officiallyliam

The only way to have the bypass not go underground between Sunnyside and Woodside is to widen the right-of-way. That's not happening. Tunnel provisions under Sunnyside Yard were built several years ago as part of ESA; the line will use those and carry on underground as far as Woodside station. Leaving Woodside, it would continue underground until to the point where the Port Washington branch splits. From there, it will use the former RBB trackways, on the outside of the LIRR Main line. At Whitepot Junction, where the RBB once split off, there is room to build tunnel portals for the bypass, which will run underneath the LIRR, and use Yellowstone Blvd to get to Queens Blvd near Forest Hills. There, you have two options. The bypass station could be a lower level, or it could be constructed at the same level as the existing station. There's room on the south side of Queens Blvd for a two-track, two-platform station; alternatively, the tracks could be built on either side of the existing station, with the Manhattan-bound bypass track adjacent to the Manhattan-bound QB local, and the Jamaica-bound bypass track next to the Jamaica-bound QB local. This would save you having to tunnel under (or bisect) the layup tracks past Forest Hills, and could allow a cross-platform interchange between bypass and QB local services.

This option also works, since it would absorb the excess capacity from the Broadway express. Ideally, 72nd could be rebuilt to be like 63rd and Lex to allow a cross-platform transfer between the Broadway to Queens and the Second Avenue line, but I understand this would be quite the engineering feat to accomplish, considering the layout of existing tracks. The 79th Street tunnel idea is fine, but it should go either to Northern Blvd or to the bypass. There's no need to try to route it into upper Roosevelt; not to mention this wouldn't be physically possible. You'd have to tear out the mezzanine above the IND platforms, as the upper level platforms stub-end at the eastern end of the mezzanine. Additionally, you would have to cut-and-cover underneath Queens Blvd to get there, underpinning the Flushing IRT in the process. If the is simply rerouted to the Eighth Avenue express, the could cover Eighth Avenue local, 53rd, and the QB local to 179th on its own. This setup could probably get you about 20-24 tph on the local; sending the and via 63rd to the QB express would get you 30+ tph (with CBTC). As for the bypass, it really should go through its own tunnel, but that requires extensive construction. Sending the all through Cranberry would be operational suicide.

You're right - I actually forgot about the 125th Street branch. I was just thinking about the Program for Action (and earlier) proposals to route SAS up one of the existing Bronx elevated lines.

If SAS must re-use an existing line to get into the Bronx, I would think that the better choices would be either White Plains Road or Pelham, since those lines are slower to begin with and would stand to benefit more from faster Second Avenue service. Other than speeding up the ride downtown, the only advantage this has is that it means one of the Lex services could be diverted to run up Third Avenue; at that point, though, we may as well send SAS up Third from the start.

You could use the LIRR tracks between Long Island City and Hunters Point, if we accept then that diesel service will be relegated to shuttles on the outer ends of the island. I don't think that would be bad, as it would allow for more frequent and reliable electric service, perhaps one day meeting the MTA's 1968 goal of a rapid transit-style service on the LIRR. That being said, the line will have to go back underground between Sunnyside Yard and Woodside, where there is no space for a new subway line within the existing right-of-way. 63rd Street doesn't need to be added to the mix here. If the goal is de-interlining, as you say, then the bypass and Northern Blvd should feed only in to the new tunnel, 63rd Street only the Queens Blvd express, and 53rd Street only the Queens Blvd local. The point of building a new tunnel to serve the bypass and Northern Blvd is to create new lines into Queens that are in no way dependent on the existing overcrowded system, and to increase service frequency on the lower half of SAS, which as planned will only get half the service that the line north of 63rd gets.

No, don’t do that. There’s nothing to be gained; all it’ll do is delay both and trains because of fumigation.

The Bypass should have its own East River tunnel in order to minimize reverse branching, but it doesn't need to be this complicated. It could simply be a branch of off SAS at 38th Street (following the LIRR right-of-way through Long Island City) or at 50th Street (following 45th Road through Court Square, then into the LIRR). This tunnel could also facilitate future northern branches off of SAS, such as Northern Blvd, without overloading either 63rd Street or the northern portion of SAS.

The problem here isn't that the Bronx needs service to Second Avenue; the problem here is that there are corridors in the Bronx that need subway service more than the Grand Concourse needs a third subway service.

Is this an LRT route? Presumably not a subway, though it could be BRT as well, I suppose. Either way, the RX does this same thing, but better, because it actually connects various residential and employment centers; it could also have a transfer to the LIRR mainline near Queens Blvd or via a spur route to Jamaica station, plus of course the closer connection to the Atlantic Branch at ENY. Yes, it is - that's why it's stuffed to capacity with people transferring between various trains and buses today. Adding one more line in to the mix at the existing cramped station will only make matters worse for everyone. Buses, for the most part, are feeders. Compare the number of transfers from bus to subway to the number of transfers from subway to bus; very few people are going to the mostly-residential areas served by buses during the morning rush hour. And even if they were, Roosevelt Avenue is still going to be overwhelmed.

We could build the RX with a branch along the Lower Montauk to Jamaica to do that. What would be the alignment of your proposal via the RBB? I can't really visualize how you get from South Brooklyn to Jamaica or Nassau via the RBB, which points towards Manhattan.

Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of that idea. The Concourse line could be more frequent and reliable, but that could just mean making the and service better; adding a merge with the into the mix probably won't do a whole lot to help. I'm surprised that the RPA didn't include any central Bronx extension, either via Third Avenue or along the MNRR right-of-way. That would do a lot more for the Bronx.

The RPA's Fourth Plan actually has something slightly different: they want one branch () across 125th and the other running north into the Bronx (), connecting to the Concourse line just north of 161st.

Firstly, the RBB isn't running through the suburbs. Yes, the areas are far less dense than many places in the city, and less dense than the areas of any other proposed subway project, but it's still denser than your average suburb. Just because the area isn't dense enough to warrant an additional subway line doesn't make it suburban. And where exactly do you see additional space to develop along the RBB route? Again, while the area isn't as dense as Midtown or the South Bronx, there's not really any free space on the line build new developments - not to mention how strong the community opposition would be to that. The Port Authority tried in the late 90s to turn it into a roadway to ease access to JFK and relieve the Van Wyck. The community shot that idea down quickly, and understandably so. I could live with a rail line behind my house, but a highway? I'd rather not. It could act as a shuttle line (an extension of the , maybe) between the Rockaways and Rego Park to feed the LIRR, but how many people would really use that?

I don't think that the existing track layout at DeKalb junction will allow this without at-grade conflicts. I could be wrong.

What, really, though are the negatives? It’s basically a park without public access right now, and the corridor has little merit as a subway line. As far as I’m concerned, we might as well allow people to walk on it.

Yeah, I don't have much desire to do build housing over the RBB anyway. Was this supposed to mean something?

Would the ROW have enough room to build a sort of "linear city" idea with housing on either side and a mini-boulevard (a shared street) down the middle? It would get us more affordable housing, and would also get the Queensway supporters a pedestrian and cycle boulevard on the corridor, and a full path through Forest Park where we couldn't build houses.

I'd really rather not get bogged down in this whole R32 debacle again, but the is far superior route for the R32s. As noted above, it spends more time outside than the does, especially compared to the to Lefferts. Also, pressure on the will be increased during the Canarsie shutdown: all the more reason to ensure that the and have a more reliable fleet; conversely, the is a less critical line that will be largely unaffected by the mess. Now, about Queens Blvd CBTC: I really don't think we should be that pessimistic about the timeframe. Yes, the Canarsie and Flushing projects dragged on, but at this point the MTA has two (three, if you count the Culver and Jamaica test tracks) CBTC installations under its belt. They've also set a more optimistic timeline (2022) for completion, which I believe is a faster timeline than they ever set for either the or the . That combined with the fact that the subway's capital projects and state of infrastructure disaster have garnered much attention in recent months will increase the pressure on the MTA to get this right the first time.

It would only bring in the limited number of people within the walkshed of the line; it's not like there's much room in the corridor for new or additional housing, unless you're planning on paving over Forest Park or building artificial islands in Jamaica Bay. Hudson Yards was designed around a new planned neighborhood and major office district that the RBB would never have. A planned high-density residential and commercial district built around the station, a convention center around the corner, and a growing neighborhood immediately to the south are just some of the things that differentiate Hudson Yards from the Rockaway Beach Branch. If we took just some of the energy that people put in to talking about how much we need the Rockaway Beach Branch, and put it into fighting for the Triboro RX, we could actually end up with a transit service that acts as an effective crosstown and will genuinely help people in Brooklyn and Queens. And that's before we even get started on subway projects that should be done long before the RBB is touched: SAS, 125th Street, Third Avenue, Utica Avenue, Nostrand Avenue, Hillside Avenue, Jewel Avenue, or southeast Queens on the Atlantic Branch. Pick any of these projects to talk about and let's build an actually useful transit service that will finally patch up true transit deserts. But something needs to be done with the RBB, right?

Canal actually provides better access to more of Chinatown than Grand Street does; I'm not sure about Brighton. Remember, though, that a cross-platform transfer between 6th Avenue and Broadway is preserved between the and at DeKalb Avenue. And yes, the will run through DeKalb on the Fourth Avenue express tracks.

The most common such plan sends the to Brighton, with the as the local, and the and rush-hour to Fourth Avenue. This way the could take West End, the and would be unchanged, and the can help the . I calculated some time ago that this could get you about twice as many trains through DeKalb during the morning rush, and along with de-interlining the Broadway line, would allow the and the to run as fully-separated lines.

The transfer for anyone coming from Woodhaven Boulevard to Jamaica will be nearly identical, the only exception being the extra required walk from Woodhaven to the RBB line. Those in Richmond Hill have the for Jamaica; those south have various buses which will get you to Jamaica as fast or faster than a circuitous route via Rego Park. Reopening the LIRR station at Woodhaven Blvd will do more for people in that area trying to get to Jamaica quickly than the RBB ever could. As for the operations side, there are operational reasons to give the Queens Blvd local a better terminal, either by extension or through diverting one of the lines. But we have to ask ourselves if the RBB is the best use of Queens Blvd local capacity, or, more likely, if another corridor in the area is a better choice. Is making terminal procedures at Forest Hills better really worth running half the trains to a line that won't carry many people?

Exactly. It suffers, in reverse, from the same problems that make the a poor crosstown, and that is proximity to the core. The line is to close to Manhattan to have a large ridership base of its own, especially considering that north-south lines in Manhattan have better transfers. The RBB, on the other hand, is too far from the CBD to be an effective crosstown, and would have the same problem with missing or annoying transfers that plagues the . I've never understood why the RBB seems to get so much more attention in transit circles than the Triboro RX, which is essentially the same concept (crosstown rapid transit service on underused ROW) but would be orders of magnitude more effective at both connecting radial lines and connecting residential and job centers. If we are so desperate to build a branch off the Queens Blvd line, why aren't we talking about Jewel Avenue or Union Turnpike? The RBB is a waste of precious capacity that would do little for either the region or the city.

Transit has been telling Bombardier for years now that we need the 179s ASAP. It's not really a strategy that works. The doesn't need NTTs any sooner than any other line that lacks them. The 4-car sets are top priority to ensure that East New York is composed solely of new trains as quickly as it can be; the 5-car sets aren't as critical until Jamaica needs to be fully new tech for Queens Blvd CBTC.

There are numerous problems with this analysis, which does little to show that the RBB is a needed subway extension, much less that it should move to the front of the line of other long-considered subway extensions. So yes, 300k+ people live in all the neighborhoods which the RBB passes through. But you can't seriously claim that all those people stand to be affected either positively or negatively by the building of a subway in this corridor. This is because you missed a key number, which is not the number of people living in these neighborhoods, but the population density. If the areas are very spread out, the line will have a smaller walkshed; not good for a route which already suffers from inconvenient walking connections. Here are the persons per acre figures for the neighborhoods you mentioned, as of the 2010 Census: Forest Hills 63.0, Rego Park 62.0, Woodhaven 66.4, Richmond Hill 53.8, and Ozone Park 37.1. The average density of the neighborhoods along the RBB, therefore, is 56.4 (and this assumes that all stand to benefit, which might be true if these areas were true transit deserts, and they're not). This means nothing, though, out of context. Let's take some other long-proposed and oft-discussed subway extensions and look at the density figures there. An IRT Utica Avenue extension would have stations in Crown Heights, East Flatbush and Flatlands; the average density here is 74.6. A line through the central Bronx (along Third Avenue, perhaps, or the MNRR right-of-way) would stop in Mott Haven, Melrose, Claremont, Belmont, Fordham, and Williamsbridge, and have an average density of 98.6 persons per acre. This is a density nearly twice that of the RBB, meaning that far more people will be served. Why and how? Density is how, as you'll have seen above, you determine how many people stand to benefit from transit expansion of any kind; therefore, it is extremely linked with cost. Density, or the lack of it, is the reason there's no push to build rapid transit services through countryside: the cost remains the same as in the city, but much less of that cost is ever going to come back through revenue. And while that may be an exaggerated example, the point still stands. While the RBB might be cheaper than Third or Utica because the ROW is already there, that doesn't mean anything if the line isn't going to be carrying anyone. And this brings me to my next and final point. This is often used as justification for the RBB extension; because the Q52/53 buses are often crowded, the subway line should naturally be built. The RBB corridor, and the Woodhaven Boulevard corridor that the Q52/53 buses serve, are not one and the same. At the respective corridors' northern ends in Rego Park, the RBB and Woodhaven are nowhere near each other, and while the RBB cuts through a relatively sparse residential area, the buses are serving a denser residential and commercial corridor, where more people are both getting on transit from their homes as well as getting off transit to go to jobs. Even where they are closest, the RBB and the Boulevard maintain a distance of several blocks away from one another, just enough to make walking a pain. Even if a transfer to the were built, it would be closer to 104th instead of the busier Woodhaven station - not to mention how much of a pain this transfer would be both to build and to use. People take buses on Woodhaven Blvd for different reasons - but more importantly, for more reasons - then they would use a train on the RBB route. If the ROW in question was closer or directly next to the the denser and more commercial boulevard, this might be a different story. But the RBB is purely residential, and not dense residential either. As far as rapid transit expansions go in my mind, it's at the back of the line.