Coo-Coo text service (provides schedule info for the LIRR) is starting to provide cross-carrier scheduling soon, simply by sending a text message “merrick to suffern”, would give you detailed information about the next few departures + details about the transfer times.

It is my view however, that the FRA has dropped the ball with the Northeast. There should be a mandated standard for all rolling stock – YES, the Pennsylvania RR, Central RR and Long Island RR all did compete, this has not been the case for many years. It seems that the MTA and NJT kept on the former employees of the RR’s and their corporate culture. This needs to be eliminated.

At this point, we need to slowly wein off 3rd Rail use on LIRR and MNRR, by requiring all new car to have dual systems: 3rd rail AND ac canternary.

Which regard to through service at penn, it is obvious that not every train would continue through, only some. However, there are many trips made from JFK to EWR that would now be made easily from Jamaica to Newark Airport Station.

The removal of an entire industry that take advantage of this lack of through service (taxi from EWR to Queens, JFK to Bergen, ect.) would mean the loss of many jobs in the Region!

Finally, it the transfer experience that really makes the cake. Thousands of people transfer at Jamaica everyday, because the signs are clear, the trains are scheduled to arrive at the same time and it is a single ticket.

(NJT does a terrible job at this at Secaucus, it is common that trains going to NYP do not wait for a Hoboken Bound train with a scheduled transfer.)

It is 600,000 a day, on the railroads alone. The subway fares don’t count.

The LIRR and new Jersey Transit together don’t have 600,000 riders a weekday. And only about half their riders go to Penn Station, and half of those exit rather than enter. NJT used to provide information about how many boardings it had at its busiest stations; Penn had 67,000 per weekday. The only way you can get to 600,000 from that is if you include entries and exits on both systems plus the subway.

It would take five minutes to check that Copenhagen has 24/7 service, that Seoul has dedicated express tracks on one of its lines and so do many of Tokyo’s commuter lines, and that while New York may have twice as many subway cars as Tokyo, it only gets half the ridership. Yay, efficiency. If ignoring all that makes you a real New Yorker, maybe New York needs to be governed by outsiders for a change.

Go work as a Wal-Mart greeter or something.

You’ve just proven you don’t know what you are talking about.

You’re not a New Yorker. You’re not one of us. you’ll never be one of us, you’ll never understand. All the booksmarts in the world will get you no where in this town. You can’t stand there and say “well, it works there, it’ll work here,” because this is America and that doesn’t happen here. We don’t want to be like everyone else. we don’t want copy the idiot europeans who are currently dranging down our econimic recovery, becuase the euro finally has come back to bite them in the butt.

We have the largest rapid transit system in the world by track miles. We have the largest number of stations. We hae the largest fleet of subway cars. We have the only system in the world that is open in it’s entirety all day every day. We have the only system that offeres all day every day express service on dedicated express tracks.

If anything, they should be the ones copying us!

As one example of interoperation, on the Den-en-toshi line, owned by Tokyu, trains run from Den-en-toshi in Kanagawa prefecture (a prefecture here is like a state in the US) to Shibuya in the Tokyo prefecture, continue on the Hanzomon subway line owned by the private Tokyo Metro corporation to Oshiage where it is now on the Isesaki line, owned by Tobu, continuing on through the Saitama prefecture into the Gunma prefecture. You can get in a train car at one end and come out two hours later at the other end a hundred kilometers and four prefectures away. You’re charged your twelve bucks for this via one swipe of a contactless smart card going in and another going out.

Most of the infrastructure was inherited from failed private companies. Penn and GCT are named for the railroads that once occupied them. GCT exists where it is as laws forbade operation of steam trains south fo 42nd. Its footprint has been the same for 130+ years at this point (I know it’s been rebuilt since). Creating a connection between the two ran contrary to the business interests of the corporations who developed the structures.

As for Queens, well, *insert Robert Moses thoughts here*. In all seriousness though, Moses did a lot to squash transit expansion plans, and aside from the initial boom in transit construction in the first half of the 20th century, there hasn’t been a really renewed focus on intensive transit capital growth until recently. With the developmento f the interstate system, all eyes were on cars, and most of the money went that way.

Creating a unified through-running system will be nigh impossible, given the multiple state-level government agencies in multiple states with differing political needs and customer bases. I’d love to have a large, unified system like Paris or Berlin, where one fare gets you access to the system and transfers, but getting the MTA, NJT, and PANYNJ all on the same page would be a nightmare, and probably require federal intervention, which might get shot down in the court system. Just look at the WTC. 9 years later, and the only thing that’s been rebuilt is the only privately owned tower in the complex.

Thought you might get a kick out of this. Video of an NJT test run on the MNR tracks at Larchmont, NY, with a double-decker electric train set.

Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDfcy_PBEs0

It really boils down to this: You have to upgrade all the SIRR stations and build a brand new subway station at St George regardless of the solution, so those are sunk costs of any connection of the SIRR to anything. The only difference is whether you want to upgrade the current situation from a 60 minute ± commute to a 30 minute ± commute via the N for $2.5 billion ± with max capacity 15 tph or to a 15/20 minute commute for $5 billion ± with maximum capacity of 30 tph.