The MTA late last week unveiled a new video glimpse inside the 7 line extension,and progress is moving quickly. According to the video, the build-out of the station at 34th St. and 11th Ave. has been completed ahead of schedule, and the area is ready for the vast array of finishes, ventilation structures and signals that must be installed before the extension enters revenue service by the end of 2013.
Throughout the video, Shawn Kildare from MTA Capital Construction calls the terminal a real “21st century station” with ample room for passengers to circulate throughout the space. It will connect the Javits Center and the Hudson Yards development to the subway, but it won’t provide a station at 41st St. and 10th Ave. The barest of provisioning has been implemented to ensure future work if the funds are ever in place, but this project should be remembered for what it failed to deliver to Hells Kitchen as much as for it promises to deliver to the Far West Side.
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Being ahead of schedule is nice to see. Any chance the lack of federal involvement in this is helping things along? IIRC the city is paying for this out of its own pocket.
Now just extend the L Train to meet the 7 and we really got a deal!
http://nybydzine.tumblr.com/day/2011/11/19
Always thought that was a great idea.
Or continue south with the #7: one station at a time if need be, until you reach the Battery. Whatever you don’t, under any circumstances, go to NJ. They had their chance. Christie cancelled ARC. I fail to see why we should be building NJ’s rail projects for them.
Agreed
Way overbuilt, like much of the IND system. They could have built something much more modest and had the money for the 41st St/10th Ave station. Do the vast mezzanines at places like 14th St/8th Ave or W 4th St/6th Ave actually do anybody any good?
I think the thought behind this is the claim that this will be the busiest station in the system by 2030 or some (possibly unsubstantiated) claim such as that.
And I believe although they didn’t leave an island-platform station shell at 41/10, they have included provisions for adding side platforms at some point in the future when funds become available. Is this correct, Ben?
Correct. The tracks are leveled out to the maximum station slope possible as they pass the site for a potential stop at 41st and 10th Ave. It would have to involve two side platforms.
Give up on the 10th Ave Station. There are so many other parts of the City that could use an infill station and it wouldn’t have to be underground. Half-price Baby…
Really? Where would you put a better used infill station? Most stops on the NYC subway are spaced pretty close together.
Agreed all 28th Street, 18th Street, and anything that pwrqprovides access to Statin Eyelun station should be closed and filled in with sidewalk cart pretzels. Eeeewwww.
But if you look at the need for a future station either between 10th Ave. and west Chelsea, guess who wins?
There should be a $10 per day surcharge on all private commuter parking spaces in Manhattan. You want to drive that FOSSIL CAR into the City, then you clearly are able and ultimately willing to pay.
I don’t know about infill station in our subway system. Most stops are close together. Other than maybe somewhere on the Dyre Ave line I don’t know about any spots where there is any kind of long enough space to squeeze in another stop. As for 10th Avenue, we can always hope.
But construction of the 41st/10th station would involve closing down service to the 34th/11th station, right?
That is the most minimal of provisions.
The West 4th St. mezzanine is useless? What about passengers who are, let’s say, coming in on an F train from Brooklyn and transferring to an E train to go downtown?
P.S. I remember that bad old days, like the 1960’s, at that station. The escalators were not there yet, and when you got off any train on the lower level, you had to walk up all those levels to get to the street.
The West Fourth mezzanine is what it is in part because the Eighth Avenue trains and the Sixth Avenue trains had to be two levels apart so that the PATH trains turning from Sixth Avenue onto Christopher Street could be accommodated in the middle. They may not have had to have built as expansive a mezzanine as they did, but that space between the upper and lower tracks had to be there, at least at the northern half of the station.
The mezzanine between the 6th & 8th Ave levels at W 4th was designed to provide the easiest transfers between northbound & southbound 6th & 8th Ave services.
People say the IND was overbuilt. I say they are wrong. It was designed wisely (not withstanding some of the grand but underutilized stations in the outer boroughs) to handle anticipated passenger growth, and not on the cheap, like so many current transit projects.
This not-on-the-cheap design doomed Second Avenue Subway and many other useful expansion projects: all the money available for them was instead spent on the Sixth Avenue Subway boondoggle, which is the very definition of concrete-before-organization thinking.
To which 6th Ave subway boondoggle are you referring? The 6th Ave subway as it now exists? After all the entire IND system was predicated on two 4 tk Manhattan trunk lines. The project was brought to final fruition in 67-68 with through 6 Ave exp tracks and the Christie cut, which greatly improved service & connectivity throughout the combined IND-BMT and provided the railroad with an enviable level of operational redundancy. I see no problem with the layout as it now stands.
What we should be asking is why heavy rail metro construction here in the USA costs anywhere from two to four times what it costs in Western Europe. Various reasons have been suggested here and elsewhere, including virulent NIMBYism. But the outrageous cost: that’s what’s ultimately killing so many worthy projects.
Both halves of Sixth Avenue Subway were bad ideas. Constructing alongside and under an operating subway line is hard, and this raises costs. It’s analogous to today’s penchant for deep-level caverns and tail tracks. If there was a real need for a subway under Sixth, they should’ve extended the Hudson Tubes to Grand Central as previously planned.
High construction costs can come from either high unit costs or from overbuilding. Places known for their low-cost construction, such as Spain all around and France for high-speed lines, got this way by keeping both under control. In France, high-speed lines don’t go into cities and take a long time to build in order to build local support – and in the Riviera, where NIMBYism and an inferiority complex is forcing heavy urban and mountain tunneling, HSR costs are high by non-Anglophone standards. Likewise, Spain’s ungodly low costs come in part from using standard, conservative designs, and keeping tunnels as shallow as possible.
The IND system was predicated on replacing els with subways from the center outward, and only providing new service at a few places (e.g. QB). And both the new service and the subways running along former el lines interacted poorly with the IRT and BMT, requiring even more tunnels later on to create some compatibility. Redundancy for Upper West Siders is nice, but real problems that were foreseeable even then, such as the growth of Queens, were not addressed.
The original NY els were fine in their day but, if they were still up and running would be well in excess of 100 years old. And their capacity was limited as they had at most three tracks, and on 6th Ave only two, and were built for smaller cars, almost exactly the dimensions of the present IRT cars.
The IND was designed to be integrated with the BMT subway, which, eventually came to pass. The through routing of several shorter lines (BB & T, D & Q, with the F replacing the D, etc) resulted in a far more efficient and economical operation in terms of car requirements, car milage and crew requirements. The 6th Ave subway, with all 4 tracks in operation and the Christie cut open, took significant traffic off the BMT Bway subway, the express tracks of which had been reduced to a crawl in the peak periods with three express services, N, Q & T, and also allowed for a better utilization of the 4 tracks on the Manhattan Br, with two services using each side: D & B on the “A/B’ side and the N & QB on the “H” side. Previously the “A/B” side was used 24/7 by Bway express trains. The “H” side was only used weekday rush hours.
As to redundancy: midday there is no need for two local services on CPW. Unfortunately there is no where to turn the trains. It was operational redundancy which I had in mind: the ability to reroute trains when there are blockages of one sort or another, and the ability to schedule less disruptive general order work. The lack of operational redundancy in the Hudson River tubes of Amtk/NJT, where 4 tracks are sorely needed to adequately handle the scheduled service (let alone provide for expanding service) is being brought home with increasing frequency as almost every morning and evening we hear of major tie ups on the lines due to signal problems, stalled trains, etc.
The problems in the outer boroughs were eventually to be addressed. And you need 4 track trunk lines if you’re going to merge numerous branch lines into them. Unfortunately first the Depression, then WW II put all these schemes on hold. After WW II it was time to start spending trillions on car infrastructure and sprawl. Given the trillions we’ve invested in vastly over built car infrastructure and sprawl I’d say the IND system was a bargain.
The biggest Queens problem, lack of capacity into Manhattan, was addressed in a half-assed way with the 63rd Street Line. But even in the 1920s, Queens was rapidly growing, and its population was almost as high as that of the Bronx, which had 8 subway tracks and 4 el tracks connecting to Manhattan. But while Queens only had 4 subway tracks and 2 el tracks, the IND only gave it 2 new tracks, fewer than the 3 it gave the Bronx. Back then it was not obvious that the CBD would only extend as far north as 59th, making a 63rd Street tunnel useless, but by the time they began building the tunnel, it should have been obvious.
The IND was designed for a hostile takeover of the BMT, not for integration. If it ha been designed for integration, then IND/BMT intersections would’ve had free transfers, just like intersections within each of the three systems. Instead, 53rd/7th is far from 49th/Broadway and the G is too far from both QBP and the main Downtown Brooklyn BMT/IRT stations.
Based on already-existing trends, it should have been obvious that the IND would not add much capacity. That it would add some capacity on the West Side, but not be too useful since half the station radius would be wasted on trees. That it would reduce capacity on the East Side and in Eastern Brooklyn, and add insufficient capacity in Queens. That Broadway was the perfect corridor for the Upper West Side whereas most of the Upper East Side’s population was well to the east of Lex.
A system based on trying to solve the subway’s problems instead of destroy it would have tied into the existing IRT and BMT lines, as planned in the late 1910s and early 1920s before the IND. The Crosstown Line would connect QBP and Atlantic. QB would go under 50th Street and be four-tracked all the way – or maybe 34th, which was more important than the 50s at the time. Sixth Avenue would get a Hudson Tubes extension. The els would stay. Extra West Side service would feed into the Broadway express tracks. And Second Avenue would get a subway before CPW.
I notice the caption at the beginning of the station says “34th St – Hudson Yards Station”. Is that the official name? Putting Hudson Yards in there seems a bit odd…
Beginning of the video, I mean.
“Hudson Yards” makes perfect sense. It let’s you know where it is while having a unique finish, not overbearing, with just a hint of brokerbabble.
Agreed, if anything “Javits Center” is the more appropriate addition to the name. At least that exists now.
this is a disgrace of monumental proportions- the RINO or whatever the hek he is Bloomberg and his pet projects skipping over that station on 10th. this will go down as one of the biggest blunder’s in history. he’s such a jerk off.
Since the city was footing a chunk of the bill, they pretty much decided whether it would have one or two stations. Doubt the MTA was gonna say much and potentially have an even more expensive project on its hands.
That said, my understanding was that the tracks will continue some distance south, and beyond merely relaying trains, the MTA would be very much open to bringing it down to 23rd in the future if far west Chelsea growth necessitates it. Not imminent of course, but possible.
While I have no problem with subway construction in Manhattan (SAS, #7) I still see a pressing need for extensions in the outer boroughs, something that’s been completely forgotten: South/East Queens extension from Parsons/Archer, #6 extension to Co-Op City, Utica Ave subway, one seat ride rail to JFK and LaG, etc, etc, etc. The MTA used to talk about this stuff all the time back in the ’70s and ’80s. It seems now they’re all forgotten dreams. And I blame the NIMBYs in large part for killing off so many of these worthy projects. Obviously they prefer subsidized highways and motor vehicles, sprawl and parking minimums.
(1968)
http://www.thejoekorner.com/li.....action.htm
(1999)
http://www.rpa.org/pdf/metrolink.pdf
(2008)
http://www.mta.info/mta/news/p.....202008.pdf
Oh the grand plans. And all we got is 3 new subway stops on 2 Ave and a stop at Javits. At least it’s something. Also notable that the South 4 St/Utica subway was completely abandoned by the 1960s as a possible new route despite the provisions for it not really being that old.
Well that doesn’t mean we should give up hope and simply never ever again think big. I dare say that when gas reaches $7 a gallon some of these schemes will be dusted off.
And one can still decry the shameful use of huge amounts of cash on utterly useless boondoggles such as Fulton Transit Mall and the new South Ferry station. For all that they have or will accomplish (nothing in terms of improving train service and increasing capacity) you might as well have flushed that money down the toilet.
That might be the true impact of the NIMBYs. Lots of money spent on something that looks like it does good, but in fact helps little or not at all.
You could possibly make the argument that Fulton Transit Center is a boondoggle but in what world is new South Ferry one? They replaced a station that basically didn’t function at all with a brand new one that could accommodate a ten-car train.
It’s been a while and I forgot the numbers, but I’m pretty sure it still cost significantly more than it needed to. I agree it was a worthy project though, just at an inexcusable price.
Andy, that’s exactly what I was thinking when I read that comment.
New SF improved service on the #1 not one iota. In fact it now costs more to run exactly the same service as two additional trains and crews are needed since there is much more relay time at the south end. Also the ridership at old SF simply did not justify this kind of expenditure. It is way down the list of station body counts – somewhere around 90 or 100. Given a normal level of service you could easily fit all the passengers in the first two cars – which is where they usually were. 90% of them knew the drill – to be in the first 5 cars.
I was with NYCTA for almost 37 years and was in on the planning of new SF. Everyone in the know, as to road operations and passenger counts, was totally against it. This was one more political scam, one more gift to the Staten Island whiners – like free ferry service. Hey people, how about cutting tolls on bridges to/from SI? Those SI motorists really have it rough.
And as to Fulton Transit Mall: yes it is a complete and total crock. You’d have done more for NYC by simply handing out that money to random homeless people on the street.
It appears you are making things up or are misinformed. South Ferry Station is ranked 34 out of 422 in terms of ridership. A total of 8,807,719 used it in 2010. The old South Ferry was a complete disaster. Service frequency might have not improved but everything else did. Don’t forget South Ferry isn’t just used by daily commuters. Tourists flock down there for a number of reasons and if you think trying to convince 50 people from Norway to shuffle into the first 5 cars at Rector Street doesn’t delay service then you’re crazy.
That’s because it the body count is now combined with Whitehall on the BMT. Previous to the completion of the transfer old SF was down around 90-100.
The South Ferry project did have benefits. First, maintenance of the old station was a real pain. I’m sure the tracks wore down quickly due to the tight turns, not to mention the trains. Second, at a time when LIRR riders were falling through gaps like it was the biggest fad since the Macarena, NYCT was getting rid of those awful, clumsy, clunky gap-fillers. Third, I do believe it was a good “practice” project prior to #7 and Second Ave. Remember when the station sprung a leak? When the platform-to-train gap was still too wide? Its better to fix it here before making the same mistake 3 or 4 times on the new subway lines.
You can criticize the stupid building on top of Fulton Street, but most of the work there needed to be done to (a) make the stations wheelchair-accessible, and (b) alleviate overcrowding on the Lexington Avenue Line.
As for South Ferry? Again, needed for wheelchair access. They seem to have hired really corrupt and incompetent contractors, though (what the hell was up with it not being watertight and not having the platform edges lined up right?)
The big problem in NYC is not actually the projects, but the fact that they are executed poorly and over-budget.
“I was with NYCTA for almost 37 years and was in on the planning of new SF. Everyone in the know, as to road operations and passenger counts, was totally against it.”
If your description of NYCTA management attitudes is true, it shows that NYCTA needs its management turfed out and replaced. Seriously. I can’t compliment the substandard, shoddy contracting at South Ferry, but the need to replace the station was clear.
Why do you *think* it was fairly far down the list of station body counts? It’s not its “adjacent to Battery Park City” location which was hurting it! It was a dreadfully functioning station. Incidentally, #100 is still within the top 25% of stations, and would have to be done relatively soon; I’m sure the operational and maintenance problems encouraged doing it sooner.
It was also on the ADA Key Stations list, which means if it hadn’t been replaced, another station would have had to have been substituted on the list. What station would you have put on the list instead? Hint: here’s the current list, you can’t include any of the ones already on the list.
http://www.nyctransportationac.....-list.html
As I’d said, the body count for old SF, previous to its being combined with Whitehall on the BMT in late 2008 and then counting the two as one station, was around 4,000,000 per year, which would put it down around #100 on the station body count list.
BTW I don’t think you build an entirely new station at the cost of hundreds of millions simply for ADA compliance.
As to where to spend the money? Well we all know it was earmarked for 9/11 related projects. But in an ideal world – for starts – totally rebuild Flatbush terminal on the IRT. This is a wholly inadequate terminal for the service it’s handling, is a nightmare to operate and every single weekday rush hour adversely affects service on all four IRT express services, 2, 3, 4 & 5.
Or better yet extend it at least to Kings Highway.
Various extension options had been studied in the ’90s, really just pie-in-the-sky stuff. The problem with extending south from FA, either under FA or under Nostrand, is the LIRR cut: it effectively blocks the subway. In the studies we’d done back then it was determined Newkirk would have had to be made a temporary terminal and, south of that point the subway structure would have needed to start ramping down to attain the necessary depth to duck under the LIRR cut.
Good point, I forgot about the Bay Ridge branch. Well at the very least, they do need to rebuild that terminal such that it isn’t the insane joke of a terminal it is now. I’ve only had the pleasure of running all the way around from the end of the eastern platform to the western one to catch a train once, and it wasn’t a fun sprint.
That was all funded by federal money earmarked for downtown recovery though. Not much else could have been done with that money
Yes this is quite true of the 9/11 money. But the MTA has been playing shell games with federal bucks for decades. I dare say they could have cooked up a compelling case for the use of 9/11 money somewhere else in the system on a more worthy project.
There is merit to ADA compliance at Fulton, but I generally agree with you. The costs are much higher than necessary to achieve ADA compliance anyway.
Two more tracks on the SAS or another segment would have been a much better use of that money.
A lot of the money, apart from the ADA-compliance money, was spent on passenger circulation from the East Side IRT station, which got new south side exits, separate east platform and west platform elevators, and a lot of extra holes in the platform wall for people to walk through on the east side. I think they were worried that overcrowding would eventually have passengers falling onto the tracks.
The argument that they should have designed for a large overbuild tower, rather than building a “signature building”… that, I agree with.
I blame the NIMBYs too, but I also blame politicians. Something like AirTrain could have been a comprehensive city transportation project for no additional cost and light years of added benefit.
AirTrain was funded with federal gimmick money; the MTA and the city would have to pony up for more AirTrain lines.
Even if that’s so, would that be so bad? But it easily could have been an extension of the New York City Subway, perhaps for less than the cost of a brand spanking new system.
Federal gimmick money, correct. It was funded thru the Port Authority charges to users of JFK, namely the airlines and/or their passengers (pretty much the same when you are counting taxes and fees).
Federal rules prohibit funds raised that way from being spent on connecting transit systems, like a subway or even LIRR. And the airlines will fight to the death any effort to allow airport funds to go to support transit, capital projects or operations.
These rules would allow AirTrain to be extended to LaGuardia, or perhaps even into Manhattan. But it could never serve as a larger system or share tracks or trains with another transit entity.
I know. Trying and failing to change federal rules is understandable. Not trying and never finding out if you will fail is kind of inexcusable. Elected officials should have been working together to make sure we got the best system we could have, not this current sorry piece of crap.
Could have used the money from 9/11 funds to build SAS from Grand south. Unlike Fulton and South Ferry, it would have actually been a useful project long term.
Because the NIMBYs have successfully blocked the reactivation of the defunct but largely intact LIRR Rockaway Line between White Pot Jct (Rego Park) and Liberty Jct, where the subway ramps down onto the ROW. This is a terrible shame. And this is one more legacy of Bob Moses who, through his high handed methods, helped create the whole NIMBY backlash.
Just out of curiosity, which project would the folks here do if they had their pick right now? Second Avenue Subway, excluded, which would you go for first if funding was available? LIE Subway in Queens? South 4 St/Utica Ave subway? 2/5 extension to Voorhees? Metrolink plans (see PDF) to take over LIRR Atlantic and connect to 2 Ave Subway? Metrolink Bronx? Original IND-planned 2 Ave Subway Bronx route? For my money, I’d do the South 4 St/Utica subway.
I’d done several studies of this for the RPA & RRWG: definitely reactivation of the abandoned LIRR Rockaway Line between White Pot Jct & Liberty Jct. This is about as “shovel ready” as you can get as the right-of-way is almost wholly intact, except for the parking lot at Union Tpk and the School Bus Depot south of Atlantic Ave. It can be readily reintegrated into the existing LIRR lines at White Pot Jct and at Woodhaven Jct (both junctions are intact) to provide a one seat ride between JFK & Penn, JFK & Flat/Atl and eventually JFK/GCT. Needless to say much renovation and/or replacement of the decrepit structures will be needed. But compared to construction an entirely new line this resurrection of the old road would be a bargain.
Yeah, the abandonment of that line is a waste. Especially with the possibilities for both LIRR and the subway for that ROW. If the group wanting to turn it into a “high-line” type park gets what they want, it’ll be an awful loss for the city.
Capt, who is in favor of renewing this line? There are always NIMBYs, but is there a constituency in favor of it? Passengers looking for a one-seat ride JFK-Penn probably don’t vote in this state. How many passengers per day we talking about?
If you suggest that it would help middle class minority neighborhoods in Queens and Brooklyn, the current Mayor’s eyes will narrow: Those folks did not vote for him.
If the thing could be repackaged as better service to the new arena at Atlantic Station, or something like that, then you might get some heavyweights behind it.
——
How would the cost of restarting this LIRR line compare to, say, extending rail service to Stewart Airport at the foot of the Catskills? Back in 2007, Second Avenue Subways quoted The Sun: “… could cost more than $600 million to construct.” That sounds like a billion to me.
First of all it has been recommended that the six stops on the line: Aqueduct (with a connection to the subway), Ozone Pk (101 Ave), Woodhaven Jct (Atlantic Ave, with a transfer to the lower level abandoned l Wdhvn Jct station), Brooklyn Manor (Jamaica Ave), Parkside (Metropolitan Ave) and Rego Park (63rd Drive). So the communities along the line, many not walkable to rail rapid transit, would be served.
As to who would use it – a one seat ride between JFK, one of the busiest airports in the world, & Midtown or Flatbush/Atl in 35-40 minutes – at, given the current LIRR fare structure, about 1/3 to 1/4 the price of a cab ride (such cab ride easily taking twice as long due to gridlocked traffic)? The question answers itself. Projections are in the tens of thousands for day one.
It’s not a one-seat ride from JFK to Midtown; it’s a one-seat ride from Howard Beach to Midtown. (The AirTrain is a proprietary system that shares very little with the subway or the LIRR except track gauge.) And there’s already a one-seat ride from Jamaica to Midtown that’s more frequent than the JFK spur could ever be and doesn’t require building even more extra infrastructure just for airport riders.
For local service, the Rockaway Cutoff’s problem is that it doesn’t serve the main neighborhood centers. The main thing that does is Woodhaven. You can set up service on the Cutoff for much cheaper, but the way current US commuter rail works, it’s going to suck; either find the money for intermediate-grade transit on Woodhaven (somewhere between BRT and light rail), or reactivate lines elsewhere. If there’s a realistic way to connect the Lower Montauk Line to Manhattan then it should be done; the Lower Montauk Line hits the main neighborhood centers or passes close to them.
The scheme is to reactivate the most direct route between Midtown & Downtown Bklyn and JFK. And that is the abandoned Rock Line, no contest. The entire ROW is in place, including a grade separated jct with the LIRR mainline at White Pot. In today’s funding environment this is the most “shovel ready” economical approach.
As to where the people are: Rego Pk (63rd Dr) is a thriving commercial center. Parkside (Metropolitan Ave) now has big box stores to the west and a thriving much gentrified commercial strip immediately to the east. Bklyn Manor (Jamiaca Ave) is also a heavily commercialized street. And with reactivated train service one could expect much TOD happening around the stations.
The scheme is to take the LIRR directly to the JFK terminals, not to an transfer to the train-to-the-train-to-the plane at HB. The PA claims that the airtrain structures were built for possible conversion to subway or LIRR operation. A shorter LIRR car would be needed for the service because of the curve radii. 60 ft “B” division cars could negotiate the curves. The only problem is one 5.5% grade on the line. LIRR & NY subway cars are not good on grades beyond 4.5%, the steepest to be found anywhere on those systems.
Would you have to use LIRR cars? Could you run AirTrain-spec cars on the LIRR tracks?
Obviously the current AirTrain cars can handle the curves and grades at the airport, so take them into Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal.
Oh, lemme guess. “Due to Federal Safety Regulations based on studies done 50 years ago, as well as to the overriding principal of opposing anything ‘not invented here’ … “
Unfortunately yes, FRA regulations. Also, AirTrain uses a proprietary Bombardier fully-automated train system. That includes the CITYFLO 650 CBTC system and linear induction motors, instead of traditional traction motors. That strip of aluminum you see going down the middle of the tracks is part of the traction system. And finally there’s the issue with AirTrain not having an operator cabin, and there not really being a lot of those cars available anyways. Not feasible.
*EDIT: Sorry, I checked and I’m not sure if AirTrain JFK uses the CITYFLO 650 system. It apparently uses Bombardier’s earlier automated system.
(Could use an edit button in the comments)
Allow me to strongly agree with the idea of an Edit button. Many times I have wished that I could correct myself here, as I did a few minutes ago when I wanted to say “presumably” and it wound up as “presumable”.
Edit buttons have their downside as well – they require a system of registration, and allow people to scrub embarrassing content they said (as opposed to embarrassing typos).
It should be fine that there’s instant comment preview.
Alex C already brought up the problem of compatibility between the mainline tracks and the AirTrain system (P.S. some mainline EMUs can climb 5.5% and even higher grades, but it’s not normal). But there’s another issue, which is operating costs. The AirTrain can maintain its short headway only because it’s automated. Put a driver, and it’s no longer economic to offer frequent service. Airport connectors that are not driverless need to have very strong non-airport demand; the A and E have it and so does the LIRR at Jamaica, but the LIRR in central Queens would not.
It all hinges on how much non-airport demand you can get out of the Cutoff, and it’s just not high. It’s very low under the LIRR’s current pattern of offering hourly off-peak service to the in-city stations. Forest Hills is a bustling neighborhood but has 1,100 weekday LIRR boardings plus exits. And all this assumes that the business-class airport travelers won’t mind that their direct Midtown train makes intermediate stops.
But even if we pretend for a second that the LIRR is run by professionals who have at least heard of Swiss trains, there’s not much to serve there. Between the Main Line and Metropolitan, the commercial development is all on Woodhaven. At Metropolitan the big development is auto-oriented hell. Farther south there is a little bit of commercial development on the cross streets, then industrial development to Liberty. If you have the political power to TOD-ify that over objections to loss of parking and high density, you have the political power to solve all of the city’s other transportation problems.
Your acronyms are “Greek” to me. (Or is it no longer politically correct to use an expression which literally refers to some group of people?) What is an EMU, when it’s not a funny kind of bird? How do you TOD-ify something?
EMU = Electric Multiple Unit (Like the M7 on the LIRR, the Shinkansen high-speed trains in Japan, etc.)
TOD is transit-oriented development. In principle, it means development that’s walkable, compact, and oriented toward the train station it’s on top of. In practice, local kvetchers and developers always turn it into a mess with too much parking, facing away from the street, like vertical suburbia in the city.
An EMU is an electric multiple-unit, which means each car or group of cars is self-propelled without needing a separate locomotive, and the traction is electric. All subway trains are EMUs. Almost all modern commuter trains are EMUs, as are the LIRR and Metro-North trains running in electric territory (beyond electric territory, they’re hauled by diesel locomotives). Intercity trains can be either locomotive-pulled or MUs, but high-speed trains are usually EMUs.
OK thanks, Alex and Alon.
First, I don’t think demand at intermediate stations on the line is the point of its resurrection. That would be the icing on the cake and a selling point to at least some of the NIMBYs. I think demand for a speedy, reasonably priced one seat ride between JFK and Penn/Flat-Atl and eventually GCT is there. These are hardly insignificant destinations. Let me add once again that the line is 90% intact, including the junctions for direct access to Flat, Penn and eventually GCT. For this reason it would be, compared to most heavy rail construction projects, a relatively cheap one.
As to the LIRR lack of professionalism: that is a corporate culture issue and one that could be changed. The fact that the LIRR has written off Queens local service (and the MNR Bronx local service) is also a practice that can be changed, and at virtually no extra costs as the trains are already running and simply by-passing those stations. I fault the MTA top management for these sorts of things – ditto for not coming up with a unified fare structure and a uni-ticket that can be used on all their services. But that’s a whole other issue.
On the contrary. Airport expresses universally suck. In Seoul, a dedicated airport express subway missed ridership projections by a factor of 7. The business class is much better at vocally demanding premium express trains than at riding them. Airport locals do better because of the more varied mix of origins and destinations, but still don’t generate too much ridership by themselves – just look at the Chicago Blue Line.
The main cost of reactivating the Rockaway Cutoff is not the cutoff itself, but rather getting the trains to use the AirTrain alignment. It’s not built for mainline specs, it’s a completely vendor-locked system, and it requires a new connection to get trains from the A route to the AirTrain tracks. Laying a bit of double-track and third rail on line that already had them is basically free.
125th Street and Triboro. Both together should cost far less than a full subway line, since one is a stub and the other requires no new tunneling except in Melrose through Yankee Stadium.
You seem awfully optimistic about Triboro RX. It doesn’t seem as easy as you seem to make it sound to add even two subway tracks at grade, and the prevailing anti-el attitude probably means a lot more tunneling than should be necessary.
There wouldn’t be use of much elevated structures other than those that already exist. And if replaced, they’d be replaced with quiet, modern concrete guideways.
Yes, I agree that would be prudent, but if Triboro RX actually happened, I’d expect a lot of overkill. And with FRA rules as they are, a lot of unnecessary grade separation will probably be called for.
Not much to do with grade separation. The LIRR Bay Ridge branch is already fully grade separated. Won’t be an issue.
The LIRR Bay Ridge branch isn’t a subway line. A subway line would need to be separated from what the FRA has jurisdiction over.
Physically separating it from the LIRR, Metro-North, etc. would help. The SIR is technically an FRA railroad, but isn’t connected to anything, so their next car order will most likely have non-dinosaur structural rigidity and weight requirements. The FRA has shown a slight hint of sanity the past year with giving waivers to CalTrain to buy actual off-the-shelf EMUs and having new rail standards that don’t require bank-vault-on-wheels trains.
We keep suffering for the stupidity of the past. I understand that when the #7 line was originally built, some areas that is went through wer still farmland at the time. Yet, when they built the Nostrand Ave. IRT, they stopped at “The Junction” because the areas to the south of it were very little built up. Why didn’t whoever was in charge of planning that line have the same foresight as those who built the Flushing line? Now, I know that it is possible that the deep LIRR cut was already there, even at that time. But if they knew how to tunnel under the East River back then, presumable they also could have tunneled under a railroad cut.
They intended to continue expanding the lines outward in the future. The Corona Line was extended to become the Flushing Line in the 1920s; the Nostrand Avenue Line was not.
My uninformed guess is that the Flushing Line was built because of very high demand on the Corona Line, the same high demand leading to its extension west from Grand Central to Times Square. By 1925, the Corona Line’s Queens stations had nearly 30 million annual boardings, excluding QBP. Nostrand had 9 million.
Another uninformed guess: the Corona/Flushing Line was elevated and only dipped underground in Flushing, whereas Nostrand was built underground. Thus extending Nostrand would have been more expensive.
Even Main St. Flushing wasn’t supposed to be a full-time terminal. There’s a lot of wasted potential in the NYC subway system, 99% of which will never be realized due to crook politicians and NIMBYs.
Part of the claims for the East Side Access Project was that it will allow much better service on the stops between Jamaica Station and Manhattan. The claim was that currently the cars are so full leaving Jamaica and heading for Penn Station that no one can push their way into the trains at intermediate stops, so they are skipped. With more trains leaving Jamaica when some of them can go into Grand Central, it will allow the LIRR to offer local service at these Queens stations. Seemed plausible, but you never know.
Was trying to reply to Capt Subway but here we am.
Is this true? I never went that way during rush hours, but I get a seat about as often as I don’t on the J at Broadway/Myrtle in those very, very rare cases where I take the J in during the morning rush.
Of course, given the way that train crawls, I’d be surprised if taking the LIRR weren’t preferable even if you were going to Chambers or something. Of course, the idiot fare guarantees that it’s much more expensive. (The obvious solution: the MetroCard should work on the LIRR within city limits.)
The claim is most likely an excuse. First, the service to the intermediate stations sucks even off-peak. Second, the subway does not skip stops just because the trains are full, and the subway gets far more crowded than the LIRR.
Commuter rail in the US has very weird ideas about what constitutes crowding. For example, at Caltrain, they skip stops based on whether their parking lots are full, on the idea that nobody accesses the stations in any way except driving. If a train is standing room only it’s considered too crowded and the railroad will want to add service, a luxury denied to subway riders even off-peak.
The rolling stock is not even built for this. It is not built for high acceleration typical of rapid transit trains making many stops. Many railroads are happy running dinosaur diesel locos; the LIRR and Metro-North deserve credit for running modern EMUs, but still have high station stop penalties for their top speed (and it’s not just the FRA’s fault, since the M7s have high power-to-weight ratio and all axles powered). In addition, again the LIRR and Metro-North being welcome but partial exceptions, the door placement at the car ends and the prevalence of low platforms lengthens station dwell times. Finally, the trains are built to maximize seating space at the expense of standing space: the aisles are too narrow for comfortable standing and lack straps, so only the vestibules are suitable for standing.
Not to pile on the FRA, but the M7’s should’ve been maybe 20,000-25,000 pounds lighter.
great progress