Month: January 2012

Background, Queens

The #7 platforms at Court Square will be closed 24/7 for eleven weeks

Here’s one announcement from Jimmy Van Bramer’s MTA Town Hall that didn’t really make it into the news.  In addition to closing the Steinway Tunnel for sixteen weekends this year and not running a bus through the Midtown Tunnel, the MTA will close the Court Square station from January 21 through April 6 – 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  The E, G and M trains will stop in the subways, but when the #7 is running to Times Square it will cruise right by Court Square without stopping.

At the town hall, Peter Cafiero, Chief of Operations Planning for the authority, said that workers would replace almost every part of the station, including the platforms and windscreens.  It’s kind of hard to board a train with no platform there, and unlike the Metro-North stations where they’ve replaced platforms recently, there’s nowhere else to build a new platform.  This makes sense, but as with the weekend closing of the Steinway Tunnel, the alternatives are bad.

On weekdays while the Court Square platforms are closed, the MTA will offer no additional service.  Passengers who want to take the #7 are advised to take the E or M trains.  That’s it.

People who used to transfer from the G to the #7 will have to walk to the E or M instead, or else go the other way and transfer to the already crowded L train at Metropolitan.

Since they’re going to shut down the station completely, I wish they could build another staircase at the north end of the platform so that we can transfer directly from the #7 to the E and M trains.  The existing transfer at 45th Road takes you to the G train, but transferring to the E or M involves walking another block underground.  At 44th Drive north of the 53rd Street tunnel there’s just a parking lot now.  It would be relatively cheap to build a staircase (and even an elevator, to be ADA accessible) connecting the el to the subway.

If they don’t do it now, they should at least require anyone who builds on that parcel to put in another transfer.

by grvsmth
Better Buses, Commentary, Queens

While the #7 train is down – run a Midtown Tunnel bus!

Yesterday I wrote about the need to shut down the #7 line through the Steinway Tunnels between Queensboro Plaza and Times Square for eleven weekends from January to April, and for five weekends in the fall, as articulated by the MTA staff who attended a Town Hall organized by City Council member Jimmy Van Bramer.  The MTA convinced me: they showed how the emergency weekend shutdowns allowed them to improve reliability on the line, and made an argument that Communications Based Train Control (CBTC) will improve train frequency and reliability.

Okay, so what do we do in the meantime?  For years, every time they have to shut down the Steinway Tunnels, the MTA planners’ response has been the same: run shuttle buses from the bypassed stations to Court Square and Queensboro Plaza.  This turns a ten-minute ride from Vernon-Jackson to Grand Central into a 45-minute odyssey.  There is a better way.

Map: Cap'n Transit. According to Google Maps, these lines are ten minutes from Penn Station.

In 2009, Cap’n Transit observed that according to Google Maps, a car driven from Penn Station through the Queens-Midtown Tunnel could get to Broadway and 21st Street in Astoria, the 39th Avenue station in Astoria, the 46th-Bliss Street station in Sunnyside or the Greenpoint Avenue station in Greenpoint in ten minutes without traffic, or thirty minutes with traffic.  Following a similar suggestion for Red Hook in 2007, he suggested that the MTA run shuttle buses through the tunnel and along 34th Street instead of – or in addition to – up Jackson Avenue to Queensboro Plaza.

Last year I suggested to Jimmy that he ask the MTA.  He did, with support from Assemblywoman Cathy Nolan, Council Speaker Christine Qunn and State Senator Mike Gianaris.  The MTA gave a lame response and that was the end of it.

On Tuesday night, I asked the MTA staff directly for a tunnel bus.  Jimmy again supported my request and offered to contribute city money for it.   I was heartened to hear several other residents echoing my request.  Peter Cafiero, Chief of Operations Planning, said that they had looked at the issue, the bus would get stuck in traffic, and it would cost $50,000 a weekend to run buses through the tunnel every ten minutes.  Their usual solution is to run buses to the nearest station, and that’s what they plan to do this time.

To me this sounds like an excuse to avoid trying something different.  Jimmy (I’m pretty sure it was him, although it might have been one of the other town-hall speakers) said that it was a failure of imagination, which pretty much sums it up.  The planners have no incentive to do anything beyond a shuttle bus, so they’re not going to try and make things any easier for residents.

Here’s why I don’t think the tunnel buses would have to cost so much or get stuck in traffic.  The request that Jimmy made last year was for a bus to Grand Central.  It kinda makes sense to run a bus to Grand Central since that’s the next stop on the #7 train, but to do that they’d have to run four blocks west on 39th Street, three blocks north on Madison Avenue, five blocks east on 42nd Street and six blocks south on Second Avenue, all in mixed traffic.  Yes, that would make them slow and unreliable.

If instead the buses ran west on 34th Street to Penn Station, around the block on 35th Street and back on 34th, they could travel the entire way on exclusive bus lanes.  True, sometimes the lanes are blocked, but they’re a lot quicker than fighting with cars and trucks on Madison Avenue and 42nd Street.  This would allow riders to transfer to the subways at Park Avenue, Herald Square and Penn Station.  Grand Central, Times Square and Bryant Park are a one-stop subway ride or a short walk away.

I hope that Cafiero and his staff will consider 34th Street and not Grand Central as the logical route for the tunnel buses.  If they do, I expect that they will find the buses to be cheaper and more reliable on that route.

by grvsmth
News, Queens

Why the MTA wants to shut down the #7 train for 16 weekends this year

For years, the MTA has been running multi-weekend repair surges on the #7 line, where they turn all the trains around at Queensboro Plaza and run shuttle buses from there to Vernon-Jackson, Hunterspoint Avenue and Court Square. Last night at a town hall organized by City Council member Jimmy Van Bramer, MTA representatives said that they would have to do it again.

Signal maintainers rewiring signal cases in the Steinway Tunnel, October 10, 2011. Photo by Metropolitan Transportation Authority / Leonard Wiggins.

Joe Leader, the Chief Maintenance Officer at the MTA, explained to us  that the cars currently used on the #7 train are wider than the streetcars that originally ran through the Steinway Tunnels to Manhattan, so they take up almost the entire tunnel.  Unlike other subway tunnels, in the Steinway Tunnels there is no room for maintenance workers to stand while trains are passing through.  Because of this, it is necessary to shut down at least one tunnel completely for any work.

As the tunnels have not been maintained on an ideal schedule since they were dug in 1907, leaks have developed and the tunnels have regularly been flooded, leading to a buildup of “muck” and debris around the rails.  Since the New York subways use the rails to “return” power (actually to draw electrons from the substation to the train, which are then sent back along the third rail), the muck can short this out, reducing power to the trains, which was a major cause of the delays and outages last year.

In October, Leader said, workers shut down the subway for a weekend and cleaned 4000 feet of track in each tunnel, removing over 8000 bags of debris.  They then power-washed the floors to clean out any remaining muck.  Crews also repaired signal boxes, replaced sections of the old third rail and hooked up the old ones as a “fourth rail” to return power more directly.

This year, for eleven weekends between January 21 and April 2, and then for five weekends between October 6 and November 17, the MTA will shut down train service from Queensboro Plaza to Times Square.  In between those times they will run trains express in one direction between Queensboro Plaza and Willets Point.  There is also a plan to renovate the platforms and replace the windscreens at the #7 train station at Court Square.

I’ll say more about this soon.

by grvsmth