Reverse- and Through-Commute Trends
I poked around some comparable data for commuting around New York for 2007 and 2019 the other day, using OnTheMap. The motivation is that I’d made two graphics of through-commutes in the region, one in 2017 (see link here, I can’t find the original article anymore) and one this year for the ETA report (see here, go to section 2B). The nicer second graphic was made by Kara Fischer, not by me, but also has about twice the volume of through-commutes, partly due to a switch in source to the more precise OnTheMap, partly due to growth. It’s the issue of growth I’d like to go over in this post.
In all cases, I’m going to compare data from 2007 and 2019. This is because these years were both business cycle peaks, and this is the best way to compare data from different years. The topline result is that commutes of all kinds are up – the US had economic growth in 2007-19 and New York participated in it – but cross-regional commutes grew much more than commutes to Manhattan. New Jersey especially grew as a residential place, thanks to its faster housing growth, to the point that by 2019, commute volumes from the state to Manhattan matched those of all east-of-Hudson suburbs combined. The analysis counts all jobs, including secondary jobs.
For the purposes of the tables below, Long Island comprises Nassau and Suffolk Counties, and Metro-North territory comprises Westchester, Putnam, and Duchess Counties and all of Connecticut.
2007 data
| From\To | Manhattan | Brooklyn | Queens | Bronx | Staten Island | Long Island | Metro-North | New Jersey |
| Manhattan | 449,308 | 30,716 | 22,028 | 17,746 | 1,974 | 17,574 | 20,281 | 29,031 |
| Brooklyn | 385,943 | 299,056 | 76,499 | 16,121 | 9,288 | 40,847 | 17,175 | 25,887 |
| Queens | 328,785 | 89,982 | 216,988 | 19,227 | 4,350 | 107,634 | 21,737 | 18,555 |
| Bronx | 184,594 | 35,994 | 29,818 | 97,397 | 2,337 | 20,200 | 41,316 | 15,467 |
| Staten Island | 59,572 | 30,241 | 7,223 | 2,326 | 49,679 | 7,514 | 3,655 | 17,919 |
| Long Island | 163,988 | 45,121 | 77,337 | 12,724 | 5,103 | 926,912 | 32,806 | 12,557 |
| Metro-North | 124,952 | 12,606 | 14,228 | 24,131 | 1,962 | 29,344 | 1,897,392 | 15,413 |
| New Jersey | 245,373 | 23,455 | 17,496 | 11,022 | 8,109 | 17,460 | 22,073 | 3,523,860 |
2019 data
| From\To | Manhattan | Brooklyn | Queens | Bronx | Staten Island | Long Island | Metro-North | New Jersey |
| Manhattan | 570,321 | 56,019 | 44,063 | 31,947 | 4,000 | 20,678 | 22,146 | 35,243 |
| Brooklyn | 486,757 | 429,234 | 119,588 | 26,192 | 17,073 | 43,410 | 18,301 | 33,119 |
| Queens | 384,186 | 134,063 | 308,903 | 36,339 | 7,640 | 121,194 | 25,216 | 22,863 |
| Bronx | 224,583 | 62,377 | 58,124 | 135,288 | 4,364 | 26,172 | 45,347 | 17,387 |
| Staten Island | 59,778 | 40,994 | 13,971 | 5,218 | 56,953 | 9,877 | 3,510 | 19,442 |
| Long Island | 191,239 | 59,241 | 102,939 | 23,246 | 8,132 | 971,193 | 40,130 | 14,724 |
| Metro-North | 153,482 | 21,283 | 23,498 | 37,147 | 3,179 | 40,586 | 1,874,618 | 20,819 |
| New Jersey | 345,551 | 40,397 | 29,523 | 17,467 | 14,134 | 23,439 | 29,755 | 3,614,386 |
Growth
| From\To | Manhattan | Brooklyn | Queens | Bronx | Staten Island | Long Island | Metro-North | New Jersey |
| Manhattan | 26.93% | 82.38% | 100.03% | 80.02% | 102.63% | 17.66% | 9.20% | 21.40% |
| Brooklyn | 26.12% | 43.53% | 56.33% | 62.47% | 83.82% | 6.27% | 6.56% | 27.94% |
| Queens | 16.85% | 48.99% | 42.36% | 89.00% | 75.63% | 12.60% | 16.00% | 23.22% |
| Bronx | 21.66% | 73.30% | 94.93% | 38.90% | 86.74% | 29.56% | 9.76% | 12.41% |
| Staten Island | 0.35% | 35.56% | 93.42% | 124.33% | 14.64% | 31.45% | -3.97% | 8.50% |
| Long Island | 16.62% | 31.29% | 33.10% | 82.69% | 59.36% | 4.78% | 22.33% | 17.26% |
| Metro-North | 22.83% | 68.83% | 65.15% | 53.94% | 62.03% | 38.31% | -1.20% | 35.07% |
| New Jersey | 40.83% | 72.23% | 68.74% | 58.47% | 74.30% | 34.24% | 34.80% | 2.57% |
Some patterns
Commutes to Manhattan are up 24.37% over the entire period. This is actually higher than the rise in all commutes in the table combined, because of the weight of intra-suburban commutes (internal to New Jersey, Metro-North territory, or Long Island), which stagnated over this period. However, the rise in all commutes that are not to Manhattan and are also not internal to one of the three suburban zones is much greater, 41.11%.
This 41.11% growth was uneven over this period. Every group of commuters to the suburbs did worse than this. On net, commutes to New Jersey, Metro-North territory, and Long Island, each excluding internal commutes, grew 21.34%, 15.95%, and 18.62%, all underperforming commutes to Manhattan. Some subgroups did somewhat better – commutes from New Jersey and Metro-North to the rest of suburbia grew healthily (they’re the top four among the cells describing commutes to the suburbs) – but overall, this isn’t really about suburban job growth, which lagged in this period.
In contrast, commutes to the Outer Boroughs grew at a collective rate of 50.31%. All four intra-borough numbers (five if we include Manhattan) did worse than this; rather, people commuted between Outer Boroughs at skyrocketing rates in this period, and many suburbanites started commuting to the Outer Boroughs too. Among these, the cis-Manhattan commutes – Long Island to Brooklyn and Queens, and Metro-North territory to the Bronx – grew less rapidly (31.29%, 33.1%, 53.94% respectively), while the trans-Manhattan commutes grew very rapidly, New Jersey-Brooklyn growing 72.23%.
New Jersey had especially high growth rates as an origin. Not counting intra-state commutes, commutes as an origin grew 45% (Long Island: 25.75%; Metro-North territory: 34.75%), due to the relatively high rate of housing construction in the state. By 2019, commutes from New Jersey to Manhattan grew to be about equal in volumes to commutes from the two east-of-Hudson suburban regions combined.
Overall, trans-Hudson through-commutes – those between New Jersey and anywhere in the table except Manhattan and Staten Island – grew from 179,385 to 249,493, 39% in total, with New Jersey growing much faster as an origin than a destination for such commutes (53.63% vs. 23.93%); through-commutes between the Bronx or Metro-North territory and Brooklyn grew 56.48%, reaching 128,153 people, with Brooklyn growing 72.13% as a destination for such commutes and 33.63% as an origin.
What this means for commuter rail
Increasingly, through-running isn’t about unlocking new markets, although I think that better through-service is bound to increase the size of the overall commute volume. Rather, it’s about serving commutes that exist, or at least did on the eve of the pandemic. About half of the through-commutes are to Brooklyn, the Bronx, or Queens; the other half are to the suburbs (largely to New Jersey).
The comparison must be with reverse-commutes. Those are also traditionally ignored by commuter rail, but Metro-North made a serious effort to accommodate the high-end ones from the city to edge cities including White Plains, Greenwich, and Stamford, where consequently transit commuters outearn drivers in workplace geography. The LIRR, which long ran its Main Line one-way at rush hour to maintain express service on the two-track line, sold the third track project as opening new reverse-commutes. But none of these markets is growing much, and the only cis-Manhattan one that’s large is Queens to Long Island, which has an extremely diffuse job geography. In contrast, the larger and faster-growing through-markets are ignored.
Short (cis-Manhattan) trips are growing healthily too. They are eclipsed by some through-commutes, but Long Island to Queens and Brooklyn and Metro-North territory to the Bronx all grew very fast, and at least for the first two, the work destinations are fairly clustered near the LIRR (but the Bronx jobs are not at all clustered near Metro-North).
The fast job growth in all four Outer Boroughs means that it’s better to think of commuter rail as linking the suburbs with the city than just linking the suburbs with Penn Station or Grand Central. There isn’t much suburban job growth, but New Jersey has residential growth (the other two suburban regions don’t), and the city has job growth, with increasing complexity as more job centers emerge outside Manhattan and as people travel between them and not just to Manhattan.
Pedestrian Observations 
Is this data about transit commutes or all commutes including cars?
All commutes, I don’t think the LEHD has any modal split data.
And this trend will continue to grow, as more and more people are now working from home, which is making office appearance less appealing due to working remotely via their PC’s. Also, Lower & Midtown Manhattan has re-invented itselve’s and have become much more residential in recent times. This is also happening in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, Miami, Philadelphia, and etc as well. It is what it is in 2023 my dear friends, and have a Happy Thanksgiving Day as well.
I think it’s separate from any trend involving remote work. What rose in 2007-19 was polycentric commuting, not local commuting, which is why commutes within Long Island, within Metro-North territory, and within New Jersey were pretty flat.
If I did the arithmetic correctly there are around 100,000 new jobs for New Jerseyans, in Manhattan. And 50,000 everyplace else. That doesn’t sound very polycentric to me.
Working from home for many means monthly or weekly trips to an office. So a transit system that can handle people who move farther from the office because they don’t make the trip often starts to make sense. That is a system built around local transit to groceries and other things that are close to home, and then express trips to major job centers that may be more than an hour away (even by car at 2am when the roads are not congested)
Jobs are easy to measure, so that is why transit does them. However I think better measures are not jobs but other trips. How people get food (both groceries and restaurants) mode share is a better measure of your transit system. Other actives like church, sports, library, clubs… also count. Things people do locally and off peak – if your transit system is good enough to capture these trips then jobs are easy.
Many non-job trips — the ones typically included under the 15-minute idea — would be dominated primarily by walking, secondarily by bicycling. The “overhead” of transit (headway, plus going somewhat out of the way to access it) can fit into typical commutes; much less so into tolerable grocery runs. Also, grocers are largely fungible thus people can go to the one closest to them, whereas they called security on me when I tried to work at the offices of a different company than the one I work for.
I think the actual underlying is “how much money do the households in the city spend on [e.g. grocery shopping] in total”, because to a first approximation, the total (rent of) commercial floorspace citywide dedicated to grocers will be linearly proportionate, and laid out in whatever size happens to make for efficient grocers. Thus for shopping trips to be long enough to be highly capturable by transit, they need to be either for niche items, or for massive central shops to be the efficient solution for that good.
That depends on the urban form. If you are in a very dense area – the only places NYC can think about putting train service do to their high construction costs – then you are correct: most non-work trips will be within 15 minutes walk. However if you have Spain construction costs you can afford to build transit to much less dense areas, and these less dense areas won’t have nearly as many services within 15 minutes walk, in turn meaning people will use transit more if it is an option (and as it is a less dense area there is no traffic so transit must be very frequent to be an option).
Suburbs tend to have larger grocery stores than dense areas because the friction of getting to one is high enough that you buy enough for a week at a time. In dense areas people are more likely to buy groceries daily, and it isn’t unusual to be in the middle of cooking and run to the store for something you are out of – in the suburbs you borrow from a neighbor (this also happens in cities) or do without.
From what I can tell through casual observation, most New Yorkers preferred to do weekly supermarket shopping rather than daily shopping. They would drive to a supermarket in the outer boroughs like Fairway, park, and get the groceries every week. Or would take the subway to the big Wholefoods at Union Square and take the subway back with their groceries.
Spend $10/week on gas (per family) and you save $50-100/week (per person not family!) on groceries. Plus those large supermarkets have much more selection in one place. If you have a car for any other purpose, then the marginal cost of a trip to a grocery store is probably worth it. For a family this savings alone can make a car worth all the high costs. Transit needs to handle the grocery case if it is to replace cars.
As I keep pointing out, the majority of the costs of a car are fixed costs. Once someone feels like a car is worth it, the marginal cost of taking more and more trips is not significant. Your payments, taxes, and insurance are fixed costs (some places insurance is by mile, but not where I live).
That’s a specifically American issue – French and German urban supermarkets are low-price chains (Carrefour/Monoprix, Aldi/Lidl/Edeka/Rewe).
– Even if you can build the infrastructure cheaply (limit case: bus on undistinguished city street) operating it at a high frequency is still an expense that needs to be justified by, basically, ridership. (There’s also a bit of abstract theory that approximately says you want to balance the different kinds of spending, so if you get better at laying track you lay more/longer lines and spread thinner the rolling fleet between them, so each line is both individually cheaper to build and sees a lower frequency of service. Yes you do reallocate from the construction budget to both the vehicle procurement budget and to the operations budget, but the effect is still there.)
– A less dense area will have longer walk times, but it should still have the geometry that groceries are “closer” than transit trip destinations, partly because many literally are at transit stops. For the entirely “selfish” reason that they want footfall, and transit collects it for them. (Incidentally, this changes the character of grocery shopping a bit. Basically, you get the option to shop not just by the method of going from home to the shop, but also by stopping in there on the way home on your workdaily commute, since you already walk within a few dozen meters of its front door on your way home even if you never buy anything there.) This is isomorphic to supermarkets putting themselves next to freeway exits.
– “[Grocery] trips would be dominated […] secondarily by bicycling.” Given that — unless you live in a rural area rather than a city — you don’t otherwise need a car, and that it’s a major hassle (not just expense) to get/keep one because you don’t already have a garage/driveway/on-street parking spot compulsorily included with your flat/house/etc., even if your grocer of choice is too far away on foot, surely it’s within range on two wheels. For example, I routinely shop at a local supermarket (an Aldi) and take the stuff home by hanging it off the handlebar, since I don’t have a basket (never mind a cargo bike). (Unlike the “they called security on me when I tried to work at the offices of a different company” bit, this one is factual.) You can take some 10-20 kg of groceries this way without difficulty. If you should feel the need to do so, from the purchase price of a car you can buy a serious fleet of different bikes and various accessories to equip them with, from panniers to trailers. In less dense areas, bikes can partly take over this “short trips” segment from walking.
Fairway only has four stores, all of them in Manhattan. Associated, Key and C-Town etc. can have parking lots in the outer boroughs.
Just like people who walk to the supermarket can do it on their way home from work, people who drive can stop in the supermarket, on their way home from work. …. I check the ads on Sunday and plot what I’m going to get where, on my way home. It might add a whole mile to my weekly use. I can charge the car at the low price chain.
Aldi is the low price chain in the US, but they have embraced the suburban model here and don’t seem to have a presence in car-free areas. Every store is surrounded by parking (I’m not sure how much of the US they cover, I suspect they don’t have a presence in NYC). Even then, while my family buys most food from Aldi, the selection is limited enough that we go to other chains for the things they don’t carry. (interestingly, the other chain is Fairway, but not the same Fairway as adirondacker12800 is talking about)
@Basil Marte that theory is not acceptable in the suburbs. It works where traffic is annoying as people are willing to wait for better service, and so are willing to accept a long wait for the next train as at least once you are one you can get someplace. However in the suburbs there is no traffic so if you can’t provide frequent service there is no point – we can all afford cars which are always show up and go. You can get commuters and make downtown offices stronger with commuter rail, but even if you run it all day off peak traffic isn’t too bad so we will just drive to a suburban mall for anything other than the office. (Edmonton is a good example – nobody drives all the way to work, but many drive to a park and ride and would drive to work if there was cheap parking and no traffic)
I cannot subscribe to the theory of more length means less trains. Trains are cheap compared to the cost of building rail, and stations are the most expensive. So I strongly encourage automated trains running very frequent with smaller stations (you don’t need a long platform, a 2 car train every 2 minutes is roughly equal to a 10 car train every 10 – if you need more than that you a great problem and enough demand to afford to build longer stations)
Nobody gives suburbs great transit because it is expensive for the ridership you can possibly give. In dense cities you amortize the costs over more people and so the cost per rider is cheap. However great transit would be cheaper for every family vs the cost of a car, and great transit would let suburban dwellers drop down to just one car since most trips are on transit. I figure we are talking about $200/month per family to provide great transit to suburbs, which is a lot of money, but that is about what gas + insurance costs (and ignores the car payment and maintenance).. you need a large comprehensive network though to make it work and that is not easy to get.
Plenty of disadvantages of a service every 2 minutes, you can’t run express and non-express service on two tracks, you can’t share tracks with freight and you can’t branch service and have shared tracks in the city centre being two.
Most sensibly with the LIRR service would be to roughly double frequency so the suburban trains run every 15 minutes and the ruralish ones run every 30 minutes.
Both London and Paris have large numbers of central terminals without issue so just run half the branches to Grand Central and half to Penn Station and call it a day.
Express service is important, but only for longer trips. I would like everyone to live within 15 minutes of a transfer point, including walking time from their door. Then express services to all nearby transfer points. This lets people who live near where they want to be get there. I’ve more than once looked up a 5 mile trip as the crow flies and discovered it was 1.5 hours because the transit service assumes I want to go downtown.
Sure I know why transit does that, it is the largest volume of trips, but it makes every other trip not workable at all and in turns fuels the shut down transit as it doesn’t go anywhere anyway argument.
Note that everything I’m asking for in trains above can be done by a self driving bus in mixed traffic! That technology doesn’t exist today which is why I’m looking at trains. In the suburbs capital costs should be traded for operating costs. This is very different from your typical use of a train (or tram) where you need the capacity that a bus cannot provide.
Again, I’m talking about a very expensive system to build, but I’m planning to amortize it over 50 years or so. Over that time period it would be a lot cheaper than cars for everyone. However if you cannot think over such a long time span it won’t pay off (and you won’t be able to build it anyway)
I believe there was a big increase in reverse commuting from NYC, especially by rail, in the 2000s. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/24Rreverse.html
There was definitely such an increase in DC https://planitmetro.com/2015/12/21/when-work-evolves-metrorail-in-the-era-of-the-flexible-workplace/
Still going obvi. I reverse commute from upper manhattan to Stamford
I think I’ve previously criticized the trans-harbor Manhattan to Staten Island regional rail line from your “Assume Nordic Costs” post before, but if not, these job figures should conclusively show why such a line is a bad idea. The route would only directly serve 80k people to/from SI for work, which is far too low to justify an 8.5km underwater crossing (before the additional tunneling in Manhattan to get to Grand Central). Another 40k could make use with a transfer (Queens/Long Island), but an enormous 90k would be unserved (people commuting to/from Brooklyn and New Jersey). Add the fact that 4 of the 5 biggest trip pairs (to Manhattan is clearly largest, but to/from Brook. and NJ are the next 4, with Brook. seeing 2/3 the Manhattan commuters) and the trans-harbor line is a huge investment in the wrong spot.
The proper way to serve SI is extending the R across the Narrows, with a new line across the center of the island roughly along Narrows Rd/Victory Blvd. Compared to the trans-harbor line and routing in the “Assume Nordic” post, this route:
– Requires less than 3.5km of tunnel, including land approaches
– Directly serves the 120k people commuting to/from SI and Manhattan/Brook., almost 60% of every worker going to/from the island.
– Serves with a connection an additional 30-55k workers from Queens, LI, etc. (less in the current arrangement with no direct connection from the R to Penn. or GCT, more with Alon’s plan and its additional lines and connecting stations in Manhattan)
– Serves Wagner College and Coll. of SI
– Doesn’t waste half its walkshed on Newark Bay (as Alon’s re-activation of the North Shore Line to feed the trans-harbor tunnel does)
– Points directly at the largest job center in SI, the Amazon complex south of I-278
(Killed a duplicate comment.)
A bunch of the 40,000 SI -> Brooklyn commuters would still be served by the train with a transfer in Lower Manhattan; OnTheMap tells me 8,000 work in Downtown Brooklyn, of whom 4,000 work in the block to which city workers are assigned to regardless of where they actually work. It’s not especially Downtown Brooklyn-centric, but over time there would be a reshuffle of where people live, even absent any TOD, so that people working in Downtown Brooklyn (or Manhattan) would choose to live near SIR stations. This is how the origin numbers for commuters are so sharply up over the 2007-19 period even with very little residential development – city population rose 7.7% in 2010-20 per the census, but 2010 was an underestimate so the actual rise was likely lower, which doesn’t by itself explain 31.68% growth in 2007-19 in city-originating commutes.
It’s going to work that way with other employers too….. I suspect National Grid is similar. Everybody in Brooklyn “works” at the main office. Maybe even everybody in the city.
If only 4,000 SI to Brooklyn commuters work in DT Brooklyn, that weakens the case for the regional rail tunnel and strengthens the case for an R extension even more. A transfer in lower Manhattan is good only for someone working in DT Brooklyn, who connect to your Hoboken-Atlantic terminal regional rail line direct from DT Man. For everyone else working in the rest of Brooklyn, the trans-harbor tunnel means going past your destination to double back, and possibly a two-connection ride (regional to Manhattan, regional to Atlantic Term., subway to destination. An R extension is more direct, and features multiple connections to subway lines before reaching At. Term., so they can get to anywhere in Brooklyn with only a single connection, while still riding direct to DT and Midtown).
“over time there would be a reshuffle of where people live”
No, if this were true no one in SI would work in Brooklyn now, because for decades the main transit connection has been the Ferry to Lower Manhattan. Yet Brooklyn workers have not ‘reshuffled’ to only live in Brooklyn, instead 40k islanders go to work in Brooklyn each day as 330k people in Brooklyn work elsewhere. The Verrazano bridge exists, as do cars and busses. There are factors where people live besides job access (space, school, family, ethnic enclaves, affordability, two worker households, etc.). The purpose of transit in community economic and social well-being is to provide greatest possible access so people have the most flexibility in where they live while being able to take advantage of the highest possible number of work, school and social opportunities (for the most wealth, growth, and fun). [Although Jarret Walker tends to depreciate mass transit too much, his evaluation of networks based on isochrones of access is spot on.] The notion of reshuffling is antithetical to good transit in that it implicitly suggests peoples’ options where they live are/will/should be limited based on network design and job. Even if reshuffling is an optimization of ‘choice’ on a housing-work axis, it is then net negative regarding choice in other areas.
Obviously reshuffling can’t be avoided and does happen (in regard to not only transit but other means of transportation, communication, geography/weather etc.) – the job differential to Manhattan between Long Island and New Jersey is testament to this. But it is clearly a bug not a feature, and shouldn’t be relied upon in network planning. Connecting SI to the jobs in Manhattan by bypassing almost as many jobs in Brooklyn with the explanation that “the Brooklyn workers will move” is a similar bug, especially when the direct to Manhattan option would be so much more expensive.
Few of the jobs in Brooklyn are along 4th Avenue. Few of them are the kind of jobs people take long commutes for.
“along 4th Avenue. Few of them are the kind of jobs people take long commutes for.”
Just because the subway from SI would take the 4th Av line to get to Manhattan doesn’t mean those SI commuters would be prevented from transferring to the dozen or so other lines the 4th Av line connects with to get to the entire rest of Brooklyn.
SI to Brooklyn isn’t a long commute, they’re right next to each other. And we know that 40k people daily are making that commute now, without the benefit of rapid transit. Let’s make their life easier instead of spending a fortune on the longest possible underwater tunnel you can build in NY to pass them by.
How many hours will it take to trek this three or four seat ride?
The New York subway isn’t exactly fast.
The A train from Jay Street Metro Tech to Inwood 207 St averages 34km/h at midday. This isn’t as quick as the Victoria Line in London (41km/h average) or even line 14 in Paris (36km/h average).
This is true even with an average stop spacing of 1.7km vs 1.3km on the Victoria line and 1.1km on Paris metro line 14.
Plus if the A and C trains ran as express from 145th street with the B, D and E as local you would have separated those trains out from the rest of the network. That would allow you to run A trains every 6 minutes and C trains every 6 minutes vs every 10 and roughly every 8 today. Even if you added an “express” stop at 50th street in Manhattan it’d be faster, more frequent and more reliable.
Last time I looked at schedules they were running an A train every 6 minutes, a B train and a D train.
Central Park West trains are on the upper level at 50th Street and Queens Blvd. trains are on the lower level. If all the locals are going to Sixth Ave there’s no way to get to 50th street from Columbus Circle or anyplace north.
How does running the D train local on Central Park West make the A train express faster?
Adiron, if you deinterline the service it is simpler so you need less padding.
Every time you try and run a very complex service it is heavily padded. The Swiss Lehman express we were talking about a couple of days ago is heavily padded east of Geneva, the Japanese Shinkansen is heavily padded (3 minutes per direction assuming 90 second stops in Omiya and Ueno by my calculations) south of Omiya because of the tightness of the terminal in Tokyo.
To be clear every 6 minutes per line I mean off peak. Peak you could probably run 12-15tph on each of the A and C if they were de-interlined from the rest of the network.
“How many hours will it take to trek this three or four seat ride?”
Right now the three seat ride is SI to Midtown or SI to Brooklyn (SIRR-Ferry-Subway). With Alon’s plan DT Brooklyn is two seat, other places in Brooklyn are three. If you extend the R, DT Brooklyn, Wall St, and Midtown are all one seat, and anywhere else in Brooklyn is two.
From the end of SI now it takes 70 min to Whitehall in the morning peak (36 min Tottenville to St George, 9 min txfr, 25 min ferry), during the rest of the day is 76 min with no express. To Times Sq takes 92min peak/98min off (txfr to the 1), to Atlantic Av 86min peak/92min off (txfr to the R).
If after Grasmere the train went to meet the R, going 35kph in the tunnel, then with existing R service (local stops) the same trips are 75min, 96min, 64min. The R, slow as it is, would be basically same time to Manhattan as the Ferry, perhaps faster mid day (and with better than the 15-30min frequency of the ferry). The extra walking distance from the pier may make the train a winner at all times.
But the slow NY subway covers 5.93 km from Broad Channel to Howard Beach at 50kph, and express tracks exist. If we assume 50kph in the tunnel and *existing* express speed 59th to Atlantic and Canal to Times Sq, our subway times have dropped to 67min Wall St, 85min Midtown, 56min Brooklyn – the subway is now 9-30min faster than the ferry.
But the N is only going 32kph express from 59th to Atlantic, despite 3km stop spacing – the SIRR averages 33kph with 1.17km spacing. The R only averages 15kph in southern Manhattan, but does 25kph south of 59th. If we assume all local services can average 25kph and express services 35kph (speeds achieved by the NYC Subway today) we can drop our times to 65min Wall St, 78min Midtown and 55min DT Brooklyn.
Get aggressive with shutting too-close stations, Alon’s de-interlining plan, fixing slow-zones, etc. and you can bring travel time to Midtown to around an hour. Remember that this is all from Tottenville, the farthest SIRR station and longest ride. From the middle of the island you could be looking at DT Brooklyn in ~30min, Midtown in 45min.
Closing too close stations will always be harder than de-interlining and having nighttime maintenance closures Sunday-Thursday.
I would be shocked if late night a bus can’t pretty much match subway speeds.
Right now, the 7 train is not running west of 74th Street; the Port Washington Branch is free to Flushing, but is only running every half hour. If the Port Washington Branch ran frequently then it would be able to substitute for the 7 more easily and then Métro-style intense closures (with the RER as a substitute) would be viable due to higher redundancy.
“Closing too close stations will always be harder than de-interlining”
Yes, but there are places with under-spaced stations where de-interlining isn’t a factor because those stretches are only carrying single services. Furthermore, closing the stations shouldn’t be as hard as you think. Rector St and City hall on the R had only 14,823 riders COMBINED pre-pandemic (in downtown Manhattan!). There were outer-borough stations doing better than that (86th St near the end of the R had 50% higher ridership than either of those two downtown stops). You could close both and never have an issue, all of the riders would switch to Whitehall/Cortlandt/Canal without problem. Same for 18th and the three 28th St stations just to the North – somehow the ACE and BDFM go fine with ~10 block spacing throughout Manhattan (as does the 456 between 14th and 23rd). Harlem 148th is just silly. Castle Hill and Westchester Sq are almost exactly a km apart (perfect!) and Zerega between them gets only 1/3 the ridership of either. I mean the closure list writes itself.
Also, de-interlining in some cases costs money for track work, while closing some stations is free (even net positive because you can eliminate some maintenance costs). For some station closures there should be cost to either move a station to make a connection (consolidating Hewes and Lorimer at Broadway, making Atlantic Av and Broadway Junction a single stop) or adding exits (such as exits at the east end of Borough Hall to close Hoyt).
if you deinterline the service it is simpler so you need less padding.
It’s a passenger railroad. The point is to move passengers not move MOAAARR trains. The C train sucks because…. they are pumping as many trains through 53rd and Lexington as they possibly can. And lack of demand.
If you run more trains you need to buy more trains. And staff them. And have someplace to store them overnight. Where they get cleaned and inspected. That all costs money.
Right now the three seat ride is SI to Midtown or SI to Brooklyn
Yes it is. I suspect the majority of people who live in Staten Island and work in Brooklyn, drive. Except for a few that can use the R train to get to downtown Brooklyn. Even though the R train sucks. If they have to go all the way to Atlantic/Barclays to hike to another train they will still drive. Or all the way to Coney Island. None of it is going to stop people in Brooklyn who work in Brooklyn or Manhattan from using the N train or the D train. Or the R train even though the R train sucks. Or the B or the Q.
Right now, the 7 train is not running west of 74th Street
There are origins and destinations NotFlushing or NotPennStation.
Flushing is the busiest station on the line, in Queens. Most of the riders are using stations NotFlushing. If I’m someplace west of Flushing I’m not going to take a subway train to Flushing, change to the LIRR, go to Manhattan and change to the subway again. I’m going to take the subway to 74th-Jackson Heights and use the E or the F. I’m going to assume Woodside is also free. If I wanted to go to or from 61st St that might be an option.
“The point is to move passengers not move MOAAARR trains.”
If you move more trains then you can move more passengers.
If your trains go faster then more people will want to ride them because people prefer spending less time commuting, and more passengers is a good thing because it is a passenger railroad.
“If you run more trains you need to buy more trains.”
Actually, if you want to run 8 tph and the trip is one hour end to end you need 16 trains, but if it is 45 min end to end you only need 12 trains. Which means fewer train cars, less staff, and less cleaning, which saves money.
“If they have to go all the way to Atlantic/Barclays to hike to another train they will still drive.”
People drive because there is no direct subway service. If there was many would ride the subway. Millions of people do so everyday from places like Forest Hills to Manhattan or Rockaway to DT Brooklyn because the service exists. They even hike to another train in places like Hearld Sq, Queensboro Plaza and . . . Atlantic Ave. Just like they ride the SIR and SI Ferry because the service exists.
If you extend the R, getting to Atlantic/Barclays isn’t a problem, it would be closer/faster/more convenient than getting to S Ferry, and cheaper than driving. Because people like things that are fast, inexpensive and convenient, people would want to take that train ride. Which is a good thing, because someone told me it is a passenger railroad and the whole point is to move people….
If you move more trains then you can move more passengers.
I’m sure you are having great fun in Sim City. Where are all these supposed passengers going to appear from and where are they going to? Filling in Jamaica Bay for more housing? Tearing down wide swaths of Brooklyn for more office space? How many car-free households in Manhattan and Brooklyn are staying home because the train runs every ten minutes instead of every six?
Actually, if you want to run 8 tph and the trip is one hour end to end you need 16 trains, but if it is 45 min end to end you only need 12 trains. Which means fewer train cars, less staff, and less cleaning, which saves money.
Sim City again. The A train already runs express everywhere it can run express – during the day. Fuck over every commute from the Grand Concourse it might save moments and moments. The locals still have to run. I can see it now, people sitting in their apartment in Washington Heights are in a funk because the A train takes moments and moments more than some railfan thinks it could.
They even hike to another train in places like Hearld Sq, Queensboro Plaza and . . . Atlantic Ave. Just like they ride the SIR and SI Ferry because the service exists.
They use the trains because it’s faster than driving. Assuming they have a car. The hike-est trip you are imagining in Staten Island Ferry. Something to with the trains being on dry land and boats in the water.
The hike-est place at Herald Square is PATH to the subway or vice versa. Partly because the station name is a lie, the station got moved south when they built the IND. It’s on 31st-ish. If you are starting out in Hoboken or Jersey City how fast the A train runs between Columbus Circle and 125th isn’t much of a concern. Because you want to take the D train to Yankee Stadium. Which gets reallly fucked over if the Concourse trains are all running local on Central Park West. IND/B,D,F or M to BMT/M,Q,R,W isn’t all that bad. Shit like that happens when it’s four islands and eight tracks.
Getting to the East Side of Manhattan from Brooklyn on the Fourth Ave Lines or the Brighton Lines sucks. Partly because when they were planning this extravaganza there was service over the Brooklyn Bridge where you could connect to the Lexington Ave lines, Third Ave El and Second Ave El. Tearing down the Second Ave. El would have made building the Second Ave Subway a lot easier. They should have never let the Third Ave El be torn down before the six tracks of the Second Ave subway was built. I digress. The R train sucks. It’s a cross platform transfer to the R train on the Fourth Ave lines and a cross platform transfer to the R at DeKalb on the Brighton line’s Q train. The 4/5 or even the 2/3 might be a better choice and those platforms are between the Brighton and Fourth Ave line at Atlantic/Barclays. Same-ish problem as Herald Square. There are five islands and ten tracks of subway. There are other options that clueless railfans from the hinterlands don’t examine.
Queensboro Plaza is a same direction cross platform transfer. Railfans from the hinterlands think people want to transfer between Queensboro Plaza and Queens Plaza. Not a lot of them do because there are other solutions to whatever problem they think that might solve.
None of that explains why someone in Staten Island that now has a 45 minute drive, with traffic, would take the bus to the train, change trains in Brooklyn and then take another bus to get to work. Unless they are already taking the ferry to get to the R train, even though the R train sucks, to get to Downtown Brooklyn. Where there is no place to park.
148th Street is where the storage yard for the 3 trains is. Since they are going there anyway might as well have a station. Has something to with extending the local platforms to ten cars and running the express trains instead of the locals to there. In ancient times the express trains went to Van Cortlandt Park/242nd and the locals terminated at 145th or 137th. According to Wikipedia the initial plan was to close 145th. Which still has short platforms.
“Where are all these supposed passengers going to appear from and where are they going to?”
They come from people living in the city and going to places in the city. Every study, everywhere, shows that increased frequency or increased speed increases ridership. People who drove when it was faster take the train when it’s faster. People take trips they wouldn’t (or longer trips instead of shorter ones) if service is better.
“Sim City again. The A train already runs express everywhere it can run express”
No, this is basic math, not a question of local or express. I’ll make it simple so you can understand. You want 8 trains per hour, leaving at 8:00, 8:08, 8:15, etc. If the trip takes just under one hour end to send, then 8 trains depart Station A (from 8:00 to 8:53) before the first train arrives from Station Z (the other end), where it turns around to be the 9:00 departure. 8 trains have left Station Z before the 8:00 departure from Station A arrives to become the other 9:00 departure. Thus you need 16 trains in operation for your service (before spares, etc.)
But if your route takes just under 45 min, then only six trains depart A (from 8:00 to 8:38) before the first train from Station Z arrives to become the 8:45 departure. With 6 trains heading each direction, you now need only 12 total trains (minus spares). Your service is 25% cheaper, and you get more ridership because more people will take the train when its faster.
“moments and moments”
No, it’s significant time. There are actual examples. The L is the only un-interlined subway line, and it runs 16.45km in 37 min, all stops, for an average 26.7kph at 0.71km stop spacing. The well interlined R covers 17.13 km in 46 min for an speed of 22.3kph with almost identical 0.75km spacing. If the L averaged 22kph it would take 44 min end to end, a penalty of 8min, if the R could do 26.7kph it would take 39 min over that stretch, a savings of 7 min. That’s 15-20% difference, which is a lot.
Similarly the single line SIR averages 32kph all stops with a spacing of 1.125km. The interlined N express averages about the same in Brooklyn despite a spacing of 2.94km, and just 28kph in Manhattan with a spacing of 1.42km.
“None of that explains why someone in Staten Island that now has a 45 minute drive, with traffic,”
“They use the trains because it’s faster than driving.”
“to get to Downtown Brooklyn. Where there is no place to park.”
You just gave the examples of why someone who drives from SI now would take the subway if it were available – its faster, no parking, etc.
Where is this 45 min drive with traffic from? Google maps gives a drive from Tottenville to Barclays as 45-110min at 6am on a weekday, and 55-120min leaving at 7am. From New Dorp the times are 26-60min at 6am, 35-90min at 7am. By 8am you are looking at 60 to 40min minimum. A conservative time for an R extension – current schedules, no express service – would be 64 min from Tottenville, 41 in from New Dorp. Assume a faster speed in the new tunnel and switch to the express tracks with current performance and those times become 56 and 33 min. Bring average speed up to international norms and you only get faster. Basically the train would beat driving for everything but no-traffic conditions, sometimes by an hour, leaving plenty of travel time for commuters to connect to another service if their destination isn’t DT Brooklyn.
@Onux, when I have run the numbers myself the net number of passengers you need per train to justify a stop is something like ~1.5/train.
Now that is for suburban service where fares are higher, but on the other hand the stop penalty is also higher which probably washes out.
If you are running 50k trains a year to a station per direction (I.e. 100k in both directions) and have 2 million annual entries and exits for a station then that is ~20
passengers gross per train. If you lost maybe 1/4 of those trips by shutting a station it would cost you ~5 passengers gross per train. That said you’d probably gain more than 3.5 passengers per train to other stations by speeding up journeys by 1 minute so logically the closure is justified.
Obviously the lost trips percentage will be higher in the suburbs than in the city centre, and the extra ridership from faster service will be smaller as there will be fewer passengers on the train so there’s a trade-off there for sure. You also have to make sure the other local stations can cope with the increased ridership – which is more likely to be an issue in the city centre.
That said I do have concerns that we aren’t doing a good job of picking battles. Adiron is bang on about that even if he is a bit over cautious. In terms of something that can actually be delivered in the real world being careful about which battles to pick is important.
Also worth noting that if we take losing 1/4 of ridership as a given and it increases journey times to places people want to go from that station by 5 minutes – well that points to a 4-5% ridership increase to all other destinations assuming you reduce journey times by a minute by not stopping. It also means that a 7 minute reduction in journey times on an urban metro line would increase passenger numbers by 30-35%.
@Matthew Hutton
When you close a station where one of the platform is less than 300m from the next platform, you lose exactly zero trips because everyone will just walk to the next station. There are many stations with wider spacing, in similar neighborhoods, that get more ridership than the combined total of the closely spaced stations. Certainly if you space stations extremely widely you begin to lose riders, but NYC has locations nowhere near this limit. There is no tradeoff in the examples I have given.
Every study, everywhere, shows that increased frequency or increased speed increases ridership.
Every study everywhere is in places where people own cars. Where there there is plenty of free parking. Increasing rush hour frequency on the A train from every 8 minutes to every 6 minutes isn’t going to change things much. And it’s got enough capacity until hipsters discover Woodhaven. And the C train sucks but the C train sucks because the Second Avenue subway hasn’t been built and they are shoving as many E trains as they possibly can through 53rd and Lexington.
No, this is basic math, not a question of local or express.
It’s Sim City. Increase the speed of the L/Carnarsie trains they careen off the tracks in the tight curves and the line is closed until they remove the bodies and clear the wreck. The curves are tight. They can’t run 75 foot cars on the J,L,M, Z lines because they don’t fit. Curves are even tighter on the numbered lines which is why they have 51 foot cars.
The L/Carnarsie line and the 7/Flushing line have CBTC whiz bangery. The solution is to go back to 1900 and explain to them that the tight curves are a really bad idea in 100 years. It’s a pity about the narrow loading gauge but silllly sillly them they ran trains from the new tracks to the old tracks of the elevated lines. Silly them.
Google maps gives a drive from Tottenville to Barclays
There ya go thinking everybody works on Fourth Ave. again. Or lives at a SIR station. There are a lot more jobs at Atlantic and Flatbush then when it was open air above railroad yards. There aren’t a lot of them that make a commute from Staten Island worthwhile. People who are driving from Staten Island to work in … Brighton Beach…. aren’t stupid enough to drive through Atlantic and Flatbush.
….speeding up journeys by 1 minute…
It’s 30 seconds-ish. The Flushing Line local takes 4 minutes longer to make the trip between Hudson Yards and Flushing. If I counted correctly it makes 9 more stops. If it was 8 it would be 30 seconds exactly….. the silly silly MTA lets the train stop to let passengers on and off. Imagine how fast the trip could be if it didn’t stop at all….. They would still have to slow down for the really tight curves on the line. Those wacky people finagling service to the Second Ave El, over the new bridge, and to Grand Central and eventually Times Square, through the tunnel. Silly them. … then again if there are no passengers the cars could be shorter and narrower and go through the curves faster. Hmmm.
@Onux, look shutting some low traffic stations is probably worthwhile, however there will almost certainly be opposition and some rides will be lost. 300m is still a 3 minute walk even at New York pace.
Of course overall ridership will probably increase as you see on other lines that don’t have those intermediate stops – otherwise it wouldn’t be worth considering at all.
@adiron, 13tph at peak on the E train into the World Trade Center stop between 8am and 9am really isn’t that impressive.
The London central line has 35tph at peak, the two branches of the Northern Line each have ~24tph at peak. They are both at least double the service frequency the E train manages
The E train shares track with the F train in Queens. And when the schedules are usual with the M train through the 53rd Street tunnel. There’s something going on where they want more trains to stations served, east of Forest Hills, by the F instead of the E.
They are sending F trains through the 53rd Street tunnel instead of 63rd Street – through early 2024 according to the very brief service change page. That explains that there is a shuttle for Queensbridge/21st street and Roosevelt Island to 63rd and Lexington. And terminating the M train, from Brooklyn at 57th in Manhattan. Instead of sending it to 53rd Street and Lexington and the tunnel to provide more service on the local tracks of Queens Blvd. which makes sucky R train service suckier if you use a Queens Blvd local station west of Forest Hills.
If I counted correctly there are 16 F trains departing Queens Plaza Manhattan/Westbound between 7:30 and 8:30 and 13 E trains. 29 an hour is quite respectable.
If I remember correctly it was 18 E trains an hour when schedules were usual. And M trains. M train sucks almost as bad as the C or the R. But that sucks less than having to change at Essex/Delancey. Or sucks less than waiting for an R train and changing to the F.
“Every study everywhere is in places where people own cars.”
People own cars in NYC. Especially in the outer boroughs where the effects of speeding up service would be felt the most. And especially in Staten Island.
“Increasing rush hour frequency”
I haven’t spoken specifically of increased rush hour frequency, but of increased speed.
“Increase the speed of the L/Carnarsie trains they careen off the tracks in the tight curves”
I certainly hope you are not this foolish, but you might be. First, trains in NYC are running slower than the tracks limits, and no one has ever suggested to run them beyond the track limits. Second, I have been speaking of speed ups by closing too-close stations or removing schedule pad by de-interlining, neither of which require trains to go faster than their max speed, but increase average speed by reducing time spent stopped or accel/decelerating. Third, I actually gave the L as an example of a local train with speed nearly as fast as some express lines despite being local, not as a line that needed to go faster.
“It’s a pity about the narrow loading gauge”
The L train uses B-division loading gauge, which isn’t narrow. A-division (the numbered lines) uses the narrower trains.
“There ya go thinking everybody works on Fourth Ave. again. Or lives at a SIR station. ”
I have never argued that the subway would serve every commuter to/from Brooklyn, but you seem to think that no one works along a subway line or lives near an SIR station, even though all of the evidence says otherwise. The Census provides a little tool called ‘On The Map’ and with it we can see that among all workers who live in SI, the highest density of jobs in Brooklyn is in DT, along 4th Ave, Borough Park and Bensonhurst. In other words, places directly served by the R or accessible with a single connection to the N or D.
“There aren’t a lot of them that make a commute from Staten Island worthwhile.”
And yet there are 40k people a day making that trip, plus another 17k going in the other direction, which means that commuters to/from SI/Brook is almost as many as to/from SI/Manhattan. Those people would benefit from a transit connection. You know, the pesky people who want to get on and off the train you are always mentioning.
And especially in Staten Island.
How does speeding up the A train make intra-island commutes faster? Or the R train or the J train or…… They let people who want to commute from Annadale to Stapleton use the train now. Someone who wants to commute from Annadale to Staten Island College will drive because there is plenty of parking and using the bus involves transferring to a campus shuttle bus.
removing schedule pad by de-interlining,
Railfans think it exists. I want to know how many moments it saves.
Apparently they are managing interlined E and F trains across 53rd Street at just over every two minutes, at the moment. And managing to interline them with M trains and C trains. The C train sucks. So does the M train. That’s from a metro New York perspective. Every ten minutes at rush hour, would be extraordinarily frequent most places. I don’t know how much upgrading they’ve done on Queens Blvd., Sixth Ave and Eighth Ave. Are they doing this with 1930’s relay logic? Hmmm.
Assuming they continue to have local and express service in Brooklyn and Queens the merging and diverging on east side of the East River tunnel is unavoidable. Until someone builds a tunnel to the Second Ave. Subway. The A train has to merge/diverge with the D train on the six or seven tracks between 145th – where they stop and 125th – where they stop – and again south of Columbus Circle – where they stop. They wouldn’t have to merge and diverge at Canal Street – where they stop. How how many dozens of moments does it save? Hmm.
……Save moments and moments to make railfans go all warm and fuzzy and fuck over all the trips to and from the Bronx. Sounds great.
Roughly three quarters of households in Manhattan don’t have cars. Where are all these people you are expecting to appear – in Inwood and Washington Heights … Harlem and the Upper West Side… going to come from? And why do they want to go to Howard Beach? Where they might have to merge or diverge with a Lefferts Blvd train. Egads!
L as an example of a local train…..
That has pesky pesky interlining because they turn trains around east of Mrytle/Wycoff during rush hour. Merge a short turn L with a end of the line L isn’t all that much different than merging an A and C at Canal Street, is it? Or at Hoyt-Schermerhorn.
but you seem to think that no one works along a subway line or lives near an SIR station
Somebody lives along the SIR because they use it to get to the ferry and high paying jobs in Manhattan. And lots and lots of people use the bus to get to the ferry to get to high paying jobs in Manhattan.
the highest density of jobs in Brooklyn is in DT
Yes it is. Because that’s where the tall office buildings are. With high paying jobs that are worth a long commute. I’d be willing to hazard a guess there are even people taking the ferry to Manhattan and using the R train to get to Downtown Brooklyn, even though the R train sucks. It’s also a major shopping district filled with low wage retail jobs – that contribute to the job density – that aren’t worth a commute from Staten Island because there are plenty of low wage retail jobs in Staten Island.
… Borough Park and Bensonhurst. ….
Then what was the utility of finding the drive time to Barclays Center/Atlantic Avenue? The thought of getting on the Gowanus Expressway makes me twitch and there is no place to park. …Barclays Center is not in Downtown. It’s downtown relative to Ditmas Park or Coney Island but it’s not in Downtown.
Send the InterBoro eXpress to Staten Island they can change to the N train at 8th Ave or the D train at New Utrecht. Or the F train at Ave I or the Q train at Ave H and just walk to their fabulous job at Brooklyn College. Or study there. Or change to the 2/5. And someday change to the C train at Utica. Or perhaps some sort of management job at Target. Or something at Pepsi at Rockaway Avenue. Or get to East New York and change to LIRR because they have an overwhelming desire to shop at Green Acres Mall.
People do definitely reshuffle where they live based on transit. I am sure the villages in the Thames Valley with train stations and good trains into London have more than their fair share of London commuters.
“People do definitely reshuffle where they live based on transit.”
Yes, I acknowledged this. They also reshuffle based on other factors. This can’t be avoided, the difference is that it shouldn’t be a goal or factor in infrastructure/service planning the way Alon presented it. The ideal goal is to give everyone equal access to everywhere. More realistically, transit should aim first to serve existing travel patterns, which already account for some of the other factors that cause distribution. Although I don’t agree with Strong Towns a lot, they are definitely right on the notion of Development Oriented Transit (build transit in places that already have demand) instead of Transit Oriented Development (build transit where it is convenient, then up zone around the stations to try and build demand).* Right now the demand for SI commuting is to Manhattan and Brooklyn, so any transit connection should serve both.
Note also that reshuffling works both ways. Right now SIRR goes to the ferry, and the ferry is free to Manhattan. There is no rail to Brooklyn. Giving SI a direct subway ride to Brooklyn could cause SI job choice to redistribute to Brooklyn, increasing its job share vs Manhattan. That is a desirable form of reshuffling as a result of increasing people’s choices, not a punitive form of we-built-a-train-only-to-Manhattan-so-over-time-people-will-change-jobs-to-there.
*Note I am in no way suggesting it is bad to upzone and densify around transit lines. Maximum use should always be made of infrastructure by placing the most practical number of people and jobs within walking distance of stations. But placing a station in a walkable active urban area and zoning it for mid rise (Development Oriented Transit) is far different (and better) than dropping a station wherever and zoning it high rise hoping to build ridership from nothing (Transit Oriented Development.)
The R train sucks. The R train takes as long to get to Whitehall Street as the ferry does.
Alon has shown many times how the NY Subway is slower than it needs to be and could be sped up. There are four tracks all the way to 36th, you can switch the R to the express and have the N run local with a small amount of track switch work. Don’t say this hurts the N, the F and Q already run local all the way to Coney Is. through Brooklyn; an R extension would clearly be the longer route and deserve express service. You could also have the N and R share express tracks while making the W permanent to cover local service to 36th. You could easily make the R faster than the ferry, particularly if you ran it as a new cross town line accessing people mid island who can’t take SIRR to the ferry now. Any (or all) of the track modifications necessary for this would be a fraction of the billions to build a tunnel across the whole of NY harbor in Alon’s plan, even using his low cost “Nordic model” pricing.
But even if the ferry is the same speed, that only helps if your job is walking distance from South Ferry. For everyone working north of that, just staying on an R will be much faster than walking from the ferry docks to Whitehall St to get on the R (plus connecting from the R to the 1 is faster than the ferry to the 1 – shorter walk, already underground; plus connecting from the R to the 4/5 at Bowling Green is shorter too).
*their
There are four tracks of subway allllll the way out to Coney Island via the Sea Beach/N train route. They don’t use them but it’s four tracks wide. The Fourth Avenue express tracks go to the bridge, not the tunnel. There is that pesky pesky problem of current D and N train passengers already using the express tracks too.
I know I have criticised various transit projects a lot for not providing community benefits. However the cases where I have there a no benefits at all to a wide area.
If you were to de-interline the New York subway as Alon has suggested on the one hand some people would lose direct service, however everyone would gain faster, more reliable and more frequent service to the remaining destinations.
“The Fourth Avenue express tracks go to the bridge, not the tunnel.”
And at the other end the express tracks go to Coney not the narrows. As I already noted track realignment would be required as part of building the tunnel to SI.
“There is that pesky pesky problem of current D and N train passengers already using the express tracks too.”
Those passengers can continue to ride, just some of them on the local tracks. Or they can continue to use the express tracks, right now MTA is only running 7-9tph on the D and N at peak, which means you could split 24 tph capacity 8 tph each to D/N/R. Or upgrade signals to get 27-30tph and give each branch 9-10 trains.
@Onux, so literally no losers at all. Good.
The trains run local overnight. Any of them can get to the local or express tracks. They just choose not to do that during the day. How do they interact with the Brighton Line trains? At the Manhattan end of Broadway line the express tracks go to Second Ave and the local tracks go to Queens. Where do the wundertrains go to in Manhattan? Send as many as possible to Second Ave that screws sending Second Ave trains south of 63rd Street, someday. Send more of them to Astoria or Queens Blvd? Hmmm. They manage to sneak a few W trains in. Hmm. How does that interact with the M. And the E. Hmm.
… Send the InterBoro eXpress to Staten Island? they could change to the N at 8th ave, the D at New Utrecht, the F at Ave I, the Q at Ave H, the 2 and 5 at Nostrand – with a bit of a hike, someday the C at Utica, the A, C, J, L and Z at Broadway Junction and the M at Metropolitan. I’m sure there are dozens if not scores of them chomping at the bit to be a cashier at Dollar General in Brooklyn instead of one in Staten Island.
“The R train takes as long to get to Whitehall Street as the ferry does.”
See above on how this would not be the case, even with today’s speeds.
Just imagine that the railway tunnel between Bay Ridge – 95 Street (R) line station to Staten Island was built and in operation, with trains running thru them, what a difference it would have made.
There is something wrong with the tables. Bookkeeper in me began to toy with the numbers. Roughly half the population works. Staten Island is too low. So I looked at the Census Bureau 2020 tables. Staten Islanders working in Staten Island is seriously off.
https://www.census.gov/topics/employment/commuting/guidance/flows.html
So I trudged through for same county numbers.
The Census Bureau number for people who live in New York County and work in New York County is 748,979
The above table has the Manhattan to Manhattan at 570,321.
The Census Bureau has 603,521 for Kings County to Kings County and the table has 429,234 for Brooklyn to Brooklyn. Census Bureau for Queens to Queens is 488,085 and the table is 308,903. Census Bureau for Bronx to Bronx is 253,726 and the table is 135,288. Census Bureau for Richmond to Richmond is 108,928 and the table for Staten Island to Staten Island is 56,953.
Census Bureau says Richmond County to Kings County is 31,999 and the table says Staten Island to Brooklyn is 40,994. Richmond County to New York County is 40,994 and the table has 59,778. Richmond County to Queens county is 5,289 and the table has 13,971. Richmond to Nassau is 1,167, Richmond to Suffolk is 367 and the table says “Long Island” is 9,877. I’m not going to add up “Metro North” or “New Jersey”.
Something is seriously wrong with the tables.
@Adirondacker
There are a few possibilities here:
1) Alon stated he was using 2019 figures, the Census link you gave is to the ACS 5 year period 2016-2020. Its not clear if this is a 5 year average, or if the Covid craziness of 2020 is throwing off numbers.
2) The census has figures for all jobs, primary jobs, private jobs, private primary jobs, etc. It’s not stated what the ACS 5-year figure you linked to is measuring. Alon’s figures are accurate for what is provided by the Census Bureau ‘On The Map’ tool if you request 2019 data for all jobs.
Ultimately this is a Census Bureau issue, since both the ‘On the Map’ Alon used and the ACS file you linked to come from the Census; its not clear why their figures do not align, and if it is a legitimate difference (one is measuring all jobs and the other measuring primary jobs) or a data problem on their end (perhaps one department is making statistical estimates based off of the 10-year count and another department is measuring proxy data to produce figures each year?)
Good find though.
The numbers in the table are too LOW. I added up the five borough total for Staten Island. The table is still too LOW.
The table doesn’t reflect actual workplace, as in “OnTheMap tells me 8,000 work in Downtown Brooklyn, of whom 4,000 work in the block to which city workers are assigned to regardless of where they actually work.” The worksheet actually does because there are impossible commutes on it. it’s going to capture that even though the Board of Education headquarters is in Manhattan the Staten Islander works in P.S.Something in Brooklyn. Or that All County Building Supply & Maintenance is in Queens even though the building being maintained is in Brooklyn.
*they
OnTheMap thinks there are 813,788 employed residents in Manhattan (vs. 874,997 for the ACS); 96% of them are covered in the table, and another 1% is Rockland, Orange, Ulster, and Sullivan Counties. Then another 1% is commutes to Pennsylvania (mostly Philadelphia or the Poconos), Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. These aren’t impossible commutes, but some are rare, probably weekly rather than daily travel.
If you travel to Manhattan one day a week that implies you spend the other six days of the week somewhere else. Assuming it’s three or four work days at the same place, your primary work place is Not-Manhattan. Even if you travel about – sales rep for instance – it’s still Not-Manhattan.
Apparently the ACS is a five year average. If 2019 was a peak employment year your numbers should be HIGHER. Not lower.
When I check the ACS for how many people live in New York County and work in New York County, I’m looking at cell I69241 – and see that it’s 748,979. Your table seems to think it’s 570,321 Manhattan residents working in Manhattan. Something is off by 200,000-ish workers. The ACS is 30 percent too high or On The Map is 25 percent too low. Without using a calculator the Staten Island-Staten Island numbers are roughly that the ACS is 200 percent too high or your table is 50 percent too low.
I noticed this because roughly half the population works. Without breaking out a calculator the numbers for Staten Island looked too low. They are. Which made me go find a current ACS. You know the ACS exists and should have noticed that intra- Staten-Island numbers are wildly off. Or Manhattan-Manhattan. Your numbers are too low in places or too high in others. I don’t want to make a living at this and don’t know how you screwed up using On The Map. Sumptin is seriously wrong and I suspect it’s not the ACS.
The ACS is a Census product. On The Map is a Census product. There is no reason to think that ACS is more right than the other. Once again though, you do bring up a very good point of the two data sets not matching.
Alon, I believe the “impossible” commutes Adirondacker referred to are the ~1000 people who live in Manhattan but work in California, the ~500 in Flordia, etc. These show in both the ACS file and On The Map. In the ACS file some of the long distance commute numbers are lower than the margin of error column, which means they may be ghost commutes (ACS is a survey of a few million homes per year from which wider number are determined statistically, its not a direct count). But others are higher than the margin of error. I suspect they are people who live and work in Manhattan but who “work” in Los Angeles (or Minneapolis, etc.) by Census Bureau standards because they are employed by an LA company but work fully remotely.
Roughly half the population works. The numbers for Staten Island are too LOW.
I know off the top of my head that the population of Staten Island is half a million. That the numbers are too LOW is what made me go find the ACS. In nice round numbers the ACS and the chart disagree over how many Staten Islanders work in Staten Island by 50,000. 50,000 is one tenth of the island’s population or twenty percent of the working population. Something is very very wrong. With the chart not the ACS.
States get very very upset if employees are reported in the “wrong” state. From either state’s perspective. The return address on my paystub and my W-2 may be in a different state but I’m paying taxes where I actually work. It can get blindingly complicated.
https://dced.pa.gov/local-government/local-income-tax-information/
It’s hell for employers like home renovation contractors. And their payroll processor.
The ACS asks actual people responding to the survey where they worked last WEEK. It’s very reasonable to imagine that 1000 Manhattanites worked in California last WEEK. Then came home.
There are other places the ACS and LEHD disagree with each other. Neither of us is attempting to make a living publishing charts. For now I’m going with the ACS being more accurate. Because however whoever extracted data for Staten Island is seriously wrong. Which makes the rest of it suspect.