{"id":3633,"date":"2020-10-16T18:27:57","date_gmt":"2020-10-16T23:27:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vanshnookenraggen.com\/_index\/?p=3633"},"modified":"2020-10-16T18:31:39","modified_gmt":"2020-10-16T23:31:39","slug":"deinterlining-with-one-switch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vanshnookenraggen.com\/_index\/2020\/10\/deinterlining-with-one-switch\/","title":{"rendered":"Deinterlining with One Switch"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Regular readers of this blog may have noticed a lack of new content in a long time. This has not been because of a lack of work on my part but because the new work has been taking so long. Over the last year and a half I have been working with Uday S<\/a>c<\/a>hultz<\/a> on an in depth report on what a deinterlined NYC subway system would look like as a precursor to the next futureNYC Subway proposal. At the beginning of the Covid-19 shutdown I was able to get much of the report written but with ridership at a third of pre-Covid levels and a long recovery ahead of us I felt that the timing was not right for such a report (nor, for that matter, a proposal to expand the subway.) When light begins to shine at the end of this tunnel I will revisit releasing both the report and next future subway vision. But for now I felt that a specific proposal needed to be brought up.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey have been pushing the Federal government to fund their proposed AirTrain to LaGuardia Airport. This year the Draft Environmental Impact Statement<\/a> was released and the comments were mostly in favor due to the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and labor groups. There has been some push back from local residents and online transit groups but I hazard to guess most New Yorkers don’t even know this is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a post<\/a> which is seeing the rounds again I speculated that by extending the Astoria Line (presently the N\/W but as proposed the R train) to LaGuardia Airport instead of the AirTrain the Broadway Line (N\/Q\/R\/W) could be see capacity expanded and service delays eliminated. While this proposal still stands I have become more convinced that the chips are stacked in the favor of the AirTrain. Governor Cuomo knows how to pull political leavers better than anyone and he knows that the FAA will fund a people mover to the airport but not actual transit. As such the AirTrain has been preordained while a more useful subway extension was never a real option. Where, then, does this leave fixing the bottlenecks of the Broadway Line?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For those who are new to the issue: the Broadway Line has a series of extremely limiting bottlenecks which reduce overall system capacity and are the cause of daily delays:<\/p>

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