MTA Politics

Barely a nod to transit in Cuomo’s State of the State

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on January 10, 2013

Nice bridge. Now where’s my train?

During his State of the State address yesterday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo praised a New York State transportation initiative. “It is big, it is bold, it is beautiful,” he said. “We did it in one year, instead of talking about it for ten.” He was not, of course, talking about an effort to better prepare our subway system for the next major storm or a push to realize a badly-needed transit expansion. It was, of course, about the Tappan Zee Bridge, made all the more galling because this unnecessary $3-$4 billion won’t have dedicated transit anything.

From Cuomo, this lack of attention to the New York City region’s transit needs is hardly anything new. Throughout his time as governor, he’s shown nothing more than a tepid embrace of rail-related projects and transit needs. The current silence from Albany on the vacancy atop the MTA and the lack of urgency behind finding a replacement for Joe Lhota speaks volumes.

This year, though, Cuomo had an opening and an opportunity to take a problem by the reins. The transit network is vulnerable, and a panel Cuomo assembled had, just days before his speech, issued a report calling for a bus network, system hardening and increased investment in transit. Instead, his 300-page pamphlet on the state mentions the MTA just once:

The following measures should be taken to make our transportation systems stronger in the face of future storms. With federal assistance, these measures can and will be taken by the MTA and other State agencies and authorities to harden our transportation systems against future threats:

  • Flood-proof subways and bus depots with vertical roll-down doors, vent closures, inflatable bladders, and upsized fixed pumps (with back-up power sources);
  • Mitigate scour on road and rail bridges with strategically placed riprap and other steps;
  • Replace metal culverts with concrete on roads in flood-prone areas;
  • Providing elevated or submersible pump control panels, pump feeders, and tide gates to address flooding at vulnerable airports;
  • Install reverse flow tide gates to prevent flooding of docks, berths, terminal facilities, and connecting road and rail freight systems, and harden or elevate communication and electrical power infrastructure that services port facilities; and
  • Upgrade aged locks and movable dams to allow for reliable management of water levels and maintain embankments to protect surrounding communities from flooding.

He did not mention financing issues, fare hikes or the debt bomb. He did not mention congestion control, environmental concerns or rail or bus expansion. He also didn’t even discuss a way to pay for any of the few upgrades he has proposed. Instead, he promised to avoid any tax increases and will instead go, hat in hand, to the federal government for a hand-out while building up the upstate road network.

For as much as Cuomo wants to push upstate development, the truth remains that New York State’s economy is powered by New York City, and New York City’s economy, as we have seen in the Sandy aftermath and as we knew beforehand, is powered by a robust transit network and infrastructure investments. Yes, it’s going to cost money to protect and maintain our subway system as new 21st Century challenges emerge, but if Cuomo wants to convince us of his grand progressive vision for New York State, then he has to be willing to tackle those challenges head on.

Just because transit was absent from the State of the State doesn’t mean nothing will happen. Cuomo still has the opportunity to appoint a strong and forceful transit advocate to head the MTA, and he has the power to push through financing measures. We can’t afford inaction, and we can’t afford to ignore the problems and recommendations. Waiting until next year, next time, will be too late, and the state executive has to lead.

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AsidesPANYNJ

PATH restores some 24/7 services

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on January 9, 2013

Nearly two and a half months after Superstorm Sandy swamped the PATH system, the Port Authority will be restoring some 24-hour service to its beleaguered interstate subway system, Governors Chris Christie and Andrew Cuomo announced today. Starting tonight, PATH service between the hours of 10 p.m. and 5 a.m., seven days a week, will commence between Newark and 33rd St. via Hoboken with stops including Harrison, Journal Square, Grove Street, and Newport in New Jersey and Christopher Street, 9th Street, 14th Street, and 23rd Street in Manhattan. This route will also run non-stop over the weekends starting at 10 p.m. on Friday and running through 5 a.m. on Monday.

According to the press release, restoring PATH service “has been a top priority for the Port Authority.” Wise minds could debate what exactly that means for the same amount of time it took the PA to restore service. Still, I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth that closely. For lots of commuters and New Jersey residents, even this limited 24-hour service is a welcome relief to the transit desert that had enveloped the area.

Meanwhile, the World Trade Center stop will not be a part of this service restoration. The infrastructure between the WTC and Exchange Place was seriously damaged during the flooding, and as this week’s escalator malfunction showed, there’s still a long way to go before everything is normal again. Still, this is a big step. Now who wants to go to Barcade in Jersey City?

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Queens

Wrestling the rail option away from QueensWay

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on January 9, 2013

A 3.5-mile right-of-way should once again see train service. (Map via The New York Times)

Over the past six years following the ins and outs of transit policy in New York City, I’ve read nearly every article about trains, buses, taxis, roads, bikes and everything in between published in all of this great city’s illustrious daily newspapers. Some do a better job than others of covering the policies behind transportation and the lack of political support for adequately funding transit. Others treat the transit planning process and transit news as a game of “Gotcha” populist journalism where the MTA is the big bad guy and the rest of us are just getting our proverbial pockets picked. In other words, coverage is uneven.

Where coverage is not uneven — and, in fact, is often quite glowing — is when the Next Big Thing arrives. Now that Chelsea’s High Line is so over, the Next Big Thing is in Queens, and it’s the QueensWay. I’ve burned a lot of pixels speaking out against the QueensWay plan lately. It’s the gimmicky idea to turn a 3.5-mile rail right-of-way into a park. I want rails-to-trails initiatives to disappear and would prefer to see a renewed effort to reactive the Rockaway Beach Branch line. In the aftermath of Sandy and with space for transit at such a premium in New York City, giving upon a dedicated, if disused, right of way that could be reactivated is a major mistake.

That’s not, however, how The Times sees it. I’m a big fan of The Gray Lady. Mocking Twitter account aside, I read The Times every day, and I usually find their coverage of most issues to be on target. This article, however, has left me both speechless and full of words. It’s a glowing profile of the QueensWay effort that simply and utterly dismisses the idea of rail as though it were the worst idea in the history of bad ideas. Shall we dive in?

It has been abandoned for five decades, a railway relic that once served Queens passengers on the old Rockaway Beach branch of the Long Island Rail Road. For all those years, no one paid much notice to the ghostly tracks, long overgrown with trees and vines, as they ran silently behind tidy houses in Rego Park, dipped through ravines in Forest Park and hovered above big-box stores in Glendale.

That is, until the High Line expanded the possibilities of a public park.

Now, the three-and-a-half-mile stretch of rusty train track in central Queens is being reconceived as the “QueensWay,” a would-be linear park for walkers and bicyclists in an area desperate for more parkland and, with the potential for art installations, performances and adjacent restaurants, a draw for tourists interested in sampling the famously diverse borough.

That wascally welic of a wailway. Five decades! Fifty years! Completely abandoned. No one — except for those cranks who have long called for its return to service — has paid it any attention. But don’t worry: The High Line will save it. After all, as it is similarly located in a booming area within walking distance to major city tourist attractions as the High Line is in Chelsea, millions of tourists will be sure to flock to a park that isn’t near anything and runs through a ditch for most of its 3.5 miles.

Lisa Foderaro solders on…

“It’s Queens’s turn,” said Will Rogers, president and chief executive officer of the Trust for Public Land, a national nonprofit group that has joined local residents in promoting the idea. “The High Line led to the redefinition of the neighborhoods in Manhattan, whereas the QueensWay will be defined by the neighborhoods it passes through. Essentially, it will be a cultural trail.”

The involvement of the Trust for Public Land, which has 36 offices nationwide, including in Manhattan, has given the project new momentum, bolstering the efforts of the Friends of the QueensWay, a group with about 2,500 supporters. It did not hurt that the trust hired Adrian Benepe, who recently stepped down as the New York City parks commissioner.

Last month, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a native of Queens, awarded the trust a $467,000 environmental protection grant through the state’s Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. The grant will help pay for a community planning survey and a feasibility study that will include environmental, engineering and financial assessments of the project, including consideration of the condition of the railway’s trestles, bridges and embankments.

Setting aside my snarky retort for a minute, we come across a major problem I have with the political approach to the QueensWay folk. The government backing is incredible. The Trust for Public Land has led rails-to-trails efforts in places as diverse as Chicago, Toledo and Florida. Furthermore, from Adrian Benepe who has the ear of city leaders to Gov. Cuomo’s decision to award the Trust with nearly $500,000 to study the QueensWay proposal, New York is welcoming this idea with open arms. Where’s the competing grant to study reactivating the rail line though? This feasibility study will explore turning this ROW into a park, but it won’t offer up what should be Plan A: rail.

And then we get to the graphs that had me steaming:

But bringing the park to fruition will not be easy. The modest neighborhoods and light industrial areas through which the abandoned rail line passes cannot provide the tens of millions of dollars that were raised privately by Friends of the High Line, the nonprofit group managing the construction and maintenance of the elevated park on Manhattan’s West Side.

Nor is everyone on the same page about the Queens railway’s destiny; at least one elected official has called for a simultaneous study of reviving the rail line to provide better train service to the increasingly popular Rockaway beaches, damaged as they might be in the short term by Hurricane Sandy. (Mr. Benepe, who is well schooled in community opposition, imagined the potential horror of nearby homeowners at the prospect of the train line’s rumbling to life again.)

The first paragraph is self-explanatory. It can’t replicate the success of the High Line because it’s not the High Line. It connects Ozone Park to Forest Hills, and it’s not, as I mentioned, in an area to which tourists are flocking. It is, however, in an area that could use some faster rail options, but who wants that? Certainly not a bunch of homeowners who knowingly purchased houses that back up on a rail line’s right of way. Just think of that “potential horror” — a parenthetical one at that — of better access to Manhattan and a faster ride to the city’s job centers. What a nightmare.

The best part though is the kicker graph:

Unlike the High Line, the QueensWay would welcome bicycles. While the trestles are relatively narrow, long stretches are wide enough — up to 25 feet — to accommodate walkers and bicyclists. New bike paths could connect the park to Flushing Meadows-Corona Park to the north, as well as an existing bikeway in Jamaica Bay to the south. About 250,000 residents live within a mile of the proposed park, and its backers see all kinds of ancillary benefits, from health to traffic. “That’s a lot of carbon footprint,” said Marc Matsil, the trust’s New York state director.

“That’s a lot of carbon footprint.” What the *&!% does that even mean, Marc Matsil? The QueensWay was provide ancillary biking benefits at most as it’s generally, in my opinion, a bit too far from the city to be a part of bike commuters’ routes. It would be for mainly recreational biking and weekend strolling if it’s used as much as its proponents claim it will.

We live in a post-Sandy New York, one in which a state panel recently called for an increased investment in our transportation infrastructure. We have a dormant right of way — a very valuable one in a city that doesn’t have too many underutilized rail corridors or much open space — just sitting there waiting for rail. Before we turn it over to a rails-for-trails group that wants to build a novelty act in the middle of Queens, we have to be sure we can’t reclaim this ROW for rails. Right now, rail is a relic, an inconvenience and something that would run literally through a bunch of NIMBYs’ backyards. It will take a concerted effort to wrest this away from the QueensWay crowd, but that effort should not and would not be in vain.

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View from Underground

From DOT, signage to clarify the parking situation

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on January 8, 2013

DOT’s new parking signs clean up a confusing and cluttered presentation of information.

When it comes to transportation planning, signage is both vital to the way we get around and often simply taken for granted. We are willing to accept sub-par signage, but we’re also willing to argue over what information should be presented on signs and how. While the Vignelli-designed underground signs do a reasonably good enough job informing straphangers of their directions, New York’s parking signs have often led to questions of interpretation that stump even the most veteran of the city’s drivers.

Yesterday, though, New York City officials unveiled a new sign that has been designed to solve that problem. Created by Pentagram Design, the new signs feature a font change and streamlined information. “You shouldn’t need a Ph.D in parking signage to understand where you are allowed to leave your car in New York,” City Council Member Dan Garodnick, a self-professed supporter of syntactic clarity, said. “The days of puzzled parkers trying to make sense of our midtown signs are over. I was pleased to work directly with DOT, removing unnecessary words in these signs, cleaning up their appearance, and the result is a simple, clear product that people will understand.”

According to DOT, Garodnick has been pushing the agency to simplify parking regulation signs for nearly two years, and the new effort features standardized colors, typefaces and font sizes. For the typographically inclined among us, the font Interface takes center stage here. As far as spacing goes, the new signs seem ideal for the Twitter era as DOT has reduced the number of characters used to explain parking regs from 250 to around 140. The signs are also a foot shorter with the day of the regulation preceding the hours. There are no more abbreviations either.

The new signs are going up throughout Manhattan’s paid parking areas in Midtown, and the initial build-out includes 3300 commercial parking signs and 3000 other signs for nighttime and weekend parking, hotel and taxi stands, street cleaning and the always-confusing “no standing” areas. “New York City’s parking signs can sometimes be a five-foot-high totem pole of confusing information,” DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. “Parking signs play an important role in setting the rules at the curbside and these changes will make regulations easier to read and take the stress out of figuring out where and when you can legally park.”

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View from Underground

To prepare for storms, panel urges rail expansion, CBTC and a BRT network

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on January 8, 2013

The H train is a symbol of the challenges facing the New York City transit system as superstorms become a greater threat to the region. (Photo via Photo: Metropolitan Transportation Authority / Amy Hausmann)

When Superstorm Sandy swept through the New York City area, it left a wide swath of transit destruction in its path. New York City Transit’s subway tunnels connecting Manhattan to Brooklyn and Queens were flooded out while some parts of the system suffered further destruction. New Jersey Transit rather foolishly left its rolling stock in vulnerable areas. The Port Authority’s PATH trains still aren’t operating 24-7. It was the closest to a transit armageddon the region had seen in over a decade.

In the aftermath of the storm, Gov. Andrew Cuomo commissioned a few panels to ascertain the region’s next steps, and one of them — NYS2100 — released its preliminary report this week. We can’t wait until 2100 to implement these suggestions, and they’re worth assessing now. None of the panel’s transportation suggestions are all that groundbreaking, but with a state-commissioned body putting forward these ideas, hopefully acting and, more importantly, funding can come sooner rather than later.

NYS2100 featured some transit luminaries, including current RPA head Robert Yaro and former MTA chief Joe Lhota, and their suggestions seem to reflect such influence. At a high level, the panel has recommended a rapid CBTC implementation, action on the Gateway Tunnel and Metro-North Access plans and a faster and broader bus rapid transit network for the city. On a more philosophical level, the panel has urged the city to reconsider its transportation priorities.

“Even now,” the report says, “the state’s transportation network is being stressed to the limits of its capacity. For this reason, the recommendations in this chapter — building redundancies that enhance the overall transportation network — focus strongly on ways that enhance the resilience of the New York of tomorrow. The infrastructure we invest in today will serve generations of New Yorkers.”

First up is the subway system’s signaling. The panel suggests a rapid CBTC implementation because of the flexibility and increased capacity such a system provides. How this ties into a response from a major storm is a good guess. As far as I can see, CBTC would allow any non-flooded routes to run more trains. Otherwise, it’s an upgrade that shouldn’t require a massive weather event to see the light of day.

Next up comes the recommendation making headlines: The NYS2100 panel urges a crazy bus rapid transit network. “A world class BRT network would enhance the resilience and redundancy of the overall transit system by expanding and supplementing surface transit options,” the draft report says. SBS, says the panel, could be a foundation for a true bus rapid transit network, but all I see is the potential for four or five years of endless public studies with no actual progress made. Let’s reform the process before things get out of hand.

Furthermore, the panel urges New York to push forward on both Amtrak’s Gateway Tunnel and the Penn Station Access project. The former requires a significant federal contribution and the latter the completion of the East Side Access project. Neither are expected to be ready before 2019 at the earliest. Looking to the future, the report also calls upon the state to “encourage alternate modes of transportation.” It is truly compelling language.

In terms of proactive protection, the NYS2100 panel put forward some recommendations that don’t need nearly as much snark as their forward-looking affirmations of projects currently in progress. The report urges the MTA to retrofit subway stations with waterproof roll-down doors; install below-grade vent closures to seal ventilation shafts; and to use inflatable plugs to seal tunnels. Of those three recommendations, the third is most controversial. It’s likely easier to recover from a tunnel flood than it is, as South Ferry has shown, from a station flood, and we should figure out a way to deliver more floodwater into the tunnels while better draining that piece of the infrastructure puzzle. I can’t argue with the doors and vent closures though as keeping water out in the first place should become a priority.

So what do we make of this panel and its suggestions? As my tone may indicate, I’m not too impressed. Most of these projects are in progress, and they hardly solve major problems. They don’t represent a major expansion of the rail network — with a corresponding decrease in car travel — and they seem to respond to problems we witnessed two months ago. They don’t address potential future problems different storms or steadily rising sea levels may pose to the city and its transportation network, and they don’t address funding sources. None of these ideas, obviously, are cheap.

In the end, we’re left at the beginning: With ideas that have long been discussed and no way to pay for the necessary upgrades. This is but a draft report. Hopefully, the final version can deliver on specifics, but I’m not too optimistic. Without the dollars and a funding source, the waters will rise, and the floods will come.

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View from Underground

Link: The subway’s missing and closed restrooms

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on January 7, 2013

Please don’t relieve yourself in this former subway restroom. (Photo by flickr user theratrace)

A few years ago, I had the admittedly terrible idea of documenting the New York City subway system’s public restrooms. I thought I would maybe make a day of checking out the bathrooms, snapping some photographs and writing up a witty overview of what I would find. Eventually, amNew York beat me to it, and I’m glad they did. I’ve used a subway restroom only once in my life (8th Ave./42nd St.), and it wasn’t a terrible experience. It was just one I’d rather not repeat.

Now and then, though, my curiosity still gets the best of me, and if I’m walking past a subway bathroom, I’m often tempted to duck in. Usually, though, I can’t. Despite signs promising open hours of 5 a.m. to midnight, I’ve found subway restrooms locked more often than not. Those on the mezzanine at West 4th St. are never open, and only once or twice have I seen straphangers duck into the bathrooms off the passageway between the Atlantic Ave. and Pacific St. sides of that complex. I can’t imagine what the ones on the F platform at Delancey St. look like, but those too are often locked.

This past week, Eric Jaffe at The Atlantic Cities tackled a different element of the Great Subway Bathroom Conundrum. Why, he asked, are America’s public transit systems generally without restrooms? By and large, cost seems to be the dominant factor as transit agencies that have restrooms have shut them because no one wants to pay to keep them clean. New York seems to be the exception. Jaffe writes:

Back in 1940, with Fiorello LaGuardia running the city, there were 1,676 functioning toilets in subway stations throughout the system — and all of them received weekly inspections. That figure has since dwindled significantly. Most reports now believe that 77 stations citywide have working public bathrooms (28 in Manhattan), mostly at major transfers or at the end of the line. A survey of the Manhattan facilities conducted by New York magazine in 2006 found most of them either impossible to locate or closed for “construction.” (The rest were just gross.) A citywide survey, done by AM New York in 2010, found that 60 of the 129 total restrooms were locked or being used for another purpose, such as storage. (The rest were still pretty gross.) The MTA cited “criminal activity” as the main reason for the closures.

So there you have it: We don’t have restrooms underground because of the unscrupulous activities they seem to foster. That doesn’t stop many people from simply using the subway system itself as a restroom, and therein lies the problem.

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Manhattan

What if the Low Line space were still transit?

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on January 6, 2013

In my brief post on Friday linking to a piece on The Atlantic Cities site about urban trends that should disappear, I wrote about my own objection to rails-to-trails projects. With the success of the High Line, groups throughout the country think that they can find success by turning underutilized rail rights-of-way into parks. In our own backyard here in the city, one group in Queens and one in Manhattan have identified two areas that could be parks.

My biggest objection to these efforts is the permanence and prioritization of it all. The QueensWay project proposed for the Rockaway Beach Branch has garnered a lot of press, but, as I’ve repeatedly said, we should retain the right of way and restore rail service. In Manhattan, the issue isn’t nearly as cut and dry, but transit options should still be fully explored before a group proposing an underground park gets its way.

The Low Line has been proposed for the Essex St. trolley terminal, an underused area across from the BMT’s Essex St. stop that once housed the trolleys that crossed the Williamsburg Bridge. A group of ambitious folks have proposed an underground park for the space called the Low Line, and as in Queens, this park has captured the attention of reporters.

Recently, The Wall Street Journal profiled the effort and put an interesting spin on the story. The Low Line, wrote Richard Morgan, would significantly boost the value of Lower East Side properties. He said:

Messrs. Barasch and Ramsey are embarked on a new strategy in an effort to generate more momentum for the Lowline idea. They are touting the economic benefits they say the Lowline could bring to the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area, or SPURA, that is being planned above ground near Delancey and Grand streets. After years of debate and delay, the city in January is slated to receive proposals from developers wanting to build residential and commercial space as part of the SPURA project. The Lowline backers hope that providing more financial information on their project will give it lift as discussion about economic development in the area gets higher visibility because of SPURA…

According to the draft of an economic-impact summary that Messrs. Barasch and Ramsey have been circulating among local officials and business people, creating the Lowline would boost land values of SPURA sites by between $10 million and $20 million and create between $5 million and $10 million in sales, hotel and real-estate taxes over 30 years based on a net-present-value basis.

The Lowline backers say in the summary that they will seek to raise $55 million, figuring the actual cost will be in a range between $44 million and $72 million, including donations and between $7 million and $14 million in tax credits. With a projected annual operating cost of between $2 million and $4 million for the Lowline, the summary notes the goal of the park would be self-sufficiency, aided by revenue from programming festivals, performances, private events, public art and children’s programming. Commercial space is also planned. “This is the panoply of things that make a space popular but that this neighborhood also needs,” said Mr. Barasch. The summary says the Lowline will be “a new living room for the community.”

The article itself delves into the issues surrounding the site: It’s owned by the MTA, and the MTA hasn’t yet opened it up to development. Plus, any use of the space would have to adhere to MTA requirements that it not interfere with subway operations. On a practical matter, Dan Barasch and James Ramsey, the Low Line advocates, had the ear of Jay Walder for a bit of time in late 2011, but the MTA is soon to be two heads removed from Walder. They’re trying to generate public support that will force the MTA’s hand, but any near-term progress is a long shot.

Outside of these practicalities, though, I have to question an underlying assumption of the study: Would turning the Low Line from idea to reality bring more value to the area than restoring some transit services through the terminal? Granted, the Essex St. Trolley Terminal isn’t a particularly obvious candidate for reactivation. We don’t have trolley, for one, and the J/M/Z trains serve the Williamsburg Bridge. But I could easily envision the space serving as a depot for a proper bus rapid transit line that bridges the borough divide between Manhattan and Brooklyn. That alone would generate significant value for the area.

Ultimately, as in Queens, before we embrace a rails-to-trails (or, in this case, rails-to-park) initiative, we have to adequately assess whether or not the space can be restored to its original intended use. The High Line worked due to a confluence of circumstances, and it’s not so easy to duplicate it. Plus, it’s hard enough to build out new rights of way for rail projects that we shouldn’t be so callous discarding those that already exist. Only once we believe transit to be a non-starter and a park to be the only should we turn over the space.

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Service Advisories

Bus restoration begins as work impacts 10 subway lines

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on January 4, 2013

Although Joe Lhota has left and Sandy dealt a significant amount of damage to the MTA’s bottom line, the agency is moving forward with its plan to restore nearly $30 million worth of services lost to the 2010 cuts. The first of those services come back on Sunday as a series of bus routes will return. Those are as follows:

Bx13 New Extension from East 161st Street to Bronx Terminal Market (149th Street and River Avenue)
Bx34 Restore daytime weekend service
B4 Restore full-time service to Knapp Street/Voorhies Avenue via Neptune Avenue, Sheepshead Bay Road and Emmons Ave/Shore Parkway
B24 Restore weekend service
B39 Restore daytime service between Williamsburg and Lower East Side
B48 Restore extension from Atlantic Avenue to Prospect Park (B, Q) Station
B57 Extend route from Carroll Gardens to Red Hook (Ikea) via Court Street, Lorraine Street and Otsego Street
B64 Restore extension from Cropsey Avenue to Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue (D, F, N, Q) Station via Harway Avenue
B69 Restore weekend service
M1 Restore weekend service from 106th Street to 8th Street
M9 Extend north terminal from 23rd Street to 29th Street via 1st and 2nd Avenues and extend south terminal from City Hall to Battery Park City via Warren Street/Murray Street and West Street
M21 Restore weekend service
Q24 Restore extension from Broadway Junction to Bushwick Avenue via Broadway
Q27 Provide new overnight service from Horace Harding Expressway to Cambria Heights via Springfield Blvd
Q30 Provide new branch to Queensborough Community College
Q36 Extend alternate trips from Jamaica Avenue to Little Neck via Little Neck Parkway (This restores weekday service along route of previous Q79 route.)
Q42 Restore midday service from Jamaica Center to St. Albans via Archer Avenue}

Meanwhile, there are of course some weekend changes. No fake snow forecast to delay these this time.


From 3:45 a.m. Saturday, January 5 to 9 p.m. Sunday, January 6, Rector Street-bound 1 trains skip 238th Street, 231st Street and 225th Street due to track panel installation north of 231st Street.


From 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday, January 5 and Sunday, January 6, the last stop for some uptown 1 trains is 137th Street. Customers may continue their trip by transferring at 137th Street.


From 3:45 a.m. Saturday, January 5 to 10 p.m. Sunday, January 6, 2 service operates in two sections due to track panel installation north of Bronx Park East:

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

Customers may transfer between trains at East 180th Street.

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


From 11:30 p.m. Friday, January 4 to 5 a.m. Monday, January 7, there are no 3 trains between Franklin Avenue and New Lots Avenue due to switch replacement at Utica Avenue.

  • 3 service operates between 148th Street and Franklin Avenue and via the 2 line between Franklin Avenue and Flatbush Avenue.
  • Free shuttle buses operate in two segments between Franklin Avenue and New Lots Avenue:
    1. Local between Franklin Avenue and Sutter Avenue.
    2. Non-stop between Franklin Avenue and Sutter Avenue and local between Sutter Avenue and New Lots Avenue.

Customers may transfer between trains and free shuttle buses at Franklin Avenue.

Note: From 12:01 a.m. to 6 a.m., the 3 operates between 148th Street and Times Square-42nd Street only.


From 11:30 p.m. Friday, January 4 to 5 a.m. Monday, January 7, there are no 4 trains between Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center and New Lots Avenue due to switch replacement at Utica Avenue.

  • 4 service operates between Woodlawn and Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center. Take 2 or 3 trains between Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center and Franklin Avenue.
  • Free shuttle buses operate in two segments between Franklin Avenue and New Lots Avenue:
    1. Local between Franklin Avenue and Sutter Avenue.
    2. Non-stop between Franklin Avenue and Sutter Avenue and local between Sutter Avenue and New Lots Avenue.


From 3:45 a.m. Saturday, January 5 to 10 p.m. Sunday, January 6, 5 service is suspended due to track panel installation of 219th Street and Gun Hill Road. Customers should take the 2 and/or 4 instead.


From 11:45 p.m. Friday, January 4 to 5 a.m. Monday, January 7 (and the next 11 weekends), there is no 7 train service between Times Square-42nd Street and Queensboro Plaza due to Flushing Line CBTC. Customers may take the E, N, Q and S (42nd Street shuttle) and free shuttle buses as alternatives.

  • Use the E, N or Q* between Manhattan and Queens
  • Free shuttle buses operate between Vernon Blvd-Jackson Avenue and Queensboro Plaza
  • In Manhattan, the 42nd Street S Shuttle operates overnight

*Q service is extended to Ditmars Blvd. (See Q entry for hours of operation.)


From 10:45 p.m. Friday, January 4 to 5 a.m. Monday, January 7, uptown D trains run express from 145th Street to Tremont Avenue due to installation of electronics south of 167th Street.


From 11:45 p.m. Friday, January 4 to 5 a.m. Monday, January 7, Coney Island-bound F trains are rerouted via the M After 36th Street, Queens to 47th-50th Sts. due to SAS work at Lexington Avenue-63rd Street.


From 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday, January 5 and from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday, January 6, Q trains are extended to Ditmars Blvd. in order to augment service between Manhattan and Queens.

(42nd Street Shuttle)
From 12:01 a.m. to 6 a.m. Saturday, January 5, Sunday, January 6 and Monday, January 7, 42nd Street S shuttle operates overnight due to weekend work on the 7 line.

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AsidesView from Underground

Link: The Atlantic Cities on the worst in urban trends

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on January 4, 2013

As part of their year-end wrap up, the good folks over at The Atlantic Cities published a piece I enjoyed called “Urban Trends We Hope Die in 2013.” On one level, these included topics near and dear to my heart: They urge cities to retain hybrid taxis, speak out against transit naming rights deals and call upon bikers, pedestrians and drivers to get along better. Other topics — including useless Olympics venues and and lax attitudes toward sexual harassment on public transit — I haven’t covered but deserve more attention.

The list is a thought-provoking look at the way urbanists, city planners and transit advocates spend their resources, and it speaks to the fetishization of certain aspects of city growth and livability. I would add two more to their list. I think rails-to-trails initiatives at the cost of rail lines that can and should be reactivated should die out, and I think the love affair with bus rapid transit (or, in New York’s case, the subpar Select Bus Service) could be back-burnered as well. I’ve spoken out against Queensway and feel that SBS accomplishes very little at an absurdly slow pace of adoption. Anyway, even without these trends, it’s a good read. [The Atlantic Cities]

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New Jersey Transit

From Christie, an odd defense of NJ Transit execs

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on January 4, 2013

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is flying high these days. After taking a hard stand against his GOP colleagues in the House on Sandy relief, his star has risen among both Republicans and Democrats in the northeast. While his national future is cloudy — it’s hard seeing too many GOP establishment figures lining up behind him right now — he has bipartisan support in his own state and in New York as well. Still, his defense of New Jersey Transit’s actions during Superstorm Sandy leave much to be desired.

While speaking to reporters earlier this week about his extreme disappointment in Congress, Christie again responded to criticism over New Jersey Transit’s handling of its rolling stock. Saying that NJ Transit Executive Director Jim Weinstein’s decisions were “not a hanging offense,” Christie issued a rigorous defense of the transit agency. A reporter and Christie engaged in the following exchange (via Transportation Nation):

Reporter: In light of the report last week that NJ Transit had been warned months ahead of time that rail yards in Kearny would likely flood in the event of a storm like Sandy, do you still support the leadership?

Christie: “I absolutely support the leadership — and I don’t believe that that’s what the report said. I mean, I think you’ve gilded that report up pretty well in the lead up to your question. I don’t think that’s what the report said. I think these guys made the best judgement they could under the circumstances. And all of you are geniuses after. Once you see that the Kearny yards flooded, you could say ‘well, geez, they should have moved the trains.’ Well, you know, if they knew for sure it was going to flood, believe me, executive director Jim Weinstein would have moved the trains. This is a guy with decades of experience in government, with extraordinary competence, who made the best decision he could make at the time. Sometimes, people make wrong decisions. It happens. It’s not a hanging offense.”

“If they knew for sure it was going to flood, we would have moved the trains” is a great statement in modern times. We already know what the report said because we had a chance to read it last week, and we know that Weinstein himself admitted that he hadn’t studied it much prior to the storm.

What strikes me about Christie’s language, though, is the definitiveness of it. Last summer, Christie yelled at surfers to get off the beach before Hurricane Irene when we didn’t know how Irene would hit the area or behave. We didn’t know what would or wouldn’t flood, but citizens were expected to act as though the worst might happen. Here, with Sandy — a stronger storm aiming directly at New Jersey — Christie is excusing NJ Transit’s response because they didn’t know Kearny would flood. Of course, they didn’t know; that’s part of the unknown of a weather event. But being safe rather than sorry is why New York had its transit system up and running relatively quickly.

New Jersey failed, and, as an added insult, some Metro-North trains suffered damage because of it. They were warned; they ignored the warnings; and Weinstein should be replaced. I think it’s that simple.

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