The RPA has just put up its Fourth Regional Plan , recommending many new subway and commuter rail lines in New York, ranging from good th Street subway, Brooklyn-Lower Manhattan regional rail to terrible Astoria Line extension to the west rather than to LaGuardia, which gets a people mover heading away from Manhattan.
I have a poll for Patreon supporters for which aspects I should blog about; I expect to also pitch some other aspects โ almost certainly not what I said in my poll โ to media outlets.
There are interesting things to say about the plan โ not all negative โ in areas including rail extensions, transit-oriented development, and livable streets. But for now, I just want to zoom in on the crayon aspects. I previously put up my 5-line map 4 MB version , 44 MB version. With all this extra tunneling, the map has 46 new double-track-km of tunnel. With just Lines , it has 30; these figures include Gateway and the other tunnels highlighted in yellow but not the highlighted at-grade lines, like Lower Montauk , but exclude East Side Access.
Counting the Triboro-Staten Island tunnel and Gateway starting from the portal not at Secaucus as the map portrays , this is 58 route-km, and about 62 double-track-km of tunnel the Third Avenue trunk line needs four tracks between 57th and Houston at a minimum , for substantially the same capacity.
My plan has more underwater tunnel, courtesy of the tunnel to Staten Island, but conversely less complex junctions in Manhattan, and much more austere stations i. But I do want to draw a contrast between what the RPA wants for regional rail and what I want, because there are a lot of similarities e. What I look for when I think of regional rail map is an express subway. There should be a north-south line, such as the Third Avenue trunk in the Fourth Regional Plan or my Line 4; there should be an east-west line, such as the lines inherited from the legacy Northeast Corridor and LIRR; and so on.
