Fixing the Broadway Line
Brooklyn deserves better than the current R train, but improving it will take more than fancy new signals.
A note: I know that a lot of this won’t exactly make sense without maps, and I may draw proper maps to illustrate these proposals later. I’ve inserted croppings of the official Hertz map that is currently standard in the New York City Subway, but I won’t be drawing out my own proposals for some time.
The BMT Broadway Line and its branches are crucial to moving New York City. With branch lines extending deep into South Brooklyn, the Broadway Line’s N, Q, and R trains are vital for bringing good service to the most populous borough of the city. However, as any Brooklynite will tell you, these lines do not provide good service. Why? Well, it’s complicated. Let’s talk about it.
The R train is a particularly messy thing, because of where it runs. Presently, it runs from Bay Ridge to Forest Hills in Queens. The reason it does this is because Bay Ridge has no yard access, and of the northern branches served by Broadway trains (Second Avenue, Astoria, and Queens Boulevard) only Queens Boulevard has a yard. However, the R train running on Queens Boulevard creates problems. It has to merge with the M train, which can lead to ripple effect delays across the system:
The 4:55 PM J train gets removed from service due to a door problem. This causes delays on the J, M, and Z trains.
The delayed M train causes a ripple effect and delays the F in Manhattan.
The delayed F continues the chain, and holds up the E in Queens.
Lastly, the delayed M train also causes delays on the R train in Queens.
One singular train, which doesn’t even share tracks with the R train, has messed up the R train. Many issues like this one can be resolved by removing the R train from Queens Boulevard.
So where should the R train go? It needs yard access if it’s not going to Queens. There are two options in Brooklyn. Either the R can go over the West End Line, replacing the N train, and access the 36-38th Street yard. This is less than ideal, since the MTA plans on using that yard for the Second Avenue Subway. The other option is to send the R to West End (replacing the D train) and have trains stored at Coney Island.
Above: The branches of the Fourth Avenue Line, currently served by the D, N, and R.
These options both have their own unique disadvantages, and at the end of the day, it’s a little difficult to move the R train as of now. The R could continue running to Bay Ridge and use the 36th-38th Street Yard without causing too many problems, but it could still cause minor delays on other lines if a train has an issue.
Thankfully, the N and Q are a bit easier, because aside from the Fourth Avenue local tracks, every BMT/IND line in Brooklyn has direct access to Coney Island Yard. That gives us the flexibility to put the N and Q on any other line in Brooklyn. Broadway express services, the main focus is on eliminating the merging conflicts with the B and D. The Q merges with the B from Prospect Park until the Manhattan Bridge, and the N merges with the D from 36th Street until the bridge. The solution is fairly simple: Move the B train over to West End, and replace Brighton Express service with the N. This has many benefits. The only merges that exist now are the B and D merging (which already happens at the Manhattan Bridge) and the N and Q merging (which also happens at the bridge).
The current service patterns that go through DeKalb Avenue as shown on the subway map. Untangling the orange and yellow spaghetti that runs through this station is key to fixing the Broadway Line.
Additionally, riders on Fourth Avenue still have a one-seat ride to either Sixth Avenue or Broadway. This plan does require the B train to have some late night and weekend service. As such, the B should run at all times in this scheme, and terminate at 145th Street.
An easier solution that requires no schedule changes is to move the D train to Brighton Beach local service, then have the Q take over service on the West End Line. This gives all branches some level of 24-hour service without making new schedules.
The northern branches of the Broadway Line are not much easier for us to deal with. As it stands now, the N train merges onto the local tracks after 34th St, joining with the R train until they separate in Queens. This forces downtown R trains to wait for the N to merge, and it forces uptown Q trains to wait as well. This merge is required in order to send the N to Astoria, and it is why the N, supposedly a Broadway express service, makes a local stop at 49th Street in Manhattan (see the map below).
The first possible solution is one that others have proposed: Move the R to Astoria, and have it run over West End to Coney Island so that it has yard access. Then, run the N and Q on basically the same route, going from Brighton Beach and/or Coney Island to Second Avenue. The N would run express in Brooklyn, while the Q would run local. This eliminates the Herald Square merge, but it does require some additional switches on the Fourth Avenue line in order to maintain local service to Bay Ridge.
The second option is to send the N and Q to Astoria, while the R goes to second avenue. The junction at 57th street would need to be reconfigured to allow this, but it does allow the express trains to serve longer journeys, which is what they should do. In an ideal world, I would like for the R to serve Second Avenue, while the N and Q serve Astoria. This provides express service to long-distance riders, while also providing express service to LaGuardia Airport, if the Astoria line is ever extended. However, the R train would once again be left without a yard.
The lack of a yard is why the R has to run to Forest Hills, causing problems all along Queens Boulevard and delaying subways across New York’s biggest (and frankly, best) borough. So we should give it a yard. The R train should not run on Queens Boulevard. By kicking it off and moving it to Astoria, we can make Queens Boulevard a better line with more service.
There’s plenty of industrial land and surface parking lots available in Astoria, especially northeast of 20th Avenue. This is where a yard should be built. Some of these parking lots are owned by ConEd, who runs a facility nearby. If they insist on maintaining a parking structure, either the train yard or the parking lot could be elevated. It may make more sense to elevate the yard, since it would connect to the elevated Astoria Line, but it would certainly be cheaper to elevate the parking structure. This yard would be used primarily for R train storage and maintenance, and allows the R to run from Bay Ridge to Astoria. This allows us to solve all of our problems with some service changes:
B/D runs via Brighton Beach to Coney Island, thus eliminating merging conflicts for the Q in Brooklyn.
N runs from Second Avenue to Coney Island via the Sea Beach Line.
Q runs from Second Avenue to Coney Island via the West End Line.
R runs from Astoria to Bay Ridge via the Montague Street Tunnel.
W is discontinued.
With that, every train has yard access and does not merge with another train until the Manhattan Bridge. The R train, in fact, does not merge with any other trains at all. It is entirely independent, meaning that its capacity is as high as the infrastructure allows. But the service changes I’ve detailed above are not the only options. There are many others, each with varying requirements for new infrastructure.
I hope that I’ve made it abundantly clear that today, the Broadway line is not good enough for New York City anymore. Capacity improvement is necessary for the long-term health of the city, and while new signal technologies will bring some of those improvements, it will not fix everything. A few minor service changes, however, could improve capacity at a lower cost - and when swapping services can create as much capacity as a billion-dollar signal upgrades, it’s clear that these lower-cost solutions need to be investigated.