CapTengu
@captengu.bsky.social
170 followers 140 following 870 posts
Transit nerd and Weeb. EN/FR OK. Taylor Ham, not "Pork Roll". Go play Touhou. Left-Libertarian/Georgist/De Leonist. Slava Ukraini!
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Broadway IBOA is shutting down next month, with NJ Transit to take over the route. This is the last urban bus route controlled by a private carrier in the state.
NJT is now one step closer to achieving ONE STATE, ONE AGENCY.
ESA was the only project that was almost exclusively focused on a traditional commuter market. The LIRR Third Track project, while in part an enabling work for this, moved that service to one usable both ways at all times, which has proven to be a worthy investment even post-COVID.
That is the one major exception, but very easily attributable to the COVID pandemic heavily impacting the traditional Midtown office worker commuter market that this was nearly exclusively intended to serve. The LIRR fumbling the City Terminal Zone schedule changes for it also did not help.
City of Yes is a huge part of this. The IBX was initially planned well before these zoning changes were even on the horizon; ridership estimates have since been revised significantly upwards, partially due to better line design, and partially due to more expected housing in Brooklyn and Queens.
The MTA is well-known to use extremely conservative ridership projections, so much so that virtually every urban transit project completed by it in recent years (including SAS Phase 1) has far exceeded expected ridership. There is no evidence that the IBX or SAS Phase 2 are somehow any different.
The marginally increased system operating cost is more than covered by the decongestion, efficiency, and ridership growth benefits of the expansions. There has never been a time in the subway's history where system expansion has led to a service cut elsewhere solely due to increased operating costs.
They only spawn in thunderstorms to begin with. The problem is that they're supposed to not burn up after the thunderstorm, so unsuspecting players trigger them later.
They've been in the game as-is for over a decade now and changing this now solely for "consistency" would be weird.
Them not burning is almost certainly intentional game design. Skeleton horses burning in sunlight would break the skeleton trap mechanic (the only case where they occur naturally in the game) if it stops raining.
Closing one of these stops would put the area around the closed stop's exit outside the ¼ mile standard walkshed for rapid transit. Previous station closures on the basis of proximity have all been for stops with exits fully inside this radius from another.
Most Brighton Line stations have exits at either end of the station to better distribute passenger loads; most on Sea Beach also are like this. Consolidating Beverley and Cortleyou would result in a similar layout that could safely handle the rather large combined ridership of both.
Neither of the existing stations can be safely made ADA-accessible due to the way they were first built a century ago. The only viable solution is to build a new, wider set of platforms between the current ones. Retaining both exits is important for maintaining full walkshed access.
There are federal regulations regarding equipment and guideway service life for things federal funds have been spent on. NJT had a dead line of electric locomotives for over 15 years to wait this out because they were prematurely retired in favor of newer, cheaper, and more powerful ones.
Most times that lines have been closed due to poor ridership (Brooklyn Lexington Avenue in 1950, the Polo Grounds Shuttle in 1958, most of Myrtle Avenue in 1969, Third Avenue in 1973, Culver Shuttle in 1975) have been viewed as massive mistakes in retrospect due to development in those areas since.
Shutting down an entire line solely over ridership not meeting projections before anything reaches its expected service life would require paying back any and all federal funds used for it in full. Continuing to run service usually is far cheaper than doing this
The G train had poor ridership for most of its existence until the last 20 years, when commuting patterns in the city started shifting from Manhattan-centric to polycentric. The IBX provides a circumfrential with even more connections than the G, hitting several significant transit nodes.
Multiple different transit advocacy groups have run different industry-standard ridership projection models to check this, which all agreed with the MTA's projection to within a margin of error or exceeded it. In any case it's not cost-effective to shut anything using dedicated infrastructure down.
Foreign companies would have to crew American-built ships with Americans to participate in the US shipping market, while US companies can choose between whether it is more efficent for them to crew foreign-built ships with Americans, or US-built ships with foreign crews paid at the US rate.
The Jones Act would be far more effective if ships only needed to meet 3 of the 4 criteria insetad of all 4. That simple change would enable a far more competitive domestic industry, and enable American companies to purchase ship types that are simply not built by US shipyards.
Projected ridership is in the range of 160,000 daily riders, which is more than most other viable expansion projects. Ridership growth itself comes from unlocking more city destination pairs within a given travel time, as well as the option to reverse-commute on the LIRR from East New York.
The IBX helps take loads off Manhattan-bound services by enabling faster travel outside of it. There is currently no good way to go between most of the lines that will be connected by the IBX other than convoluted multi-leg trips through Downtown Brooklyn, LIC, or going out to Jamaica.
American exceptionalism is not a valid excuse. Euronorms or equivalents thereof are now standard practice in countries like Russia, China, and India, where freight trains can often be even larger and heavier than those found in the US.
The old standard dates to 1946, when buff strength was the only known way to make trains survivable in a crash. We now know that CEM makes crashes significantly more survivable; the US was about the last place on earth where this was not legal to use despite its increased safety until recently.
Bombardier took advantage of the extremely outdated standard to push for a regulatory change advantageous to itself. This is common among large industries.
The change to alt compliance/euronorms makes this far more difficult, as it is the de facto global industry standard.
The regulated standards were put into place because of a total failure of the industry to self-regulate.
Considering that railcar builders globally are equally comfortable building to Euronorms or US standards, it's not a lack of experienced car builders that's the problem.
There are very "American" looking railcar designs that meet Euronorms (or greater!) out in East Asia. Conversely, part of American passenger railroading's DNA has been lightweight trainsets very similar to modern European ones. Why should we fossilize our standards like it's still the 1960s?