Although the Lexington Avenue line serves the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall, Fulton Street-Broadway/Nassau, Wall Street, and Bowling Green stations, Yankees’ fans should be aware that the 4 5 6 lines are usually crowded during normal weekday rush hour along the corridor.

Instead, fans are encouraged to use the 1 line or the R or W lines to Rector Street, or the E to World Trade Center. Fans should also consider taking the 2 or 3 lines to Chambers Street or Wall Street, and the J to the Broad Street station.

Crowding conditions at the City Hall R and W station, Park Place 2 and 3 station and nearby 4 5 6 Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall station may force trains to bypass those stations during the parade and ceremony at City Hall. All lines affected will be monitored by supervision to ensure smooth operation.

Read the entire press release for this November 6, 2009 event, here. I’ve also provided an image of the Special Event poster for the parade, as well as an image of the revised World Series poster from earlier in the week:

In addition, both Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road will be running extra trains to bring fans to and from the parade. Click the preceding links for the train schedules.

Metrocard: Proctology Clinic - Say No to Surgery!

I couldn’t believe that I had found a real Metrocard when I picked it up off a reader in a midtown subway station this evening. But it seems to be legit. A proctology clinic advertising on a Metrocard.

A google search reveals that billboards of a similar design have appeared recently around New York City. Except that the billboards use a peach where the Metrocard shows an apple. So there’s a line – a peach/butt crosses it, but proctology itself does not. Good to know.

MTA New York City Transit will be running a set of 1917 Lo-V subway cars to Yankee Stadium this Wednesday evening in honor of the Yankees being in the World Series. For both the ALDS and ALCS this year, the Lo-V cars ran along the (4) subway line from Grand Central-42 St to 161 St-Yankee Stadium.

191 Street Station on the (1)

I received an MTA Text Message Alert about this while I was on a Bx20 heading for the 207 St terminal of the (A) train. Looks like I made the right choice this morning! [I usually take the (1) train through 191 St.]

(1) line Service Alert at MTA.info

Poster updated for the ALCS

*If necessary

The original joint LIRR/NJT ticketing policy was that such tickets could only be used on football game days, and not on days for which rail service was running to the Meadowlands for any other event or reason. That policy has now been changed to allow the LIRR/NJT joint tickets to also be used for a limited number of non-football events. This is likely a result of the the huge lines seen at the NJT ticket machines in Penn Station before the U2 concerts, and should help to reduce those lines in the future.

The joint ticketing policy change reflected on the LIRR website

Since NJT must adequately staff the Secaucus turnstiles to manually process the joint ticket holders (the joint tickets, printed on LIRR ticket stock, do not have the correct magnetic stripe and encoding to work in the turnstiles), this policy change could not have come about without NJT’s input/permission. So if NJT ok’ed it, it is curious that Metro-North has not yet updated their policy about the use of MNCR/NJT joint tickets to the Meadowlands. As of now, MNCR’s website text and detailed brochure (PDF) both continue to state that “[the MNCR/NJT joint] tickets are only good for travel to football games and not for any other event at the Meadowlands Sports Complex.”

The LIRR has also done what NJT should have done from the beginning – publish a simple one-page schedule of all the trains to and from the Meadowlands. The LIRR now allows you to click on the game time of the football game you are traveling to, and then they present you with a table of trains times for traveling between Penn Station and the Meadowlands Sports Complex station.

This is a huge help for people trying to understand how often the trains run, how long the rides and transfers take, and what their options are for getting home from the game. Bravo LIRR!

Click the links below to see the game time timetables, or look at the screen shots below them.

1:00 PM Games —- 4:15 PM Games —- 8:20 PM Games

1:00 PM Games

4:15 PM Games

8:20 PM Games

As I exited the rat hole that is the current Penn Station, I was offered my choice of four new flavors of glaceau’s vitaminwater10 “low cal nutrient enhanced water beverage”. I went for “recoup”, which is “peach-mandarin”. Don’t recall what the other three new flavors were. I picked up my bottle at the corner of 8 Av and 31 St. They weren’t on ice, though the chilly morning has the bottle feeling a tad cold. I’ll cool it down in the fridge anyhow before trying it.

Wait, I found a list of the new flavors in a press release from earlier this month:

• go-go (mixed berry)
• mega-c (grape raspberry)
• recoup (peach-mandarin)
• revitalize (green tea)

Metro-North has announced that they are FINALLY reviving their Penn Station Access Study. The first part of study, formally called the Metro-North Penn Station Access Major Investment Study/Draft Environmental Impact Statement (MIS/DEIS), was carried out from 1999 to 2002. Since then, it seems it has been dormant. Railfans and transit planners used to speak about it in hushed tones and with tears in their eyes. The “DEIS” part of the study never came to fruition, even though it was promised for “Fall 2003″.

Now the study is back in a big way, with an Environmental Assessment (EA) scheduled for completion in 2011. Thankfully “analyses performed to date on [the proposed "Build"] alternative reveal no significant impacts that cannot be mitigated. Therefore, Metro-North has decided to prepare an Environmental Assessment (EA), rather than an EIS.” That should save some time and money.

Click here for the press release: MTA Metro-North Railroad Renews Study of Access to Pennsylvania Station

The proposed “Build” alternative consists of Hudson Line service to Penn Station via Amtrak’s West Side line + Empire Connection, and New Haven Line service to Penn Station via the Hell Gate line. There would be five new stations built:

Hudson Line trains

• West 125th Street
• Upper West Side

New Haven Line trains

• Co-op City
• Parkchester
• Hunts Point

I say that this service can’t come soon enough. For people who work near Penn Station or along the 8th Avenue IND or 7th Avenue IRT subway lines, this service could possibly significantly reduce their commuting times.

For a lot more information about the work done so far on this project (1999-2002), check out the Penn Station Access Study website on MTA.info. The site appears to have been updated to reflect that the EA will be done in 2011, and with a proposed “Build” alternative graphic that shows the station formerly called “West 59th Street” to now be called “Upper West Side”.

Bonus: a graphic from a past version of the Penn Station Access Study website.