Quick Note: Flushing’s Growth and Through-Running
One of the dirty secrets of my (and ETA’s) New York commuter rail through-running proposal is that it barely connects Long Island to New Jersey. The later lines with the longer greenfield tunnels do, but the base proposal only through-runs the Port Washington Branch to New Jersey, and with some work it can also through-run some branches to the Hudson Line via Penn Station.
Credit: Kara Fischer, ETA; Flushing is not depicted on the map and is on the Port Washington Branch
It’s long been a criticism of the plan in comments and on social media that it doesn’t do anything to connect Newark with Jamaica. I’d like to address this briefly, since changes in work geography over the last decade have made the Port Washington connection more valuable relative to the Jamaica connection.
Job counts
For the main secondary centers that are or could be on this system, here are the job counts within 1 km of the station, in the business cycle peak years of 2007 and 2019:
| Station | 2007 jobs | 2019 jobs |
| Newark Penn Station | 57,944 | 44,171 |
| Sunnyside – Queens Boulevard | 40,092 | 63,096 |
| Flushing | 17,026 | 42,961 |
| Jamaica | 11,880 | 20,130 |
| Stamford | 25,189 | 25,141 |
Source: OnTheMap
Jamaica and Flushing both grew rapidly in the 2007-19 business cycle, but Flushing both started bigger and grew faster, to the point of approaching the job count near Newark Penn Station.
Long Island City has seen booming development, as the only near-center neighborhood in New York with significant construction rates; the number of residents has grown even faster, from 4,502 to 12,183 employed residents over the same period, but with a jobs-to-employed-residents ratio higher than 5, it is a business district first. Plans for an infill station at Queens Boulevard are on the MTA’s wishlist in the 20 Year Needs Assessment, at typically extreme MTA costs; this is separate from Sunnyside Junction, somewhat to the east, which has less development but could be a cross-platform transfer with East Side Access-bound trains.
Non-work trips
Flushing is a booming ethnic center for Chinese-New Yorkers. Jobs there serve the community wherever its members live, and so do non-work destinations, including cultural centers and well-regarded Chinese restaurants. This generates not only work trips, but also consumption trips. Without fast transit to Flushing, it’s a special occasion to go there for food, especially if one does not live on the subway; with fast transit, Flushing restaurants are capable of outcompeting more local alternatives for people arriving from inner New Jersey, and people from suburbs farther out may choose to take a more frequent LIRR than to drive.
Jamaica is not a regional center of much. There is one big trip generator there, other than the growing job center: JFK, via the AirTrain. Airport connections are valuable, but also overrated. The unlinked (likely total) ridership on the AirTrain in the first three months of 2024 was 1.924 million, or 21,143/day (not weekday), slightly higher than in 2019. This is not a high modal split, but airport arrivals are disproportionately going to Manhattan already, and the frequency between Penn Station and Jamaica is high enough that through-running and other modernization elements would only mildly increase this figure.
I can’t quite compare the two figures, since leisure trips, especially routine ones like going out to restaurants, are hard to measure. But Jamaica’s airport trips coming from better commuter rail are just not going to be significant in volume by the standards of the work trips of Long Island City or Flushing.
Through-running schemas
The reason I’ve advocated for through-running from New Jersey to the Port Washington Branch and no other LIRR line is operational. There is only enough capacity for at most 12 trains per hour, because the trains have to share tracks with Penn Station Access local trains to Stamford and with intercity trains. Connecting to an LIRR branch serving Jamaica would create complex branching, with the same line in Queens reverse-branching to different destinations, reducing reliability. It was hard enough to timetable the reverse-branched New Haven Line in our Northeast Corridor project. The Port Washington Branch, running completely separately from the rest of the system, sharing tracks only on the approach to and within Penn Station, is an ideal candidate.
It is a happy coincidence that the through-running schema for the LIRR that is easiest to implement also happens to serve the larger Queens business center between the two traditional ones. It would also be a great opportunity to build infill in Long Island City, which has emerged in the last few decades to be a much larger center. Another happy coincidence is that, while New Haven Line timetabling has been difficult, there is room in the schedule for two infill stations in Queens without upsetting the delicate track sharing between Penn Station Access local commuter trains and intercity trains within the East River Tunnels to Penn Station. Anything involving mainline rail through legacy cities is necessarily going to have to rely on tricks, waivers, and happy coincidences like this to cobble together a good system out of a region that had no reason to be built in 1900-30 around the commuter rail technology of the 1970s-2020s.
Pedestrian Observations 
Shame London doesn’t start at Tottenham Court Road for its stop spacing 😝
Great post.
RE: JFK, while yes Penn-Jamaica service is very frequent, a) it’s never reliably a cross platform transfer from any given train, b) you pay a second fare ($5-7) and then a third fare for the AirTrain. So if there were fare reform in conjunction with through running modal split might be higher. Though from NJ the issue is many trains are already stopping EWR.
Elizabeth Line can be seen as threading two lines through a single tunnel. How does that model not work for threading a second NJ Transit with an LIRR line? The sharing of track is already happening between LIRR and Amtrak, so the only difference would be to ensure the train coming from LIRR arrives on a Penn Station track with access to Hudson tunnels.
If I have to fly out of JFK because I’m taking the Wedneday flight of the twice weekly to Nowhereistan I’m not going to take the bus to Penn Station Newark with my three bags and then two trains. I’m going to call a limo. If I’m going to Chicago why in my right mind would I use JFK when there are non stops from EWR. Or any of the many many places with non stop service from EWR. Even the places that have me changing at a hub somewhere. Yokel railfans from the hinterlands think getting to JFK is important. It isn’t for the vast majority of trips.
And if I’m at one of the stations with service to the New Haven line, those trains don’t go through Jamaica. Or one of the stations that don’t run through. It’s a very small percentage of people who will have a one seat ride.
If you run say 18tph through the centre then you can run 6tph towards New Haven, 6tph towards Port Washington and 6tph to Jamaica and then onto one other place. Then you can run 9tph towards two destinations to the east.
I’ve often scratched my head at how regional and intercity trains mix in your New York regional rail plans, particularly north of Penn. So Line 1 (the red lines) has 12 tph to Port Washington, 6 tph to Stamford via Penn Station Access and room for 6 tph intercity to Boston? Is that enough capacity? And how do they co-run with the regionals on the New Rochelle branch (particularly in Queens, where there is only space for two tracks, and where you have a couple of infill stations)?
Why do you have a reverse branch there anyway? Wouldn’t it make things simpler to terminate the PSA trains at New Rochelle, run all the Stamford locals to Grand Central and switch the Yonkers branch to the Blue line to Southeast (which surely doesn’t require all 24 tph to itself)?
Many many railfans lose sight of the reason passenger trains run. Passengers. It is possible to run 12 trains per hour to Great Neck on the Port Washington Branch. with lots and lots and lots of empty seats.
The MTA wants to run trains from the New Haven line to Penn Station so that those passengers are not on trains to Grand Central. If they aren’t on a train to Grand Central that frees up space for someone else to get on the train to Grand Central. Ideally enough space so they can squeeze in an extra Harlem line train or two. It also frees up space on the subway’s shuttle to Times Square and the rest of the subway.
fare reform and frequency means that within queens the PW would take a tremendous load off the 7 which is always crowded and slow. You can short turn at like great neck.
the 7 train goes lots of other places besides Times Square. Taking Port Washington train to Penn Station isn’t very effective at those trips. One of the other places it goes is Grand Central. Going to Penn Station isn’t very effective at that either. … Railfans imagine all sorts of things.
Well yeah, I’ve also wondered why Port Washington needs 12tph, when 6tph would probably be good enough for capacity and frequency purposes. It would then make slotting in intercity trains a more manageable enterprise.
The scheduling is pretty similar either way. The difficulty is getting the intercities and PSA locals to match. If PW runs 12 tph, then PW runs every five minutes and through-runs to the NEC/NJC locals while the PSA locals through-run to the NEC commuter expresses; if PW runs 6 tph, then it is offset five minutes from the PSA locals and then both through-run to the NEC/NJC locals (it doesn’t matter which goes to which) while the NEC commuter expresses terminate at Penn.
If PW runs every five minutes, then the PSA locals and the intercities have depart Penn at 5min intervals from each other. Which makes things very tight given that the PSA trains will be stopping at Sunnyside and Astoria before the track quadding begins (if I understand what you’re proposing correctly). Which I guess is mathematically possible without slowing down the intercities but seems like it could easily fall apart. It also means intercities are limited to 6tph, which seems fine now but isn’t really future-proofed.
If PW runs 6tph, then intercities and PSAs can run at 7.5min intervals from each other, which is a more comfortable buffer. And it means that in the future intercities can run up to 12tph (although this makes things tighter again).
Because railfans mistake Auburndale for Shinjuku and Douglaston for Gangnam?
Just stop. This is just too much hilarity.
LIRR passengers will be able to change between Penn Station trains and Grand Central trains in Jamaica or Woodside. Only especially frothy railfan foamer geeks will want to take a New Haven Line Penn Station train to Queens to change trains. Normal people, even not so normal people, will get a faster one seat ride by getting on a train that goes to Grand Central. That has higher frequency.
And the only information I can find about new station in Queens is the one at Queens Blvd. Which isn’t accessible to East Side Access trains. You have a cite for Sunnyside Junction that isn’t a fantasy thread on subchat?
Sunnyside Junction has never been officially planned that I know of, no, unlike Sunnyside-Queens Boulevard. Only plans I’m aware of for the Yards is decking with TOD, which runs into the problems of “too expensive” and also “what T.”
For the reason you mention – Main Line passengers can change at Woodside even if it’s not cross-platform, and PSA passengers from the Bronx have decent (if slow) subway service to Grand Central – I don’t consider it a must-build as part of the core plan; wiring NJT lines that get into Penn Station, even ones that don’t touch, the NEC, is in my view a higher priority. However, many things are both constructible and useful without being must-builds; I don’t even think Gateway is a must-build, just something that given better operations is worth $16 billion.
I see some clueless railfan is rambling on about today’s unused space. Also the same one that wants to run trains all over the place every six minutes. That would need bigger fleets. It would be nice if railfans could keep more than one shiny object in mind.
Would both Sunnyside Junction and Sunnyside-Queens Blvd. be stations on the PSA line? We are still waiting for the first one-seat ride between Queens and the Bronx!
Sunnyside-Queens Boulevard is on PSA; Sunnyside Junction is on both PSA and the LIRR to ESA.
It’s been so long I’ve forgotten, and also because it appears slightly different names have evolved over time – please clarify the difference between the two Sunnyside stations you are discussing – which of these is the one that was environmentally cleared and programmed under East Side Access, and then eventually chucked to reduce the overall ESA project cost?
Queens Boulevard.
Your plan is problematic for racial equity, in that it prioritizes the Asian community in Flushing over the Black community in Jamaica that has historically experienced redlining and lack of transportation investment.
From the perspective of residents in those communities, it doesn’t matter very much – both areas get good service to Manhattan. Flushing gets through-service to New Jersey and Jamaica does not, but Jersey is not a significant destination for either. The prioritization of Flushing over Jamaica is that there are more jobs in Flushing, so it could become a bigger destination for people from New Jersey, for work and non-work trips.
It’s true that the plan doesn’t do the same for black regional centers – but that’s because the main ones in the region are Harlem and Black Brooklyn. Harlem can’t get through-service if the infrastructure plan is “Gateway plus things that are of a smaller order of magnitude,” which is what goes into the phase 2 map. The phase 3 one explicitly includes a Penn-Grand Central connection, which improves access to Harlem from New Jersey; this is the first major (multi-billion) project we’re proposing beyond what’s already funded. Black Brooklyn, from Downtown Brooklyn east, does get better train service in the sense of actually usable (frequent, fare-integrated) commuter rail service between Atlantic/Flatbush and Jamaica via Nostrand Avenue and East New York, likely with additional infill stops; through-service to the west requires even bigger investment than the Penn-Grand Central tunnel, and has long been on every crayon map I’ve posted, it’s just (again) not funded whereas Gateway is.
If someone has his or hers heart set on working in chain store there are chain stores in New Jersey.
For the umpteeth time if you send trains from New Jersey to Grand Central they can’t go to Long Island. I don’t know why you have problem with basic arithmetic.
The jobs in Flushing are way more specialized than chain stores at this point. Of the 42,961 workers in 2019, 12.5% were in retail; 48.6% were in health care and social assistance, and the origins look like Chinese New York with a notable cluster of reverse-commuters from Chinatown.
For comparison, let’s do the same analysis on Northern and 94th, so chosen so that the 1 km radius miss LGA as well as the Central Queens job centers. There, the number of jobs within the same radius is not 42,961. It’s 9,169, and there’s no obvious pattern to where the commuters come from.
And to go back to the equity analysis, the profile of the 20,130 Jamaica workers is not especially black – only 32.8% are black, while 46.7% are white (Flushing: 67.8% Asian, 21.1% white); the average income is much higher than that of Flushing-bound workers; and the profile of where they live does not look like Black Brooklyn is especially represented. The industry profile is 8% retail, 32% health and social assistance, 22% public administration.
Alon, I appreciate how thoroughly researched this post is. As a supporters through-running, I’m really impressed with the amount of research and effort that went into planning it, and I don’t think I can comment on it at anywhere near the same footing. But, I really thing you’re undserselling just how much Jamaica and Southeast Queens are massive hubs for African-American life, and how connections between, say, Southeast Queens Far Rockaway lines, Jamaica, and Hempsted could really change a lot of people’s lives.
My family moved from Harlem, still a historically black center in it’s own right for sure, to Laurelton. They were joined by many back people who did the same. I feel like Locust Grove and St. Albans have quite a few black people living there. Black folks living in East New York and the Ozone Park are could travel to Jamaica for a train to Jersey. A family friend frequently goes to The Oranges to meet a significant other; I’m sure there’s more cases of people wanting to go to Newark or Plainfield than the raw numbers immediately show. I’m not saying that there’s an airtight case for throughrunning, or thar a LI connection should be prioritized over a Flushing one, but I hope I can provide a bit of a perspective of why this feels important. Thanks for advocating for better transit in NYC.
People in New Jersey don’t forage in the parks for medicinal roots and berries. There are health care jobs in New Jersey. And if you are in the mood for a commute, there is a shorter commute to very likely better paying job in Manhattan.
The train that stops in Laurelton isn’t going to go to Plainfield and East Orange. It’s going to be one or the other. It might be the one that passes through Paterson. This all seems like a wonderful thing until you back the railfans into a corner and get details like which branch is the train that stops in Laurelton going to serve. In nice round numbers 90 percent of the people crossing Manhattan are going to be changing trains anyway. If you ignore that the branches have local and express service. Considering local and express service makes it even less likely the station you are at is connected to a branch on the other side of Manhattan.
It’s a pain in the ass to get to Jamaica from East New York or Ozone Park. It’s going in the wrong direction if you want to go to New Jersey. It’s a pain in the ass to get to Manhattan too but at least that’s going in the right direction.
Morgan Hunlen, I’d just like to take a moment to say that it was so gosh-darned pleasant to read your comment, acknowledging that somebody had done the work, contributing your personal observations without implying universal applicability or impugning ignorance or malice, and so on. I personally have less than zero (less than an informed zero) to say about anything NJ ⇆ Long Island so I say exactly zero … nonetheless I feel for a moment I’m living in a better world, one in which people write reasonable and informed blog comments about Flushing NY (wherever that is!) vs Jamaica NY.
Thanks!
you probably get plenty of Chinese food out there in SF Richard but flushing really is a spectacular location for it. Would really recommend it if you ever visit NYC and have a free evening. Easy access on both the 7 and LIRR.
In SF, Chinese recommendations need to go through Adrianna Tan, on Fedi; she will tell you of hidden gems, mostly in the East and South Bay, where the owners don’t even speak Mandarin, let alone English.
Just because Newark an Flushing have a fair number of jobs near their stations does not mean there’s a demand for through service between them.
You can get a better idea of such demand by using the LEHD census data which gives employee home (origin) and work (destination) data at census block precision.
The problem with using O&D data is that O&D data tells you how people commute given current constraints. Jersey-to-Flushing commute volumes are very low, because by subway it’s a minimum three-seat ride with difficult transfer from PATH to NYCT, and by commuter rail it’s still a three-seat ride with two difficult transfers at Penn and Times Square, and in both cases the 7 is so slow getting from Manhattan to Queensboro Plaza that if you’re at QBP and headed to Times Square you should never take the 7, always the N/W, unless there’s disruption.
For Flushing, isn’t the the commuter rail a two-seat ride? NJT to Penn, and then LIRR to Flushing?
Or is the current frequency on the Port Washington Branch so bad, that subway is faster net of wait time?
Yeah, it’s an hourly off-peak frequency from Penn.
Off-peak weekday service on the Port Washington Branch is every half hour. Trains now alternate between Grand Central and Penn Sta. Previously, service to/from Penn Sta was every half hour.
Check NYMTC’s Hub Bound Report. Almost twice as many NJ/NY commuters use buses than the railroad. Connections between the 7 and the PABT are excellent. Also, a lot more NJ locations are available from the PABT than from a Port Washington-Newark rail service.
Essentially your argument is that if more convenient Newark-Flushing connection were available, people would use it.
There are other factors. One is income taxes. There are tax advantages. NJ residents have a tax advantage over NY residents who work in NJ. They enjoy an even larger tax advantage over NYC residents who work in NJ.
The main factor is that almost all the jobs in Northeastern Queens are regular ol’ jobs. There are plenty of regular ol’ jobs in New Jersey. And lots and lots of regular ol’ jobs in Manhattan. That are likely to be better paid and have a shorter cheaper commute.
And those wily New Jerseyans can figure out that taking the bus to PABT might be faster than engaging in some railfannery.
Keep more than one thing in mind. It’s a two seat ride from Uptown PATH trains to the N/W. Or the B/D/F/M/Q/R. Through the PATH turnstiles across the outside-of-fare-control concourse and through the turnstiles for the Herald Square subway stations. It’s going to be a long long hike from the LIRR Sunnyside station with a lovely view of Sunnyside Yard and the roar of traffic on Queens Blvd. It’s likely to be faster and more pleasant to walk a whole block from Penn Station to Herald Square instead of relentlessly satisfying railfan fantasies. A whole block!! !!
Two seat ride from the World Trade Center PATH station to the R train. The R train sucks. Not that anyone except maybe a trainspotter adding something to his lists would do that. But it is possible to take a one seat ride from the World Trade Center to Queens Plaza.
The 7 should be faster than the NW from Queensboro to Times Square. It’s scheduled for 12 minutes on the 7 vs. 14 on the NW, and the 7 sticks to that schedule better with CBTC as well. Perhaps the NW used to be faster before the 7 got CBTC?