MHV9218

14 minutes ago, QM1to6Ave said:

I totally agree about only taking out food. I used to love eating out in a nice restaurant, but I don't know when I'll be comfortable doing that again. take out it is, for the foreseeable future for me. 

This take-out thing has been huge. A lot of places that didn't even do takeout/delivery before doing it now too. I've been getting take-out twice a week for months, never used to do that before. 

16 hours ago, MHV9218 said:

A little lower... think it's 6744, something like that. 

Actually, having checked this, it's 6740, for anybody who cares about this minor mystery lol.

On 9/29/2020 at 9:49 PM, Q43LTD said:

I think it was 6750 for TA and 3550 for BC

On 9/29/2020 at 7:56 PM, trainfan22 said:

The changeover happened somewhere in the 6700s, not sure which exact bus it was though as I rarely ride MCH 40ft routes and whenever I do, I always get an NG.

A little lower... think it's 6744, something like that. 

Here, linked it for you: 

12 minutes ago, Deucey said:

Makes me wonder how much of the fund was based on price increases/trading vs blue chips paying dividends and bonds.

Yeah, they must have been playing something ridiculously aggressive and then levering on top of it. Which is one thing for your hotshot hedge fund, but for a pension fund? 

2 hours ago, m2fwannabe said:

3924/25 were back in revenue service after waiting for months.

Did somebody say 'rollsign cranks'?

2 hours ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

What I found absurd is they took no measures to mitigate losses from the fund, so how is it an "all-weather" fund then if they continued to be bullish when the market was tanking?

I agree. It's baffling. All I can think is that they must have been levered up beyond belief, because with the possible exception of say, Hertz, and a couple airlines/cruise companies, nothing went down 87%, least of all 'all-weather' (read: industrials, managed funds).

"After Allianz was forced to liquidate that fund in late March"

What kind of an escape clause is that? Selling late March is the worst thing anybody could possibly have done. Had they held on, if they even remotely followed the market, they'd probably be not far from break-even on the year. I understand there might be some stop-loss mechanism for a huge loss, but man, that's short-sighted. 

40 minutes ago, Cait Sith said:

No there isn't.

Seems like there's been a change of plans, 22 is at Kingsbridge.

Damn. MV continues the longest streak in the entire bus network of going without a brand new delivery. Last new order that came straight to their door were the OGs. Gonna be impressive when their last new order has been fully retired... 

9 minutes ago, Trainmaster5 said:

Why do you think that it’s not R33 9306 ? Just curious.

Couple reasons – one, 9306 was removed from service in the mid-1970s to become Transit Museum Property, and that's why it wears its old interior and bluebird exterior. Don't think they ever would have moved it out of the museum fleet to paint in redbird colors in what looks to the-1980s. Second, that's an R21/R22 storm door and those are mainline, not World's Fair windows. Plus the photographer who took it says it's an R21, so deferring to him a little! 

But it is a mystery!

In case anybody wondered what a Redbird R21 would have looked like... Not a great paint job, but you get the idea. No service R21s or R22s were painted as a Redbirds, and only a couple dozen R17s were painted as redbirds.

And why it received the number of museum R33WF 9306, beyond me.

1 hour ago, Union Tpke said:

These are the rollsigns in question, courtesy of @Lance

 

Good catch. I was actually referring to the Helvetica 1988 R68A/replacement rolls, which some cars still have, but yes, same alphabetic ordering. I would have to check if they remedied that in later printings.

The 68A originals, for reference (RapidTransitArt photo):

1 hour ago, Union Tpke said:

@Lance @MHV9218@Ilia  I have a few questions that any of you might be able to answer.

First, do you have any explanation for why this was done?

Second, anyone have an explanation for this? I would love to know what the other readings on this curtain were.

 

The first is an experimental addition to the 62A rolls that a handful of cars got. You can see it's actually taped on to the front of the roll, which is a 1988 addition with 1-13. All those rolls were scrapped anyway in the latest SMS for the all-Helvetica rolls, so any cars that had this addition no longer have it. 

The latter is the original R44 print, which was a mixture of some handcut in-house font and oddly-spaced Akzidenz-Grotesk. It was printed just before the Culver Shuttle was closed, so that makes an appearance. I saved a photo of the roll once, though this isn't my photo originally:

Note the Identra tabs above and below each roll, like on R46s. In theory these were all remotely-selected from the cabin, how well that worked I don't know.

3 hours ago, Bill from Maspeth said:

or if they're short relaying due to a b/o train making them short a train, to change signs to/from Lefferts/Far Rock on the R68/68A equipment is an impossibility.  Even if they had 4 platform c/r's, each person changing 4 signs in 2 cars each takes time.

On this note, at least on the 80s signs for the 68As – don't know if the 2001 replacements were printed the same way – the MTA, in its infinite wisdom, grouped the readings alphabetically. This makes sense to somebody in a suit, less so somebody working in RTO. Consequently, "Far Rockaway" is nowhere near "Rockaways, Queens" or "Rockaway Park," and "Lefferts" is stuck in the middle. On other orders of rollsigns they wisely placed terminals near each other for the C/R's sake, and in later 68 rolls they combined "Far Rockaway" and "JFK Airport" into "Far Rockaway via JFK Aiport," which made things smoother.

1 hour ago, Deucey said:

I hate passive-aggro behavior. Since you feel a way about my response to your personal attacks on @Via Garibaldi 8's voting choice, and don't see the difference between that and discussing the politicians' choices to act on the bailout requests his rally and  were/are calling for, I invite you to get in my DMs to discuss in depth.

As for the news part: I admin three Facebook politics groups, used to write for my college newspaper and one of my older brothers is a staff political analyst for CBS News.

Trust that I'm more informed about news and political goings-on than you perceive.

And here's me, Mama Deuce, and that CBS Analyst (Jamal Simmons) all together - if you need proof (pic will disappear soon):

[pulled pic for space]

/digression

Hey, that was general – four different people in the last thread said or implied I was 'bringing in politics,' and some guy called me an "idiot" for "downplaying" Trump (whatever downplaying is supposed to mean). That's really who I was getting at. I trust you know what's going on politically, I can tell that from your posts. We might disagree about how much the politics are relevant to it, but I never said (or meant to imply) you weren't up on things.

Right, and 95% of the time when somebody dies on the tracks it's from a train hitting them, not third rail contact. My understanding is you actually have to work fairly precisely to make contact with the rail and complete a circuit, but that's just from watching Taking of Pelham...

If the money doesn't come, it's all over.

Unfortunately, Trump's outrageous decision to push to replace Justice Ginsburg – breaking every precedent the Republicans have claimed to follow – has derailed the chance of stimulus bill passing. And before somebody who doesn't read the news tries to argue this is 'bringing in politics,' this is an inarguable reality. The new goal in the Senate and the Trump administration is to ram the court nominee through the Senate, rather than to focus on the stimulus.

I will quote from the Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/us-stimulus-prospects-darken-with-partisan-strains-over-court/2020/09/21/1981d416-fc3c-11ea-b0e4-350e4e60cc91_story.html.

Quote

Besides the ill-will it’s sparked between the parties, the prospect of a contentious Senate confirmation process along with the need to pass a vital stopgap spending bill by the end of this month raises the challenge for lawmakers to get a coronavirus relief package done before they’re scheduled to break for campaigning.

It further diminishes the small hopes for a potential deal that emerged last week when Trump signaled he’d back a much bigger stimulus than the administration previously supported, and called on Republican lawmakers to shift tack as well. Democratic leaders continue to insist on a $2.2 trillion plan, after cutting their offer by more than $1 trillion, but the two sides remain far apart.

Now, the focus for the White House and Senate leadership is likely to be on Trump’s push to alter the balance of the nation’s top court, with just 43 days to go until the presidential and congressional elections.

The MTA's fate essentially hinges on the election in November. Go vote.

11 hours ago, Eric B said:

Gee whzs; RGB's are easy to get nowadays. Why would they use on a computerized train a makeshift setup made to hook up to an existing (no longer used) "off/on" switch on the older trains?

Yeah, they seem weirdly wedded to the backlit flipdot style with all the individual boxes for text. They could just as easily swap the whole unit out and find something less bulky, too. Part of me is impressed by the consistency, part of me sees it as the MTA's usual bizarre reluctance to change.

47 minutes ago, Deucey said:

Actually I would've taken it to the DM instead of distracting further purpose of the post if I was that interested.

And if someone was telling me after I didn't take it to the DMs that I started an "unnecessary fight" and there's 12 hours of posts showing the salience of that accusation, this wouldn't be a part of my reply:

Dunno, seems to me like the 12 hours of posts led to a pretty interesting conversation and really revealed how true the point was: that politics are directly connected to the bill's passing.

47 minutes ago, Deucey said:

So now can we get back on topic, or will I need to ask @Via Garibaldi 8 to post it again and then turn off replies?

You're gonna erase the entire conversation, including @JAzumah and everybody else's points, just to prove a point and talk to me like I'm a little kid? Alright, you can do what you wanna do – you can take the whole thing down. Sometimes I think Dante had the right idea getting the hell out of here...

Loving these old-scheme NGs while we have them...

2 minutes ago, Deucey said:

Feel free to disagree. There's even an off-topic section to have that battle of people's activism and wants contrasted with their voting preferences.

But you chose to pick that unnecessary fight when what you should've done was:

If I wore a t-shirt for months that said "Science is Real," and today you saw me at a fundraiser for the Flat Earth Society, I think you'd say, hey man, why the change of heart? An avowed Trump supporter holding a rally on behalf of the stimulus bill (which Trump has let die) is a similar 180º. So that's why I'm curious.

You have a lot of faith in people being able to remain civil – we'll see!

I'll say this, as somebody who is no fan of his: the very best thing Trump proposed – and the thing it makes me the saddest that he hasn't followed through on – is infrastructure.  There was talk of roads, bridges, investment in the nation...we do need that. And Democrats and Republicans both stand a lot to gain from a massive investment in infrastructure, not to mention that a number of things can be achieved at once if we spend thoughtfully on it. Construction union and building trades leaders have even stated their openness to "Green New Deal"-style investment if it brings opportunity for their workers. So there's a lot of potential here, and it isn't even particularly partisan in its benefit. When you bring into the equation TIF and synthetic-TIF-style policy like the Hudson Yards station, no less, you can even get a lot done without massive expense. 

Public transit and our transportation network are essential to the country's economic well-being. And dense cities with serious transit networks contribute far more to the Feds than they receive back. So it's an investment that really pays off at a number of levels. Trump promised in 2016 a $550 billion investment in infrastructure. I totally supported that. Now, my question is, where is it? He never pushed it. It clearly wasn't a priority. I look at Biden's "Build it Back Better" strategy and, beyond the silly name, I see a lot that I like. Infrastructure should be a bipartisan issue, and with this massive economic downturn, the last thing we need is austerity. Investment in transit and our transportation network will be key.

11 minutes ago, Deucey said:

Actually, you picked an unnecessary fight to distract from @Via Garibaldi 8's purpose.

My friend, I've been on this forum long enough to remember when VG8's loud all red-lettered "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN" was attached to every post he made. Nobody else trumpeted politics so loudly – I certainly never put my affiliation on every post. We couldn't escape his politics, the signature was on every single comment. I've been here 10 years, I take notice of how people conduct themselves. It's a very natural question to now observe the contradictory advocacy and ask what's changed. And if anybody's been following this conversation – @JAzumah has thoughtfully considered the mechanisms at play here, even if we differ on our analyses – the point is that the president's actions are directly connected to the success or failure of the bill and the purpose of this event. So I disagree with your accusation. 

3 minutes ago, JAzumah said:

If people are working 2 days a week or less, they are going to relocate to someplace nicer.

Remote work lowers productivity for everyone but your top performers. The question is whether the cost savings is worth it. I think the jury is still out on that.

France saw a 113% increase in productivity after ending most of its remote work programs. In Italy the figure was about 100%. Those figures aren't absolutes, and naturally it varies by location and field, but they're striking. I think most companies would be hard-pressed to swallow that kind of a difference in output to save the operating expense of office space. That's part of why I'm not betting on a complete shift out of physical offices. 

7 minutes ago, JAzumah said:

Your friends in real estate disagree with you. You can draw a 50 mile circle from Times Square and see how the real estate prices have increased in the last six months. In addition, certain vacation areas such as the Hamptons and Long Beach Island have significantly increased school enrollment this year. Rich people working remotely have left, are leaving, and are continuing to think about leaving. Middle-class people are now doing the math to see what their options are. 

Why would Gov Cuomo beg people to come back from their vacation homes? If they aren't buying and selling property, the MTA can't get a cut. If they aren't buying anything locally, the city can't get a cut. If they are vacationing out-of-state for months on end, the state isn't getting a cut.

The economy was bifurcating. People with money made a ton more money, but that was creating cost pressure on the bottom of the pyramid.

What I'm referring to is the age-old myth that 'taxes make rich people leave.' What you're referring to are the people who have left due to covid. Those are different things – they haven't left because of taxes. You're correct that this is a phenomenon, but I don't see it as any evidence related to the point he's making. Furthermore, the pandemic is temporary. It's hard to be sure what the long-term relocation prospects will truly be.

Broader picture, I actually think we'll find that the remote economy is less total than many of us expected. Already many companies – particular white-collar – are observing that productivity has fallen. Lots are insisting their workers return. The entire real estate sector is adamant about a return. Yes, remote work has increased, but I certainly wouldn't expect a permanent relocation if downtown/midtown offices remain open.