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Benjamin Kabak

The Bad News: A summer and fall with weekend G train outages

by Benjamin Kabak June 5, 2013

written by Benjamin Kabak on June 5, 2013

Contrast the new tie plates in the background with those damaged by Sandy’s floodwaters in the G train’s Greenpoint Tube. (Photo: Marc A. Hermann / MTA New York City Transit)

The big news of the day concerned the looming 12-14 month shutdown of the R train’s Montague Tube beginning this August, but the looming G train work, while less extensive, may be more painful for riders. For 12 weekends this summer and fall, the MTA will shut G service from Nassau Ave. to Queens. Then, during the summer of 2014, for five weeks, the MTA will have to close the Greenpoint Tube entirely.

“Closing these two subway tubes is a difficult but necessary step to restore them to the condition they were in before Sandy struck,” MTA Acting Chairman Fernando Ferrer said of the R and G train closures. “The temporary repairs that returned these tubes to operation after Sandy are not enough to provide reliable service. This is unfortunately the reality of recovery from Sandy: the damage is insidious and continuing, and repairing it will take billions of dollars over several years. We recognize that these closures will be an inconvenience for many of our customers, and we will do our best to provide them with alternatives. But there is no alternative to doing this work now.”

The Greenpoint Tube will be out of commission for 53 hours straight during the following weekends this year: July 6-7, 13-14, 20-21; August 3-4, 10-11, 17-18, 24-25; September 7-8, 28-29; October 5-6; December 7-8, and 14-15. The exact dates for the 2014 closure have not been determined yet.

Shutting the Greenpoint Tube will allow the MTA to repair the damaged systems during periods of lighter ridership, but the impact will still be felt by Greenpointers and Long Island City residents. According to the MTA’s statistics, Greenpoint Ave., 21st St., and Court Square affect around 57,000 total weekend riders — though most of those are using other lines at Court Sq. Greenpoint Ave. and 21st St. see a combined weekend ridership of slightly under 11,000. (The Montague Tube outage, on the other hand, will impact 65,000 daily R train riders and thousands of others on lines that will become increasingly more crowded.)

The MTA dodged a bullet when it avoided damage to movable parts and its rolling stock, but the tunnels absorbed the floodwaters. The Greenpoint and Montague Tubes were covered wall to ceiling, and now the repairs are coming into view. “Even after we restored service through the tubes again, signal and other component failures rose dramatically,” Thomas F. Prendergast, MTA Interim Executive Director, said. “The chief area of concern is the tubes’ mechanical and electrical systems that were subjected to salt water accelerating the deterioration of these vital systems and reducing their reliability over time.”

For views of the damage in the tunnels, check out this photoset. After the jump, a glimpse at the G train map during these Sandy-related outages.

June 5, 2013 34 comments

Superstorm Sandy

The Bad News: A 12-14 month outage for the R’s Montague Tube

by Benjamin Kabak June 5, 2013

written by Benjamin Kabak on June 5, 2013

Map via <a href='http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324563004578525602849939578.html'><p id=

WSJ.” width=”555″ height=”568″ class=”size-full wp-image-13304″ /> Map via WSJ.

Just last night I discussed the looming work awaiting R train riders on the Montague Tube. in the aftermath of Sandy. We knew the work would be long and service changes onerous, but we didn’t know the timing for the extensive repairs. Now, we do, and the news for R train riders is not good.

As Ted Mann of The Wall Street Journal reported tonight, the Montague Tube will be closed completely for 12-14 months essentially in order to strip everyone out of the tube and rebuild everything inundated by the Sandy floodwaters. I had heard rumors that such a shutdown was coming but did not know of the timing. My original source with knowledge of the situation also said the G train’s Greenpoint tube would undergo a similar outage, but the plans have changed. Rather, the G will not run between Brooklyn and Queens for 12 weekends later this year with similar outages planned for the summer of 2014.

It’s one giant mess with the worst of it in the Manhattan/Brooklyn connector. Mann reports that work will begin in August and last through most, if not all, of 2014. He calls it “the biggest post-Sandy setback for the MTA ” and writes:

While no similar outages are planned as yet for the MTA’s other under-river tunnels, the closure of the Montague tube underscores how hard it will be to complete some critical storm repairs while continuing to run a 24-hour subway system. “Pretty much anything down there that’s made of metal is rusting,” the official said. “And sooner or later, it has to come out.”

While the MTA was able to pump out subway tunnels and restart service on the trains after the storm, a threat to the system remained: the lingering corrosion from brackish floodwaters. The salt from storm surges heavily damaged sensitive electronic components in the tunnels, and continues to eat away at wires, cables and motors, causing failures that have snarled commutes. “They’re all starting to fail,” Wynton Habersham, the MTA’s chief electrical officer, said this spring before the decision to shut down Montague was made.

MTA work crews have spent months trying to fix problems in the Montague tube, which was among the most heavily damaged by flooding and the final under-river tunnel to be restored to working order, in December. Signal failures have been a chronic problem in the tunnel since the storm, leading to delayed trains and sometimes requiring rerouting R trains over the Manhattan Bridge to cross the river.

The official said MTA leaders determined earlier this spring that they couldn’t complete the necessary work using the normal mix of overnight and off-hour shifts. Instead, the full tunnel will be shut down this summer so the damaged components — from lighting to the signals that enable trains to safely move through the system — can be replaced. The cost will be at least $100 million, according to legal notices prepared for the project.

According to The Journal, during the 12-14 months of construction, R train service patterns will more or less resemble post-Sandy routing. During the week, the train will operate in two sections north from Whitehall St. and south in Brooklyn from Court St. During the weekends, trains will run into Manhattan via the Manhattan bridge.

The silver lining in all of this, though, are the nearby service redundancies. There’s no way around the transfer between the R and some other line for Manhattan-bound passengers, but the connections are relatively painless and more reliable than the R itself. The 4 and 5 East Side IRT closely mirrors the R from Atlantic Ave. to Union Square, providing easy access to the BMT’s Lower Manhattan stations. It’s not perfect, but it could be worse.

This news, though, is yet another reminder of the damages from Sandy and the system’s vulnerability. It would be silly to spend hundreds of millions and cause extensive service disruptions without hardening the system at the same time. But so far, news stories on anti-flood measures have been few and far between. It’s a dangerous roll of the dice.

June 5, 2013 40 comments

Reminder: Problem Solves on transit security tomorrow

by Benjamin Kabak June 4, 2013

written by Benjamin Kabak on June 4, 2013

My long-standing series at the Transit Museum continues tomorrow, Wednesday, June 5, and this time, I’ll be talking transit security with Joseph Nugent, the liaison between New York City Transit and the New York Police Department. In the aftermath of the Boston bombings, Nugent and I will be discussing the extensive security measures — some visible, some not — in place to protect transit riders in New York. It’s not an easy task as the system is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and unmanned access points exist throughout the five boroughs.

Some background on my guest: Nugent is the interagency liaison between the New York Police Department and New York City Transit. He began his career as an officer with the NYC Transit Police Department in 1985, and was promoted to sergeant in 1993. In 2002, he became a lieutenant with the NYPD, retiring in July 2005. Before starting in his current position, he worked as an NYCT investigator in employee misconduct and workplace violence, and later as counterterrorism liaison. He received a B.S. in Business Management from St. Francis College in 2000, and a Masters in Public Administration from Marist College in 2009.

As always, Problem Solvers takes place at the Transit Museum in Downtown Brooklyn, and the program starts at 6:30 p.m. with doors at 6. Admission is free, but the Museum asks that you kindly RSVP right here. See you then.

June 4, 2013 0 comment

View from Underground

A glimpse at the work ahead for the Montague Tube

by Benjamin Kabak June 4, 2013

written by Benjamin Kabak on June 4, 2013

The Montague St. tunnel, shaded white during its Sandy outage, will soon undergo extensive repairs.

The past weekend came and went with little fanfare, but for New York City, June 1 should have raised a few eyebrows. Down south in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, Saturday marked the start of the hurricane season, and the first tropical depression that could warrant a name is brewing in the Gulf. New York City celebrated the start of the season by reopening the A train over the Jamaica Bay crossing and crossing its fingers that no storm would take aim at our city this summer.

For the MTA, last week’s reopening of the A train and regular service to the Rockaways was a milestone to celebrate, but it’s not time to rest on the laurels of that work. It may be easy for an armchair quarterback to look at the subway system and appreciate its return to a completed state barely seven months since Sandy arrived. With the old South Ferry loop recommissioned and Rockaway service restored, things are back to normal, right? At least, that’s how it appears on the subway map.

Of course, that’s far from the truth. On the one hand, the MTA hasn’t even addressed hardening the system in any significant manner. Parts of the Broad Channel crossing were rebuilt to withstand storm surges, but otherwise, every single part of the subway system that was vulnerable last October is still vulnerable this June. The MTA has begun to assess various solutions including tunnel plugs and removable floodwall paneling, but it’s a long ways away from implementing a fix.

On the other hand, the system isn’t really repaired. While service has been restored, components that were inundated with floodwaters are corroding at a rapid clip, and signal and switch problems are on the rise. This weekend, we received another glimpse at the future ahead of us as the MTA announced an upcoming bidding process for work in the Montague Tube. The R train’s connection from Lower Manhattan to Brooklyn suffered extensive flooding and is one of the few tubes that will have to undergo a near-top-to-bottom makeover.

In the documents [pdf], the MTA offered up the following assessment:

Work includes the demolition of existing duct banks; removal & disposal of existing tunnel lighting, conduits, wiring, fixtures, ballast & receptacles; construction of new duct banks; installation of new Power & Communications cables in the new duct banks; reconstruction of circuit breaker houses CBH # 82, CBH # 83 & CBH # 91; rehabilitation of two substations (Montague Furman Substation & Broadway-Park Row Substation); new tunnel lighting including fixtures, wiring, & conduit; replacing isolation dampers & wiring for the fan plant; replacement of three submersible pumps & new AC/DC lighting at the pump rooms; track work including new rails & plates; installation of new 8” dry discharge line in both tubes; painting & lead abatement.

Needless to say, none of that is good news for riders who depend upon the R train for their daily commutes. MTA officials haven’t yet confirmed the extent of the work or any potential service outages, but I’ve heard long-term rerouting may come into play. On the bright side, the R train through Montague St. is one of the least-used East River subway crossings, and with the 4 and 5 trains via the Joralemon St. tunnel just downstream, riders enjoy plenty of redundant (and faster) service.

This work and the outages won’t be limited to the R train. The L train’s 14th St. tunnel suffered extensive damage, and the G train’s tube underneath Newtown Creek did as well. And now we’re in that hurricane season again with our fingers crossed that nothing will hit the area that could roll back the recovery progress already in the books. It takes time to rebuild and fortify the system, but time isn’t necessarily on our side.

June 4, 2013 18 comments

TWU View from Underground

To promote platform safety, a TWU rap

by Benjamin Kabak June 3, 2013

written by Benjamin Kabak on June 3, 2013

Over the weekend, a 22-year-old Bronx man dropped his iPhone in the subway tracks, and then he decided to go it. He electrocuted himself upon jumping into the tracks, and then the incoming 2 train struck him. It was a fatal accident, and it wasn’t the only one this weekend. Two other New Yorkers — both determined to be suicides — were killed by trains this past weekend.

After an initial flurry of press over subway/passenger collisions earlier this year, the coverage has largely died down, but the issue remains. As part of a general awareness campaign, the TWU released the video posted above. It’s a rap urging straphangers to stand away from the platform edge as trains enter subway stations, and it’s sage advice. (The call at the end of the video for slower trains upon entering stations is, on the other hand, not a wise one.)

But will the video solve the problem? An article in The Post this weekend delves into the numbers behind subway deaths, and suicides have a slight edge over the last three years. According to numbers The Post received from a FOIA request, 78 of 153 deaths caused by subway trains from 2010-2012 are believed to be suicides. So far this year, 16 of 28 deaths fall in that category as well.

With these numbers on hand, New York politicians again called for the MTA to implement some safety measures, including as Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer said, “better early-warning systems to detect people on our subway tracks.” But people who jump in front of an incoming train wouldn’t trigger the warning system early enough and even a train traveling at reduced speeds will still kill someone who leaps in front of it. Platform edge barriers — an expensive and sometimes impractical solution — remain the best deterrent.

Meanwhile, it’s not unreasonable to question how much of a problem these collisions truly are. According to Pete Donohue’s latest, there were 657 train/passenger collisions from 2008 through 2012 out of over 8 billion subway riders and around a quarter of those were attempted suicides. As the TWU rap says, stand back just a little bit, don’t jump in the tracks over replaceable items, and personal safety shouldn’t be an issue.

June 3, 2013 11 comments

Queens Service Advisories

FASTRACK returns to the Queens Boulevard line tonight

by Benjamin Kabak June 3, 2013

written by Benjamin Kabak on June 3, 2013

Shuttle buses and 7 trains will pick up the slack during Fastrack this week. Click the map to enlarge.

In a repeat of the mid-March FASTRACK treatment, the MTA’s not-so-new overnight construction program returns to the Queens Boulevard line this evening. From 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. each night this week, there will be no subway service between Jackson Heights and 21st-Queensbridge on the F or the World Trade Center on the E. Shuttle buses and the 7 train will provide alternate service.

Here’s how this goes:

E in Queens only between Jamaica Center and 74th Street/Roosevelt Avenue
F in two sections:

Between 179th Street and Roosevelt Avenue and
Between Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue and 21st Street-Queensbridge.

M service ends early each night and the M shuttle operates between Metropolitan and Myrtle Avenues all night.
R service ends early each night and the R shuttle operates in Brooklyn between 95th Street and 36th Street all night.

So how does one get around? Well, the MTA offers up these lovely suggestions:

Take the 7 between Manhattan and 74th Street-Roosevelt Avenue or Queensboro Plaza
Take the N between Manhattan and Queensboro Plaza
In Manhattan, transfer at 5th Avenue/42nd Street-Bryant Park for the 7 or F, Times Square-42nd Street/42nd Street-Port Authority for the 7 or A, and 34th Street-Herald Square for the F or N
In Manhattan along 8th Avenue, take the A local instead of the E
Take free shuttle buses running LOCAL between Queensboro Plaza and 74th Street-Roosevelt Avenue making station stops at Queens Plaza, 36th Street, Steinway Street, 46th Street, Northern Blvd and 65th Street
In Queens, transfer between shuttle buses and trains at 74th Street-Roosevelt Avenue for the 7, E and F or Queensboro Plaza for the 7 and N

While looking at the map and the shuttle bus route, I realized it’s an odd service pattern. It connects a 7 train stop with another 7 train stop while running above the route of the Queens Boulevard local trains, but it doesn’t contain to the F at Queensbridge. Thus there is a bit of a gap in service. It’s useful for people who need the Queens Boulevard local stops, but it’s not useful for anyone continuing to travel on the F.

And as with last time, not much in the way of media coverage here. FASTRACK is here to stay, and it’s causing nary a stir any longer.

June 3, 2013 3 comments

Penn Station

Guest Post: Why the focus on Penn Station?

by Benjamin Kabak June 3, 2013

written by Benjamin Kabak on June 3, 2013

A glimpse at SHoP’s grand proposal for a new Penn Station.

Alon Levy, a long-time SAS reader and commenter, runs his own site called Pedestrian Observations. Late on Friday, he published he thoughts on the discussion over Penn Station and the driving factors behind the push to limit Madison Square Garden’s occupancy permit to 10 or 15 years. Rather than excerpting Levy’s post, I asked him if I could run it here as a guest post, and what follows are his words and arguments. It’s a very astute commentary on some of the overarching concerns. Check out the original post on Alon’s website for a healthy discussion that grew over the weekend.

Penn Station is in the news again: the Municipal Art Society ran a public competition for a rebuilt station house, involving proposals by four different architectural firms. This does not include any track-level improvements at all: only the concourses and above-ground infrastructure are to be rebuilt, at a cost of $9.5 billion according to one of the four firms. The quotes from the architects and other backers of rebuilding use language like “great train station” and “gateway to the city,” and this is where the subtle hate of the city’s actual residents lies: why the focus on Penn Station? Why not a subway station?

The headline figure for the ridership at Penn Station is 600,000-650,000 a day, but this is a wild exaggeration. First, this includes both entries and exits, so the real number is half that. Second, about half of the number comes from subway riders, who these discussions always ignore. And third, there is a large number of passengers transferring between commuter rail and the subway who are doubled-counted; at subway stations, passengers transferring between lines are not even single-counted, since the subway counts entries at the turnstiles. Taking an average of boardings and alightings when both numbers are given or just boardings otherwise, Penn Station has 100,000 weekday LIRR riders, 80,000 weekday New Jersey Transit riders, and 170,000 weekday subway riders between the two stations. However, people transferring between the subway and commuter rail are double-counted.

In contrast, not counting any connecting passengers, there are 195,000 weekday Times Square subway riders. Without detailed data about transfer volumes at each station we can’t compare the two, but since the proposals for a better Penn Station focus only on the mainline station, the number of passengers served is certainly less than that of Times Square passengers.

Indeed, every single problem that the architects are trying to fix with Penn Station exists at Times Square. Times Square has low ceilings. The corridors between different lines and between the platforms and the exits are as labyrinthine as at Penn Station. In my experience rush hour passenger crowding levels within the station itself are comparable. Most platforms are wider, but nobody is proposing to widen platforms at Penn Station, and the 42nd Street Shuttle platforms are narrow and curvy and have been this way since 1918. The tickets are all integrated because the trains are all run by one operator, but again nobody who proposes to replace Penn Station is talking about the separate LIRR, NJ Transit, and Amtrak fiefs.

There are some legitimate changes that could be done if Penn Station is knocked down and rebuilt: instead of a hack involving paving over platforms to increase their width, the platform level could be rebuilt, two tracks at a time, with six approach tracks in each direction each splitting into two platform tracks, giving twelve tracks on six platforms; the train box appears about 140 meters wide, enough for 15-meter-wide platforms (compare 10 meters on the Chuo Line platform at Tokyo Station, where 28 trains per hour turn on two tracks).

However, the technical issues here are a lot less important than the fact that city leaders, architects, and even transit commentators assume that it is more important for New York to have a great train station used by 200,000 suburban commuters than for it to have a great subway station used by (at least) 200,000 city residents. It speaks to the utter hatred most city leaders have of the people who live in what they consider their fief or perhaps their playground. For most people in the city, there are more important transportation facilities, and even on a metro area level Penn Station isn’t unusually important.

This leaves the argument that Penn Station is a gateway to the city. But if the point is to impress a few thousand tourists, why not spend the same money on improving tourist amenities at Times Square, building more hotels? Or maybe building free housing for tens of thousands of homeless people (both the ones at Penn Station and the ones in the rest of the city) so that they stop being homeless and disturbing the rest of the population? If the point is to have great art, why not spend the money on employing artists to produce more work or to improve the aesthetics of the city’s ordinary spaces?

Of course, none of those options involves city leaders getting together and building important edifices with plaques with their names on them. So at the end the idea is to tax actual city inhabitants $10 billion to build a monument to the vision of city leaders. Large corporations pay their executives hundreds of millions a year in stock options and bonuses; governments cannot pay top political power brokers this way, so instead they spend large quantities of money on monuments that glorify them.

June 3, 2013 84 comments

Service Advisories

The G train workout and service changes on 13 subway lines

by Benjamin Kabak May 31, 2013

written by Benjamin Kabak on May 31, 2013

As part of its G train improvement campaign, the Riders Alliance — of which I am a board member — released this video detailing the infamous G train workout. With short trains that run infrequently (but still regularly) and weekends like this one where truncated service operates sparsely, riders are often engaged in a battle against the train which involves long walks, sprints down the platform or even avoiding it all together. According to the Riders Alliance, four out of five G train riders have admitted to resorting to strenuous exercise or a cab to avoid the train at one point or another.

The video comes out as the MTA continues to work on its full line review of the G train. At the request of Daniel Squadron, the agency is assessing improvements it may be able to make to the IND Crosstown route that would encourage more riders. To bolster its own case, the Alliance released some stats. They found that 26 percent of those surveyed have walked more than 20 minutes to their destination instead of using the G train and that 60 percent have resorted to the infamous “G train sprint” to catch a four-car train. Supposedly, 70 percent of riders would use a free transfer at either the Broadway stop to the J/M or to anything at Atlantic Ave. from the Fulton St. station.

Meanwhile, the G train workout is in full effect this weekend as we have yet another Saturday and Sunday with a service change. The details follow:

From 3:45 a.m. Saturday, June 1 to 10 p.m. Sunday, June 2, 2 service operates in two sections due to track panel installation north of Gun Hill Road:

Between Flatbush Avenue and East 180th Street
Between East 180th Street and 241st Street

2 trains from Flatbush Avenue are rerouted to Dyre Avenue at East 180th Street during this time.

From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, June 1 to 5 a.m. Monday, June 3, 4 trains run local in both directions between 125th Street and Grand Central-42nd Street due to signal work at Grand Central-42nd Street.

From 3:45 a.m. Saturday, June 1 to 10 p.m. Sunday, June 2, 5 service is suspended due to
track panel installation north of Gun Hill Road. Customers may take the 2 and/or 4 instead. For service between:

Dyre Avenue and 149th Street-Grand Concourse, take the 2 instead (the 2 operates between Dyre Avenue ad Flatbush Avenue during this time.)
149th Street-Grand Concourse and Bowling Green, take the 4 instead.

From 11:45 p.m. Friday, May 31 to 2 p.m. Sunday, June 2, Flushing/Main Street-bound 7 trains run express from Queensboro Plaza to Mets-Willets Point due to signal cable and track tie installation for Flushing CBTC and track panel installation between 52nd Street and 61st Street-Woodside.

From 11:45 p.m. Friday, May 31 to 6:30 a.m. Saturday, June 1, from 11:45 p.m. Saturday, June 1 to 6:30 a.m. Sunday, June 2, and from 11:45 p.m. Sunday, June 2 to 5 a.m. Monday, June 3, downtown (Queens-bound) A trains run express from 59th Street-Columbus Circle to Canal Street due to track tie block renewal north of Spring Street and fan plant rehabilitation south of 14th Street.

From 6:30 a.m. to 11 p.m., Saturday, June 1 and Sunday, June 2, downtown (Brooklyn-bound) C trains run express from 59th Street-Columbus Circle to Canal Street due to track tie block renewal north of Spring Street and fan plant rehabilitation south of 14th Street.

From 11:45 p.m. Friday, May 31 to 5 a.m. Monday, June 3, 205th Street-bound D trains run express from 145th Street to Tremont Avenue due to prep work on the Concourse line for upcoming Fastrack maintenance.

From 11:30 p.m. Friday, May 31 to 5 a.m. Monday, June 3, World Trade Center-bound E trains are rerouted via the F line after 36th Street, Queens to 2nd Avenue due to track tie renewal in the 53rd Street tube. In addition, there are no E trains between World Trade Center and West 4th Street due to track tie block renewal north of Spring Street. Customers may take the A or C instead. E trains originate and terminate at the 2nd Avenue F station.

From 9:45 p.m. Friday, May 31 to 5 a.m. Monday, June 3, Jamaica-bound F trains are rerouted via the M line from 47th-50th Sts to Queens Plaza due to station work at Lexington Avenue-63rd Street for Second Avenue Subway project.

From 11:15 p.m. Friday, May 31 to 5 a.m., Monday, June 3, Coney Island-bound F trains run express from Jay Street-MetroTech to Church Avenue due to tie and plate renewal south of Ft. Hamilton Parkway.

From 9:45 p.m. Saturday, June 1 to 6 a.m. Sunday, June 2, there is no F service at Lexington Avenue-63rd Street due to shut down of elevators and escalators for electrical testing.

Coney Island-bound F trains skip this station
Jamaica-bound F trains are rerouted via the M from 47th-50th Sts to Queens Plaza.
Customers may use nearby Lexington Avenue-59th Street 4, 6, N and R stations.

From 11 p.m. Friday, May 31 to 5 a.m. Monday, June 3, there is no G train service between Church Avenue and Hoyt-Schermerhorn Sts due to work on the Church Avenue Interlocking. Customers should take the F instead. For F service, take the A or C between Hoyt-Schermerhorn Sts and Jay Street-MetroTech. G service operates in two sections:

Between Court Square and Bedford-Nostrand Avs
Between Bedford-Nostrand Avs and Hoyt-Schermerhorn Sts, every 20 minutes

From 5:30 a.m. Saturday, June 1 to 10 p.m. Sunday, June 2, there are no J trains between Crescent Street and Jamaica Center due to structural steel repair and painting north of Cypress Hills. J service operates between Chambers Street and Crescent Street. Free shuttle buses operate between Crescent Street and 121st Street, and connect with the E at Jamaica-Van Wyck, where service to and from Sutphin Blvd and Jamaica Center is available.

From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, June 1 to 5:30 p.m. Monday, June 3, N trains are rerouted via the R line in both directions between Canal Street and Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center due to NYC DOT work on the Manhattan Bridge. N trains stop at City Hall, Cortlandt Street, Rector Street, Whitehall Street, Court Street, Jay Street-MetroTech and DeKalb Avenue.

From 11:45 p.m. Friday, May 31 to 5 a.m. Monday, June 3, Ditmars Blvd-bound N trains skip 39th Avenue, 36th Avenue, Broadway and 30th Avenue due to station painting at 30th Avenue.

From 12:01 a.m. Saturday, June 1 to 5 a.m. Monday, June 3, Q trains are rerouted via the R in both directions between Canal Street and DeKalb Avenue due to NYC DOT work on the Manhattan Bridge. Q trains stop at City Hall, Cortlandt Street, Rector Street, Whitehall Street, Court Street and Jay Street-MetroTech.

From 12:01 a.m. to 5 a.m., Saturday, June 1, Sunday, June 2 and Monday, June 3, 57th Street/7th Avenue-bound Q trains stop at 49th Street due to station painting at 30th Avenue.

May 31, 2013 9 comments

MTA Technology

iOS App of the Day: The Transit App

by Benjamin Kabak May 31, 2013

written by Benjamin Kabak on May 31, 2013

TransitApp

For those jonesing for transit directions on Apple’s iOS platform and not too keen on Google’s full-featured stand-alone Maps app, Samuel Vermette’s Transit app, now available for free, can help full the void. With the 2.0 release out this week, the app features real-time data, offline access and travel packs for those who venture outside the cozy confines of New York. It also comes with a context-aware feature that remembers recent travel routes.

Vermette approached me a few weeks ago after I ran my thoughts on the ideal transit app, and his latest release covers my initial request for real-time tracking better than any I’ve seen. It pulls countdown clock data from the MTA’s subway API and bus tracking from the BusTime API. He informs me that they plan to add above-ground entrance location data and real-time service changes in future releases.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been using the beta version of the app, and the 2.0.1 release is now far more stable. What I like about this app is that it works. It’s intuitive to use, very graphical and definitely worth a spin. An Android version is in the works as well.

May 31, 2013 5 comments

Brooklyn Queens

Can you tell me how to get, how to get from Brooklyn to Queens?

by Benjamin Kabak May 31, 2013

written by Benjamin Kabak on May 31, 2013

A sighting of the rare G train. (Photo via flickr user Bitch Cakes)

The geography of New York City makes for some strange transportation bedfellows. Manhattan — a long, narrow island — contains a lot of key job centers and is the house of city government while Brooklyn and Queens, as close neighbors, are home to a combined 4.7 million people. Yet, it’s relatively easy to take a train into Manhattan and relatively painful to travel between the counties of Kings and Queens. That’s a problem.

Every now and then, this transit imbalance takes center stage for a few days. On and off for the past few years, the Pratt Center has tried to fight for better interborough travel options, and the G train remains an object of scorn and derision. Yet, true Select Bus Routes between Queens and Brooklyn remain elusive, and plans to build subway connections died along with the rest of the Second System in the 1930s.

For many New Yorkers, they why of it all is elusive. In 2013, it’s viewed as a great failing that there is no quick way to get from Forest Hills or Astoria to Downtown Brooklyn or Park Slope, that the best transit route from Coney Island to Flushing involves hours of travel through three boroughs. Yet, these patterns have their roots in the history of the city’s economic development and transit policy, and yesterday, at The Atlantic Cities, Richard Greenwald, a history professor at St. Joseph’s College, offered up a brief history of the tortured connections. Here’s his take:

In the beginning, the New York City subway system, as historian Clifton Hood details in his masterful book, 722 Miles, was a commuter line. As such, it was designed to bring people to where the jobs were, and that meant Manhattan. So all subway routes lead there…While the subway got people from the outer boroughs into Manhattan, the once-vast trolley system of New York connected the residents of Queens to Brooklyn…

The demise of the trolleys in the late 1930s and ’40s seems to be largely responsible for disconnecting the two sister boroughs. Yes, they were replaced by buses, but buses have never — for a number of reasons — been able to cement the connection the way trolleys seemed to.

Starting in the 1920s, a company called National City Lines started buying up street car lines, then mostly privately owned. In 1936, the company became a holding company owned equally by General Motors, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California, and Phillips Petroleum. Perhaps you can guess where this is going. NCL bought up trolley systems in over 40 cities and 15 states, converting them almost overnight into bus lines. In 1947, they were indicted in federal court, in what became known as the “Great American Streetcar Scandal.” Two years later, the four original companies who owned NCL, along with MAC Truck, were found guilty of conspiracy to monopolize mass transit. But by then the damage was done. Most of the nation’s streetcar system was in junkyards, replaced by buses.

Outside of the streetcar conspiracies, Greenwald points his fingers at the social stigma attached to buses as a reason why the trolley connections were cut. “In the outer boroughs of New York, trolleys had acted as a primary mode of transportation,” he said. “Buses, on the other-hand, were tertiary, connecting commuters first-and-foremost to subway lines.” That’s not quite accurate though as the current Brooklyn bus map and the old trolley map look awfully similar. At ground level, at least, it’s no harder or easier to travel between Brooklyn and Queens than it was 80 years ago.

What happened were social shifts. Up until the last decade or so, few people noticed the poor quality of transit connections between Brooklyn and Queens because no one wanted to travel between these two boroughs. As gentrification took hold though, suddenly, middle/upper class neighborhoods were disconnected. It’s easy to travel from East New York to Jamaica or the Rockaways via the IND Fulton Line. It’s not easy to get from South Slope to Forest Hills without a arduous slow ride through Manhattan on the F train. Neighborhoods eight miles apart may as well be in different cities.

Fixes for this problem are not easy to identify. Even the long lost Second System wouldn’t have materially improved connections between Brooklyn and Queens. We instead need something as creative and fanciful as Vanshookenraggen’s Franklin Ave. Shuttle extension (or the entirety of his Second System plans). Such plans, though, require money to be no obstacle, and for the foreseeable future, money is an obstacle.

In the meantime, a better Select Bus Service would do the trick with a focus on interborough connections between neighborhoods that are current disconnected. Of course, SBS takes literally years of planning and is fraught with its own problems. Meanwhile, as jobs migrate from Manhattan to centers in Brooklyn and Queens, the Outer Boroughs remain frustratingly disconnected, a victim of the history of the economic growth and centralization of Manhattan and a lack of foresight by politicians over the past 100 years. It’s a rather familiar story after all.

May 31, 2013 60 comments

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