Regional Plan Association today released a comprehensive new report and companion website “Save Our Subways: A Plan to Transform New York City’s Rapid Transit System.” The report draws on the body of research RPA conducted as part of its Fourth Regional Plan and aims to support the subway components of the MTA NYC Transit’s (NYCT) recent Fast Forward plan.

Both call for modernizing the subway’s signal system over the course of a 10 years instead of over 40 years, restoring preventative maintenance, upgrading stations and improving accessibility. And both plans recognize that improvements at this scale can only be achieved if service is suspended for extended periods of time on lines where the work is being performed. RPA’s report offers more details on how to implement some of the ideas in the NYCT’s plan and suggests some additional investments to address station circulation and track geometry bottlenecks. RPA’s report also goes further by specifying how the system should be expanded to meet future ridership demand and serve more parts of the city.