but the commercial and office buildings in the Third Ave area around 49th Street, along with the public entrance to the U.N. at First Avenue and 47th Street would make an additional stop at 49th-Daj Hammarskjold Plaza a viable midtown option, even if you had another stop running from 42nd to 40th streets.
(As for the gap between 14th and Houston streets, the line would have to curve slightly to the east at Houston to match the angle of Chrystie Street, so I would guess the future plans would not be to have the station bisect Houston, with a curve right in the middle of it. A stop with a south end near Houston and a north end exit at 2nd or even 3rd Street, and a 14th Street stop similar to the one on the Seventh Avenue line, with an exit at 12th Street, would narrow that gap from 14 down 9-10 blocks between stations, similar to the IND in Manattan.)
Then maybe they should consider naming the stations differently…more akin to the Rock Center station: 12th-14th Street, Houston-3rd Street, 83rd-86th Street. This might help riders who are thinking that the spacing is too wide by showing the streets accessible by getting off at that stop.
Or build two stations at 59th and 52nd instead?
59th will be in the middle of an interlocking.
The 2nd and 3rd Avenue Els handled the spacing and coverage area problem well, especially north of 42nd Street, where all but 2 stations on 3rd Avenue and 2nd Avenue were situated on the same streets.
In light of the SAS station distances, necessitated by the omission of express service (as is the world standard), the SBS could cover the gaps. Roughly speaking, reconfigure the SBS stops where the deficiencies are, or reconfigure them to where the removed limited stops formerly were, and that coverage area would be solved. Rerouting the SBS to Alphabet City would be a problem unless the streets became one-way, but the north-south streets there are narrow nonetheless.
IF they made a station at 55th for the purpose of connecting to the E and M at Lex/53rd, wouldn’t it be a bit easier to just build a station at 59th that connects to Lex/63rd and the Lex/59th station? The E is crowded enough as it is- do we need to shift all the Queens riders on the new T line to the E as well?
I think everyone is forgetting the most important reason why there is a 14 block gap between stations in midtown. No it’s not because 42nd to 55th means better spacing. It has everything to do with the fact that when the 63rd Street tunnel was built, it was done with a future SAS in mind. There are two tunnels that most people don’t realize have already been built.
At 63rd Street station on that platform behind that wall for downtown F service the track for Q service from 2nd Avenue already exists. It’s merging tunnel that would lead from the 2nd Avenue line into the 63rd Station already exists. On the other side if you’ve ever taken the F into Queens from 57th and 6th and peered through the window looking in the reverse direction and to your left you can see that the tunnel that would northbound 2nd Avenue line to the 63rd Street line already exists.
B division equipment needs a huge amount of space for turns. Especially the 75 foot cars. A station at 59th Street would not be able to avoid all of this tunnel merging and track switching.
Even the 1970s plan which can be seen in the link provided below shows a 12 block gap between stations with 72 being a four track station and 57 being the next stop heading southbound to accommodate all of the looping and connecting from 63rd Street in either direct.
http://images.nycsubway.org/maps/2ave-tr.gif
Bingo. The gap from 72nd to 55th is because of a major interlocking in between.
The gap in the East Village is no different from the gap on SBS, and that’s before taking into account where the additional exits will be. Most of Alphabet City will still benefit. By that point the 6 train is very close to 3rd Ave., so it should come as no surprise that people midway through the East Village gap are closer to Astor Place – it’s one long block plus one short block west of 2nd.
Jarrett Walker recommends 1 km station spacing while recognizing that a rapid transit line is a line. That means that some areas east and west of the north-south line will be outside the coverage area. See his diagram (included here) – those are the marked Coverage Gaps.
Remember, SAS doesn’t have an express. Closely space stations make sense if there’s an express to carry longer-distance travelers past them. If there’s no express, a 14-block spacing is not at all out of line. (Lexington Avenue riders from the Upper East Side to Lower Manhattan don’t stop at Astor Place either.)
A deep tunnel Secod Avenue station at 59th Street wouldn’t be unfeasible, based on the layout of the Sixth Avenue line, where you have a four-track station at 47th-50th Streets (ending just south of 50th) followed by stations just three blocks to the north, on 53rd Street at Fifth and Seventh avenues. That still leaves space for both the turn and a split from both the local and express tracks north of 50th Street to/from the 63rd Street connector.
The gap on Second Avenue would be four blocks, from 63rd to 59th, more than enough space to turn the trains from the already- built bell mouths off the 63rd Street tunnel and merge them with the tracks extending south along Second Avenue (the only space concession IND builders had to make with the Sixth Ave.-53rd Street arrangement was to place the F train’s southbound track to the east of the B/D tracks coming into Rockefeller Center, and then using a flyover between there and 42nd Street to get into the normal local/express track set-up).
John, you’re missing two things. First, deep-level stations are ungodly expensive. And second, if SAS can only connect to one of 53rd/Lex and 59th/Lex then it should connect to 53rd, which has worse crowding problems and could use the extra exits on Second.
Ungodly expensive, not to mention not user friendly at all. Imagine getting off at 63rd-Lex on the hottest day of the summer, running late (i.e. can’t wait for the single tiny elevator that may or may not be working), and find out that all of the escalators are out. Or pretty much any day of the summer when all of the escalators are out. Easily the worst station in the system. How do other cities have deep-level stations, but manage to run high speed escalators and don’t require walking along multiple massive landings before finally getting to the mezzanine (and then having to still go up another huge flight)?
Those other cities just make sure the escalators work. From what I recall of Singapore, Shanghai, and the RER, they have multiple escalators at each entrance as well as between the platforms. Best industry practice is wide island platforms with room for two escalators side by side.
The MTA apparently made the same decision, since the east ends of the Lexington Ave. stations for the E/M and the N/R are roughly the same distance from Second Ave. (you’d need a slightly longer tunnel to hook the N/R platform into a 57-59 St. stop on Second Ave. than you would a 55th Street station connection to the E/M, but the one advantage would be access to the 4/5 trains that 53rd wouldn’t provide). But from a functionality standpoint, in placing stations where passengers most want to go, it’s just an odd layout that is really counter-intuitive to what you’d expect, which would be the stations would be the closest together on the line in the main business districts.
On the East Side, that’s roughly from 40th-60th streets, but the design calls for just one station within the mile-and-a-half gap from 42nd to 72nd streets. So the layout actually places the least amount of stations south of 63rd where — based on the usage numbers for other stations in the system — the most number of people will want to go. The Lower Manhattan station alignment makes far more sense, with the Seaport station serving the northeastern end of the downtown business district and Hanover Square serving the southeastern end, with a distance in-between of only about seven blocks (or less, if Hanover Square is built to the north, towards Wall Street, instead of to the south, towards Broad).
The basic problem is that an additional station between 55th and 42nd would just bite into the station radius of existing stations, both on SAS and on the Lex.
The narrower station spacing in Lower Manhattan is okay, because it’s at the end of the line. It’s more important for a line to be fast in the middle than at the ends: a slowdown in Lower Manhattan only affects people going to Hanover Square, whereas a slowdown in Midtown affects everyone going south of 42nd.
The CBD spacing of SAS is a little wider than in the comparable systems I’ve checked, but not outrageously so – it’s about 1 km versus 800 meters in Tokyo.
i’ve wanted to ask this before … what’s a ‘barge facility’, and what use has it to the SAS?
That question was answered in an earlier comment.
is my face red …
Can’t they just put a stop at say, 66th St? And another at St Mark’s?
If they had the extra money to build the SAS with 3 tracks and the leftover money for more stations, then I bet these would’ve been considered first priority for inclusion. But this is SAS on a shoestring.
$1.7 billion per kilometer is hardly a shoestring.
To be honest, three tracks on the SAS would be a waste w/o at least service to the Bronx…
What would be the point of three tracks (with or without the Bronx)?
Three tracks is only needed at certain points. Even though they are doing away with it, three tracks at 72nd Street Station would have been a money saver in the long run on switching maintenance. The 70s plan was for four tracks at that station. That would’ve allowed for overnight Q service to be able to terminate at 72nd as opposed to having to crawl all the way up to 125th Street. Which in turn would save even more dollars on switching maintenance.
Agreed that the third track at 72nd should have remained.
And then let’s also say stops at 49th and 79th.
Why do you need a stop at 79th that will stretch to 81st if there’s already a stop that gets out between 83rd and 84th Sts.? The point of a subway isn’t to replicate bus service; it’s to provide faster service. Too many station stops defeats that purpose. There’s nothing wrong with the UES spacing here. It’s 0.6 miles — or 1 km — between stops, just as Walker proposes.
There’s a crosstown bus at 79th. A station there would be particularly useful.
The most widely used bus is on 86th, though.
It is, but 79th is quite busy also – despite the 6 train missing it by two blocks. The bus on 86th owes much of its business to its connections with all three subway lines, one of them (the one that feeds the greatest numbers onto the bus) at an express station. I wonder which one was busier before MetroCard.
I’m not arguing that there should be a station at 79th. I’m just pointing out that it’s still a very reasonable request – 79th is a lot more useful than 83rd.
Much, but not all – the 96th Street bus isn’t as busy. A while ago Streetsblog had a post on how 86th was an important street in and of itself, generating significant car traffic even on segments that don’t connect across the park.
But you’re right that 79th is more important by far than 83rd…
It’s the most logical stop for a station in between. One thing I find infuriating about the current placement of stations is that they are too far (IMO) that they need stations in between, but often too close to make stations in between feasible.
Also, spacing stations a little closer allows for eventual implementation of express service.
No space is being left aside for future express tracks. There is never going to be an express here.
Could you not possibly put express tracks on the outside?
Most likely, the construction of the tracks isn’t leaving any room for future express tracks on the outside while staying within the ROW under 2nd. If it did, they’d need to spend (a little) more money and they’d say it’s being made ready for future express service.
In that case, they might as well have done it to the NYC standard of local on the outside, express on the inside.
The reason I though on the outside was b/c in theory, you could add express tracks w/o destroying the already built locals. To do it the standard way after the fact would require ripping up the local tracks.
That would also be nice in case they ever extend the Nostrand Ave segment…
I don’t think it matters – it’s the same either way.
There are other reasons to build new tracks with express trains on the outside, though. The main one is that the local trains can terminate midway easily; the standard way would require an expensive flying junction, as at 168th.
Like I’ve been saying for a long time, the SAS will be like an express line in which they forgot to build the local stations.
A local line wihout express stations is still better than an express line without local stations.
The fact that there will be longer stations with more exits does not make up for the unreasonably long distance between stations. A long walk is a long walk, even if part of the walk is underground.
One really simple improvement they could make for Alphabet city is to just build another exit on the L train at 14th street and Avenue A. This would shorten the walking distance to the subway for people in the neighborhood and should be very cheap. I really don’t understand why the L is missing entrances for Ave A(Alphabet City) and Second Avenue (the downtown Select Bus Stop).
I read somewhere that another station on the L-train isnt possible in Alphabet city because of the steep downgrade of the tunnel heading under the river.
That’s the best answer I’ve ever gotten as well. It’s an infuriating question to research.
I also have many times wondered why that line was not built with one more station between First Ave. and the river. It is as if they had ignored the fact that the distance between First Ave. and the river at that point is much greater than the distance between First Ave. and the river in midtown.
If that statement about a steep grade in the tunnel east of First Ave. is correct, than that was a hell of a mistake in construction. What about stations like East Broadway, Whitehall St., or Wall St.(on the #2 and #3)? Those stations certainly are much closer to the water than the First Ave. L station is.
Oh yes, I want to add than this issue reminds me of how I’ve heard that the steepness of the grades on each side of the Verrazano Bridge made it permanently impossible for train service to be added to that bridge.
Some people believe that Robert Moses did it that way intentionally, because of his bias against mass transit.
I’ve never heard anyone state a belief to the contrary. I think everyone agrees that Moses did it intentionally.
To be fair, none of the other east-west lines have stations at First Ave.
But I do wish both First and Third had exits at A and Second (respectively). Presumably an exit at Second will be available when the SAS transfer opens. But A would be even more useful.
One of the posters on the Straphangers forums said the MTA gave that answer when he asked.
We’re not talking about adding a station, here. The east end of the existing 1st Avenue station is physically already at Avenue A… but you can only enter or exit the station from the west end of the platform at 1st Ave.
You could get a lot of benefit with fairly little cost by installing exits at the east end of the platforms…
i agree. seems like an easy fix. i assume they are busy with the bleecker/bway/lafayette and jay/lawrence connections. something like a new entrance would inevitably be done with a station renovation that could cost around $100 million by the time it’s done.
The RPA has made this suggestion a number of times, including in their “Tomorrow’s Transit” report: http://www.rpa.org/pdf/RPA_tomorrows_transit.pdf
I can see why it’d be difficult to build new stations further east along the L in Manhattan but I don’t understand how the tunnel’s downgrade could prevent stairs being constructed at the east end of the existing stations. The existing stations are already in the middle of the blocks and everybody has to walk back west to the stairwell by the end of the train. We’re just talking about adding a stairwell at the existing east end of the stations. It seems like the cost-benefit on a stairway at Avenue A would be high. You instantly reduce commute times for everybody in Stuy Town and Alphabet City north of Tompkins Square.
Yes, a stair at Avenue A into the 1st ave station would be useful and cheap.
As for an entrance 2nd Ave., the current 3rd Avenue L station should probably be closed altogether; that is excess station density and pointlessly slows down the trip to/from Brooklyn. All the points it serves are already within one avenue of an L station.
But that’s going to be the transfer point to SAS!
Should Phase 3 ever get built, it would make a lot more sense to build the transfer out to the 1st Ave. stop (or make it a walking transfer), for the same reasons stated above. At any rate, whether we’d want the stop to be open once the T has a transfer there isn’t very relevant to whether it should be operating today, when T service there is probably 20 years out or more.
It’s fairly safe to assume the L will get its exit at Second Ave. if they ever build the 14th Street stop for the Second Avenue subway. Right now, the Avenue A exit at First Avenue would be far more useful, though it’s been in the talking stage for the better part of 40 years. Given the growth in ridership of the L over the past 15 years, and the fare control placements on the line in Williamsburgh and at First Avenue — mostly towards the west end of the stations — a new Avenue A exit would, along with making access better for Alphabet City and the eastern end of Stuyvesant Town, also help spread out the passenger load a little on the L, which tends to cluster in the front four cars headed to Eighth Ave. and in the rear four Canarsie-bound cars.
I too wonder why the MTA does not consider adding an eastern entrance to the L train at Avenue A. Both platforms are incredibly crowded near the exits during rush hours, to the point that I worry about someone being accidently pushed into the tracks. And the street level exits occur at the corner of 1st and 14th, a very busy intersection from a traffic and pedestrian point of view.
But I suppose that’s a topic for another day…improving coverage by adding exits to existing stations.
Although I’ll miss my comfort commuting to/from Brooklyn on that end of the train, I agree with having the east entrance at Avenue A (as well as a 2nd Avenue entrance eventually). Unsure if there’s enough space for a mezzanine to span both platforms, which would also be useful for the occasional lost tourist who’d otherwise need to go to Brooklyn or Union Square. The police booth must also be considered in the entrance design. It certainly impedes foot traffic at Bedford Avenue station.
Would elevators be required for this entrance per ADA?
[…] the importance of subway station spacing. Alphabet City residents probably won’t benefit much from the new Second Avenue Subway, if it’s ever completed [Second Avenue […]
But WHERE does that idea about 1 km/0.6 mile come from?
The IND did not follow a standard like that when it was built.
Maybe the IRT did put some of its stops too close together, but the SAS (and also the #7 extension) are going to the other extreme.
When some transit planners talk about a reasonable walking distance, they have in mind young, healthy people walking in good weather.
Jarrett’s idea about 1 km comes from observing real-world rapid transit systems, most of which are not the exceptionally closely-spaced New York City Subway. His principle is that people walk longer to better service; thus subway stations can and should be much more widely spaced than bus stops. (And bus stops should be spaced every 400 meters, not 200 as in most US cities.)
IND standards sucked even for the 1920s, and are pretty much irrelevant today.
In my opinion:
400 meters = 1/4 mile = 5 blocks = ridiculous
It’s standard in Europe. The seniors there seem to be doing fine. In fact the local transportation systems are specifically geared to be friendly to seniors: in Amsterdam, they say they plan the bike infrastructure for 60-year-old women with grocery bags.
It’s just a 2.5 block walk worst case, really. And if you consider that the stops itself tend to be more advertised (for example in the maps they have dots), people know where the stops are – they tend to walk to the closest ones.
A 2.5 block walk plus the distance perpendicular to the bus line just to reach the street the bus runs on.
Usually the standard is 400 meters in the worst case, i.e. 200 perpendicular and 200 along the streets.
When some transit planners talk about a reasonable walking distance, they have in mind young, healthy people walking in good weather.
Puh-leez. A 90 year old finished this year’s NYC marathon. That’s 42 Kilometers.
If at least they would build an entrance/exit on Avenue A or B and Houston street, it would make a huge difference to some people like myself.