Tag: subway

Transit Elevated Bus: That’s not a bus, it’s a big train

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In the last few months, an idea in search of a solution, has emerged from China: a giant car-straddling bus which would soar above waiting traffic below. Which sounds awesome; I’ve been to Beijing – the ring roads are some of the most congested pavement on earth. Let’s go to the grey lady with, China’s Straddling Bus, on a Test Run, Floats Above Streets:

If you’re driving in a Chinese city in the none-too-distant future and your car is engulfed in a smooth, humming metallic belly, don’t panic. It may feel like an alien abduction, but probably it’s only a colossal, street-straddling bus.

The idea of a bus so large, high and long that it could virtually levitate above congested streets seemed surreal when presented at an expo in Beijing in May. But it came a step closer to reality this week, when a prototype went for an experimental spin in Qinhuangdao, a seaside city in northern China.

But having about 7 feet of vertical clearance for cars to go underneath feels like a disaster waiting to happen. And this isn’t a bus – it’s a new type of light rail vehicle. You can see the running rails on either side of the vehicle, below:

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It appears that the rail system is a running guide rail and the propulsion is by rubber tires, very similar to Paris Metro rubber tire subway cars.

teb-3If the goal is to densify the street and overlay many different modes of transport, this might be your ticket. It is interesting if you don’t have the time or money to build heavy rail or subway system, or don’t have the right of way to build surface rail. This feels like a solution when your constraint is to not reduce vehicle miles traveled in low-occupancy vehicles, or you cannot densify a lane of traffic by using light rail or even high-value bus rapid transit.

Putting my pendant hat on: let’s stop calling this a bus (because it isn’t).

 

 

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Accessible Transit – NYC Subway Hurricane Sandy Service

With the extensive damage wrought by Hurricane Sandy on the Northeast it is unsurprising that the New York Subway has been especially hard hit. Many of the underground river crossings were fully flooded, but luckily most of the rolling stock has been spared and all of the large capital projects (East Side Access, 7th Line extension, and the Second Avenue Subway) have received little to no damage.

What hasn’t been spared are people’s commute – which has been brutal due to the lack of power below 34th Street. This means that even if all cross river tunnels were dry and open for operation there would be no service due to power loss. Below is the Accessible Transit map for the New York City Subway during partial shutdown. This is the sixth installment of my Accessible Transit Map series – an unofficial map, not sanctioned by the MTA or NYCTA. As in previous maps, I have removed all stations which are not handicapped accessible.

Maps represent corporeal objects, through convenient fictions; a representation which works for a majority of its users. But where are the maps for the disabled or those require additional accessibility? Wouldn’t the mother with newborn in stroller need a different map then those without the need to lug all the accoutrement’s of childhood? Equally, those in a wheelchair require a map different then one which the walking can use. I decided to rectify the situation by editing the maps of major metropolitan transportation systems, in order to create a map for those who are not represented on the official map.

Midtown Detail

Overall Map

You may download the Accessible Transit NYC Subway Hurricane Sandy Service map here:

Other Accessible Transit Maps for your perusal:

Bleecker Street Station finally gets a two-way transfer

For more than half a century, it has stood out as a singularly vexing flaw of the subway system, a glaring inequity that has frustrated generations of riders and has even puzzled transit officials, who have wondered how the situation ever came to be.

But beginning on Tuesday, once the first travelers make their way between a B train and an uptown No. 6 at Bleecker Street, a daily frustration will have given way to a whimsical remembrance: Here stood New York City’s fussiest subway transfer point, the one that went one way but not the other.

via Vexing Flaw in the Subway Is Finally Corrected – NYTimes.com.

Tunneling Below Second Avenue

Looking west to a passageway about halfway between 72nd and 71st Streets. Richard Barnes for The New York Times

The New York Times Magazine has an article about the Tunneling Below Second Avenue:

“Geology defines the way you drive the tunnel,” Mukherjee said. The bedrock below Second Avenue and for much of the rest of Manhattan is schist — a hard, gray black rock shot through with sheets of glittery mica. Some 500 million years ago, Manhattan was a continental coastline that collided with a group of volcanic islands known as the Taconic arc. That crash crumpled layers of mud, sand and lava into schist, lending it an inconsistent structure and complicating tunneling: in some places, the schist holds firmly together, creating self-supporting arches; in others, it’s broken and prone to shattering, forcing workers to reinforce the tunnel as they go to keep it from falling.

The first time New York confronted its bedrock to build a subway, in 1900, the method was “cut and cover”: nearly 8,000 laborers given to gambling, fighting and swearing were hired to pickax and dynamite their way through streets and utility lines for two miles. Their efforts were quick — they finished in four years — but their blasts smashed windows and terrorized carriage horses. Tunnels collapsed, killing workers and swallowing storefronts.

Accompanying the article is a short movie directed by Jacob Krupnick of Girl Walk // All Day fame. The video is quite good, and is a step up from the usual NY Times shorts. Go on, and have a view.

Washington DC’s 17 foot Long Station Prototype Mockup

Greater Greater Washington has a great article about the Metro’s 17-foot long “experimental station” (photo above) built in 1968 to test the design of Chicago architect Harry Weese.

Architecture Week has a quick overview of the station mockup, and the whole history is worth your read:

Prior to construction, the NCTA erected, on a site adjacent to the future Rhode Island Avenue station, a partial full-scale mock-up of a cross section of a typical below-grade vaulted train room, complete with a segment of a full-size train car. The model measured 64 feet (19.5 meters) in width, 30 feet (9.1 meters) in height, and 17 feet (5.2 meters) in length and was used to study and test various components of the design and construction of the system.

I love the Washington Metro stations: they have aged very well in the last 40 years and are an iconic statement which is instantly recognizable as being DC.

L'Enfant Station

DC Metro

Coffer

Coffer

On New York Subway Map’s Compounding Travesty

Pedestrians on Broadway in this area can stumble upon an Ivy League university or gaze through the windows of Tom’s Restaurant, of “Seinfeld” fame. They can find a copy of “Pride and Prejudice” for $2 at a stand on West 112th Street, and, four blocks south, a taco for 50 cents more. They can even sip mojitos at Havana Central at the West End, near West 114th Street.

But they will never find West End Avenue between Broadway and Riverside Drive.

Mr. Tauranac, who has for years assailed Mr. Vignelli for such inaccuracies as having Bowling Green north of Rector Street, said the revelations had forced him to re-evaluate his harsh judgments of Mr. Vignelli, 81. “It really has dulled my attack, that’s for sure,” Mr. Tauranac said.

Moments later, he retrieved from his office the May 2008 copy of Men’s Vogue, featuring an updated Vignelli map “every bit as terrible a map as he designed in 1972,” to Mr. Tauranac’s eye.

“I’m happy to see that he’s mellowing,” Mr. Vignelli said.

via On New York Subway Map, a Wayward Broadway and Phantom Blocks – NYTimes.com.

The current map is an abomination of design, the revelation of more mistakes just compounds the existing travesty. Not that Vignell’s 1972 map is any better with oversimplification, a precious use of color and lines rendering it more art piece than functional map or diagram.

Vignelli 1972 Map

It seems every designer is trying to reinvent Harry Beck’s amazing diagram for both the Paris Metro and the London Underground:

The problem being that Beck’s Underground Map is uniquely suited to London’s system, not New York City subway’s combination of express/local lines, geography and history of being composed of three different subway companies.

See also

SUPERTRAIN to the Game

I attend Friday’s U.S. Open tennis match in Flushing Meadows (Queens), which increased my East Coast Liberal Elitism a step forward (gift baskets arriving soon!) by not only watching Tennis but also taking the SUPERTRAIN to the game. The USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows is a very nice facility, but it is nowhere close to where I live or work. Luckily it is served by both the 7 Train and the Long Island Railroad. The LIRR isn’t quite the SUPERTRAIN but the trip was only 12 minutes, considerably shorter then the estimated 90 minutes by subway. That is SUPER enough for me.

Penn Station

This trip underscored how many parts of the SUPERTRAIN experience need to be operating in top form in order to provide a smooth, stress-free trip. Not only do you need efficient transportation at both departing and arriving stops, but you need logical path of travel in both departing and arriving stations so that you can make your 7:04 train. This includes clear signage throughout your journey, especially at stations, not to mention clear announcements of station stops.

Madison Square Garden Ceiling
LIRR fails (Epic Transit Fail) spectacularly when it comes to Penn Station, or what remains of Penn Station. A multi-modal station which was destroyed in order to build an sub-urban basketball arena, what’s left is a rabbit-worn maze of 9′-0″ high corridors. Exasperating the situation is that there are, at minimum, three waiting areas: one each for LIRR, Amtrak and NJ Transit. There is no central waiting room such as at Grand Central (not to mention a lack of any celebration of entry or exit which arriving and departing at Grand Central) and the station spans two floors (not counting the track level).

Penn Station is perhaps the only major urban station which treats its passenger’s in such a manner. We can only hope that the future Moynihan Station will wiggle free from the current logjam and Penn Station will again be a dignified entry to New York City.