On Tue, 31 Jul 2007 05:57:34 -0700, sweek
wrote:

24 hour running and express services are things I really wish we had.

The greatest advantage of the four-track system [1] is that it allows
24-hour running. The express trains often save you less time than you
might think.


[1] Well, it mostly is... I was particularly intrigued by the
three-track layout on the 7 in Queens...

A point where I think London does much better is connections between
lines. There are quite a few cross-platform ones, and walks between
stops seem to be shorter. There also seem to be more of them. New York
for example, has so many lines crossing each other in Western Brooklyn
without any connections between them.

sweek wrote:
A point where I think London does much better is connections between
lines. There are quite a few cross-platform ones, and walks between
stops seem to be shorter. There also seem to be more of them. New York
for example, has so many lines crossing each other in Western Brooklyn
without any connections between them.

I'm afraid I strongly disagree. New York probably has more
cross-platform transfers than London, and transfers that aren't don't
usually involve long walks through endless mazes of narrow passageways.

The downtown Brooklyn situation is annoying, but it's not as bad as you
make it out to be. The IRT and BMT have several connection points.
It's the IND that's mostly left out.
--
David of Broadway
New York, NY, USA

Michael Hoffman wrote:
There is certainly a downtown and a midtown though. Where does midtown
stop? I would have said 59th Street. That doesn't mean that anyone calls
the Upper East/West Side "Uptown" though.

There's no hard line, but 59th Street is as good a border as any.
--
David of Broadway
New York, NY, USA

On Tue, 31 Jul 2007 07:56:12 -0400, David of Broadway
wrote:

PigPOg wrote:

Found this site very interesting. I'm a Londoner yet know nothing of
NYC. I've never been able to find (or have someone explain) the
Uptown/Downtown concept. I mean, where exactly is Uptown New York?

In general, downtown refers to the central business district. In NYC it
refers specifically to lower Manhattan (our /original/ central business
district, which has since grown quite a bit northward). The area called
downtown is alternatively referred to as lower Manhattan.

There is no location called uptown.

However, downtown and uptown are both very commonly used as directions
within Manhattan. They are essentially synonymous with south and north,
respectively. (So in about a half hour, I'll be getting on a downtown -
that is, southbound - train to go to work, since I live in Manhattan
north of where I work.) The same terminology can be extended to the
Bronx. In modern usage, it is never extended to the other boroughs,
although mosaic tiling (installed when the line was built in the 1920's)
in some of the 4th Avenue line subway stations in Brooklyn directs
passengers to the uptown (southbound!) and downtown (northbound!) platforms.

Well done David - perfectly clear now!
Kind regards,
Simon

On Tue, 31 Jul 2007, David of Broadway wrote:

PigPOg wrote:

Found this site very interesting. I'm a Londoner yet know nothing of
NYC. I've never been able to find (or have someone explain) the
Uptown/Downtown concept. I mean, where exactly is Uptown New York?

However, downtown and uptown are both very commonly used as directions
within Manhattan. They are essentially synonymous with south and north,
respectively.

Whereas the Manhattan grid doesn't actually run dead north-south. They're
a sort of a local approximation to north that's more useful than what a
magnet has to say about it.

In Silicon Valley hacker culture, the same concept exists, based on an
axis running along El Camino Real - towards San Francisco is "logical
north", and away from it is "logical south":

http://catb.org/esr/jargon/html/L/logical.html

And indeed, and on-topically, not entirely unlike the 'up' and 'down' used
on railways!

tom

--
22% Essential Components, 22% Repetitive Patterns, 56% Pauses