Facing record ridership, internal cost controls and a slightly sunnier financial outlook, the MTA today announced over $29 million in service enhancements that will go into effect over the next year. Included in this package of improvements — the single largest investment in service in recent years — are a permanent extension of the G train to Church Ave., more frequent commuter rail service during off-peak hours and a sweeping array of new bus lines and restorations of routes lost to the 2010 cuts. Additionally, MTA Chairman Joe Lhota announced that the 2013 fare hikes will likely be delayed 60 days from January 1 until March 1.
Subway riders, unfortunately, seemed to draw the shorter straw during today’s announcement. The only subway improvement involved a five-stop extension of the G train to Church Ave. that’s currently in place today due to the rehabilitation work on the Culver Viaduct. The loss of service along 4th Ave. in Brooklyn as well as the W and V trains will not be coming back, but more importantly, the MTA has chosen not to revise load guidelines that have led to more crowded trains and slightly longer waits for subway commuters.
According to MTA officials, the decision to focus on buses was one of expediency and efficiency. With dollars thin, buses offer more flexible options for transit-poor areas. Officials also explained that the subway cuts from 2010 had a minimal impact on riders and did not result in ridership losses. Thus, with bus ridership in free fall over the last few years, Transit has focused its efforts on bringing service to underserved neighborhoods and offering connections to new job areas — such as health care centers — that the subway doesn’t easily provide.
For the most part, the new bus routes will connect what MTA officials termed “new areas of residential and commercial growth.” The Bx13, for instance, will head to the Gateway Center Mall, an area currently inaccessible by transit. In Red Hook, where community activists and union officials have lobbied hard for better service, the B57 will now provide a new bus connection to the rest of Brooklyn.
Overall, over 25 bus routes will enjoy service enhancements. For a closer look, check out the MTA information available here. More intriguing to me than the extensions though are a series of new routes Transit has unveiled. These include a new north-south route along the far West Side of Manhattan; a bus from the South Bronx to western Hunts Point; a route in Brooklyn connecting Downtown with Dumbo, Vinegar Hill and the Navy Yard; and Williamsburg/Greenpoint waterfront service. These areas are truly the under-served.
The commuter rail agencies announced similar service expansions as well. Facing record ridership, Metro-North will add 230 additional trains each week, and they will be relaxing load guidelines as well. The LIRR will increase off-peak service to every 30 minutes and will restore late-night trains from the Atlantic Terminal. Not coincidentally, the Barclays Center opening this fall is expected to spur LIRR demand into and out of Brooklyn.
Finally, in a bit of guardedly good news, Lhota announced that the 2013 fare hikes will be delayed by two months. The MTA needs the revenue to cover increasing health care and pension costs as well as its ballooning debt service, but he is willing to wait as long as possible. “We owe it to the riders to wait to collect until we absolutely need to collect,” he said. So we have a reprieve until March 1 and new services that will roll out over the next year. Even as I wish for more subway service, this is nothing to sneeze at indeed.
80 comments
http://www.mta.info/mta/2012_13_investment.html
Some interesting stuff in there, including several new routes such as the Williamsburg/Greenpoint waterfront line. I remember reading a lot about the planned launch for that before the 2010 cuts took it off the table.
These are the right kinds of improvements, which I would rate as a higher priority than adding more trains along subway lines that already have service. (They DID announce more L service just a month or so ago. Costmetically, it would have looked more impressive if they’d included those improvements in today’s release.)
The item I disagree with is postponing the fare hike from January to March. Straphangers will complain no matter when the hike occurs. The MTA is just artificially squandering two months of revenue that it will most likely need later on, when the current rosy projections turn sour again.
Completely anecdotal, but L-service during rush hours has been much smoother since that special increase. There were some issues in the first week or so, but my commute to work has been safely cut down by five minutes.
It’s also the Summer, schools are out and people vacation. I think that they introduced the additional L service now for that very reason (i) work out the kinks with (relatively) less crowding and (ii) coupled with (i) the appearance is much greater than the eventual reality. Wait until September to see and also more buildings will be open for occupancy then too.
Subway schedules change twice a year, typically in June and November/December. It just so happens that June is the beginning of the summer.
“Thus, with bus ridership in free fall over the last few years, Transit has focused its efforts on bringing service to underserved neighborhoods and offering connections to new job areas — such as health care centers — that the subway does easily provide.”
That last ‘does’–seems like it should be ‘doesn’t’, is that a typo?
Incidentally, bus ridership hasn’t been “in free fall over the last few years.” It’s been steadily declining for decades.
They need to bring back the W train. Having the N Local has turned the Broadway line into a nightmare. The N and Q train literally crawls along the bridge.
The service along the bridge crawls because of speed restrictions due to the structural integrity of the bridge. It has nothing to do with the death of the W. The idiotic switch from the express to the local to the express tracks that the Q does south of 57th St. though should really stop.
No. I’ve ridden on the bridge since I was a child. I’ve been riding the lines for years, I’m well aware of the average speed of trains on the bridge. In this case, crawl means to stop every couple of minutes (only during rush hour) while B and D trains zip past you on the other side.
Its because (I suspect) of the switching the N has to do before Prince street, and now the system must take into account the R trains. This used to cause delays back in the day to, but trains would often resolve it by lingering at 34th street before they switched to the local at 42nd.
I used to take the N and somewhat agree. While the N would get first priority north of DeKalb, it would then have to wait for the R to cross south of Prince St. Ideally, the N/Q go express all the way and the R/W(W ends at Whitehall) run local. The problem is that there’s not the capacity to do this ideally. They could go back to the previous pattern, but that still has the N cross over local north of 42 St. As is, the N already has a handful of trains during rush hour that run express in Manhattan and drop out at 57 St due to Astoria being a 2-track terminal. If the 2nd Ave stub was open, it would be Q to 96, N/W to Astoria with N/Q express (with the N switching to 60 St tunnel smoothly north of 57 St). Until then, we’ll have to make due.
There are no blanket priorities at merge points. To the extend feasible, trains operate according to a schedule. If a train is running significantly early or late as it approaches a merge point, the dispatcher decides which train should go first.
The N will continue to stop at 49th after SAS opens, because 49th is a very busy destination for Astoria riders – it’s their closest station to Rockefeller Center. Since the N has to share trackage with the R and (future) W anyway, crossing at 34th creates no more of a bottleneck than crossing at 57th.
With the eventual opening of SAS, the W could return and be the train Astoria that stops at 49 St. That being said, the switch has to be done at some point for the N, so having it north of 42 St is fine if the demand for 49 St for N riders is that great.
Agreed
It is nothing to do with the speed restrictions. It’s the congestion when the B/Q cross over to the Brighton Line and D/N on the 4th Avenue Line. Rush hour during those times can screw up service.
Plus, the R68 and R68s are way too heavy to climb up the bridge because of the weight.
And yet, over all those years, there were all kinds of service changes while they renovated the Manhattan Bridge. First one side, then the other side. And the trains STILL have to creep because of concerns about structural integrity! (Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that they should risk a bridge collapse. I just mean that I thought all that work was going to make the bridge safe for trains to be operated at normal speeds.)
They are still renovating the bridge, replacing the bridge ropes / wires.
Again, its not the speed restrictions. Its the congestion since there are way too many trains on the Manhattan Bridge and have go through the Dekalb Avenue junction.
I wonder if it’s not really just another excuse to slow the system. The bridge was rehabbed not long ago and isn’t about to fall down. If trains plodding along at 35mph are too much for the bridge, then fix it or take it down.
Intuitively I’m willing to be that with vibration dampening subway trains could run without speed restrictions on that bridge, perhaps accelerating the time when bridge repair/replacement needs to be done, but the thing is deficient in any case.
You can bicycle faster than those trains shuffle across the water.
The speeds have nothing to do with structural integrity. Going uphill, the trains move slowly because, well, they’re going uphill. Going downhill, there are grade timers to protect trains from speeding out of control. (The Williamsburg Bridge also has grade timers going down the grade into Manhattan.)
The Q doesn’t switch “from the express to the local to the express” south of 57th. When the Q runs to Astoria, it’s on the locals track at 57th. When it terminates on the express tracks at 57th, it stays on the express the whole way, bypassing 49th.
I understand that subway trains cannot be driven like cars or even like trucks, but from a time of living in Brooklyn and riding the D/N etc it was clear they were crawling over the bridge. The whole fleet has been downgraded in power, via some change to the motor control circuits.
As far as speeding out of control downhill, I’ll buy that 50mph would be too much, but subway cars are not freight trains and can stop reasonably well. They routinely wait until halfway through a platform to hit the brakes from 30mph.
Surely they do not need to be limited down to speeds attainable on a 3 speed bicycle. It’s over ten minutes to go one subway stop from Canal to Atlantic Street.
It all comes down to the signal system.
The point of the signals is to protect against one train running into another. The faster a train is moving, the greater its stopping distance – and the greater the worst-case stopping distance of the train, the longer the control lines of the signals need to be. (A signal’s control line determines how far ahead its leader must be in order for the signal to clear. If any other train is on any portion of the control line, the signal will be at danger.) And long control lines mean reduced capacity.
None of this applies with CBTC, but we won’t be seeing CBTC on the Manhattan Bridge for many years. Until then, enjoy the view.
I always thought that the time that it takes to get from Atlantic to Canal Street was extremely slow, The B & Q crawl from leaving 7 Avenue to the bridge. It makes no sense whatsoever. The N needs to return as a express immediately. The Broadway line on the weekdays has the worst screwed up service in the city, with Astoria being way over served. At 59 Street on Broadway line, the R seems to be the most popular line and needs better headways. No need for the Q and Brighton riders to be screwed by this awful extension.
The N is fine the way it is. The local stops add about a minute to the ride, maybe two in the worst case. Doubling headways at the local stations is not a realistic option, and the W is an extravagance that can wait until SAS opens.
Astoria is not overserved by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a short but busy line. Queens Blvd. is also busy, but the R shares the line with the M and, at express stops, the E and F. Even if there were a desire to improve R headways, that could only be done by thinning out M service, since the Queens terminal can’t handle any more trains.
I know I harp on this, but having grossly overweight subway cars doesn’t help the whole “slow up the bridge” issue. Congestion will always slow them down anyways, but the 150,000 extra lbs of weight the R160’s carry with them doesn’t help when they actually do have a clean track ahead.
I doubt the MTA is going to do anything with the BMT’s 42nd-57th bottleneck until the SAS to 96th Street becomes operational. That’s when the Q will likely stay on the express track and continue on to 63rd and Lex, the W is revived to replace the Q to Astoria and the N goes back to express via bridge while the W serves the local stops between Herald Square and Whitehall (the MTA has the option on if the N continues to stop at 49th once the new line opens).
Best case there is also when the W restoration when Second Avenue opens, that (and available cash, come 2016-19) permits the MTA to extend it south as the second rush hour service along Fourth Ave. in Brooklyn to Ninth Ave. or Bay Parkway. You wouldn’t have the former Nassau St. option, but you also wouldn’t have the problem of interfering with the current J/Z skip stop service if one of those routes were extended to South Brooklyn.
I agree with most of this, but if there’s a need for more service on the 4th Avenue local, it will be provided by another R train or two, not by adding an entirely new service.
Depends on where the W’s yard is — if it’s run out of Coney Island as was the case in the past, W train morning put-ins at Bay Parkway or Ninth Avenue would simply mean opening the doors to passengers in Brooklyn, instead of having those same trains travel light to Whitehall in the AM and back again in the PM (that option would be less practical if a revived W were to get its trains out of Jamaica).
Contrary to popular belief, a train line doesn’t typically have a single yard – it has a single maintenance shop, which in the case of the W was (and most likely will again be) Coney Island. But W trains were stored in several locations, including the lower level at City Hall.
When the old W ran, the first three trains of the morning ran in service up the Sea Beach line and the last three trains of the evening ran in service back down. There’s no reason that can’t happen again, but it wouldn’t provide any extra service in Brooklyn during the peak of the rush hour.
That’s going to have to happen when the Q goes to 2 Av. That should be around 2016-2018.
“The LIRR will increase off-peak service to every 30 minutes”
That only applies to the Ronkonkoma branch.
Also, when it comes to undoing some of the bus cuts, what about the crosstown buses?
Nothing is being said about restoring weekend service on the 8th St. and 50th St. crosstown lines. And those are lines that are NOT at least partially duplicated by subway service, as are the 14th St. and 42nd St. crosstown buses.
MTA already restored the M50 (49/50 Street Crosstown) Weekend service by shorten the route.
The weekend M21 was restored. There’s no need for the weekend M8 also.
The change in loading guideline had a relatively minor effect. It only applied off-peak (the much tighter rush hour guidelines remained unchanged), and weekend headways are mostly constrained by the needs of common GO’s.
>>New north-south Far Westside Manhattan route
Serves West Village, Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen, Clinton
I dont like this new route only going south to the West Village. It should go all the way to the World Trade Center area, even if it runs express, without stops, for the last mile or so. There needs to be a one-seat ride between the WTC and the new Hudson Yards development.
Plus the mini-golf at Pier 25 needs some kind of transit.
“There needs to be a one-seat ride between the WTC and the new Hudson Yards development.”
That’s what I would have preferred was done with the High Line.
You’re giving rail buffs a bad name. It would be pretty hard for any sane person to walk the High Line today, and contend it would be better as railroad tracks.
In any event, it wouldn’t even have solved the stated problem. The High Line hasn’t gone all the way downtown for decades. The most it could have been is a very short train line from Hudson Yards to the Meatpacking District. I don’t see evidence of any great demand for that particular route, that would make it more desirable than the very popular pedestrian park that the High Line has become.
Combined with an extension of the L Line, it would be more popular than the current walking path, and would have made a lot more sense than extending the 7 line. It would have encouraged redevelopment. New construction coud have been built over and around the High Line so that it would have disappeared within buildings and eventually would not even have been visible. It coud in effect become invisible like the subway.
Talk about a rail buff’s wet dream. There is no evidence for any of that, and even less public support. The project to connect the L to the High Line would have required the eminent domain seizure and demolition of at least two full city blocks, and perhaps as many as four blocks, in one of the city’s most valuable neighborhoods. You’ll be the next Queen of England before that happens.
Because everybody would just love to have an apartment or office directly adjacent to or below a subway line!
I’m just saying that if Hudson Yards is justified in getting connected by subway to Times Square, it’s also justified in getting connected by more than bus service to WTC. A cheap way to do that would’ve been refurbishing the High Line and creating an extension of it (perhaps Air Train style above the West Side Highway) for light rail service. The far West Side has no subway service, so the demand is there. It could’ve been a simple conductor-less people mover.
Of course it’s all a moot point now, and the best alternative is another 7 extension south.
Eh, going all the way from WTC to Hudson Yards on a local bus? It’d probably be much quicker to take the A train to Penn and the crosstown bus from there. But all the new development on the West Side is worthy of a new bus route.
It could run express between around Christopher/10th Street to WTC. Transfers suck. Especially when one of those modes is a bus.
Taking the 7 to Times Square for your choice of downtown train (the 2/3 is probably quickest) will get you there a lot faster than a bus.
Your proposed bus would rack up a lot of nearly-empty mileage on its express run, at significant cost. At least if it made local stops, it would be useful for local trips.
If you go up to Times Square, you are going way out of your way. If you take the 34 bus to Penn Station, it’s slow (despite the upgrade to SBS), and not very frequent (as you don’t have the choice between 34 and 34A that far west). In either case you have to transfer, which sucks. I think a bus that ran local to around Christoper Street PATH station and then express to WTC would be a better option. Especially if you’re starting around 30th Street, as opposed to 33rd/34th Street, as it would eliminate the initial walk up to the new subway station.
In any case, taking the 7 to the 2/3, or the bus to Penn Station, that would involve a transfer.
There is also the fact there there should be a transit route of some sort running alongside the river.
Times Square is only slightly out of the way, and going a bit out of your way by train often saves a lot of time compared to going straight by bus.
It’s two miles from Christopher to the WTC – that’s four miles round trip that the bus would be traveling mostly empty, not picking up any fares, because most people would still find it faster to reach their destinations by subway, and the bus wouldn’t be carrying any local traffic.
Many if not most subway riders transfer. It’s not a big deal.
Alongside the river is a bad place for a transit route, since it can only attract riders from the east.
You could G R and M to 179 street Jamaica
I don’t think they have enough subway cars to make that happen.
When is NJ Transit going to restore some of their 2010 service cuts. Service frequency on HBLR light rail is pathetic.
I was there a recent Sunday morn’, not too early, maybe 10:30 and the service intervals were somewhere between 15 & 20 minutes. On top of that, they no longer run the HOB-TON line on the weekends any more!
Williamsburg/Greenpoint waterfront service is an unfair giveaway to the city. They should’ve negotiated this route in lieu of all that parking in the new high rises. Now that the parking has already been built, the new bus service undermines the environmental studies behind the parking requirements by reducing parking demand. Of course it’s a good thing, but a lot of money, space, and concrete has already been wasted.
And what type of route would it be? A loop or feeder to the G J L M Z or to where?
I’m happy that some service was restored but my neighborhood is still gonna suffer from the 2010 cuts. Co-op City got screwed HARD with the cuts and as a result, the Bx26 & Bx28 don’t go to where I live anymore and what makes me mad is that it seemed like no one high up in Co-op City or the people who represent the area was trying to fight for us and it pisses me off. I can’t help but feel like I was slapped in the face again by the MTA with this cause we were ignored this time. I don’t know but the whole thing is bittersweet for me.
Remember, the cuts happened because the state legislature took money from the dedicated transit tax pool to be used for their pet projects. The MTA is relatively powerless in how it is funded.
Co-op City bus service has already been changed at least once, and I think twice, in response to complaints about the June 2010 plan.
I see that Express Bus service has been restored to Bay Ridge on the weekends.
The local politicians had been agitating for this – despite the fact that these buses had been running nearly empty on the weekends, truth be told.
Marty (G, not M) apparently has a lot of sway ultimately
Loss of the weekend service should not have come as a surprise.
There were a lot of empty seats when it ran every half hour.
Every hour makes more sense.
Better to have weekday service fully restored to prior level. I relied on that last 12:30am bus back to Bay Ridge.
Nice to see half-hour service on New Haven & Harlem lines on Sundays
Which Metro-North noted was “non-commutational” ridership, increasing at a rate of 6% per annuam — another indication that M-N is more than just a “commuter railroad,” and should no longer be called such. It’s a railroad that, among other things, handles commuters — there’s a difference. Words matter, at least to us advocates.
Metro-North is still dominated by commuters. I doubt that anyone using that term would ever have claimed that there were no other riders. It’s just that commuting is its predominant use.
For what it’s worth, they did take the “commuter” out of their branded name.
When they refer to “non-commutational” ridership, they are referring to anything other than rush-hour commuting into Manhattan. So even if you go from the Bronx to a job in Stamford or White Plains, or from Poughkeepsie to a job in Tarrytown, you are a “non-commutational” rider. But the vast majority of people are still riding to/from work.
There’s nothing wrong with being a “commuter railroad” if you manage to provide service and access to jobs for millions of people both toward the CBD and in the opposite direction.
New Haven specifically has as much ridership on a weekend day as on a weekday.
How about bringing back the G to Forest Hills? That was such a convenient service, when it actually ran.
Not happening. There are too many switching conflicts if you run the R, the M, and the G at the same time.
Except that the M doesn’t run on Queens Blvd over half the time, and the R is gone at night. The G should be extended during those times.
When the G did officially run on Queens Blvd. on weekends, it very rarely ran in practice (yet the MTA still had to pay the crews that were assigned to operate the full line). And when it did run, it carried very few riders.
With three major interlocking signal jobs on the horizon, followed by CBTC, Queens Blvd. is going to be seeing a lot more GO’s in the coming years. There simply isn’t room for more than three services when GO’s are going on.
And if there were, the M, not the G, should be the line to run there.
Weekend M service would definitely be better for local riders. People wanting the G would still not have direct service, but they’d have one transfer instead of two.
You can’t run the G on QB because the capacity isn’t there (not until CBTC is fully done and they have the rolling stock all ready to use it) and because the MTA’s fumigation procedures at terminals mean longer turning times at 71 Ave, further decreasing capacity. You also run into the issue of the possibility of the G needing 6 75-foot car trains when covering QB, which would require some shifting of rolling stock.
Fumigation? That sounds interesting…say more.
When employees walk through cars at the last stop to clear out people. It shouldn’t really be necessary for trains that are coming back into service.
Agreed. I couldn’t believe they would be killing bugs at the end of every run.
Apparently no one on this forum is concerned at all with buses.
My wife asked me the bus changes would make it easier to take the B61 from Windsor Terrace, where the local Key Food shut down, to the Red Hook Fairway.
That’s a 30 minute ride. The buses run just four per hour on Saturday. You’d be talking about perhaps 1:15 just to travel to and from there, not counting the time spent in the store.
Who rides buses anyway?
About 2.2 million New Yorkers a day.
[…] « G train, bus routes among $29M in service enhancements Jul […]
“The loss of service along 4th Ave. in Brooklyn as well as the W and V trains will not be coming back, but more importantly, the MTA has chosen not to revise load guidelines that have led to more crowded trains and slightly longer waits for subway commuters.” Aw man, no return of the brown (M), (V), and (W) lines? I was expecting the (M) to be rerouted back along the Nassau St Line to help out the 4th Avenue riders that are stuck with the (R) for the last 2 years. I was also hoping that the MTA might bring back the (W) to replace the (Q) on weekdays, and for the (Q) to replace the (W) on weekends. The (V) was also helpful to the (R) in Queens, and the (F) in Manhattan on weekdays, and I would really like to see it back as well.
I hope that everybody will benefit for all these service enhancements. The funds are quite very high in number and the many are expected to pay for it.
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