LOL, I love that argument from the City. He just takes it for granted that the State and Federal governments should pay for THEIR subway system? 100 million dollars from the city is a total joke. It just blew my mind when I hard that's all the city contributes to it's own transportation network and expects other people to subsidize the rest.

Read More Here : http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/201...l_on_path.html

Should New York Rebuild the Subways?

Antiplanner

:previous:

That proposal is as stupid as it could possible be, it is so dumb that makes me wanna cry. As if the problem with the NYC Subway were the trains. Will the buses still run in flooded tunnels? Who will pay for retrofiting hundred of kilometers of tunnels and elevated viaducts for being able for buses to circulate? Who will pay for throwing away hundreds of subway cars and replacing them with thousands of buses? Even supposing that the same capacity could be achieved using buses instead of trains, you will spend billions of dollars in that to basically left the system just as it is. Yes, brilliant.
The problem with the NY subway are not the trains, that can be replaced regularly, it is the century-old infraestructure, which is not that easily replaceable. The same aging infraestructure use by the trains, would be used by those hypotetical buses, still having the same problems.

With a blog name like The Antiplanner, did you really expect anything more logical?

Yes. NYC is an ever changing city, the city evolves and transforms. Perhaps the only relic of 1900's NYC other than than skyscrapers, that is actually left intact are the tunnels belong to the subway system. These tunnels are really in essence 19th Century infrastructure serving a 21st Century populous.

The rails need servicing every other day in NYC. Trains are delayed every week, as portions of the rail bed are cut off every week for servicing and repairing in a phase called the weekender.

But it's all the city has. NYC is one of those places that can get away with a bad subway system, merely because of the fact that NYC is NYC, and people in NYC are content with a hole in the ground and a train that takes them home in 50 minutes as opposed to 15 minutes. Whilst highspeed rail in not feasible in NYC, there can be better efforts made to use the express tracks and use them to their fullest potential. If express stops were introduced in Brooklyn, Queens, and Bronx, then travel times for people travelling to Manhattan could be reduced from 80 minutes to as little as 27 minutes. This requires no change to infrastructure.

What they can do with infrastructure however is introduce quality track bed, faster trains with quicker brakes, and if possible enlarge the busiest train stations (Times Sq./Herald Sq./Union Sq./Grand Central/Penn Station).

In Dubai if infrastructure is 5 years old, they just demolish it and build better infrastructure. That's not possible in NYC, but the city can make strides in caring and enhancing the system to 22nd Century standards. Think ahead.

^^ The basal metabolic rate of the infrastructure in Dubai is rather high.

New York made a mistake by demolishing the El system that once went throughout Manhattan. NY could of had the SAS done twice as fast and probably twice (maybe many multiples more than that) as cheap had they have gone with an elevated railway. At some point the city needs to step up and realize they have a choice to either do what needs to be done or choose to wait until mass transit develops into the inevitable existential crisis it's surely going to become as the 21st century moves forward. In many ways this is like what the issue of street crime was to NY in the 20th Century. Once it got to a point where it [crime] began to seriously threaten the fundamental status of NYC as a global hub, Guliani was elected and we all know the rest...

I just hope mass transit doesn't get to that point.

Elevated railways in dense urban environments are far more antiquated than subways. They are an eyesore and noisy. There was a reason why they were demolished years ago.

Old =! Antiquated. Noise abatement technology has advanced as well as structural design. Sometimes it's back-to-the-future when solving large scale problems.

The problem with elevated trains and noise is a technology issue, not a fact of life. The old elevated lines are metal frames, metal rails and metal wheels all rubbing against each other. Using concrete guideways, wheels with rubber pads and sound deflecting barriers along the track can cut a lot of the noise. A lot of people still think it looks ugly, but that's a matter of opinion. It's not like the road that it's running over is so pretty and quiet either.

I agree. Washington Metrorail just built a new Elevated railway as part of it's Silver Line extension thru Tysons Corner, and having ridden on it it's quite quiet and unobtrusive. Los Angeles has also utilized elevated rail as a part of it's Metro extensions, so it's not like you can't get it done in the US.

People really dislike the noisy, dirty, and vibratory steel elevated portions (in Brooklyn, Queens, and Bronx).

http://m3.i.pbase.com/o6/55/435155/1...0g65XLZ.70.jpg

People however love the portion of the 7 train elevated where it is a viaduct, and the structure is covered in stone cladding. This prevents noise, and keeps train dirt, oils, and leakages above the elevated. People love this portion of Sunnyside, Queens.

http://www.subwaynut.com/flushing_li...0_lowery15.jpg

Re on how running buses in subway tunnels is idiotic, we have the Boston Silver Line as an example of how bad it is. Since the underground transit way to the Seaport is so narrow, buses have to crawl through it so they don't hit the walls or opposing buses without a fixed guideway. In addition, surprise, pavement doesn't last as long under heavy bus traffic as steel rails do.

Even though buses will physically fit in the tunnels doesn't mean that they will run effectively.

Good point, I wonder the cost difference between elevated vs subway in NYC.

I don't know why NY doesn't build an elevated (either light or heavy rail) line on the West Side Highway. You'd have a line running pretty much the length of Manhattan on the mass transit-starved west side and it's all right-of-way.

The roadway and center median is wide and all that space seem so wasted by not putting an elevated line on it.

Same exact reason why there isn't El rail service to LaGuardia yet. It's because of NIMBYs.

the least mta could do is have brt extensions at the outer borough ends of many of the subway lines.

The IND 6th and 8th Avenue 4-track trunk routes replaced 6th and 9th Avenue el. SAS was supposed to be built in the 50s to replace 2nd and 3rd Avenue el. However, my impression is that the south portion of Myrtle Avenue el to downtown Brooklyn should not be demolished. I wonder why the Inner Loop of Chicago L is still preserved.

There are two reasons why the Loop in Chicago still exist. The first is to preserve a part of Chicago history, even though many of the city's jobs are in other parts of downtown. The second, more important reason is that even though Chicago had dozens of plans to build multiple downtown subways, we didn't have enough money to build them so we were stuck with what we had.