Brighton Line Express

Why does the express service for the Brighton Line end at Brighton Beach? Wouldn't it make sense to give people coming from Coney Island a faster ride?

I'd assume that it is capacity at Stillwell, but I could be wrong.

It is definitely a capacity issue. The local service already terminates at Coney Island. There is no capacity to extend the express service to Coney Island; and it would make no sense to swap the two. Besides, the Brighton Express is a weekday, day hour service anyway which is designed simply to increase capacity along that line during periods of high traffic.

The Brighton express service has almost always ended at Brighton Beach while the locals continued on to Coney Island. This is due to the track configuration at Brighton Beach. Express arrive and depart from the center tracks and do not interfere with the local service.

If an express was to go to Coney Island it would have to switch to the local tracks north of Brighton Beach station and the locals would have to switch to the center tracks. This was tried back in November 1967 when the "D" was extended to Coney Island 24/7 while the "QB" and "QJ" locals terminated at Brighton Beach. It was the source of many delays and was discontinued in July 1968.

Larry, RedbirdR33

Anyone here old enough to remember when the Brighton Express also ran on Saturdays from 6AM to 8PM? I remember riding it on a Saturday as a kid circa 1962.

The problem is capacity and track layout.

When the Brighton Line had it's flat junction with the Culver line at West 8th, all four trains could use Stillwell.

These days, the local gets priority because it always runs and turning it anywhere else is impossible.