Paul Corfield wrote:
On Mon, 30 Jul 2007 22:33:15 -0400, David of Broadway
wrote:

Paul Corfield wrote:

Not exactly. (But impressively close for someone who doesn't ride the
buses in question!)

MTA New York City Transit has operated a large number of express routes
between Staten Island and Manhattan and several express routes between
Queens and Manhattan and between Brooklyn and Manhattan for decades.
(There's also an express route between Queens and the Bronx, but that's
an anomaly.)

OK - I was going from memory and failed to load up a MTA Bus Map ;-)

The various city-subsidized private bus operators operated many local
routes in Queens and Brooklyn, along with express routes between Queens
and Manhattan, Brooklyn and Manhattan, and the Bronx and Manhattan.
Those routes were recently taken over by the newly formed MTA Bus.

I knew I'd got a bit of it correct.

- What are New York's night buses like?
Not dissimilar to the concept used in London - i.e. 24 hour service on
key corridors. There is not the same need as in London for longer
distance routes as the Subway is 24 hours in NYC.
Generally, New York doesn't have any specific night buses. Some bus
routes run all night - that's all.

But many of London's routes are now on exactly this basis - the daytime
route but running all night.

Yes, but the difference is that London has separate night-only bus
routes as well as 24-hour bus routes. New York, basically, simply has
24-hour bus routes.

--

Stephen

Is that all I was to you, a one-bite stand?

On Tue, 31 Jul 2007 19:11:42 +0100, "Stevo" wrote:

David of Broadway wrote:
Michael Hoffman wrote:
PigPOg wrote:
On Mon, 30 Jul 2007 10:05:00 -0700, Nerdbird
wrote:

This web site may be of interest to the visitor to London. The
Underground and taxis are discussed.


http://hometown.aol.com/nerdbird1/LondonNYC.html

Found this site very interesting. I'm a Londoner yet know nothing of
NYC. I've never been able to find (or have someone explain) the
Uptown/Downtown concept. I mean, where exactly is Uptown New York?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uptown%2C_Manhattan

This New Yorker suspects that that page was not written by a New
Yorker. It's not accurate in the slightest. (But I'm too lazy fix
it, so I really have no right to complain.)

In my experience, entries in Wikipedia are more often wrong than right.

This is mostly because there's a whole lot of unsourced crap that it
is best to ignore completely. The good stuff is often very, very good
indeed.

Michael Hoffman wrote:
There is certainly a downtown and a midtown though. Where does midtown
stop? I would have said 59th Street. That doesn't mean that anyone calls
the Upper East/West Side "Uptown" though.

There's no hard line, but 59th Street is as good a border as any.
--
David of Broadway
New York, NY, USA

sweek wrote:
A point where I think London does much better is connections between
lines. There are quite a few cross-platform ones, and walks between
stops seem to be shorter. There also seem to be more of them. New York
for example, has so many lines crossing each other in Western Brooklyn
without any connections between them.

I'm afraid I strongly disagree. New York probably has more
cross-platform transfers than London, and transfers that aren't don't
usually involve long walks through endless mazes of narrow passageways.

The downtown Brooklyn situation is annoying, but it's not as bad as you
make it out to be. The IRT and BMT have several connection points.
It's the IND that's mostly left out.
--
David of Broadway
New York, NY, USA

Tom Anderson wrote:
On Mon, 30 Jul 2007, David of Broadway wrote:

The statements about your lack of express services were probably
referring to the Underground, where they're largely accurate, except
on the western Piccadilly and Metropolitan.

Strictly speaking, that're true, but my point was that NR trains act as
expresses for LU lines in some situations. For example, the Great
Northern from King's Cross, which only has stations north of Finsbury
Park (if you forget about Moorgate and all that) is the express service
of the northeastern Piccadilly. The London, Tilbury and Southend line is
the express service of the eastern District. Other lines don't have such
close correspondence to LU lines, but often serve overlapping areas at
the edge of town, providing a quicker service in.

And we in New York have the LIRR between Jamaica and Penn Station and
Metro-North between various points in the Bronx and Grand Central.
(Granted, the subway has substantially lower fares.)

In New York, I might hop on a 1 local train at 116th Street, transfer to
the 2/3 express at 96th Street, transfer back to the 1 local at 14th
Street, and get off at Houston Street. (Whether I save any time in the
process is a different question - in my experience, depending on the
time of day, it could jump me ahead one or two locals. OTOH, if there's
a long wait for the express, I might not even catch the local I started on.)

Or maybe I'm taking a relatively short trip, one for which the time
savings on the express are minimal. I can simply take whichever train
comes first, since the local and express stop at the same station,
usually at the same platform.

Or if a train breaks down on one track, the following trains can be
rerouted around it on the other track. The resulting congestion is
sometimes painful, and local passengers may have to backtrack, but at
least the trains can keep moving.

And, as has been pointed out elsewhere, parallel tracks make track work
much easier to carry out while the trains are still running.
--
David of Broadway
New York, NY, USA

James Farrar wrote:

The greatest advantage of the four-track system [1] is that it allows
24-hour running. The express trains often save you less time than you
might think.

Another advantage is capacity. A four-track line can carry (roughly)
twice as many trains per hour as a two-track line.

[1] Well, it mostly is... I was particularly intrigued by the
three-track layout on the 7 in Queens...

Many lines have three tracks, although only a few actually have regular
service scheduled to run on the middle track. On the others, the middle
track is still available for scheduled and unscheduled reroutes.
--
David of Broadway
New York, NY, USA

Paul Corfield wrote:
On Mon, 30 Jul 2007 22:33:15 -0400, David of Broadway
wrote:

Paul Corfield wrote:

Not exactly. (But impressively close for someone who doesn't ride the
buses in question!)

MTA New York City Transit has operated a large number of express routes
between Staten Island and Manhattan and several express routes between
Queens and Manhattan and between Brooklyn and Manhattan for decades.
(There's also an express route between Queens and the Bronx, but that's
an anomaly.)

OK - I was going from memory and failed to load up a MTA Bus Map ;-)

You are excused.

The various city-subsidized private bus operators operated many local
routes in Queens and Brooklyn, along with express routes between Queens
and Manhattan, Brooklyn and Manhattan, and the Bronx and Manhattan.
Those routes were recently taken over by the newly formed MTA Bus.

I knew I'd got a bit of it correct.

You got a lot of it correct!

- What are New York's night buses like?
Not dissimilar to the concept used in London - i.e. 24 hour service on
key corridors. There is not the same need as in London for longer
distance routes as the Subway is 24 hours in NYC.
Generally, New York doesn't have any specific night buses. Some bus
routes run all night - that's all.

But many of London's routes are now on exactly this basis - the daytime
route but running all night.

In that way the two systems are similar.

London is now catching up with NYC with its never ending variants of
what line or station is open or closed at any point in time! I think
I'd struggle to cope with a Subway system that is subject to such
frequent change to its operating pattern.
Catching up? With three exceptions, every single subway station in New
York is open around the clock. (The three exceptions are the two
northernmost stations on the 3, which are replaced by bus service at
night, and Broad Street on the J/M/Z, which is closed on weekends, when
the J is cut back to Chambers Street.)

What I meant was that with the scale of work going on in London we have
almost as long lists of what is open, what is half open, closed and what
is replaced by a bus as NYC used to have for its subway system. I
wasn't alluding for a moment to our system being open 24 hours which it
demonstrably is not (for LU). There are a few exceptions on rail routes.

But London also has a good number of stations that have strange hours.
Closed weekends. Rush hours only. Rush hours and Sunday mornings only.
Open for exit and interchange only at certain times. Etc.

But our route patterns can certainly get confusing.

Err yes. While I know you've had to close large sections of the network
for rehabilitation works I do find it quite odd that the route and
service pattern changes as much as it does.

Rather than address this directly, allow me to present you with a challenge:

Study the current service pattern (the guide on the lower left-hand
corner of the subway map is a good place to start; ask me if you have
any questions) and, for as much of the network as you choose to tackle,
come up with something simpler that still provides good service.

I'd be interested in seeing what you come up with.

The statements about your lack of express services were probably
referring to the Underground, where they're largely accurate, except on
the western Piccadilly and Metropolitan.

I don't think they were. The website author mentioned rail rather than
Tube or Subway.

No, I think he's referring to subway/Underground:

"New York subway cars are air conditioned. Not so in London where global
warming is making it quite unbearable at times. New York has express
trains which is nice if you live at the far end of Brooklyn, Queens or
the Bronx. London has no express trains. Every train stops at every
station. New York is more of a 24 hour city. The subway runs through the
niight and does not shut down after midnight as does the London system.
The subway serves the large numbers of graveyard shift workers, party
people and night time weirdos. Even muggers and rapists have to get home
in the wee hours.and the New York transit system respects the needs of all."

Don't forget Gants Hill and Barkingside. Not as obviously orthodox as GG
or SH but plenty of Jewish businesses and synagogues.
Also Hendon and Edgware.

True but really just a continuation of the Golders Green area.

Geographically, yes, but the neighbo(u)rhoods seem to be distinct. I've
met several people here from the Hendon and Edgware Jewish communities,
and they've identified themselves as being from Hendon and Edgware, not
Golders Green, even before ascertaining whether I'm at all familiar with
London geography.

(I didn't realize Gants Hill and Barkingside were Jewish. The various
lists of kosher restaurants that I consulted didn't include any in those
neighbo(u)rhoods.)

Well there's certainly a synagogue and a range of kosher businesses that
follow Sabbath opening and closing rules. Can't think of a kosher
restaurant in the area but I'm just commenting from what I've seen from
the bus.

I'll keep them in mind for my next visit!
--
David of Broadway
New York, NY, USA

On Wed, 01 Aug 2007 00:06:47 -0400, David of Broadway
wrote:

But London also has a good number of stations that have strange hours.
Closed weekends.

Just Cannon Street now, is it not?

Rush hours only. Rush hours and Sunday mornings only.

Can't think of an example of either of these.

Open for exit and interchange only at certain times. Etc.

Ah, yes. Camden Town and Covent Garden - the latter mainly because
people refuse to actually look at a map and see that Covent Garden is
very close at street level to various other stations not on the
Piccadilly line, leading to almost everyone going there cramming
through the tiny station.

In message , James Farrar
writes
On Wed, 01 Aug 2007 00:06:47 -0400, David of Broadway
wrote:

But London also has a good number of stations that have strange hours.
Closed weekends.

Just Cannon Street now, is it not?

Rush hours only. Rush hours and Sunday mornings only.

Can't think of an example of either of these.
This used to apply to Shoreditch (and still does for the replacement
bus) but that's for the special reason of the Sunday Markets.

Open for exit and interchange only at certain times. Etc.

Ah, yes. Camden Town and Covent Garden - the latter mainly because
people refuse to actually look at a map and see that Covent Garden is
very close at street level to various other stations not on the
Piccadilly line, leading to almost everyone going there cramming
through the tiny station.
I don't think they actually close Coventry Garden on Saturday afternoons
any more, do they? (Checks TfL site: no they don't; the Tube Map
simply states that the station gets very busy and suggests
alternatives.) They certainly do at Camden Town on Sundays, though.
And of course at stations around Notting Hill during the Carnival and
such like.

--
Ian Jelf, MITG
Birmingham, UK

Registered Blue Badge Tourist Guide for London and the Heart of England
http://www.bluebadge.demon.co.uk

Ian Jelf wrote:

I don't think they actually close Coventry Garden on Saturday
afternoons any more, do they? (Checks TfL site: no they don't; the
Tube Map simply states that the station gets very busy and
suggests alternatives.)

Covent Garden is 'Way Out only' at all times until the end of the year.



--
Bob