11 posts tagged “mta”
After a 3 month hiatus (when I was on a project outside New York), I am back to being a regular on the"E" (For those who are not familiar with what I am referring to, The New York E Subway Line is what I mean). I do the WTC - 7Av/53rd street stretch daily. The E trainset composition is now all R160 - which is great. That conversion of trainsets was well underway even before my travel. The other change I noticed was that, in off-peak hours, they open only one door per car when the trains wait at WTC. I am guessing this is for energy conservation ans seems like a sensible move. The only catch is that, if you choose to walk past a car to the next one, you have to recalibrate your judgement - for you cannot just hop into the next door.
7Av/53rd Street is unique in that you can seemingly head off in opposite directions while actually going the same way. So, on the upper level, you have the "E" going one way and the "B" and "D" going the other way but you can take either and still get to, say, W4 street.
The proportion of R160 trainsets on the E line has gone up significantly - to over 50% in my opinion. The highest R160 serial no. I have seen on the E is 9437. Given that there are cars from the 90XX, 91XX series also operating on the 'E', that's a lot of cars. Of course, other lines like the 'F' must have gotten some of them. But it is not uncommon to see 3-4 R160 E's in a span of 10-15 minutes at any given station.
On the topic of glitches in the new R160s, today's is a serious one. The AC seemed to have failed in car 9186. Non functioning displays or the occasional jammed door is one thing. An AC failure seems more serious. I transferred to the adjacent car where I found this tag. It's interesting to see that they're crediting two places for the manufacture of this car. Never seen that sort of thing before
Apologies for the shake. What is made in Yonkers and what is made in Lincoln? And how does stuff from Lincoln come to Yonkers? On flatbed railcars?
I usually work in our office in the Rockefeller center on Fridays. This Fri was no exception. Got of work just a little before 6 and walked to the subway at 6th Av. The brasserie below was doing brisk business and the gentle chatter and clink of white and red wine glasses momentarily seemed to drive recessionary thoughts away.
But soon I was staring at bicycles hugging lamposts on 49th Street between 5th and 6th Av under the shadows of Radio City and NBC? Just green riders or someone trying to avoid buying the metrocard? Does Brian Williams ride a bike to work or is it a dude who's seen a pay cut?
I still have my metrocard and don't plan on alternatives. So I rode home on the subway
Then rode with friends in their car to Somerset NJ for a sumptuous south Indian dinner at Hoysala
To get there, you drive on the NJTP which, mercifully, had normal traffic conditions for the Friday evening. Saw an Australias shaped cloud (do you agree?) and the usual evening airplane traffic at Newark.
All in all, a very satisfying evening.
Today was one of those "up and down R160" days on the E. Got an R160 from WTC around 8.40 (car 9163) and almost immediately I noticed that all 3 route maps in the car were on the blink. Everything else was OK - automated voice was doing its thing and the variable message displays were fine. Now imagine my surprise when the exact same thing happened on the return! I was in a hurry else I would have asked the operator. Any ideas why this might be?
The new R160 trainsets on the "E" continue to delight - the experience somewhat marred by a few glitches which I will proceed to describe. I am hoping these have more to do with operators' learning curve rather than actual defects. Time will tell. Each car has 3 route maps and 2 variable display message boards (which typically tell the time, the next stop and anything the pre-recorded voice announces).
1) The "V" wannabee
On an R160, the variable message board said it was a "E"to 2 Av. The "E" of course, actually went to WTC.
2) The Confused "E"
The variable display said E to Jamaica center while the route map correctly showed WTC as the destination. It's a little hard to get a readable snap of the variable message board and the route map - but here it is
3) The frozen variable message
I have seen the variable message boards freezing up more than once. I got into an E before 8 am and I thought I saw 7.47 am on the variable message board. That lulled me into a false sense of complancency as I though I had plenty of time for my 8.30 meeting. The time was actually 7.58 or so and the display was frozen at 1:47 AM"! I had mistaken the 1 for the 7. Didn't take a pic of that. On the same day, I got into another R160 which had a problem with one of the doors - only one door would open. This was on car #9339.
Though the route maps on the R160s are somewhat flexible, I wonder what the limits are. Last morning, there was a problem at Queen's plaza that led to trains piling up behind it. We were at Penn station when the dispatchers decided that the E would run on the A line to 168th St! Can the train operator dynamically change the route and set the displays accordingly? (He didn't or couldn't - he chose to let the automated annoncement happen and then came online to correct it)
More R160 train sets are definitely being introduced on the E and I have seen several cars in the 9300 series. My rides in R160s are getting more frequent as are sightings. It does appear that there are consecutive pairs of R160s running which makes sightings of two of them at WTC pretty frequent. The ride in the 53rd street tunnel is noticeably smoother and less noisy in the R160. No complaints on the lighting and temperature control front either. However, I’ve seen two recent automated announcement system glitches. The first one was when the automated announcement and the electronic display decided to play truant in tandem. Here I was on a WTC bound train hurtling towards Penn station and the announcement system insisted that this was a “Manhattan bound E Express train” next stop was “Archer Avenue JFK Airport”. The frustrated conductor would then come on line, apologize for the glitch and announce the correct stop. This continued till WTC. Even as it arrived in WTC, the loud and clear announcement was that the next stop was Woodhaven Blvd! creating confusion among some of the waiting crowd and elicitng quite a few what the f…? The other incident was when the audio announcement was correct but the electronic display was stubbornly stuck in Queens when we were at W4! In both cases, some kind of re-set ensured that the the audio and visual information was corrected before the trains left WTC. I wonder what kind of overrides do the conductors have?
Today was a pretty remarkable day in that my ride to and from work were on the exact same R160 train set on the ‘E’ (Cars 9282 – 9278 / 9287 – 9283). As a bonus, when my train pulled into WTC on my return, the other ‘E’ across the platform was also an R160 (one of whose cars was 9270). That’s the first time I have seen two R160s at WTC – which also implied that there would be consecutive R160s. I noticed also that we had crossed another R160 ‘E’ at Lexington / 53rd Street (one of whose cars was 9240). How many 160’s do we have running on the ‘E’?
The sound of a train running has been music to many ears - including those of yours truly. The source of the 'music' has usually been the clickety clack or the hooters/horns or, mostly in the case of diesel or steam locomotion, the sound of the engine itself. Subways/metros (usually consisting of electric multiple units) have been seen as dull in this regard (no engine, often underground, too noisy & crowded, often run down etc.) - but not anymore if you read this article in NYtimes. It appears that there is music in the electronic whine as some of the trains leave. I can attest to the whine though I had not made the correlation with a specific piece of music mentioned.
Users of some of the numbered subways (4,5,6,2,3...) and now some of the lettered ones (E, W, J....) have been getting used to new subway cars (The so called R140, R142, R160 etc. named after the MTA contract number) which have the characteristic whine (The NY Times article has a audio snippet of this). I am a regular user of the 'E' line which has a few of these new R160 trainsets running. I think there are at least 3 such trainsets on the E (see some of my previous posts on this).
These trainsets, of course, have features other than the musical whine for their users. They also have brighter lights, automated announcements that are crystal clear, better temperature control and user friendly station displays. An automated female voice gives you information about the next step ("The next stop is &th Av/53rd Street") and a male automated voice asks you to "stand clear of the closing doors" or to "please be patient as there is train traffic ahead". This is apparently based on research which suggests that people react better to information from women but instructions from men!
Finally, for those interested in knowing more about NYC subways, the MTA forum on railroad.net is an excellent resource.
I usually take the 'E' subway line from World Trade Center to my workplace. It is amazing how reliable the New York subway is and you realize it only on the rare occasions when something goes wrong. Sure, the MTA has its detractors but I am an unabashed fan.
