Just as I did last week, I’m again letting you know that MTA New York City Transit wants you to ride the subway to get to Yankee Stadium later this week and next week* to see the Yankees play in the ALCS vs. the Angels. I got there on a train of 1917 Lo-V cars. Seems like the only way to go…
Poster updated for the ALCS
MTA New York City Transit reminds you that taking the subway to Yankee Stadium is the best way to get there. No word yet on whether MTA Metro-North Railroad would dispute that claim.
MTA NYCT Special Event poster
The Long Island Rail Road recently made two notable improvements to its “Take the Train to the Game” Meadowlands Rail program. First, it changed its joint LIRR/NJT ticketing policy. Second, it added excellent schedule information to its website.
The original joint LIRR/NJT ticketing policy was that such tickets could only be used on football game days, and not on days for which rail service was running to the Meadowlands for any other event or reason. That policy has now been changed to allow the LIRR/NJT joint tickets to also be used for a limited number of non-football events. This is likely a result of the the huge lines seen at the NJT ticket machines in Penn Station before the U2 concerts, and should help to reduce those lines in the future.
The joint ticketing policy change reflected on the LIRR website
Since NJT must adequately staff the Secaucus turnstiles to manually process the joint ticket holders (the joint tickets, printed on LIRR ticket stock, do not have the correct magnetic stripe and encoding to work in the turnstiles), this policy change could not have come about without NJT’s input/permission. So if NJT ok’ed it, it is curious that Metro-North has not yet updated their policy about the use of MNCR/NJT joint tickets to the Meadowlands. As of now, MNCR’s website text and detailed brochure (PDF) both continue to state that “[the MNCR/NJT joint] tickets are only good for travel to football games and not for any other event at the Meadowlands Sports Complex.”
The LIRR has also done what NJT should have done from the beginning – publish a simple one-page schedule of all the trains to and from the Meadowlands. The LIRR now allows you to click on the game time of the football game you are traveling to, and then they present you with a table of trains times for traveling between Penn Station and the Meadowlands Sports Complex station.
This is a huge help for people trying to understand how often the trains run, how long the rides and transfers take, and what their options are for getting home from the game. Bravo LIRR!
Click the links below to see the game time timetables, or look at the screen shots below them.
1:00 PM Games —- 4:15 PM Games —- 8:20 PM Games
1:00 PM Games
4:15 PM Games
8:20 PM Games
As I exited the rat hole that is the current Penn Station, I was offered my choice of four new flavors of glaceau’s vitaminwater10 “low cal nutrient enhanced water beverage”. I went for “recoup”, which is “peach-mandarin”. Don’t recall what the other three new flavors were. I picked up my bottle at the corner of 8 Av and 31 St. They weren’t on ice, though the chilly morning has the bottle feeling a tad cold. I’ll cool it down in the fridge anyhow before trying it.
Wait, I found a list of the new flavors in a press release from earlier this month:
Metro-North has announced that they are FINALLY reviving their Penn Station Access Study. The first part of study, formally called the Metro-North Penn Station Access Major Investment Study/Draft Environmental Impact Statement (MIS/DEIS), was carried out from 1999 to 2002. Since then, it seems it has been dormant. Railfans and transit planners used to speak about it in hushed tones and with tears in their eyes. The “DEIS” part of the study never came to fruition, even though it was promised for “Fall 2003”.
Now the study is back in a big way, with an Environmental Assessment (EA) scheduled for completion in 2011. Thankfully “analyses performed to date on [the proposed “Build”] alternative reveal no significant impacts that cannot be mitigated. Therefore, Metro-North has decided to prepare an Environmental Assessment (EA), rather than an EIS.” That should save some time and money.
Click here for the press release: MTA Metro-North Railroad Renews Study of Access to Pennsylvania Station
The proposed “Build” alternative consists of Hudson Line service to Penn Station via Amtrak’s West Side line + Empire Connection, and New Haven Line service to Penn Station via the Hell Gate line. There would be five new stations built:
Hudson Line trains
New Haven Line trains
I say that this service can’t come soon enough. For people who work near Penn Station or along the 8th Avenue IND or 7th Avenue IRT subway lines, this service could possibly significantly reduce their commuting times.
For a lot more information about the work done so far on this project (1999-2002), check out the Penn Station Access Study website on MTA.info. The site appears to have been updated to reflect that the EA will be done in 2011, and with a proposed “Build” alternative graphic that shows the station formerly called “West 59th Street” to now be called “Upper West Side”.
Bonus: a graphic from a past version of the Penn Station Access Study website.
NJ Transit finally opened yesterday its new entrance to Penn Station.
Summary info from the website:
The new entrance is located at the corner of 7th Avenue and West 31st Street at street level and is adjacent to the NJ TRANSIT Customer Service Office inside the station.
The new entrance will provide customers with direct access to and from our 7th Avenue Concourse for the first time.
The new entrance is fully accessible with ADA-compliant elevators, as well as escalators and stairs that connect the NJ TRANSIT concourse with the street at 7th Avenue.
The 31st Street entrance also includes lighting, signage and electronic train information displays for customer convenience.
I’ll have to go check it out soon. In the meantime, here’s an interior photo from NJT’s website, and some exterior photos I took back in July:
The following images were seen on MARTA’s website today. See if you can spot the mistake.
Considering how MARTA launched a completely new website at the beginning of this month, I wonder if the mistake has really been live for a whole month already…?
Of course, this wouldn’t be the first mistake MARTA has made. A few years ago their employees were harassing amateur photographers and telling them that photography required a permit and/or was not allowed at all. Any restrictions on photography, both then and now, were and are obviously only in relation to commercial photography. I hope that by now MARTA has retrained their employees. I want to go down there and test them on this some day.
Anyhow, here’s a hint to help you if you didn’t find the mistake above – this is another image on the website:
Click the wide pic to see if you can see where MARTA went wrong in one of the small pics
Update: The answer that I was thinking of was that in the last of the six small images, the word “serve” is misspelled.
The shock here is not that NYCT uses twitter – they’ve been using it for a long time – but rather that they are actually releasing photos of the interior of the station, from right after the ceiling collapse to current views of the repair efforts. Check these out before someone at NYCT or the MTA catches wind of this and makes the photos disappear!
Link: http://twitpic.com/photos/NYCTSubwayScoop
Source: SubChat
Today’s Metro newspaper features a short(!) article on the subway ceiling collapse at the 181st Street subway station on the (1) line. As usual, the reporter asked some subway rider member of the public to offer an opinion. The genius she chose made this enlightening remark:
“[The 181st Street Station is] old,” said Luz Contreras, 46. “The station at 191st looks old, too. I’m worried if something happens here, it could happen at the other one next.” (emphasis added)
Is that so? No, Luz. The station at 191st Street was COMPLETELY REFURBISHED in 2003-2004. And it looks fantastic. Maybe the nice white tiles and walls have gotten dirty since the renovation, but dirty does not equal old!
Take a look at some photos. In each row, the photo on the left is from before the renovation, and the photo on the right is from after the renovation.
Those last two are the most clear example.
Here are some bonus photos from after the renovation:
Now if you want to complain about something, how about complaining about NYCT’s deplorable operational response to this incident? That’s my next blog post 🙂
Last night, apparently part of the ceiling collapsed at the 181 St station on the (1) New York City Subway line, causing debris to fall onto the tracks. This is causing all manner of mad craziness this morning. I took the Bx10 to the Bx7 to the (A).
Bad news for residents of Van Cortlandt Park, Riverdale, Spuyten Duyvil, Kingsbridge, Inwood, and Washington Heights, though the latter two have the (A) train to make up for it.
My Bx10 driver correctly announced several times that there was no (1) service, and to take the Bx7 or Bx20 to 207 St for the (A) train. However, the driver of the Bx7 I transferred to did not make any such announcement, and thus a lot of people exited his bus at 231 St to walk down to the (1) station 🙁
Then in my station in midtown, I heard the much lauded “Dedicated Announcer” announce that there was shuttle bus service between 242 St and 168 St (making all stops), and that all (1) trains running between 242 St and Dyckman St would be running express. Express????
