WHAT'S RUNNING ON 2ND AVENUE?
---------------------------
John Pazmino
NYSkies Astronomy Inc
www.nyskies.org
nyskies@nyskies.org
2007 September 11
Introduction
----------
With construction resumed on the 2nd Av line (again!) some readers
asked me which routes will work the new line. There is no simple answer
for a couple reasons.
I deal here only with the lettered routes, those of the IND and
BMT, because the 2nd Av line will be operated only by these routes.
Numbered routes are confined to IRT lines, which do not interact with
IND/BMT lines.
I also describe the trackwork in the IND 63rd St line that joins
2nd Av to 6th Av and Broadway. This description is essential to
understanding some peculiar routings now employed from time to time.
Route designations
----------------
The IRT and BMT companies, before they became divisions of the
unified New York City transit system, preferred geographic names for
their routes. They did number their routes and these numbers were
sometimes listed in their litterature. As far as anyone can remember,
the route numbers were never emphasized in announcements, instructions,
or signs.
The IND used letters for its routes. These were from the start of
service in 1932 extensively employed in litterature. The lettering
system was deceptively simple. A single letter was assigned to express
routes; geminated ones to local routes. The 'odd' letter routes worked
the 8th Av line; 'even', the 6th Av. The last letters needed to cover
all of the IND services were H and HH.
NYC Transit letters
-----------------
In the 1950s the plan arose to merge the IND and BMT lines into
one grand system with thru routing over the lines of both divisions.
Part of this project was the 2nd Avenue subway, which would connect
with both IND and BNT lines.
In anticipation of this coalition, the BMT routes were assigned
letters, following the IND scheme. The BMT services picked up with
letter J and continued thru the alphabet. The last letters needed,
with some skipped, were T and TT.
Without going into some intriguing, but tedious, detail, the IND
pattern was not faithfully followed. Assorted pairs of letters, not
just geminated ones, tried to reflect the geographic territories of
the BMT services.
The IRT was not part of the coalition project. There was no
revision of the IRT route designations. NYC Transit (to use the current
name of the agency managing the transit system) left the IRT's
geographic names in place.
The roll signs of the new cars received in the 1950s thru the
1970s had the IND letters, the new BMT letters, and the old IRT proper
names. There were gaps in the sequence of letters to allow for new
routes in the future. Some were employed when the Chrystie St section
opened in 1967. This segment was the first major operational piece of
the future 2nd Avenue line.
Present lettering
---------------
In 1984, or maybe 1985, NYC Transit revamped all the route
designations. The most important changes were a formal numbering of
the IRT services and the elimination of double letters. All routes now
have a single character for their designation. Such a paradigmatic
shift forced a shuffle of letters on the IND and BMT, such that some
routes were removed from their traditional territories.
For the most part, the original IND letters were preserved. The
BMT letters were almost completely revised. While UND riders suffered
only a minimal adjustment, BMT and IRT riders went thru a protracted
acclimation period.
Mainline colors
-------------
A collateral change was to assign a color to the mainlines on
Manhattan. Previously colors were only a typographic aid on maps or,
for a while, assigned to each discrete route. The latter resulted in
the 'candy cane' maps of the late 1960s. As example, the IND 6th Av is
now the orange line; BMT Broadway, yellow; IRT Lexington Av, green.
Any route, regardless of letter, that works the IND 6th Av has its
letter on an orange shield. Any route that runs in the BMT Broadway
has a yellow shield behind its letter. Any service that plies the IRT
Lexington Av is numbered on a green shield.
This color scheme is very helpful for threading thru the subway
system. If you want to get to a station on the IND 6th Av, the orange
line, you MUST somewhere, somewhen, get onto a train whose letter sits
in an orange shield. Conversely, you may start from the orange line by
boarding an orange train. If you are going to a station WITHOUT an
orange stripe on the subway map, you MUST somewhen, somewhere, change
from your train to a train of the same color as your target station.
As useful as the color scheme can be, NYC Transit never latched
onto it like other towns do. It never cites the 'green line'. In the
stead, it cites the routes that run in the green line, as the '4-5-6
line'. As I explain later, this is a risky and confusing method of
describing the various lines.
Other towns, to be fair with them, have a far simpler transit
network. Their trains pretty much run back and forth on a single
itinery, to which a single color can be assigned. Where we use letters
and numbers for our routes, they can do well with just a color. Trains
on Boston's orange line run back and forth from the north end at Oak
Grove station to the south end at Forest Hills station. There being
only the one itinery, there is no need for a new designation. You look
for the one and only orange train.
An irritating feature of the colors is that they are not
calibrated. Other towns typicly make sure their colors are the same in
all their litterature, signs, maps. NYC Transit does not. You may see
a sign with a purple, violet, maroon, magenta shield, all being the
color for the IRT Flushing line. It's supposed to be magenta.
An other example is the orange and red lines. Their colors shift
from clearly distinct to almost the same, a reddish-orange or orangish-
red, like a tomato.
Mutable routes
------------
After all the effort to revise the route designation system, it is
a cruel fact of life in New York that the subway routes are not
permanent. They are shifted and shuffled every so often to the point
that we can not confidently know where they will run a few years from
now. Some routes haven't changed much in decades while others mutate
every couple years. The result is that the letter for a route no
longer has a stable geographic meaning.
This also means that it is very risky to refer to a subway line
only by the routes that work it today. There really is no such a thing
as the 'D' line, but only a 'D' route. The physical structure that the
'D' train now works remains in place when the 'D' train is shifted to
an other part of the transit grid.
The use of only the route designation to cite a structure makes
havoc in reading old news items, like for some history study. An
incident happened on the 'D' line, according to the historical text.
Unless the reader traces the history of service, he may be misguided
to the wrong line under today's routings. A parallel situation
prevails for travel instructions in old litterature still in current
circulation.
An other situation is the alteration of a route during the day and
during the week. Route 'N' runs on Manhattan bridge as an express only
during the day, not in owl hours. In those hours it's a local thru the
Montague tunnel. The 'V' train runs only on weekdays, not on weekends.
Route 'G' normally ends its run at Court Square. one station short of
entering the IND queens Bv line. Yet it can extend its run to Forest
Hills, several kilometers along that line.
This is particularly troublesome when announcements are made about
services at transfer stations. The annunciator is supposed to be
wisely about the alterations of service. It far too often isn't.
Riders may look for a service that at the instant hour runs on
different tracks or isn't running at all.
Proper names
----------
It is best to refer to the LINE, the structure (tunnels, tracks,
stations) by a proper name and NOT by the letter (or number for IRT)
of the routes running in it.
The proper names of the lines were never formally declared. They
came about thru popular usage or legacy litterature. Despite the
occasional multiple names for a particular line, the names are
amazingly stable. Everyone equa mente accepts all the names for a
given line. It's the Woodlawn line and the Jerome Av line.
It seems that one line never got named! The IND territory from
Bergen St to Church Av stations is innominate! It is variously and
indifferently called the Prospect Park, Smith-9th St, Church Av, and
South Brooklyn line. Since the attachment of the former BMT Culver
line to it in the 1950s, it is also called the Culver line!
One line whose name is the cause of some bitter bar-room brawls is
the BMT Canarsie line. If you live in Brooklyn, this is the Canarsie
line. For Manhattan folk it's the 14th St line. Those who want to keep
peace between the boros compromise with 14th St-Canarsie line.
Obsolete signs
------------
On the cars the roll signs carry only certain of the possible
letters. Depending on which cars are assigned to 2nd Av, the choice of
new letters is constrained by their signs. New rolls can not be easily
made because the various models of car are fitted with rolls of
assorted size, length, and fittings.
The newer 'V' route on IND 6th Av got its designation because the
signs on the cars assigned to this route have that letter on an orange
shield. If it was on some other color of shield, for a mainline other
than IND 6th Av, it could not be used for this route.
A more serious glitch is that the older signs have the letter AND
geographic name on the same panel. When the current scheme of letters
was established, there was some intent to associate the letters with
territories in the transit system. These associations were hard-
written on the roll signs made at that time. Cars since the 1970s has
the letter and name on separate panels.
On the IND 6th Av this today causes substantial mixups. This line
carries both the 'B' and 'D' routes. Today 'B' works the BMT Brighton
line; 'D', BMT West End. When certain older cars were assigned to
route 'B' their signs read 'B - West End express'. This WAS the
territory for "B" trains in the 1980s, but not now.
The cars obtained since the 1980s have digital displays, not roll
signs. The display can be coded for any combination of route name and
letter. On the other hand, there is no color shield on these signs.
All writing is in one color. In theory, this frees the letter from its
mainline color, the 'V' situation noted above, so any route on any
mainline can have any letter.
Many alphabets
------------
Discarding the color shield on the new digital signs loses some
powerful flexibility. Now -- and this is a real dark secret -- EACH
mainline color can have its OWN COMPLETE set of letters! There COULD
be an orange 'A' train, working IND 6th Av, along with a blue 'A', the
one now running on IND 8th Av.
This faculty so far is used rarely, best remembered from the
1980s-1990s repair of Manhattan Bridge. There was an orange 'D' and
'Q' train concurrent with a yellow 'D' and 'Q'. That's how the split-
service was operated with the transfer between the two pairs of route
at 34 St/6 Av/Broadway.
What's on 2nd Av?
---------------
The talk right now is that the first reach of the 2nd Av line,
from its junction with the IND 63rd St line to its north terminal at
96th St, will be worked by route 'Q'. This really means that if the
new line opened tomorrow, the plausible route to be extended onto it
is the present 'Q'.
Now 'Q' ends on the center tracks at 57 St/7 Av on BMT Broadway.
The center tracks continue north and east to IND 63 St. They are now
used for stashing extra trains or shifting trains between BMT Broadway
and IND 6th Av.
In 1989-2001 'Q' did run beyond 57 St/7 Av to Queensbridge via IND
63 St. However, there is nothing in future years to keep 'Q' from
being rerouted away from IND 63 St so it can not be the initial new
service in 2nd Av. Nor is there anything to prevent sending some other
route to 57 St/7 Av on its center tracks, making that route the
reasonable first service in 2nd Av.
2nd Av alignment
--------------
The first segment of the new line has stations at 72nd St, 86th
St, and 96th St. Layup tracks extend north of 96th St to about 103rd
St. The structure is configured for future extension north and south
in 2nd Av.
There is continual agitation to close up the long reach between
72nd St and 86th St, some 1200 meters!. Common alternatives are an
extra station at 79th St. or replacing 72nd St with new stations at
76th St and 66th St. So far there is no positive effort to accommodate
these suggestions.
The entire line has only two running tracks. Trains make all stops
along it, except for a quite unlikely skip-stop operation. There seems
to be no thought of later fitting express tracks, altho these can be
added without seriously upsetting the present construction plans.
The color for the main stem of the 2nd Av line is turquoise[!],
which I suspect most people will treat as a cyan or aqua tint. Transit
pundits hazard that it's the same color used for the defunct 'Train to
the plane' service to Kennedy airport.
Lexington Av station
------------------
The junction between 2nd Av and the rest of the system is at the
existing Lexington Av station on IND 63rd St. This resembles the 5th
Av station on IND 53rd St: two tracks, lateral platforms, two levels.
The upper level, for downtown service, is about 24 meters below
the street; lower, uptown, about 30. Escalators and elevators reach to
the fare control house on the northwest corner of Lexington Av & 63rd
St. Stairs are only for emergency egress. At the east end of the
station is a vacant chamber for the future access to a fare control at
3rd Av & 63rd St.
This station is in fact a 4-track, island platform, 2-level
structure much like 7th Av on IND 53rd St. The present arch roof is a
false ceiling. The orange brick back wall is a skin wall. When the 2nd
Av line opens, this wall and roof will be removed to reveal a wider
arch over the full width of the station.
The currently used tracks will be the southern pair. The north
pair in this station is behind the back wall, This part of the station
is raw with no finish and minimum conveniences. The tracks end in
bumpers at the east, 3rd Av, end of the station.
The north tracks are used now to relay trains between BMT Broadway
and IND 6th Av or to store extra trains for either line. You may hear
rumbling noises behind the wall. It more likely is an empty train back
there than it is the IRT Lexington Av line above you.
If you look out the front or right-side window of a downtown train
leaving this station, you see a double crossover joining your track to
the northern track on your right. You also see, before the crash wall
blocks your view, the northern track itself.
A similar configuration is on the uptown level. In this case, from
the front or left-side window, the crossover is immediately before
entering the station. You see a bit more of the northern track, on
your left, and confirm that it does align parallel to the southern
track, before the station walls block your view.
When the station is filled out, the north tracks will extend east
and curve north into 2nd Av. They join the mainline in a flying
junction near 66th St & 2nd Av. The long reach to join the mainline is
due to the difference in elevation between the 63rd St line, heading
under East River to Queens, and 2nd Av, much closer to the street.
This is a bus?!
-------------
The stored-ride MetroCard, the one you refill with dollars as you
use up its rides, allows a transfer for each fare you use. This
privilege applies to bus-bus and bus-subway, but not to subway-subway.
Because there are so many subway stations where you may change from
train to train without leaving the system, the restriction against
subway-subway transfer is not a serious one.
MetroCard knows where the first fare was paid and compares that
location to where you are offering the transfer. If the first ride was
via bus, it allows the transfer to an other bus or to the subway. If
the first ride was via subway, the transfer is allowed only to a bus.
If you enter a subway station after taking the first ride via
subway, you are clipped for a second fare. This can happen if you exit
to the street form one station, walk to an other station, and enter the
other station. Unless you query the MetroCard at a card head, you may
not realize that you are down two, not one, fare for the full journey.
Why do this? It can be quicker and simpler to jump ship where two
stations are near to each other but have no walk-thru transfer than to
continue your ride to a transfer station farther down the line.
There used to be lots of intensely irritating pairs of close
subway stations with no internal transfer between them. Some were:
IND's Lexington/53rd St and IRT's 51st St/lexington Av
IRT's Atlantic Av and BMT's Atlantic Av & Pacific St
BMT's Botanic Gardens and IRT's Franklin Av
IRT's Fifth Av and IND's 42nd St (6th Av line)
Blessed be the minds that eventually built walk-thru connections at
these stations! The last pair was at first connected by paper ticket.
You picked up a ticket when leaving the one station and handed it to
an agent at the other.
There are still many annoying stations pairs having no walk-thru
interchange between them. Several are:
IND's Canal St and IRT's Canal St (7th Av line)
IND's Jay St and IRT/BMT's Boro Hall & Court St
BMT's Livonia Av and IRT's Junius Av
IRT's Nevins St and BMT's DeKalb Av
BMT's Rector St and IRT's Rector St
BMT's Whitehall St and IRT's South ferry & Bowling Green
IRT's Astor Pl and BMT's 8th St
IND's Broadway-Lafayette St and BMT's Prince St
OMD's Grand St and BMT's Bowery
IND's Broadway-Lafayette St and IRT's Bleecker St uptown
BMT's City Hall and IRT's Park Place & Brooklyn Beidge
IND's Chambers St & World Trade Center and BMT's Cortlandt St
Some of these pairs are under consideration for walk-thru
transfers or have transfers under construction.
However, there IS a free transfer via the stored-value MetroCard
between IND's Lexington/63rd St station and IRT/BMT's Lexington/59th
St! You have to walk on street but you enter the other station with NO
second fare deducted from your MetroCard!
How is this wizardry pulled off?
He he he. The two Lexington Av stations are coded as BUSES!
MetroCard rings up your first fare as a subway ride when you entered
the subway. You exit from the one Lexington Av station, walk to and
enter into the other. MetroCard sees the other Lexington Av station as
an effing bus!! Subway-bus? Good; transfer is allowed.
Mind well that the transfer mark on your MetroCard lives for only
two hours. If you don't exercise it within that span, it dies. You are
charged a new fare there after.
Services
------
Now all trains passing thru Lexington Av/63 St go to either IND
6th Av or IND Queens Bv. Route 'F' provides this service at all hours.
Downtown trains run thru on the upper level; uptown, lower.
When this station opened in 1989, the line ended at Queensbridge
with three stations: Lexington Av, Roosevelt Is, Queensbridge. Because
this segment reached only to the East River waterfront in Long Island
City, with no substantial penetration into Queens, it was called the
'stubway'.
From 1989 to 2001 various routes served this station. If the route
came from the BMT Broadway, it switched thru the double crosover west
of the station from the north to the south tracks.
There were several options for prolonging the tracks farther into
Queens, with structure allowing for different directions of extension.
Eventually they were tied to the IND Queens Bv line near 36th St
station in 2001.
The planned routing for the complete station is simple. All trains
on the south pair of tracks are orange trains to or from IND 6th Av.
Those on the north pair are yellow for BMT Broadway. The double
crossover will not operate for regular service, only for diversions
and shuffling trains between the yellow and orange lines. On the new
subway map this station will have both an orange, like now, and a
yellow stripe.
The mainline north of the junction will have only a yellow stripe
because only trains from BMT Broadway, possibly the 'Q' train, will
work this line. For the record, the 2nd Av mainline is the turquoise
line. It will be served by a new route 'T', restoring a letter now
retired.
Disused turnouts
--------------
On the south tracks, both levels, east of Lexington Av station,
are turnouts heading south into 2nd Av. These were provided for
traffic between Queens and the southern reach of the mainline. An
uptown train would stop at 55th St/2nd Av, then Roosevelt Is.
These are hard to spot from the train window because they are not
lighted and are made of concrete similar to the rest of the tunnel.
Heading to Queens the turnout trails into your track from the right.
On the way to IND 6th Av, it leads away on the left from your track.
The connection will be installed when the southern segment is
built, but there seems to be no proposed service for it. One plausible
reason is that the connection would join the IND Queens Bv line, which
is already overloaded with current service. The connection may be only
for yard & shop moves.
Here's a diagram of the Lexington Av/63 St station as it is now
and when completed by year 2020. Only one level is shown, the other
being a duplicate.
/ --------\-----------#bumper
/ \ / +-----+
| crossoverX | sta | LEXINGTON/63 IN 2007
| / \ +-----+
| /--/---\------------IND Queens Bv
| /
| |
| |IND 6th Av
|BMT Broadway
|2nd Av
/|
/--------\---/--------/ |
/ \ / +-----+
| crossoverX | sta | LEXINGTON/63 BY 2020
| / \ +-----+
| /--/---\------------/----IND Queens Bv
| / | /(no service)
| | |/
| |IND 6th Av |2nd Av
|BMT Broadway
It's a bit amusing that we in 75 years developed rockets and space
travel to send humans to the man, and probably will do so again by
2020. In the same span we haven't gotten far at all with building the
2nd Av line! The Moon is over 380,000 kilometers and three days away.
The first piece of 2nd Av mainline is only 3 kilometers long and takes
ten minutes to traverse.
Chain letters
----------
If you speak with transit workers and fans, you may hear of the
'G' and 'T' tracks in the IND 63rd St line. These letters refer to the
chaining of the tracks, the method of locating points along them. The
name comes from the early use of real chains of prescribed length and
number of links for pacing off distances along roads, canals, walls,
and similar linear features. This scheme is also called decatenation,
for obvious reasons.
Each continuous segment of the subway has a zero point from which
downtrack distance is measured. Each such segment is given a letter,
or two letters. Each of the three divisions has its own set of chain
letters, like the Bayer letters for stars within constellations. Each
track in a segment is also given a number.
Chaining need not concern you if you are not tuned into transit
circles. But, if you ask, the tracks from BMT Broadway to Lexington
Av/63 St are tracks G3 and G4. Those from IND 6th Av to this station,
and beyond to their merge with IND Queens Bv, are tracks T1 and T2.
The G tracks start on the BMT Broadway at 58th St & 7th Av, north
of the 57 St/7 Av station. This point is also the zero of the 'G'
chain. The T tracks tap off of the IND 6th Av at 52nd St & 6th Av,
north of Rockefeller Center station. The 'T' chain continues from that
in the IND 6th Av.
You may hear of an IND 63rd St and a BMT 63rd St line. Because the
two divisions are now so interlinked, there probably is no strong
reason to cleave this reach of subway into two distinct lines. For the
picky & fussy among readers, the IND line is the south pair of tracks;
BMT, north. The very station may be allocated to both, much like
Queensboro Plaza is both a BMT and an IRT station.
Missing letters
-------------
If you examine the current, 2007, subway map, you notice that
there are gaps in the route letter sequence. Some of the missing
letters were once active. Others were never used. Hence, it is
possible that when the 2nd Av line opens, the itineries of the routes
may be so altered that some of the missing letters may be called into
service. So far, one retired letter, 'T', is on deck for 2nd Av
mainline service.
Here I note the missing letters. This is NOT a history of their
former use, but simply their current status. Only the present
lettering system is covered. There was an alphabet soup of old
lettering from before the mid 1980s that will never be used again.
As long as I'm going thru this magilla, I include the IRT's
numbering scheme. IRT trains will not operate on 2nd Av.
'H' - Used for shuttles from Euclid Av to Rockaway Pk and Far
Rockaway
'I' - This may be excluded because it resembles the number '1',
even tho a 'I' and '1' train can not operate together on the same line
'K' - Used for assorted itineries. It may be held back for some
new variation in BMT service in Brooklyn and Queens.
'O' - This may be excluded because it resembles the number '0',
even tho a 'O' and '0' train can not operate together on the same line
'P' - Prepared for a threatened Amtrak strike several years ago
that would have shut down Penn Station. It would have run from Sutphin
Bv/Archer Av to 34 St/Penn Sta by a twisted itinery thru tracks not
now in regular use. The route was never activated; the strike was
averted. It is sometimes noted that 'P' is now excluded because it
sounds naughty to tell a rider, 'take a 'P''. Yet the same argument
applies to the existing 'F' route. I have on occasion, at 34 St/6 Av,
advised a rider to 'take an 'F' against the wall'.
'T' - Used for BMT West End line. Possible restored use for
mainline service in 2nd Av.
'U' - Never used
'X' - Never used
'Y' - Never used
'0' - This may be excluded because it resembles the letter 'O',
even tho a '0' and 'O' train can not operate together on the same line
'8' - Internal name for the <6> route
'9' - Used for skip-stop service on IRT Upper Broadway
'10' - Internal name for <5>
'11' - Internal name for <7>
'12' - Internal name for (2) to New Lots Av, not Flatbush Av
'13' - Internal name for (3) to Flatbush Av, not New Lots Av