Today’s Headlines

$10 billion? We just rebuilt JFK not long ago. It was under construction for several years, and several new buildings were built. Money from the passenger facility charge that was imposed in the 1990s was diverted to that (and keeping PATH fares and Port Authority tolls low in the 1990s), which is why we didn’t get the full Airtrain we were promised the PFC would pay for.

Maybe a building or two needs to be replaced, but $10 billion — borrowed from younger generations? That’s what is needed — according to construction firm Tishman?

What is this, an attempt to fund all the multi-employer construction pension fund deficits at once? How could this be?

Our overfunded schools want 8 percent more. Our overstaffed cops want 1,000 more officers to “put the cop back on the beat.” And now this. I guess it’s “progressive” to grab all you can and make poorer younger generations pay for it.

I love how Cuomo is unquestionably treated as the a messiah for crumbling transportation infrastructure.

Pop quiz: what’s the most important single piece of local transportation infrastructure in the USA? Maybe the most important piece of transportation infrastructure period? You can make a really good case that it is, based on sheer demand and the economic activity it facilitates, the New York City Subway. He has done virtually nothing for it, besides starve it.

I took a ride on the 2nd Avenue subway yesterday. Putting aside the huge amount of money spent for it, I was pretty impressed. Some things which stood out in no particular order:

1) Tile work seemed top notch but of course we no longer have skilled artisans who can do the mosaic work which we did in the subways a century ago.

2) When there are no delays, the trains make the run pretty quickly. Going downtown, it only took 5 minutes, 15 seconds to go from 96th Street to 63rd Street start to stop. CBTC might knock a minute off this by allowing the trains to use their full acceleration and speed potential.

3) Track work is top notch. Very little shaking and it looks like tracks are fastened to a concrete roadbed with an elastic fastening system.

4) Never saw a new stopcock until yesterday. For the uninitiated, those are the arms which go up to trip a train’s emergency brake if the train runs a stop signal.

5) The full-length mezzanines are huge and very nice but probably an unwarranted expense except at the busiest stations.

6) There was more use of stainless steel than I’ve ever seen before in a subway station. The stairs are even solid stainless, including the structural members. And there were stainless steel benches. Costly yes, but here I probably have no objections because these things should be virtually maintenance free, recouping the cost many times over in the long run.

7) Everything smelled new.

8) No track rats, at least not yet, anyway.

9) The fresh concrete trackbed was a nice shade of gray. Can we keep it that way or is it inevitable that it’ll turn dirty black like every other subway trackbed? Ditto for the tunnel walls.

10) Stations were brightly lit but no LED lighting which is frankly a big surprise for something built in 2016. I saw plenty of old-school T8 flourescent tubes which were all in vogue maybe about 20 years. This is probably my biggest critique of the project. LED lighting would save at least 50% in power plus drastically reduce maintenance.

Some pictures:

https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c954d0482feadf8aceeeecbcb545713864a95efd29f542a0a5ee053efac8f120.jpg
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bef3c213df0ddf9357aaea62dc4eb8119e330ce05c6de97c4ad207c89e083568.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0d66a0da3eaa315bb0481b7ee9f7afefb97385f9aea20eceee79ef4d804f7c70.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/04271119d81e27f7579ec709be5f22ea204574890d92cb3aeca7f6eb3ef6735c.jpg
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c06752cef02b8cd1b7819a70302842612502f6aeb2acb498dea8b90c1b341f1a.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4af4174f46837dab22d72fcd91c8b3996c0a3b7b3dda659293db80d0e27ec435.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b133c284d0164d51350045b90d9bbabf6b50671e7335117f89b828df5e4079be.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cb1240e733dc6aabf3ffb9b190cd4a685b0c674ed42f3b91a3fdd1c2a311d867.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6e52a46b6b2b9c54860856b73d2c6c0e7661f7a19d78234c2d243b6243fd7722.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/80ce42ad8747d887f8112e307ec0d68cacbc9abf6565ec6373ab2fca7a269d13.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8173d08d0abe425e746c3515adee4a133120c1b6abfbb89d5ec10ecfcbfcbcac.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ae341da3409723b62deb280f439ef733ed7c81a7b9bde8e73408404330d8c08d.jpg

There was writing on the tubes which matches the markings on similar types of fluorescent tubes. Also, the LED fluorescent retrofits have a metal heat sink on the top which would be plainly obvious (example here). The tubes here had no heatsink, and emitted light in a 360 degree circle. Finally, as someone who has done a huge amount of design work with LEDs, I know the type of light an LED casts. The colors are a little to a lot more vivid than under triphosphor fluorescent. I took a picture of one of the fixtures in the mezzanine:

https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/58fa1b47d8b970e57f04b3df8a54361b37ceb76d5c3432457d64cd5ed88e496e.jpg

It’s emitting light up as well as down, and no heat sink is visible.

I thought this section would use CBTC? Or is it not possible to utilize without the entire line?

Funny but I forgot to mention that I was a little disappointed to see conventional wayside signals on the line. They certainly could have installed CBTC on this short stretch. My guess is the reason they chose not to (at least yet) was so non-CBTC equipped trains can use the line. I’m hoping they already installed most of the infrastructure for CBTC, and when they want to turn it on it will be almost as simple as turning on a switch. Or at least that’s what I would have done.

Reason #1: The systemwide CBTC standard was only just recently defined (the standalone Canarsie and Flushing lines have their own independent CBTC implementations, but that won’t work for the rest of the subway system), and it will first be implemented on Queens Blvd. Waiting for the CBTC standard to be defined before designing and installing the signal system would have delayed the opening of SAS by several years.

Reason #2: No cars have had equipment installed for the systemwide CBTC standard yet – the Queens Blvd. project will be equipping the cars that it needs. There may not be enough New Tech cars in the system, even after the R179 order is fully in, to cover, the E, F, M, R, and now Q. And any cars that aren’t equipped can’t be rerouted to the line – we already saw a bunch of N trains rerouted up SAS yesterday, due to an investigation at Lex/59th. So, effectively, this would further delay implementation until at least part of the R211 order is in service.

Reason #3: You’re asking to install CBTC equipment into a lot of cars to accommodate a very short stretch of track – and, in particular, a section of track that can’t take advantage of the capacity boost provided by CBTC until Phase 3 opens, since the Q has to be infrequent enough to leave room for the N in Manhattan and the B in Brooklyn to share track under wayside signals.

In other words, CBTC would be a very costly way to seriously delay SAS without actually accomplishing anything useful.

It makes sense to install CBTC here along with the rest of the Broadway line, and not a moment sooner – and the Broadway line is several rungs down in the priority order.

It is part of CBTC. Queens Boulevard is certainly getting CBTC, but it also certainly won’t be active this year.

The Q train is longer than 30 blocks. And none of the stations have escalator rides anywhere near 5 minutes long.

Sorry to disappoint, but transit riders aren’t the enemy.