Saturday, December 09, 2017

Express and local services on subway system in New York city

When I first visited New York City almost 40 years ago, I observed that some lines of their subway has a local service and an express service.

The local service stops at every station while the express service stops at the major stations.

This arrangement requires two separate rails in each direction. Each station probably needs a separate platform for each direction with two rails for each platform for the local and express services.

It will reduce the travel time. A commuter can take the express train until the stop before the final destination and change to a local train for the remaining stops.

I wondered at that time why our MRT did not provide for this kind of local and express trains.

I guess that there is no need to use this approach for our MRT in Singapore. The distance is really quite short, unlike the transit systems in other major cities that cover a much bigger geographical area.

There is possibly another reason. The stations for our MRT system are about 1.6 km apart. Commuters have to take the bus to the destinations between the MRT stations. Perhaps our MRT operates like the express service in New York City and our buses provide the local service?

I wonder what is the average distance between the stations in the express service in New York City?

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