Effective Transit Alliance

The planned Interborough Express will bring better transit access and faster travel times to Brooklyn and Queens. In order for IBX’s smaller, light metro style vehicles to keep up with demand, it needs to be automated.

Important design elements for automation such as platform screen doors would add 0.75% to IBX’s current budget if planned for from the very start, but as a retrofit could cost nearly 10x more, based on examples from Paris and Hong Kong.

The planned Interborough Express will bring better transit access and faster travel times to Brooklyn and Queens. In order for IBX’s smaller, light metro style vehicles to keep up with demand, it needs to be automated.

ALM can fill the gap by providing the level of service necessary to keep IBX from being over-capacity. This technology isn’t new—it’s already used for the JFK AirTrain here in New York, and for 73% of new rapid transit lines around the world.

The planned Interborough Express will bring better transit access and faster travel times to Brooklyn and Queens. In order for IBX’s smaller, light metro style vehicles to keep up with demand, it needs to be automated.

Automated light metro (ALM) systems provide high-frequency, reliable, and exceptionally safe service around the world—and frequency is crucial for IBX, where the ease of transferring can make or break a rider’s willingness to use transit.

"A group of transit wonks wants the MTA to say dōmo arigatō, Mr. Roboto and institute automated train operation for the upcoming Interborough Express — a revolutionary change that could allow the MTA to carry 50 percent more riders than the agency currently projects."

"The MTA should design its planned [IBX] as a fully automated system from the beginning in order to ensure it can accommodate its frequency and capacity needs without having to undergo a costly retrofit in the future, a new report from [ETA] argues." www.amny.com/news/automat...

"'Now it’s time for them to continue the good work and select the right technology for the line: automated light metro,' said Blair Lorenzo, the ETA’s executive director, in a statement. 'Automation allows for frequent trains at all times of the day at a low cost.'"

The MTA is beginning the environmental impact process for the 125 St Subway. Right now the project is focused tunnels, with station and other infrastructure to come later. Deep tunnels, however, would lock in the project's main downsides: depth and cost. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

The MTA is looking for ways to improve passenger wayfinding via improved screens and announcements. Better tech is good on paper, ETA's Blair Lorenzo told the New York Groove, but the real question is if it will actually be used to improve the rider experience, and not simply blast more noise.

ETA is here in Berlin and will be all week for InnoTrans to bring the best insights back to New York from the biggest public transit showcase in the world! If you'd like to meet with our team while we are here, we'd love to hear from you, feel free to drop us a message!

The New York Groove sat down with ETA to discuss the onslaught of unnecessary announcements facing NY riders. This type of noise pollution not only annoys riders, but trains them to not listen to announcements. As the NY Groove's tag puts it, "Better Things are Possible."

Transit in New York is just too damn loud. The seemingly-endless onslaught of announcements not only annoys riders, but impairs accessibility, making navigating transit far more difficult than it needs to be. ETA discusses how to let riders travel in peace: www.etany.org/briefs/too-d...

ETA measured that on a 40 minutes trip from one end of the 7 train to another, nearly a full 25% of the time was filled by announcements. That makes it hard to talk with traveling companions, read a book, or even just travel in solitude.

Extending the Second Avenue Subway is a great idea, but the price is way out of line. Read more: www.etany.org/reports/digg...

Another lesson they should learn is that NIMBYs are going to NIMBY. Many engineering choices are apparently being made to minimize disruption, but the number of Phase 1 complaints shows that they didn’t.

Extending the Second Avenue Subway is a great idea, but the price is way out of line. Read more: www.etany.org/reports/digg...

Some of these stations will take five minutes on an escalator to get from the surface to the platform or back. That’s a long time to be on an escalator.

Extending the Second Avenue Subway is a great idea, but the price is way out of line. Read more: www.etany.org/reports/digg...

$7.7 billion for 1.25 miles of subway is an order of magnitude more than what other developed countries pay.

TONIGHT, August 28, come join ETA for TOD: Transit-Oriented Drinks, August! Join us for drinks, transit discussion, and transit advocacy. Tonight, Friday, August 28 6-8 PM Vanderbilt Market Vanderbilt Avenue & 45 Street Behind Grand Central All are welcome!

According to a CB10 presentation in June, it appears the @mta.info may have reverted its plans to make 116 St on Phase 2 of the Second Avenue Subway an elevator-only station with a below-platform mezzanine. It now appears to be a standard above-platform mezzanine with escalators.

See the presentation here: www.mta.info/document/211...

According to a CB10 presentation in June, it appears the @mta.info may have reverted its plans to make 116 St on Phase 2 of the Second Avenue Subway an elevator-only station with a below-platform mezzanine. It now appears to be a standard above-platform mezzanine with escalators.