David Rosenstein's Blog

I promised myself I would do this every weekend then the MTA threw a curve ball by having the weekend of 1/11 have the exact same pattern as the weekend of 1/4. Very funny.

Anyway this is my not at all late analysis of the weekend service for MLK weekend! Lets start off by looking at all the service changes:

In the Bronx, the 5 is not going onto white plains and the 6 is skipping some stops.

In Manhattan, the 1 is running express between 72 st and 145 st in the uptown direction, while the 2 and 3 are running local between 96 and 72 going downtown.

In Queens, the 7 is not running into Manhattan, so it ends at Queensboro Plaza. The W train will be running to help increase Astoria service. The 7 is also running express after 74 St in the Flushing bound direction. Lastly, this weekend marks the beginning of the Rockaways Bridge rehabilitation project. For now, all service past Howard Beach is suspended, but that will change in the future.

In Brooklyn, the J is not going to Manhattan either, so it is ending at Hewes St. The M is ending at Myrtle as well. There is a free OSI between Hewes St and Broadway on the G. The J is also skipping a couple stops. Lastly, the Q is also not running to Mahattan. It is running in two segments: from 96st to Times Sq and from Prospect Pk to Coney Island.

The 5 Change

I think the 5 change is a completely fine change here although there are some interesting implications here. The one that I notice the most is that normally in this service pattern, 5 trains would turn around in the center track at 149 St, but they aren’t doing that here. I think this whole issue because of track work on the local Woodlawn bound track near 138 St (which is why its skipped), and this track work is taking place in a big enough segments so that they won’t be able to use the switch back to the local track (or for the 5 train to switch to white plains). In this case, turning around at Burnside makes a ton of sense, and allows the 5 to still provide important service. My only very mild complaint is that the 5 should serve Yankee Stadium – 161 and 167 as well since it could wait until then to switch to the express track if it wanted to, and if we are going through the effort to run 5 trains up here, we might as well give them the extra service.

The 1/2/3 Changes

And on that note, lets talk about where they did exactly that. There are three areas of track we saw construction on here in the UWS (I talk this way because I am an UWS resident). First is the uptown local track between 72 and 96. Second is the downtown express track between 72 and 96. And lastly is the uptown local track between 96 and 145. Given there are redundant tracks all over the place here, the MTA simply put the trains where there wasn’t construction, and called it a day. The inconvenience of no uptown service was relieved by the convenience of express service, so I have no complaints for the segment south of 96. My one complaint here is that I think the MTA should have maybe delayed the section north of 96 a bit if possible, just so there isn’t such a long section that needed to be closed at once. I understand the MTA was probably delaying 7 Ave IRT construction for a weekend that they weren’t doing Columbus Circle Switch Replacement, but having both of these at once made the 1, a train with no digital screens or announcements to help you understand whats happening, a very confusing ride in the UWS and West Harlem.

The 7 to Manhattan Changes

Are you ready for my hottest Weekend Service Change take? I think the 7 train should run via Broadway when it can’t go through its tunnel to Manhattan. Making all 7 riders transfer to either Astoria or QBL is ridiculous given how important the 7 is. And while the L doesn’t really have another option, the 7 technically does. Here is how I would do it: first the Q is going to run via 6th Ave in both directions. On a weekend like this, it would probably just terminate at W 4 St or Herald Sq, but if the Q could run to Coney Island, it definetly should. The W wouldn’t run like on most weekends. The N and R would have to be reduced in this plan, making the argument for running the full M or sending J’s down to Bay Ridge, but neither would be possible on this weekend either. At Queensboro Plaza, the 7 would switch onto the 60 St tunnel tracks and follow the N and R through it. Then at 59 St/7 Ave it would switch to the express tracks and run on them until 34 St Herald Sq, where it would end. It would have to turn around on the downtown bound track due to the switch layout, but other than that this maneuver would be completely possible. The obvious problem comes from running A division trains in B division tunnels, but temporary platform extensions might be possible which could alleviate the problem. If this became a more regular occurance, the MTA would probably want to reopen the lower level of City Hall as a much better turn around point. If it were opened, I would turn around the 7 trains there, which would allow the Q to stay on Broadway. The whole reason why I think the MTA should do this is that having so many people switch from the 7 to the N or W at QBP is honestly a bit dangerous. I given how spotty weekend service is, a one seat ride here to Manhattan would signifigantly improve the experience, especially since it would still go to Times Sq, and have 2 easy connection points to Grand Central, so the final destination of most 7 riders would be greatly covered without the extra transfer.

Now given that what I just suggested is more of a pipe dream rather than something the MTA would realistically do, lets talk about smaller, more incremental changes to improve this situation here, which I have two ideas to do so. First, have the 7 trains turn around at Hunters Point Ave instead of Queensboro Plaza. This will provide 3 extra connections at the end of the line here (E,G, and LIRR), which I think will be crucial in spreading the load. Second, run the N express after 34 Herald Sq, like on weekdays. If we are going to put in the effort to run W trains, lets get their full benefits, especially since the Q isn’t running (note: I couldn’t go and check if there was construction on the Broadway express tracks, if there was then obviously they shouldn’t run express trains). Speaking of the Q not running…

The Q Changes

Alright time for the second hot take of the post: when the Q is running as a shuttle between Prospect Park and Coney Island, it should through run onto the Franklin Ave Shuttle. The benefits of this are pretty obvious, so I’m going to address 3 issues of increasing severity. First, the Q trains are too long for the Shuttle. The answer is obviously to just run half-length Q trains to accomplish this. It means that the trains would be very short at all the other stations, but proper signage should alleviate this issue. Regarding capacity, they ran the Grand Concourse (D train) Shuttle every 15 minutes during Columbus Circle construction, and I imagine that the Q shuttle was running at similarly abysmal frequencies. Yet despite that, capacity was never an issue. With smaller trains that only require one operator, we can bump that up to every 10 minutes to compensate a bit here, but we have to limit ourselves due to the third and final issue: single tracking on the shuttle. Given that on weekdays they are able to run the shuttle every 10 minutes no problem, if we run our Q shuttle every 10 minutes here as well, we should be fine. With this, we take 1 seat off of every Q train rider’s ride for, essentially, free. I feel that this is a pretty easy choice to make, with the only real reason it is not done already is that it would require a lot of prep to seperate all the Q trains in half and prepping signage at all the stations. But if the MTA isn’t doing this, I don’t see much else worth doing to this change.

J and M changes

These changes kind of suck but I think the MTA is probably correct in their approach here. There is an argument that maybe G trains should run into Manhattan to compensate here but the switch layout makes that impossible (which seems like a weird oversight? why can’t G trains switch onto A/C tracks at Hoyt-Schimerhorn?) So we are stuck with this. If Hewes St has capacity to turn around more trains, the M should probably run there, but I am quite doubtful that it does.

6/other 7/other 2 Changes

This is a pretty typical “we are fixing the local track so all trains will run on the third track” so there not a ton to say here. This is the correct approach. The only improvement here would be to maybe save the 7 changes here for a weekend its running to Manhattan.

A/S_R Changes

So this weekend begins the shutdown of the bridge connecting Howard Beach to the Rockaways to preform much needed work on the Bridge. However, this weekend has the bonus issue of also needing to do work on some of the tracks actually there too! So I’ll save the regular change for next weekend’s post and I’ll just talk about what’s here this weekend. And given what is closed, this is pretty much the only option. I am happy that the LIRR has set their Fares to be $2.90 from Far Rockaway, so it could be used as an alternative. I am a little confused whats the point of the Q97 bus here as well (an express bus from Howard Beach to Far Rockaway. I think it makes sense when the Shuttle is running but for now its a bit pointless), but I guess they just want it to run. The main thing to criticize here is why didn’t they do this trackwork before the shutdown? I feel that could have, say, shut down the Rockaway Park half one weekend and shut down the Far Rockaway half the other weekend so that when the shutdown started, at least the service will stay consistent throughout the whole thing.

Skipped Stations

Lastly, there are some skipped stations. For just this weekend, 138 Grand Concourse will be skipped going Bronx bound. We also have some usual suspects: Cypress Hills, 85 St, and Church Ave, all of which are having long term work done on them.

Conclusion

This weekend there were a lot of issues that brought out my more, uh, ambitious ideas. I’m not even certain myself that they would work, but I feel that the MTA is more willing than ever to experiment with their weekend service patterns to ensure better weekend service, so I hope that they continue to push the bar in what is possible.