What to Do with the Steinway Tunnel

I'll admit it: my last post was a setup. Thanks - and apologies - go to faithful reader Alon Levy, who proved the perfect foil for my strategy. When I proposed running 9.75 foot wide B Division cars on the Flushing Line, he wrote, "Widening the Steinway Tunnels for this to be feasible is even harder than converting the Contract 1-2 IRT to Division B specs." He's absolutely right. As was discussed in detail in the SubChat thread I linked to, the Steinway Tunnels were built of cast iron between 1886 and 1907 for streetcars, and can't easily be widened to accommodate the B Division cars.

What's that you say? The Steinway Tunnels were built for streetcars? Well, it's been said that good streets include streetcars, and we've got a bad street on our hands. Queens Boulevard has killed too many people, and despite the best efforts of the DOT to change it without really changing it, it's still killing people.

The family of Asif Rahman has called for part of Queens Boulevard to be converted into a bike lane. That call has been taken up by Transportation Alternatives, Councilmember Gennaro and others. One potential criticism of that plan is that unless the new bike lane is full of cyclists from day one, it will represent a reduction in capacity.

That capacity could be maintained by adding a streetcar line to the Boulevard. In other parts of the world it is recognized that adding streetcars can calm dangerous boulevards at the same time as they increase mobility.

It's true that Queens Boulevard is served by several subway lines, but there is no subway service between 49th Street and Broadway, two miles out of the Boulevard's seven mile length. That section has recently been upzoned to encourage density, but it's not as near transit as it should be. Some of that section is walking distance from the subway, but in many parts it's a long walk. For several years the Boulevard had both trolleys and subways, and the demise of the trolley company can't necessarily be taken as an indication that the trolleys didn't work.

Also, the #7 train and the Queens Boulevard subway line are some of the most crowded trains in the city. There are a lot of people who want to go short distances along the Boulevard, and the Q60 bus is often slow and unreliable. If you're going from Forest Hills to Rego Park, or LIC to Sunnyside, it's quicker to hop on a trolley than to go down into the subway and back up again. If you're going from Sunnyside to Elmhurst, it's a lot quicker to take one trolley than two subways.

Even better, the streetcar can serve a lot of people who now take the #7 to Manhattan from Sunnyside and Woodside. Instead, they can get on the streetcar. The tracks can run down Queens Boulevard (in a dedicated right-of-way, naturally) to the Sunnyside Yards, and then go either over or under the LIRR tracks to the portal at Hunterspoint Avenue. From there it's a quick shot through the tunnel to Grand Central, Fifth Avenue and Times Square. That means a lot less people trying to squeeze onto the former #7 train at 46th Street.

If trolleys are too outlandish for the alternative-transportation crowd in New York to get behind, you could do it with Bus Rapid Transit too. It would cost almost as much and look shitty, but it would have a similar traffic calming effect.

Crowding on the #7? Widen the trains

A number of people have complained to me about crowding on the #7 train at rush hour, and they say it's only getting worse. The MTA has recently added more trains, but they say they're already running as many Well, here's a possible solution that's been floating around for years: widen the trains.

The elevated structures that now support the #7 in Long Island City, Woodside and out to Corona, and the N in LIC and Astoria, were built by the City in 1916 as part of the Dual Contracts with the two major transit companies, the Interboro Rapid Transit Company and the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Company. They used to both be connected through the Steinway Tunnel to Times Square and across the Queensboro Bridge to the Second Avenue El. Like most of the els in Manhattan, and like the IRT routes, the platforms were built for trains that were 8.8 feet wide.

The tracks were supposed to be for the benefit of the BMT, and in 1920 the BMT built a tunnel under 60th Street to connect its tracks to Queensboro Plaza. Unfortunately, the BMT trains were 9.75 feet wide and couldn't fit between these platforms, so everyone had to change trains.

In 1942 the City demolished the Second Avenue El, and in 1949 it assigned the Astoria line to the BMT. The platforms were cut back to accommodate the BMT trains, and the 60th Street tunnel was connected to the line. The result was the service pattern that exists today: the 9.75 foot N and W trains from the 60th Street Tunnel go onto the Astoria line, and the 8.8 foot 7 trains from the Steinway Tunnel go onto the Flushing line.

The #7 train currently runs trains with eleven R62A cars. Each car can hold 182 people, for a total of 2002 passengers. If we cut back the platforms on the Flushing Line, the MTA could run trains with ten R160B cars. Each of these can hold 240 people, for a total of 2400 passengers. In other words, switching to B division trains would allow 400 more people to fit on each train.

(P.S. I highly recommend this SubTalk post).

The Rail Bank and (mis)Trust

Banking operates on trust; many of them used to have the word in their names. When you deposit money in a bank, you expect it to be there if you need it. If a banker ever told you, "Gee, you know, I've actually come to like this money a lot, and I really need it to buy gym equipment," you'd take them to court.

Apparently trust doesn't go for much in the world of railbanking. This process was set up in the late twentieth century when railroads were going bankrupt. The freight business was dwindling, and railroad companies didn't want to pay to maintain lines that they didn't use. At first, they just abandoned them, but then the government recognized that many of them had acquired their rights-of-way with government subsidies.

Rather than give that land away for free, Congress passed laws allowing agencies and nonprofits to buy it and convert it temporarily to recreational trails. There was always the implied guarantee that rail uses for these corridors was still a priority, and that if a railroad wanted the land back it could get it easily. The term "railbanking" deliberately invoked a metaphor with financial banking: you deposit the right-of-way to keep it safe for future use.

Nowadays, with driving and motor freight getting more and more expensive, current rail corridors are getting overburdened. In places like the D.C. suburbs, people are looking at reactivating the rail corridors, and encountering resistance. Many of the opponents object to active rail lines in their backyards or parks, but others object to returning rail-trails to their previous uses.

Because of this, I think it's appropriate to look at rail-trail projects with a certain amount of skepticism. Mrs. Transit and I are members of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, and we get their magazine, which is invariably upbeat and cheery. It's full of exciting stories about how this old railroad line has been transformed into a trail with educational exhibits telling kids about its history, and that one is used by commuters in some small city in the Midwest.

What it often glosses over, of course, is the loss of passenger and freight capacity that occurred when the line was abandoned. How the people who lived nearby were forced to drive or take buses whether they wanted to or not, and how the roads were widened to accommodate the increased car and truck traffic. It also glosses over any hint that the right-of-way could or should ever revert to rail use.

There are some times when I read about a trail and think, "well, that's nice, but imagine if they still had commuter rail along that line. Or if this town had Amtrak service three times a day."

Don't get me wrong, I love rail-trails. Plenty of times I want to go for a nice long walk in the woods, but I don't want to climb a narrow twisty hiking path or worry about cars on a suburban road. I've spent many an enjoyable hour on the South and North County Trailways, the Walkill Valley Rail-Trail and other wonderful paths in the region. I think that we need more long-distance corridors for walking and biking that can give people a break from dealing with cars. But I think that often, we have a greater need for trains, and we need to think about that when deciding what to do with particular corridors.

Zipcar unclear on the concept?

Zipcar would have done wonders for my life during the time I spent in a small Western city where the buses stopped running at 8PM and there were lots of things worth seeing out beyond where the buses went. In New York it just seems bizarre, but then again it's bizarre that anyone would want to drive anywhere here, let alone actually own a car.

Be that as it may, if there's anywhere you might want a car handy, it would be Ikea. Especially since, unlike the sane furniture companies (Gothic Cabinet Craft, for instance), Ikea offers no reasonable delivery service. Judging by a quick Google search, there are several small businesses that do nothing but deliver furniture from Ikea. I solve that problem by simply buying my furniture at Gothic or some other reasonable place, but some people want to shop at Ikea.

It's not surprising that many of these Ikea shoppers would be Zipcar members, and therefore it seems reasonable that Ikea would reserve six prime parking spots at its new Brooklyn store for Zipcars.

Now, wouldn't it make even more sense to actually store the Zipcars in the Ikea parking lot? Sure, Red Hook is a schlep, and if you planned a furniture-buying trip you'd probably want to reserve a Zipcar ahead of time from a location close to you. But what about spontaneity? What if you were riding the B61 and decided to stay on for a few more stops and check out some furniture, or what if you planned a day of hanging out by the old docks and eating Swedish meatballs, but then, you decided you had to have that supper-classy LMAO bookcase, and it's much too big to fit on the bus. Wouldn't you want at least the possibility of calling up to see if there are any Zipcars available nearby? And don't they think that maybe they'd get some business from the projects as well, people who don't want to schlep over to Bond and Union?

I thought Zipcar was supposed to be all about convenience and spontaneity. This must be just a little too far to stretch their minds around.

Boondoggles: Stewart Airport Rail Link

Following Ben Kabak's lead, I have added the Stewart Airport Rail Link to my Spreadsheet o'Boondoggles. In this, I agree with Jeff Zupan, who was paraphrased by the Sun as saying that "the real benefit of Stewart International Airport would be if it relieved the city airports of upstate residents who would no longer have to commute into the city to fly." None of the rail proposals would serve very many upstate air passengers.

With AirTran cancelling its flights out of Stewart, Ben observes that there's even less reason to invest scarce transit funding in enabling this airport.

Following up on an earlier article about the tradeoff between funding air and rail travel, I feel that government money spent on air travel deprives passenger rail carriers of needed revenue and ensures that they will continue to need to beg for subsidies. My parents regularly fly to Florida through Stewart. They've tried driving the entire way, and they've tried taking the train the entire way. They've told me that flying out of Stewart is so much more convenient than either of the other options. But would the train be more attractive if they had to fly out of Albany or one of the other airports?

Incidentally, there used to be a privately-operated bus called the Hudson Valley Airporter, which traveled down the Thruway and Route 9 to Kennedy and La Guardia. It was active in the 1980s, gone in the 1990s. Stewart Airport opened in 1990. Coincidence?

Here's an idea: imagine if we extended the Empire Corridor train service from Rhinecliff, Poughkeepsie, Croton and Yonkers through Penn Station to Kennedy Airport. There are only two obstacles. The first is that the ex-New York Central Hudson Line and the LIRR Main Line have incompatible third-rail electrification systems. This could be dealt with by stringing catenary the whole length, but it would be expensive. Another option would be some kind of dual-mode locomotive that could switch shoes. The second obstacle is that use of the Rockaway Cut-Off has been blocked by local residents, and the MTA has allowed the tracks to decay.

Anyone care to give a back-of-the-envelope calculation about how much it would cost to restore the Rockaway Cut-Off? To deploy catenary along the route? To produce dual-mode locomotives like this? Any chance that this is under $600 million dollars?

Staten Island: Why light?

Staten Island has a rail line, but it used to have three. In addition, the Bayonne Bridge was built to handle light rail, a capacity that has never been used. There's fairly broad support for reactivating passenger service on the North Shore and West Shore Lines. So far, so good.

What bugs me is that they keep talking about "light rail." It's in the PlaNYC 2030 documentation, and in a Staten Island Advance article discussing a grant won by Senators Schumer and Clinton (one of the few things that those two have gone out of their way to do for transit).

The original rail lines, described in loving detail in this article in
The Third Rail, were heavy rail, though. Saint George was the New York terminus for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Long-distance and commuter passenger trains, and freight trains, came from New Jersey over the Arthur Kill Bridge and the North Shore Line to the ferry at Saint George. You would expect the proposal to be for either commuter rail like the Metro-North Penn Station Access project, or metrorail like the TriboroRX proposal. But no, it's all light rail, light rail, light rail. There doesn't seem to be any justification for preferring light rail over any of the other potential modes.

There are two explanations I can think of. The practical one is that New Jersey Transit's Hudson-Bergen Light Rail could go across the Bayonne Bridge, but what would it connect to? Probably the West Shore line, so that should be light rail. But why the North Shore Line as well? Hm, maybe energy efficiency? Staten Island is considered to be too sprawly to support commuter or metro rail (and everyone conveniently forget about the SIRT), so we shouldn't put heavy locomotives on those lines?

Mainly, though, I think it's a fad. Light rail is a buzzword that's been going around. All the cool cities are doing it. New Jersey's got one. The only thing cooler would be if we had one of those BRT things that the kids are always talking about.

Fads are not a good reason to choose a transit mode. The residents of Staten Island are going to be using this thing for years to come. This would be like the subway cars that still have the fake wood laminate - don't you love being saddled with what someone thought was cutting edge in the 70s? - except that it would actually matter in terms of speed and connections.

Staten Island is the borough closest to the west side of the Hudson, and has the potential to be closely connected with the continental rail infrastructure. Right now to get a train to Philadelphia you have to take a bus or train to the ferry, then a subway uptown to Penn Station. With a connection to the Hudson-Bergen light rail, you could get to Hoboken or Journal Square and then get a train to Newark and another to Philadelphia.

Meanwhile, with the North Shore line revived as heavy rail, you could get a commuter train directly to Elizabeth, Newark - or even West Trenton and Philadelphia. From a commuter point of view, you could connect to the Northeast Corridor at Elizabeth and transfer at Newark to a train to Penn Station. You could get to some of the many jobs in New Jersey.

We're still doing the studies. I think we'll find that light rail makes sense for the West Shore line, but heavy rail for the North Shore Line. But why don't we do them without making up our minds ahead of time about the mode?

TriboroRX: Is the capacity there?

In discussing the TriboroRX proposal, I have serious concerns about the capacity of the right-of-way to handle this amount of service. Right now the Bay Ridge Branch and the New York Connecting Railroad are single-track freight lines in many places. Of course the proposal is to increase it to two tracks and possibly four where there's room. In fact the Bay Ridge Branch and the NYCR were originally four tracks for part of their length and can fit three, if not four, from the Brighton Line (Q train) to Fresh Pond Yard, and possibly even six for part of the right-of-way west of the Culver Line (F train). But the rest of the line, from the Culver Line to the Brighton Line, and from Fresh Pond Yard to the junction with the Amtrak line to Penn Station in Woodside, is two tracks, and even if the right-of-way could fit another track here or there, it would be expensive to expand the bridges and tunnels.

The problem is that these lines are still used for freight trains, and unless they're expanded to three tracks for the entire length, they will need to share the tracks. It's not unprecedented for transit and freight service to use the same tracks: New Jersey Transit's River Line between Camden and Trenton shares tracks with Conrail freight. However, New Jersey Transit has an agreement with Conrail that the passenger trains will only run from 6AM to 10PM, except Saturday nights. That might work in South Jersey, but it would be difficult in New York City, even in Maspeth.

But let's suppose that it was worth running passenger service just for the daytime and evening use. The River Line is a secondary freight route, and only runs a few trains a night, and the Bay Ridge Branch is even more lightly used. Good, right? Wrong.

There is a proposal for a Cross-Harbor Rail Freight Tunnel to connect the Bay Ridge Branch with the Greenville Yard in Jersey City. Currently, rail freight going from New Jersey to or through New York City needs to either be floated across the river on barges, or hauled over 150 miles north to the bridge at Selkirk and 150 miles back south. In practice, it's cheaper and easier to transfer the freight to trucks and drive it over the bridges. Of course that wears down and clogs up the city's bridges, highways and streets, pollutes the air and increases traffic carnage, hence the need for the tunnel.

According to the Draft Environmental Impact Study for the tunnel, insted of eight train trips a day, there would be 24-64 freight train trips using the Bay Ridge Branch per day (page 8-69 of this PDF), depending on whether one or two tunnels were built. The DEIS is very unclear on the anticipated number of train trips on the Hell Gate Bridge, but the total number anticipated for LIRR destinations (i.e. all other destinations) is 13-15 per day. It sounds like that means we'd see 11-49 trains going over the Hell Gate Bridge, but I can't figure out whether the prediction is closer to 11 or to 49. I'm going to assume the most extreme scenario of 49 trains a day; it's still less than four an hour.

The TriboroRX proposal also doesn't take into account the plans to run Metro-North trains from New Haven to Penn Station via the Hell Gate Bridge. This would run five trains an hour in each direction during peak hours, a substantial addition to Amtrak's current ten trains per day.

Adding it all up, it looks like the following by the hour:

Segment	Max tracks	Current freight	Cross-Harbor freight	Amtrak	Commuter rail	total
Hell Gate	4	<1	4	2	10	14
NY CR	2	<1	4	0	0	4
Bay Ridge FP to Brighton Line	4	<1	5	0	0	5
Bay Ridge Brighton Line to McDonald	2	<1	5	0	0	5
Bay Ridge McDonald to BAT	8	<1	5	0	0	5

Here's the bottom line:

• Hell Gate: Amtrak, Metro-North and freight trains could fit two tracks if the freight trains are all run on off-peak hours, leaving two tracks for TriboroRX service. Some Metro-North trains could potentially share tracks with the TriboroRX trains to make room for more freight or Amtrak trains.


• NY Connecting Railroad: Requires widening, time-sharing or commuter rail.


• Bay Ridge Branch from Fresh Pond to Brighton Line: Freight trains can run in one or two tracks, leaving two tracks for passenger service.


• Bay Ridge Branch from Brighton Line to McDonald Avenue: Requires widening, time-sharing or commuter rail.


• Bay Ridge Branch from McDonald Avenue to the Brooklyn Army Terminal: Wide enough for anything.