A sheet wall will help protect vulnerable subway tracks from future storm surges. (Photo via Kevin Ortiz on Twitter)
If all goes according to plan, A train service to the Rockaways could resume in June, Transit spokesperson Kevin Ortiz tweeted today. Ortiz posted a series of photos of ongoing work on Broad Channel as crews are busy repairing and hardening the system. Including in the work is a 40-foot sheet wall across Broad Channel that will provide a seven-foot-tall wall against future storm surges.
The wall will diminish the once-grand views as the A train crosses the channel, but it’s a small sacrifice if it can better protect these vulnerable tracks from future wash-outs. Of course, the storm surge from Sandy topped seven feet in many areas. Hopefully, this wall will be tall enough to adequately protect key infrastructure.
16 comments
That wall better be made out of unobtanium if it’s supposed to hold back a hurricane storm surge.
Um… yeah, this seems like a pretty dumb plan. This is what is called “big concrete” responses to storms, and it just ends up funnelling the storm surge into a narrower area, where it gets even higher. The bridges will still wash out, or are they going to become fully enclosed boxes? Meanwhile, yay, people on the north shore of the bay will get bigger flooding.
At 33 feet down….that should work. That seems to be the most cost effective technique for getting this thing done.
That wall better work, or else we’ll have wasted all this time and money waiting for the line to reopen.
Ben,
Today after attending a broadway show on the Times Sq (7) platform there are “countdown clocks” installed but it is not connected yet. Just letting you know.
Hope they will finally get it connected and do some testing.
Those countdown clocks have actually been in working order for years on other stations on the 7 service. It’s hard to believe that the MTA just installed them at Times Square.
The 7 line may have message display boards but not the countdown clocks currently installed in the rest of the A division or the L line.
The new installation is part of the CBTC signaling upgrades currently going in place. With the R188 set to arrive in Corona Yard possibly as early as May this will give the opportunity to do some sectional testing. The work being done in the Steinway tube is also apart of the overall upgrades with corrections being made to the bench wall.
The countdown clocks on the other IRT lines were tied into the ATO signalling system installed on those lines, which was NOT used on the 7. It’s not very accurate, either – it depends on signals to determine the position of a train, so it updates only every time it passes a signal. (Hence, downtown at 34th St on the (2), the signs will only show “2 minutes” before the train actually gets there.)
The CBTC on the 7 is designed to boost capacity on the line – it brings the line from 30TPH on ATO to a theoretical 40, and perhaps even 48TPH with CBTC. It uses moving-block signalling (as opposed to fixed-block signaling) and will thus keep track of the trains in real time.
Until CBTC work wraps up, though, there’s no way to do countdown clocks, especially since this is completely replacing the old signalling.
48 TPH? I find it hard to believe that the MTA will go over 30 TPH even with CBTC. It said it was only going to add 2 trains per hour, anyway.
Also, I get the concept of CBTC, it’s just that the system currently in use on the L isn’t very accurate either.
Paris’s Line 14 uses the same technology and runs 90 second headways (40 TPH). Milan Metro’s Line D will use similar technology, and the project is touting 75 second headways (48 TPH). CBTC is only really limited by the braking capacity of trains and terminal capacity – due to the (L)’s stub terminal at 8th Av, it can only turn 24 TPH, maximum.
The other part that would make this theoretical is the lack of rolling stock to run 40 TPH, the questionable need for an additional 15 TPH on the 7, the complex switching at Queensboro and at Main, and the limiting factor of the terminal at Main, which, while it has three tracks, has no tail tracks, so trains cannot enter the station at speed.
If we were dealing with a Paris Metro-style line, two tracks, adequate terminals, no interlining, then we would be able to hit closer to that theoretical 40 TPH. The only line that fits that profile and doesn’t have excessive dwell times at most stations would be the 6. (The 1 meets that profile theoretically with the loop platform, but in practice trains are held at Chambers and at Rector due to the SF loop’s five-car restriction, and the new SF has only 24 TPH maximum.
Maybe the NYC Subway could hold 48 TPH, if fumigation weren’t needed (which is the case in stations which are not stub terminals). But even without fumigation, the number of tail tracks is also a factor. Jamaica-179th Street on the F has 8 tracks and can turn at least 64 TPH (maybe even more.) Norwood-205th Street on the D can only turn 1/4 that amount, with 2 tails. Then, there’s also the minor matter of arriving trains blocking the switches so that it is hard for departing trains on the tails to move.
The 6 has its own set of problems, including the 6 local/6 express junction at Parkchester that forces both services to run on the same track for a short distance.
Main has 3 tracks, rather than the standard two, so maybe it could turn 36 TPH. If we’re lucky.
I think that 168th Street in Manhattan can turn 40 TPH of 8-car trains on the C, or 24 TPH of 10-car trains on the A.
2/3 Fulton St still doesn’t have working countdown clocks…
I finally noticed them installed 2 weeks ago – they are not operating as of this past Tuesday (and are covered up).
They were actually originally installed early on a while back – then taken down before activation for some reason
That seems like a stupid move, for the MTA to do something like that.
And they were so close to installing countdown clocks in all the IRT stations, too…
Not that it would’ve been cheap, but couldn’t they have at least put in a wall with some kind of transparency? Maybe just a few portholes here and there would’ve been nicer; I think I’m going to feel very claustrophobic on the Rockaway Line now.
That would actually be expensive and hard to maintain. I mean, holes in the wall would be fine for riders’ comfort in the short term, but when the next hurricane comes rolling around, the water would come in right through these holes.