JERSEY CITY — A report by the Port Authority that’s supported by the governors of New York and New Jersey floats the idea of eliminating overnight PATH service and turning over its operation to an outside organization — public or private.
Read More: Source
Looks like the 126 bus could become 24/7 to fill the overnight gap if this happens and maybe something set up similar to the 120 via Holland Tunnel for WTC
Anyway, theres 4.4 million that could have went to NICE. I'm not pasting the whole article because I don't know their stance on it.
Nassau elected officials have awarded $4.4 million in salary hikes and benefits to their appointees since the county's financial control board lifted a three-year wage freeze on the nonunion workers in August, records show......
http://www.newsday.com/long-island/new-gps-systems-rolled-out-to-help-track-li-buses-1.9740182
Technological innovations, including GPS tracking systems, on buses in Nassau and Suffolk could change the way Long Island transit users get around in 2015, officials said Monday.
The Nassau Inter-County Express, or NICE, and Suffolk County Transit have begun installing computer-based Automatic Vehicle Location systems on their vehicles. They expect that, by the end of 2015, bus dispatchers will be able to monitor the exact location of all vehicles -- as will riders using mobile applications
"We're just about finished with the hardware part of this. The software part, of course, is the more significant part," said NICE chief executive Michael Setzer, who noted that nearly 90 percent of the agency's 308 buses have already been fitted with the new global positioning system-based technology. "It could be very useful to be able to see that their bus is still 2 miles away -- so that they don't have to stand out in a blizzard.....
........Meanwhile, Suffolk County Transit is moving ahead with parallel efforts to install computerized location technology on its buses. The systems are already in place in most Suffolk County Accessible Transit vehicles, and installation will begin next month on the county's 158 fixed route buses, said Suffolk's acting director of transportation operations Garry Lenberger.
Suffolk is separately moving ahead with a $2.7 million plan to replace its 12-year-old fare boxes with state-of-the-art systems that will allow riders to use smart cards or mobile phones to pay for their rides. Lenberger said he expects the technology to be in place by the end of the summer.......
Read more at the link above
I've been going over old photos and records and it seems that the R21/22 series never ran once in service on the 
during their 30+ years of operation. Did they ever make a one-time appearance on the Flushing Line (like the R-17s in the '80s) or did they just never run over there?
This LIRR track map had an interesting detail ascribed to the Sea Beach line. Glancing at the map, the express tracks appeared to continue west for some distance, and the northbound local track had a short connection to a factory.
http://www.lirrhistory.com/emery/bayridge/br1751.jpg
According to The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, the Sea Beach right-of-way once stretched to the ocean, with the other end of the line ending somewhere around West 10 Street in Coney Island at the site of the Sea Beach Palace (for which it's named). The portion from the ocean to 3 Avenue was closed after electrification.
And now for the vetos:
Veto #583
S5684A KLEIN — Relates to New York city omnibus safety requirements
Same as A 7424-A Mosley
Source: http://blog.timesunion.com/capitol/archives/226753/cuomos-bill-actions-include-a-self-veto/
This was a no brainer. There was never a need to put partitions on express buses and thankfully Cuomo has vetoed this bill accordingly. His reasons are listed in the source article.
Most of the time around Grand Central, there is now M7As, M3As, M8 and Push cars with Locomotive Genesis P32
Are there any M2s, M4s and M6s remaining in service? or all retired as of now
The Rockaways had a lot of trouble over the years like Hurricane Sandy destroying the 
and 
lines, bringing back the 
, the Q113 LCL, now the Q114 LTD and actually none of that is trouble. But the thing that needs to be added in the Rockaways, is NICE service to Rockaway Park. People might want to go to Rockaway Park from Jones Beach and might not want to travel a lot. What do you guys think?
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/nyregion/in-the-bronx-test-driving-a-plan-to-open-railroad-tracks-to-the-public.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
In the Bronx, Test-Driving a Plan to Open Railroad Tracks to the Public
By WINNIE HUJAN. 2, 2015
The three-minute ride was just long enough to give a taste of what could be.
The old rail car with the fancy name — the Bronxstack Continental — roared through the Harlem River Yard, an industrial site in the South Bronx. The open-air car carried passengers bundled in winter jackets and scarves, as it shuttled back and forth through a landscape of steel bridges, rough-hewn buildings and chain-link fencing topped with barbed wire.
Anthony Ramirez II, a co-founder of Mainland Media, which operates the Bronx Beer Hall on Arthur Avenue, held on as the Bronxstack Continental, a small work car known as a speeder, lurched forward after hitting a bump. “My experience with trains has really been the subway, and this is way more exciting,” he said.
Mr. Ramirez is part of a group of Bronx residents, train enthusiasts, historians and others who want to bring such rides to the borough and New York City as a way to repurpose stretches of little-used or abandoned railroad tracks for recreational use. They envision opening the tracks to everyone with their own rail car, or access to one, which, like the transformation of the old Manhattan freight line into the High Line park, could potentially draw tourists and dollars to an economically struggling neighborhood.
“The closest you can come to this is the monorail at the Bronx Zoo,” said Ed Garcia Conde, the founder and editor of Welcome2theBronx, a borough-focused blog, adding that he would like to see rail car rides incorporated into redevelopment efforts for the South Bronx waterfront. “This is a beautiful example of what could happen here. Just imagine this green instead of concrete.”
But such ambitions remain just that for now, largely because of the myriad logistical, safety and financial issues involved in adapting rail lines for more widespread use. Freight rail remains a tiny but growing part of the New York region’s overall transportation system. The total volume of freight shipments is expected to rise to 15.1 million tons by 2040, from 10.2 million tons in 2007, according to the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, a regional organization charged with transportation planning.
William Goetz, a vice president of CSX Transportation, one of the nation’s largest freight railroad companies, said that most tracks are actively used, and that running a personal rail car on them would require approval from the rail owners as well as careful planning and coordination to avoid any accidents. “Railroad tracks are not a place for anyone to go uninvited,” he said. “The movement of equipment on an operating railroad is heavily regulated. It’s not like a city street where you can get a driver’s license.”
Still, Mr. Goetz did not rule out the possibility of allowing the Bronxstack Continental on CSX tracks. “We’ll take it one step at a time,” said Mr. Goetz, who was on hand recently to observe the car’s test run at the Harlem River Yard. “It’s not something we’d normally do. Safety is the critical thing.”
The rail-car group was organized by Justin Fornal, 37, who is known to fans as the culinary adventurer Baron Ambrosia, the host of several media projects devoted to the Bronx and its food. In 2011, Mr. Fornal and his father, John, bought a used rail car for $3,500 from a retired railroad worker in Monroe, N.Y. They parked it at the elder Mr. Fornal’s home in Killingworth, Conn., where they overhauled it, renamed it and painted it light purple, his son’s signature color.
The younger Mr. Fornal said he was working on a plan to take the Bronxstack Continental public next spring, running it on tracks around the city while picking up and dropping off passengers. Eventually, he said, he hoped to make a cross-country trip to build support for what he saw as an urban take on a pastime in which people buy speeders — compact, motorized rail cars usually used for maintenance — to ride on tracks in mostly rural areas.
Tony Riccio, a senior vice president of Harlem River Yard Ventures, a private development company that leases the rail yard from New York State, said he received a call from Mr. Fornal asking permission to use the tracks. “He had this idea, which was crazy,” Mr. Riccio recalled. “Why would someone say he would want to go from the East Coast to the West Coast on abandoned rail lines? That’s not exactly sanity.”
Still, Mr. Riccio agreed to open the yard to Mr. Fornal and the rest of the group for test runs last month and was one of the first to climb aboard. It was a smoother ride than he expected, he said.
The rail car, powered by a four-cylinder gas-burning engine, was christened with a bottle of sparkling birch sap wine and toasted by more than three dozen people. Then Mr. Fornal, dressed for the occasion in pinstripe overalls and an engineer’s cap, called out “all aboard” for the first ride.
“It’s like a toy train but bigger,” said James Sexton, 48, an architectural historian from New Rochelle, N.Y., who compared the excursion to cruising in a convertible.
But Mr. Sexton said he would not be getting a rail car of his own.
“I’m going to bum rides with Baron,” he said. “I don’t think my wife would be happy if I parked a speeder in the driveway.”
A version of this article appears in print on January 4, 2015, on page MB1 of the New York edition with the headline: Riding the Bronx Rails.
can some one repost the list of pending orders?
In this thread, post some descriptions of some moments where you are just excited or happy. I'll go first:
-Today, found the R160 on the 
and rode it.
-Caught the R68A 
train.
-First time riding the R188 on the .
-Catching the holiday train without knowing.
-Seeing the 
at Grand St 
.
-Riding the 
for the first time. Backfired because it was so noisy and crowded that I could hear and see what I wanted to hear and see (announcements and racing a 
).
What's your's?
Maybe the “D” should stand for “dependable.”
The D train, which runs from Norwood in The Bronx all the way to Coney Island in Brooklyn, is the most reliable subway line on weekdays — with trains punctual 82 percent of the time, according to wait-time data analyzed by The Post.
It was nearly tied with the J and Z trains, which run through some of Brooklyn’s hippest neighborhoods — Williamsburg and Bushwick. Those met the MTA’s wait standards 81.7 percent of the time.
Those were followed closely by the N and L trains, which clocked in at 81.5 and 81.3 percent, respectively. Meanwhile the biggest losers for reliable subway travel on weekdays were the 5 and 6 lines, which left straphangers in a lurch after meeting wait-time standards 67.8 and 70.1 percent, respectively.
The R line was excluded, since it ran in two segments during most of last year, as well as the shuttles.
The MTA gives trains a little leeway when calculating whether they make timely arrivals.
For example, if a train is scheduled to arrive every 10 minutes — then it’s given a 2.5-minute window, or 25 percent of the scheduled time between trains.
On weekends, the J and Z topped the list for reliable trains, followed by the 1 and 3 trains.
The F train was the worst weekend train line in terms of reliability, meeting the MTA’s wait standards 76.9 percent of the time.
It was followed closely by the 4, A and C lines, all under 80 percent.
Overall, lettered lines performed better than numbers over the last year , with the N train showing the most improvement.
A spokesman said the MTA is creating new guidelines to make track work less disruptive and improve service– as well as relying on programs like FASTRACK, which shut down large stretches of track for overnight repair work.
Source: http://nypost.com/2015/01/05/the-d-train-the-most-reliable-subway-line-in-nyc/
From the Age:
Commuters face train chaos as industrial action cripples Metro's fleetJanuary 6, 2015 - 9:16PM
Adam Carey and Benjamin Preiss
EXCLUSIVE
Melbourne's train network faces near total meltdown on Wednesday with the drivers' union planning industrial action that will take more than half of Metro's train fleet out of operation due to safety fears.
The planned action will affect trains from first service on Wednesday and continue indefinitely, crippling the city's metropolitan rail network, which carries 232 million passengers a year.
Metro has put an application before the Fair Work Commission calling the union's planned action for Wednesday unprotected.
For the Siemens trains they've had a few units with the capacitor in the static inverter under the T car going boom. Sending the cover flying into the next postcode.
With the comeng fleet the new DTRS has been giving them problems. It's all now linked up with the DDU and they've been having problems with the PA communicating when the power goes out. The old analogue system there was a battery backup and the radio and DDU(which controls the PIDs and CCTV equipment) were seperate.
is not part of this conversation.