This idea that everyone's riding for just one or two stops to get a better train into Manhattan really undersells just how much radial traffic there is in Brooklyn and Queens -- and that's before you get to the potential unlocked by a good Brooklyn-Queens connection east of LIC.
To be clear when I mentioned transfers, I was still thinking about within-outer-borough trips. TOD will lessen that over time, but only so much.
Purely personal anecdote but you simply wouldn't go from Forest Hills to Ridgewood or Bushwick via public transit rn unless absolutely necessary. It's an hour from Austin Street to say, myrtle-cypress via 2 busses. With the interboro it'd be reasonable!
There's tons of reasons for people living in the middle to want to go to Bk - students, visiting family, going to different neighborhoods, etc. I used to take the F basically the entire line to go to Gravesend from Forest Hills. Woulda killed for this
And all the different job clusters that exist a few stops away in those respective boroughs.
Yeah, was just talking with a coworker about how the ridership on the Franklin Ave Shuttle highlights this point, that train has no business having the ridership it does if people are just using it for the transfers