{"id":263590,"date":"2025-09-29T10:44:19","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T10:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/263590\/"},"modified":"2025-09-29T10:44:19","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T10:44:19","slug":"mta-tweaks-r-train-for-better-brooklyn-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/263590\/","title":{"rendered":"MTA tweaks R train for better Brooklyn service"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brooklyn-bound straphangers on the R line<\/a> may notice their train holding in the station once they hit Lower Manhattan \u2014 but MTA officials say that\u2019s all part of a plan to get them moving through Kings County more quickly.<\/p>\n

Armed with a new strategy for dispatching trains, rail traffic controllers at the MTA<\/a> are now using\u00a0 various tools \u2014 including holding trains at select stations \u2014 to speed up the R line through Brooklyn.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf a train is scheduled [to arrive] every six minutes, and customers are waiting 10, that\u2019s not good service,\u201d Bill Amarosa, NYC Transit\u2019s head of subways, said last week. \u201cWe want to make sure that we don\u2019t have trains coming every 10 minutes followed by a train two minutes behind it.\u201d<\/p>\n

But data collected by NYC Transit shows riders boarding trains in Brooklyn headed to the southern end of the R line \u2014 to Bay Ridge and Sunset Park \u2014 were waiting an average of two minutes more than they should have, Amarosa said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe started a new dispatching strategy on the R line to keep more even service coming into the Brooklyn end for riders returning to Sunset Park and Bay Ridge,\u201d he said. \u201cBy looking at the train sequencing in Manhattan on the downtown trains, we can keep those trains more even, and avoid big gaps in service that customers were seeing on the Brooklyn end.\u201d<\/p>\n

To accomplish that, tower operators and controllers at MTA\u2019s rail control center have been told to employ a number of tools to keep southbound R trains evenly spaced as they pass through the Montague St. tubes on their way into Brooklyn. Some trains might hold for one or two minutes at Whitehall St., the southern-most station in Manhattan. Others may be given the right of way at a switch while crossing over another line in order to make up time.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt Whitehall St., the R is getting ready to go into the busiest portion of the line,\u201d Amarosa said. \u201cWe really want those trains to be at the right headways coming into Jay St., De Kalb and Atlantic Ave, because that\u2019s going to give the most customers the best service.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe R is an interesting line,\u201d Amarosa said. \u201cThe riders in Brooklyn are very often taking another express train from Manhattan to DeKalb or Atlantic Ave. and then getting on the R there for the rest of the ride to Bay Ridge.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBy keeping the service as even as we can at those stations the majority of riders are getting better service,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

The move comes as part of a philosophical shift, considering station-by-station wait times\u00a0 \u2014 known in subway-speak as \u201cheadways\u201d \u2014 alongside \u201con-time performance,\u201d a metric that measures whether a train made it to the end of the line within five minutes of the scheduled end of its run.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn-time performance is an operational metric which is really important to me to get my trains and crews to the end of the line,\u201d Amarosa said. \u201cBut we recognize that customers don\u2019t ride from end to end.\u201d<\/p>\n

Systemwide on-time performance for the month of August was just above 85%, according to publicly available data<\/a>. The R train performed worse, coming in with just below 80% of trains reaching their terminal within five minutes of the schedule.<\/p>\n

But Amarosa said he was trying to improve service beyond that raw number, focusing on how riders actually use the lines.<\/p>\n

Evening out headways also more evenly divides passengers across trains. Trains with more passengers are heavier, move more slowly, and dwell at stations with their doors open for longer \u2014 all slowing down any less-occupied, \u201clighter\u201d trains behind it.<\/p>\n

And so far, Amarosa said, the plan seems to be working.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing is the trains leaving Atlantic Ave. heading towards Bay Ridge are more even in terms of frequency, and they\u2019re more evenly loaded,\u201d the subway boss said.<\/p>\n

Since the new approach began, Amarosa said his analysts estimate platform wait time on the R train has been reduced by about 25%.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis strategy is working to reduce the wait time and get people to where they\u2019re going much faster,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The very nature of the strategy is such that there is no one-size fits all approach, and Amarosa told the Daily News his teams were going \u201cline by line\u201d to figure out where else in the system wait times could be reduced.<\/p>\n

Amarosa said similar programs are currently being tested on the No. 6 train and the J train.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brooklyn-bound straphangers on the R line may notice their train holding in the station once they hit Lower…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":263591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,1121,5249,405,403,5294,5296,50,5226,5225,5228,5227,4413,522,9656,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-263590","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-brooklyn","10":"tag-manhattan","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-new-york-county","14":"tag-new-york-news","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-newyork","17":"tag-newyorkcity","18":"tag-ny","19":"tag-nyc","20":"tag-queens","21":"tag-transportation","22":"tag-uncategorized","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-united-states-of-america","25":"tag-unitedstates","26":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","27":"tag-us","28":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115287180422655649","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}