The E train is an entirely underground New York City Subway train line with a scheduled travel time as little as 45 minutes (rush hour trips are scheduled up to 15 minutes longer do to longer dwell times at stations and other train congestion) to run from the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan to Jamaica Center in Queens. E trains run at all times, always local along 8 Avenue in Manhattan, but fully express along the Queens Blvd Line during weekday rush hours and middays (from 6:00am to 7:00pm Monday through Friday), express in Queens but stopping at 75 Avenue and Briarwood-Van Wyck Blvd during weekday evenings and weekends (to allow overflow rolling stock from the Jamaica Yard to be stored on the express track here), and fully local Late Nights nightly from approximately midnight to 5:00am.
The poor design of the Jamaica Center terminal (it was originally designed to be a through station with E trains designed to be extended via taking over the LIRR Atlantic Branch to Springfield Gardens, Queens) with the switch not close enough to the terminating tracks limits capacity. This means select rush hour E trains run to and from Jamaica-179 Street instead of Jamaica Center during rush hours continuing down the Queens Blvd Line/Hillside Avenue Express Track via the F line. As of the 2019 timetable there are 4 trips in the AM rush, 3 trips in the PM rush hour from Jamaica-179 Street to World Trade Center. Running from World Trade Center to 179 Street are 3 trips in the AM rush hour and 4 trips in the PM rush hour. The last trip to 179 Street of the PM rush hour arrives at 8:06pm, after the express tracks have become overflow yard storage tracks and runs local meaning one, in the 179 Street-bound only direction, E train a day stops at Sutphin Blvd (Hillside Avenue) and 169 Street.
The line is extremely busy with many passengers using the train for relatively short trips. Due to this, the rolling stock used on the E train has been prioritized to allow crowds to get on and off the trains and minimize station dwell times. This means E trains have almost always used 10 car trains of 60 foot-long subway cars instead of 8 car trains of 75 foot long cars. This gives passengers 40 doors instead of 32 doors to get on and off of each train. The E train I will always remember for primarily using R32 cars until these were replaced by R160s between 2006 and 2010. Sometimes 75-foot long, 8 car trains of R46 cars were operated on the E train before CBTC was turned on in 2021 (which requires all Queens Blvd trains to be CBTC equipped R160s) but this wasnât standard because of the lines crowding. From 1953 until 1958 E trains (along with F trains) experimented with running 11 car trains instead of 10 car trains but operational difficulties from too small signal blocks and having to stop the trains in precise locations on platforms discontinued these operations.
E train has been operating continuously since the first section of the Queens Blvd line opened as far as Roosevelt Avenue on August 19, 1933, with E trains terminating at various locations in the early days (especially before the 6th Avenue subway opened on December 15, 1940) including providing the first subway service via the Rutgers Street tunnel into Brooklyn, running out to Church Avenue.
Even after 1940 E trains didnât always run to World Trade Center with trains originally terminating at Broadway-Lafayette Street. In 1954 trains began using the Hudson Terminal (now World Trade Center Station) running local in Manhattan, during off-peak hours with peak-hour service running via the Express track in Manhattan first to Euclid Avenue and then providing all rush hour Rockaways Service (shuttle trains to and from Euclid Avenue operated at other times) to Rockaway Park or Wavecrest when this line was taken over from the LIRR in 1956. Different patterns of service (see Wikipedia for details) were tried to service the Rockaways between A and E trains serving the Fulton Street line at rush hours over the next 20 years, with different trains running express or local along Fulton Street (E trains extended to Brooklyn always ran express in Manhattan). On August 30, 1976 the E train was finally cut back to itâs current Manhattan terminal at World Trade Center at all times running via the 8 Avenue local track, with CC trains replacing it in Brooklyn.
The E trains Queens terminus was Jamaica-179 Street from when that terminus opened in 1950 until the E train was the routing chosen for the new Arthur Avenue extension when it opened in 1988 with initially all E trains extended to the new Jamaica Center terminal, before select rush hour E trains were sent back to Jamaica-179 Street at the same time as the introduction of the V train in December 2001.
