South Ferry 1 'new' terminal

South Ferry on July 26

trainbrain wrote:I thought it was absolutely moronic to build a station in that location so deep. They should've have completely demolished the loop platforms and installed diamond crossovers to allow the 1 to terminate at Rector Street while they were building the new station. That way the new station could've been built much shallower and been less prone to flooding. I'm not entirely sure, but I think it's the deepest station in relation to sea level in the entire city.

Hopefully the renovations that were done made this station much less prone to flood damage. The tunnels crossing the East River are deeper below sea level, so they just needed to figure out how to waterproof a station at that depth.

The problems with demolishing the old loop station is that 5 Trains that terminate in lower Manhattan tur around there, and there are crossovers between the East and West side lines there. Thus, there would have been more to that proposition than just have 1 Trains terminatea stop early for a while.

Simple, they could've added a 3rd track at Bowling Green to have a similar station layout to Whitehall Street on the R and W. Terminating trains use the center track and trains to and from Brooklyn use the outer tracks.

Still doesn't solve the east/west crossover....

There is a GO that is done occasionally where 2 trains run via the 4 line from Nevins Street to Wall Street, change ends, bypass Bowling Green, run around the outer loop, and resume regular service at Chambers Street. It can only be done during overnight hours because the trains run too frequently during other times to do the direction change at Wall Street. To my knowledge, that is the only time that connection is ever used in revenue service. How important is it to have that connection available for work trains?

trainbrain wrote:How important is it to have that connection available for work trains?

Pretty damn important, considering that the east-west connection is used EVERY DAMN DAY for work trains, washes and transfers. What exactly do you expect to ACCOMPLISH by demolishing the loop???

I'm not saying it should be demolished. I'm saying that if it was when the new SF was built that it would've allowed for the new station to be much less deep and less vulnerable to flood damage.

trainbrain wrote:They should've have completely demolished the loop platforms and installed diamond crossovers to allow the 1 to terminate at Rector Street while they were building the new station.

Should've. Contraction of should have. AKA They SHOULD have completely demolished the loop platforms......

curious theoretical question
i presume the digging of the new SF for the 1 was no small amount of work

regarding the comments above re removal of the loop(s) which are important for E-W moves

would it have been somehow possible to (remove the loops and) build a 3 or 4 track stub terminal
with input from both the Lex and the 1?
of course before reaching the platforms there would have to be crossovers

and this would at least theoretically allow for a train coming from one line to enter the station then depart heading for the other line.
not as "fancy" as the loop but still can cross E to W or W to E
(and maybe even allow for more flexibility on the lex with trains running to SF in revenue.)

of course service would have had to terminate at Bowling green or brooklyn on the lex and chambers or rector on the 1 while this was being built

would this type of construction have been more or less work than the deeper dig for the current new SF
would this have kept the terminal not so deep and might it have made any difference when Sandy hit?

all in theory of course.

I mean in theory yes, but why? The 1 is the only service that terminates there full time, so any Lex platforms would lie fallow weekdays.. And what they have going at BG as of current works just fine so again I fail to see need.

i suppose they could extend the Lex to SF if there were a theoretical stub station for both E and W

perhaps if such a station existed at the depth of the current loops the damage from sandy may have been less???
who knows.
again just a thought.

By extend the Lex do you mean extend the 6? If so, you'd need 2 new tracks BBCH <-> this new terminal to handle the traffic.

I don't think the level of the station underground has much to do with flooding. As soon as you're below the waterline, you're pretty much toast. It's about how the design of the structure copes with that fact that determines how things fare more than everything else. A family member who works for the TA's engineering dept and was doing resiliency stuff post-Sandy mentioned that the new SF filled up "like a bathtub" during the storm. The loops, which had tracks on either side (incl. the Joralemon st tube which lies at a lower level) to empty into, didn't have the same issue, so in that way (water would fill the tubes before the station) a stub terminal would do better, but for all the wrong reasons.