Today’s Headlines

City Commits to Overhauling Trash Collection; Major Traffic Safety, Pollution Gains Expected (Politico)
NYPD Says William Wine, 29, “Darted Into Traffic” Before Driver Killed Him in St. Albans (News, WCBS)
Livery Driver Exiting S.I. Expressway Seriously Injures Pedestrian Near Clove Road (Advance, News)
Injured Cyclist Sees Hit-and-Run Silver Lining: Driver Arrested for Imam Murder (DNA, PIX, Post, News)
Mark-Viverito Stands by Gibson After Alleged Ticket-Fixing, Says COIB Should Investigate (News)
Alan Maisel Thrilled After DOT Un-Protects Marine Park Protected Bike Lane (Bklyn Daily)
Cyclist Slashed on Flatbush Avenue Extension in Road-Rage Confrontation (Bklyn Paper)
Mid-Block Crossing, Wider Median Installed on Gold Street in DUMBO (Patch)
Commuter Parking Now Cheaper at S.I. Ferris Wheel After Intervention by Debi Rose (Advance)
WSJ Contributor Wants to Snap His Fingers and Rebuild the Old Penn Station
We Spent $4 Billion on a Train Station and All We Got Was a Luxury Mall (DNA, Curbed, NY Mag, Post)

More headlines at Streetsblog USA

Vooch

NYC is dense enough in about 1/2 of the geograpghy to have garbage collected via underground pneumatic tubes. less costly than using trucks

many civiized cities have these systems – proven decade ago.
Vooch

one days garbage produced by my sister in law and my 2 nephews
Joe R.

Yes, that would be a great solution. You might even have another set of pneumatic tubes for mail and small package delivery.
Vooch

pneumatic tubes for mail and small packages ?

used to be system in CBD until 1950s
Joe R.

How come it seems we did things which make a lot more sense in the past? Pneumatic tubes, comprehensive rail transport, bicycles, more mixed use development, etc. were the norm. And then the 1950s came where we thought motor vehicles were the tool for every job. People have been sold a bill of goods. It’s a pity most don’t realize it.
ohnonononono

I wouldn’t quite say “every other city in America” has alleys for trash collection. Most people in Philly don’t have an alley to put their trash– although there are tons of narrow streets that may or may not be called “alleys,” the FRONT of properties are often located there– they aren’t purpose-built as back accessways for garbage in very much of the city. Plenty of Boston, Baltimore, etc doesn’t have alleys either. The widespread adoption of service alleys built into the street system on every block doesn’t really start to appear until you hit the Midwest. I think you could basically say there are pre-alley cities and post-alley cities. The Northeast has a lot of pre-alley development and in NYC particularly the concept never caught on likely due to the pressures of population density and economics. Gotta use every inch to house people.

And NYC does have a Chicago-style street grid with service alleys in a big part of Crown Heights! It was probably built around the same time alleys were being adopted in much of the rest of the country.
Joe R.

Me, my mom, and three cats generate less than that in a week.
bolwerk

That seems like a showstopper right there. Thought there was a platform height difference too, such that PATH platforms would need to be shaved.
bolwerk

Probably a good visual. You simply don’t do that in many western countries. Among other things, high bounties on bottles encourage them to be returned to vendors.
Vooch

blame Robert Moses for everything bad is a safe bet 🙂
Andrew

It will connect to the 1 and the E when those connections are completed. (The 1 doesn’t even have a Cortlandt Street station yet.) It already connects to the entire Fulton Street complex.
Andrew

So you’ve answered your own question, in part. The trucks are also placed differently, I believe, so trying to run one system’s cars on the other might result in clearance problems (center excess or end excess). And they use entirely distinct signal systems (PATH’s is being replaced now, the 6’s will probably be replaced within the next decade or two, but neither system is compatible with the other).

And, as I said, there’s no demand for it. PATH riders coming into World Trade Center are not in significant numbers traveling up the East Side, especially not during rush hours.
ahwr

If the PATH cars are a bit bigger would smaller IRT cars be able to run on the system? And the PATH fleet was just replaced entirely. How long would the path system have had to be shut down for to add a few inches to platforms so the new fleet could have been IRT standard, and bring all the cars onto the tracks? A week? Maybe run only WTC-newark and 33rd-Hoboken for a bit and expand the platforms on one segment at a time. And make sure this alternative PA-5 order could work with the existing PATH signals, and a new CBTC system that would be standardized with the IRT and installed on both systems over the next ten-fifteen years. Meanwhile rebuild the WTC station with a track connection to the 6 so once the rest of the systems are made compatible over the next fifteen years, you could run a train from Newark to the Bronx. Are the challenges so insurmountable? Would a scheme like this be too expensive to justify the benefits?

And is there really no demand for Path riders to get to the east side without changing trains?
Andrew

As I said, I don’t think tinkering with the dimensions of the cars would make them interoperable, due to differences in where the trucks are placed.

But let’s say for the sake of argument that a joint car could be designed. Even so, the new NYCT CBTC standard (starting with Queens Boulevard) was specifically designed, presumably at additional cost, so that multiple CBTC suppliers could bid on jobs. That’s necessary for NYCT (aside from Canarsie and Flushing), since the lines share trackage with one another, to avoid giving a single supplier a monopoly on all future NYCT CBTC contracts (and to protect NYCT against the possibility of that single supplier’s going out of business). PATH is a much smaller system, with CBTC going in systemwide all in one contract, by Siemens. The Port Authority has no reason to adopt the complexities of NYCT. On the flip side, PATH presumably has FRA-based requirements (I can’t speak to the details) that would unnecessarily add complexities and costs on the subway side.

PATH riders bound for Midtown primarily use the 33rd Street line, not the WTC line. The WTC line primarily serves people going to Lower Manhattan – overwhelmingly so during rush hours, when capacity is most important.
Joe R.

No FRA requirements for PATH. It runs parallel to the NEC in places, but doesn’t have interchanges to it. Indeed, it can’t because the NEC has no third rail.
bolwerk

PATH is FRA regulated, unless something changed really recently. This is from last year: http://www.fra.dot.gov/eLib/Details/L17435
Joe R.

Apparently the regulations aren’t as onerous as the ones applying to regular railroads. For example, based on the design of PATH’s rolling stock, the minimum weight requirements don’t apply.
bolwerk

Yes, seems they are exempt from some of the more onerous things like brake tests and buff strength requirements.

They seem to have a decent safety record too, so you’d think the FRA would cool its fucking jets about some of that stuff. It’s sad that something like PATH really can’t be created anymore – not that they really exploit their status as a railroad, but they presumably could share tracks with other FRA railroads, if I’m not mistaken.
Joe R.

My understanding is if there’s no direct connection to a “regular” railroad, then the FRA regulations don’t apply. This is the case with the NYC subway system. I’m not sure if and how many switches connect the PATH system to the NEC, but even one is enough to put the system under FRA jurisdiction. My guess is they got an exemption from the more onerous FRA requirements, perhaps because PATH trains can’t physically run on the NEC (due to the lack of a third rail), and standard railway stock can’t run on the PATH system simply because it couldn’t physically fit in some places. That puts the likelihood of a collision between a freight train and a PATH train at virtually zero.

And the FRA really needs to revise its regulations even as they apply to regular railroad rolling stock. It’s making our trains unnecessarily heavy and slow.
bolwerk

Yeah, I believe PATH is probably less connected to the national railway system than NYCTA is. Largely that seems to be a case of not needing to be more than not wanting to be. Historically PATH did somehow interoperate with other railroads, though I’m not entirely sure how. This probably explains the FRA status today.

(Looks to me like NYCTA can use FRA connections for deliveries and perhaps for transferring equipment to some shops.)
ahwr

What is this comment supposed to accomplish? When a cyclist dies and the NYPD reports that they were biking the wrong way down the street or ran a red light do you want to see a comment on the streetsblog article about it like this:

Anyone who walks frequently in NYC knows that NYPD reports of cyclist “riding the wrong way” and “blowing through red lights” are entirely plausible.
Andrew

No FRA requirements for PATH.

Wrong (as a quick Google search would have confirmed).

NYCT CBTC is more complex than PATH’s, which means you might be able to run an IRT train on CBTC-equipped PATH tracks, assuming there was no showstoppers as far as size or turning radius goes.

Um, no, that’s not how systems work, CBTC or otherwise.

All that said, I think a better solution to this would be more connections, and perhaps free transfers from the subway to PATH and vice versa. One seat rides are nice, but I question how many people would be going from, say, the Bronx to Newark. It’s probably easier for those people to just go to Penn Station and take NJTransit, even if it’s more costly.

Or take PATH from 33rd Street (or 14th Street), for the same fare as from WTC.

Free transfers always sound lovely, much in the same way that free fares sound lovely. But who pays for them? I suppose the base fare on both systems could go up a bit to pay for free transfers between them, but the vast majority of subway riders don’t use PATH and wouldn’t appreciate having to pay extra to subsidize PATH riders. I don’t see the point – aside from a short run (slightly over a mile) under 6th Avenue, the two systems have different service areas. There are network benefits to providing a unified fare structure across modes for similar trips (e.g., Jamaica to Midtown Manhattan via subway and via LIRR), by allowing riders to pick whichever route makes more sense for a given trip, but in the case of PATH, the alternative mode would be NJT rail (or for some trip NJT bus), not the subway.

Extending the #7 to Secaucus seems to make a lot of sense however.

More sense than merging PATH and the 6 train, sure, but that isn’t saying much. I’m not sure how much sense it makes on its own merits. I also don’t know what it does to the legal status of the NYCT employees who operate on the 7 line (how does that work on the S89 bus?), and I’m not sure how the old Manhattan stations (Grand Central certainly, probably 5th Avenue and Times Square also) would be able to handle the simultaneous heavy flows into Manhattan from both Queens and Secaucus.
bolwerk

Is it your concern that crossing state lines would place the NYCTA under FRA authority? There is at least precedent for rapid transit crossing state lines with the DC Metro.

Seems to me with free transfers to/from PATH, the cost to honor each other’s fares as transfers might at least be a wash if it induces more rides to each system than use the transfer already. Assuming it induces riders, I would expect they’d be induced with approximately a 1 PATH ride to 1 subway ride ratio* because most trips would involve a return trip.

* accountants could work out the details, like how much revenue goes to PATH for using an NYCTA unlimited on PATH. Plus the agency with the higher fares could always charge and keep the difference between the two fares when a transfer occurs.
Andrew

Is it your concern that crossing state lines would place the NYCTA under FRA authority? There is at least precedent for rapid transit crossing state lines with the DC Metro.

I honestly don’t know what effect it would have. FRA issues? Taxation issues? Union issues? Other legal issues? To what extent is the New York City Transit Authority permitted by state law to operate in New Jersey? (As I hinted, this wouldn’t be its first foray into New Jersey – the S89 bus serves Bayonne and several express buses run nonstop through New Jersey – but there might be different issues when it comes to subway service.)

Seems to me with free transfers to/from PATH, the cost to honor each other’s fares as transfers might at least be a wash if it induces more rides to each system than use the transfer already.

It always sounds nice to assume that a transit agency can make up for a fare reduction with newly induced ridership (but without raising expenses in order to handle the ridership increase), but it doesn’t often work out that way in practice. That’s why transit agencies periodically raise fares and rarely lower them. (Fare drops are typically politically motivated and, even when they’re a good idea, they’re costly to the agency.)
bolwerk

Hmm, I know NYS had to pass legislation to explicitly permit the S89, but if political will is mustered for the kind of bonds and eminent domain a 7-to-Secaucus requires, I’d guess that a clause making it legal to operate would be easy enough to insert somewhere in the legislation. I’ve seen the FRA issue raised before. WMATA may be instructive, but it’s also an explicit federal creation(?), so maybe it’s not instructive because the feds obviously can create their own rules. Regardless of the FRA, I suppose it’s conceivable that interstate operation creates additional exposure to federal authority/oversight. But I don’t see why taxation could be a problem.

Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t assuming the integration would be financially a wash, but at least it’s easy to quantify how it could be (barring new problems anyway, like worsening rush hour crowding). Most fare hikes seem to be because of pretty predictable cost increases for the agency, so it indeed rarely makes sense to lower fares unless a big cost-saving measure occurs or more financial support comes from the government.