What The Oyster Bay Branch Timetable Could Look Like

Of the three branches we've taken a look at, there hasn't been too much struggle. Other than the single-tracked portion of the Port Washington Branch, there really hasn’t been that much to worry about that we’ve covered so far. Today’s post will focus on the last off the LIRR’s “simple” branches, the Oyster Bay Branch. After this post, we’ll begin the transition into the thick of the LIRR’s operations, with the crazy Mainline and busy Montauk Branch! This is where things get interesting.

The Oyster Bay Branch serves as a decent bridge between the two. It’s service patterns are very simple, and it receives comparatively little ridership and attention for it’s comparatively low service. However, integrating Oyster Bay Branch trains into the busy Mainline and all of it’s traffic can be relatively challenging.

The Oyster Bay Branch, which begins in Mineola and slithers through some of the more sparsely-populated towns North Shore towns, ending in the beautiful enclave of Oyste Bay. The area it’s traverses isn’t nearly as dense as central & southern Long Island, but it does provide one of the only transportation links.

However, the one achilles heal of the Oyster Bay Branch is that it’s always suffered from being very slow. The MAS (Max Allowed Speed) on most of the branch is 60 mph, and the line is pretty straight as far as Roslyn, but once you travel east of that, it constantly curves this way and that, and with many curves come lots of curve-related speed restrictions. For most of the line past Roslyn, your chasing 30mph speed restrictions littered on the ridiculous curves for the remainder of the branch.

It may not seam that bad, but by adding slowly-accelerating dual-modes into the mix, and things can get pretty ugly as far as travel times go, and pair that with the infrequent service, many people will just drive to electrified stations (i.e Mineola if you live in Williston Park or Manhasset if you live farer up the branch.

There have been numerous talks about changing how this branch is ran. There have been some talks of electrification of the Oyster Bay Branch, other plans call for the railroad to get a bunch of DMUs and run them back and forth to/from Mineola, or introducing a “Transfer at Mineola”, however, I don’t think any of them are at all feasible. First off, I highly doubt the LIRR will electrify the Oyster Bay Branch anytime soon, which is for good reason. Second, while DMUs might allow for some faster acceleration and deceleration between station stops, purchasing DMUs won’t help with the curves, and therefore, there will still be speed restrictions, and when you do the math, chances are running trains with DMUs will only improve travel time by a couple of minutes, and all that saved time will vanish quickly once you make the passengers from the branch stand out on the platform at Mineola, this would be the same for the third.

With that in mind, let’s jump onto the sample timetable for the Oyster Bay Branch. It doesn’t involve DMUs (because, look, if they were interested in using them, they’d need to thick of procuring them now, which is something they obviously don’t have money for, and quite honestly, if that’s what their really interested in doing, it would probably be best to just skip the trouble and just abandon the branch altogether.)

Included in the linked PDF file below is the full sample weekday & weekend Port Washington Branch timetables. Peak, off-peak, reverse-peak, and special-event trains are all included. Note that this is a new and improved timetable design.

The timetables only show revenue trains, not equipment or deadhead moves. I have planned out to include the deadhead moves, equipment rotations, etc., as I was doing this project, and I have most of those moves handwritten down on paper, but I have yet to finalize them and insert them into the actual excel timetables. Nonetheless, I have tried whenever possible to minimize the amount of deadheading, since it’s essentially wasted crew and equipment hours, but in some cases, it was unavoidable to make the most out of the resources available.

Key Assumptions:

• The key infrastructure on the branch will remain similar to what it is today.

Service Guidelines:

• In the morning rush hour, I tried to keep trains spaced 40-50 minutes apart throughout most of the rush hour (very similar to how it is today). The branch has six trains over the course of the rush hour, the same amount as currently. The first train outta Oyster Bay in the morning will run similar today, except it will depart 4 minutes earlier at 4:52am. Service to the western terminals is decently spread-out, with 2 trains to Hunterspoint Av/Long Island City, and 2 trains to Penn Station. The first and third trains terminate in Jamaica in order to be able to quickly turn and represent eastbound runs. Train #509 will continue to run express, but instead of going to Hunterspoint Avenue will now swap terminals with #511, therefore going to Penn Station and providing a truly express run for these commuters.
• In the evening, 7 trains are provided up the branch (5 on Fridays). This provides a valid upgrade from the mere 5 that currently terminate there. The main addition is the brand new train 560, a new 5:09pm dual-mode departure from New York which would hope to relieve crowding on train 562, which is extremely crushloaded coming out of Jamaica, and also matches the two dual-modes that currently arrive into New York. I also managed to squeeze a 6:16pm departure out of Jamaica, reducing the gap between train 562 and the second dual-mode. 
• It’s important to note that East Williston will be utilized as more of an electric-terminal for several trains during rush hours, however, these trains will be included in the Mainline timetable.
• During off-peak and weekend times, service will be provided about every 90 minutes to and from Hunterspoint Av.
• Very little late night service is provided on The Oyster Bay Branch.

Link to Oyster Bay Branch Timetable

Threading Oyster Bay Branch trains onto the crazy Mainline during rush hours has provided to be quite a difficult task. It’s quite difficult to make time for Oyster Bay Branch trains to join the Mainline at Mineola. It was also difficult for me to come up with a reasonable plan for evening service to Oyster Bay, however I think I did a decent job in the end.

In the morning, all but one train operate through to a western terminal. The first train of the morning leaves 4 minutes earlier then it did under the current schedules at 4:52am. Recently, last September, train #511, had been switched from Hunterspoint Avenue to Penn Station, providing a second morning dual-mode on the branch for the first time ever. As you know, the train before is a 7:01am express-train that only makes a handful of stops along the closely packed branch, and I decided it made sense to send that to Penn Station instead, giving a true express run for those commuters as you don’t have to transfer anymore.

In the PM peak, I was able to squeeze a total of 7 trains up the branch, a great improvement over the current 5. I was able to fit an additional DM in from New York, departing at 5:09pm right before the aligning with the start of the bu rush hour. The second evening dual-mode leaves New York at 6:20pm and follows the same schedule as the current DM. I was able to 

During off-peak times, service is improved from bi-hourly to every 90 minutes. On weekends, the current schedule requires two sets to provide the two-hourly headways, so it wouldn’t require any additional equipment or crews to improve. In addition, most off-peak trains now run to/from

The first train up the branch in the early morning now departs at 12:14am, therefore giving one final train before the long overnight gap. Reverse-peak service is now maintained at much more consistent headways. By a quirk of scheduling and in order to squeeze the new dual mode in, train 569 will originate in Locust Valley (running from Oyster Bay following 558’s arrival).

I think I’ve covered pretty much everything to say about the Oyster Bay Branch. Going on from here, things will get much less simple as we say goodbye to solid blocks of time with local service and consistent stopping patterns, but we’ll see if we can shove a minimum of 50 trains down the Mainline and Babylon Branch in a period of just a couple hours soon! In the meantime, feel free to leave any comments, thoughts, corrections, suggestions, etc.

Extending the Flushing Line to Bayside

Vanshnookenraggen

The 7 train, a core subway line that connects Flushing-Main St, the true Chinatown of New York to 34 St-Hudson Yards in Midtown Manhattan has always been considered a superior line. It cuts through Queens like a steel blade and checks all the boxes as it runs frequently, has solid express service (for the most part, except for when the structure ages to be over 110 years old and needs to be replaced hindering full express service for 5 years!), and has relatively good transit connections in Manhattan. However, the line has always felt short. Clocking in at only 16 miles long, many feel as though the 7 train has more to offer.

There have been various proposals over the years to extend the 7 to various different places, with some suggesting they should extend it to New Jersey, more specifically to Secaucus, to provide a direct subway link to New Jersey for the first time, others feel the line should be extended deeper into Manhattan to better serve the Chelsea neighborhood, however, one of the most captivating proposals for this line in the last decade has been rather to to extend the 7 past it’s eastern terminal of Flushing east to somewhere in Northeast Queens.

Northeast Queens has always been considered a transit desert; having very limited options for transportation. People who live there rely on infrequent and inefficient bus service, and for those that live close enough to the Port Washington Branch, expensive and infrequent train service.

Therefore, with that said, the proposal to extend the 7 eastward in it’s home borough should feel fitting. While currently crowded and constrainted in that respect, parituclary during the rush hour, with the proper set of investments, the  

And Although the MTA has more important priorities right now, this is definitely a project they could pursue more maybe 10-15 years down the line as its a project that, while likely very expensive, would benefit a TON of riders.

The Proposal

There have been a couple of proposals related to the extension of the (7) further into Northeast Queens with the less frequented proposal being to have a branch off the (7) train, most likely elevated, branching of somewhere near 111 St, turning south for a little bit before turning east, running along the Long Island Expressway and Kissena Blvd before terminating in Springfield Gardens. The other one is for a new line to be constructed, heading northeast out of Flushing-Main St, heading north towards College Point stopping at Northern Blvd before turning East towards Whitestone. Possible extensions could be made to one day extend the (7) to Bayside, which is what many people would like to see, and was originally planned to happen almost 100 years ago.

Planned 7 extension in 1935

I personally believe that this is the more likely of the two, as it would serve an area that is in desperate need of further transit development, and while both are in areas that can be considered “transit deserts” In theory, we could possibly get both extensions, possibly having an 11 train make the run northeast towards College Point and have the 7 train run along the LIE to Springfield Blvd. This is one of those projects that we will just have to see. 

Capacity Gains

Before I wrap up this post, I'd like to mention that another benefit of having the 7 terminate somewhere besides Main St would be the likely capacity gains. If you’ve ridden the 7 train during the rush hour then you’d know that Flushing is not a great terminal. Unlike many other good subway terminals, such as 34 St-Hudson Yards, it does not feature tail tracks, rather bumper blocks on the end of all 3 station tracks (further adding insult to the injury by slowing trains down). Therefore, Flushing struggles to keep up with the demand, which is quite a bit (running trains out of there roughly every 2 minutes for a good part of the rush hour). To prevent a complete meltdown of the line, the MTA has some 7 trains end in Mets-Willets Pt, allowing for some trains to avoid the congestion, however, that doesn’t prevent Flushing from being severely capacity limited. Extending the 7 eastward would hopefully allow for a proper terminal to be built, one that can handle the level of service needed on this very crowded line. This will also account for the growth that Queens will continue to see.

In conclusion, this is one of those subway extensions that I feel strongly about. Being a big proponent of the Flushing Line myself, I’ve seen how much an extension of the (7) further east could help NYC. It could bring much needed service to some of the largest transit deserts while also helping to improve capacity along one of the most conjested lines. I personally even know someone who lives in Bayside and would love to be able to take the subway in from there. but instead gets the bus to Flushing.