L Train 10 Cars?

With all the talk about increasing ridership on the L-Train, would it be feasible to lengthen the trains from 8 cars to 10? During the tunnel closure, the Manhattan stations could have their platforms lengthened, and the Brooklyn Platforms would be easier to lengthen, being above ground.

The R143's are in 4 car sets, but to my knowledge, are not permanently coupled together, and the sets could be rearranged. If a set was broken up, the B-Cars could be used to make two 4 car sets into 5 car sets, increasing a train to 10 cars. There would also be an extra pair available. Instead of the cars all being in 4 car sets, they could be in a mix of 5 car sets and married pairs, all running as 10 car trains.

It also hasn't been mentioned anywhere, but having 10 car trains on the J and M lines could ease congestion on those lines while the L-Train is running in only Brooklyn.

Would there be anything besides the costs associated with platform lengthening and the lack of subway cars (soon to be addressed with the arrival of the R179's) that would preclude the use of 10 car trains on the L or the rest of the BMT Eastern Division.

Lengthen the platforms? Would take too long (at least 1-2 years to design the project, 1 year to get the funding, 1 year to get the approvals and 2 years to refund the project - because it took so long to get to that point that the money was moved to another project )and be extremely expensive. The L train platforms are all underground until they get to Wilson Av (upper) and Broadway Junction. Besides who knows what is above/behind/next to the tunnel walls that would have to be demolished to extend the platforms. You could be cutting into some one else's building/property. Trying to extend elevated platforms could run afoul of the NIMBY contingent.

If they were to try to extend the platforms along 14th St particularly 1st Av & 3rd Av there would barely be enough space between them.

As to taking B cars from R143 and R160 (there are some R160's on the L) for all intents and purposes they are "permanently coupled" (they are numerically set up and will remain that way). Even if the MTA started to break them up you would be breaking up sets and leaving A cars by themselves and reducing the amount of train sets available.

trainbrain wrote:With all the talk about increasing ridership on the L-Train, would it be feasible to lengthen the trains from 8 cars to 10?

No, and here's why

During the tunnel closure, the Manhattan stations could have their platforms lengthened, and the Brooklyn Platforms would be easier to lengthen, being above ground.

only 7 and a half Brooklyn stations are above ground. The layouts of many stations are not condusive to lengthening anyway.

The R143's are in 4 car sets, but to my knowledge, are not permanently coupled together, and the sets could be rearranged.

They are permanently coupled.

If a set was broken up, the B-Cars could be used to make two 4 car sets into 5 car sets, increasing a train to 10 cars.
There would also be an extra pair available. Instead of the cars all being in 4 car sets, they could be in a mix of 5 car sets and married pairs, all running as 10 car trains.

The trains are set up for multi car units, married sets on the subway are a thing of the past. this method would not be of any help because the R143s are not compatible with the R160s, you have a fixed number of R143s. at max, you have 26 trains worth of R143s as is. under your plan, there would only be 20 trains to work with.

It also hasn't been mentioned anywhere, but having 10 car trains on the J and M lines could ease congestion on those lines while the L-Train is running in only Brooklyn.

It hasn't been mentioned for the same reason no one mentioned it for the L. If it was feasible, it would have been done a long time ago, as part of the other platform lengthening programs.

Would there be anything besides the costs associated with platform lengthening and the lack of subway cars (soon to be addressed with the arrival of the R179's) that would preclude the use of 10 car trains on the L or the rest of the BMT Eastern Division.

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The R179s will not address the car shortage as most of them will be in 8 car configurations and to replace the R42 and R32 cars.

Wasn't there an 11 car test train of R160's on the F some years back? They must've broken up a few sets to make that train, so the cars can technically operate in numbers other than the sets they came in. Since they're numbered as 4 or 5 car sets, it would definitely be confusing from a maintenance standpoint to have all the numbers mixed up. I mean they could be renumbered, but that would also have its challenges. I thought lengthening trains might be an option to reduce crowding on the L, but there are more issues with it than I originally thought.

I think it was extremely short sighted to order the R179's as almost entirely 4 car sets and have zero options on the order. According to Wikipedia, they might not even be able to replace all the R32's with them since they didn't order enough and the order had no options. The R179's were originally supposed to replace R44's, but when they proved to be of a faulty design and needed immediate replacements, they kept 222 R32's and 50 R42's and retired the R44's. Then the R179's were supposed to replace those, and the R211's after that were supposed to replace all the R46's. If they don't retire all the R32's and wait until the R211's come to replace them, then they probably won't be able to replace all the R46's.