Words of wisdom
January 1st 2008 06:45 pm
From an article in the Asbury Park Press:
“It’s time to stop reacting, and time to start meeting the curve, if not getting ahead of it,” said Douglas Bowen of the New Jersey Association of Railroad Passengers. “It (NJ Transit) now has a unified network. It’s time to start growing.”
“NJ Transit has to look intra-Jersey, and that includes (lines like) MOM,” Bowen said. “We’ve got to stop focusing on the one-seat ride to Manhattan. Rail can do so much more than that.”
Bowen said he has heard stories about commuters who are going to some extremes to use mass transit for in-state commutes to suburban workplaces.
“I’m hearing stories about people leaving a second car (overnight) at their morning destination station, so they can drive to work from that station,” Bowen said. “It shows that people want solutions and want options.”
“We’ve got to grow the product,” Bowen said. “We need more than arteries, we need capillaries.”
Other steps needed to accommodate the growth could include changing how the railroad operates, such as “zoning” different rail lines, so peak-hour trains don’t stop at every station, said Ralph Braskett, Committee for Better Transit NJ coordinator.
Such an operation might have one train stopping at several high-volume stations and then running express to its final destination, he said. The busy Northeast Corridor Line would be a prime candidate for this type of operation, followed by the North Jersey Coast Line, if the number of riders on that line grows, he said.
Other lines, such as the Morris and Essex, will need different rail equipment to keep up, he said. The trains pulled by electric locomotive that run on the Corridor and Coast lines are not suited to the Morris and Essex, which has hills and stations closer together.
A better choice of trains for that line would be using multiple-unit rail cars, which have electric motors in each car, he said. NJ Transit’s current generation of electric multiple-unit cars run on the Corridor, have been rebuilt once and will need replacement in a few years.
Read the rest of the article.
cfmrail responded on 06 Jan 2008 at 9:04 pm #
New Jersey Transit needs to start thinking of itself as an integrated transit operation as does the rest of the transit network in the Metropolitan area. This means through service at Penn Station so ALL NJT trains are through routed to either LIRR points or Metro-North points (primarily New Haven points with a Sunnyside Yard station with transfers to the Flushing Line but there is a connection that might be usable to the Harlem Division). This also means FULLY integrating local transit with rail so that one ticket is good within a given area for a given time period on any vehicle within the area. It means regular clockface intervals be they hourly, half-hourly, every 15 minutes, every 10 minutes or more frequently. It means coordinating schedules so that people can connect. This would include the PATH. Find out how they have made this work with different providers in Germany, even a complicated area like the Rhein-Ruhr area with many major cities including Dusseldorf, Duisburg, Essen, Dortmund and Wuppertal.
If I were made czar of the New York Metropolitan area transit I would do the following.
1. Stop all planning for the THE as currently designed. This does nothing for Penn Station reliability. It does nothing for integrating the region. Instead come up with two more tracks into Penn Station, make tracks 1 - 4 through tracks and add a Kips Bay station (between 2nd and Park Avenue) serving both the LIRR and NJT. When the new tunnel is complete, eliminate Cammerer Yard since all LIRR and any Metro-North trains will be through routed to New Jersey and vice versa. Explore the possibility of making some of the platforms wider by eliminating tracks if that would better handle the flow.
2. Form the locomotive hauled trains into 4 - 6 car sets that can easily be coupled and uncoupled. This would allow split-join operations at Newark Broad Street, Rahway and Summit. Summit might have to have the platforms lengthened for 12 cars. HKopefully they built Broad Street that way.
3. Take the Brooklyn end of the Montauk branch from Jamaica and connect it to Penn Station with Electrification. If a station in Long Island City is retained or relocated, it could be used as a place to change from diesel to Electric locomotives. Using this line could free up 2 tracks on the LIRR right-of-way through Queens for use by the subway to connect into the subway 63rd street tunnel and allow the G to again go to Forest Hills.
4. Put in quiet crossings on all major commuter lines. The NIMBYs are right that the horns late at night are an unjustifiable nuisance. While I am aware of the FRA study of the effect of lack of horn blowing at normal (not the new quiet) crossings that have gates and/or just flashers, I believe that we have trained motorists to ignore them if they don’t hear a horn. Then the motorists drive with the radio/stereo so loud they can’t hear it anyway. If a horn is that needed all trucks and buses should sound their horns for each intersection. Most European countries don’t require horn blowing for their grade crossings and the trains can be doing up to 100 mph (160 kph) through them.
5. Unless the gradient would be truly bad, the Long Island should go into the current lower level of Grand Central Terminal with all Metro-North trains terminating in the upper level. The upper level should be able to handle 60 trains per hour if they stop using GCT as a storage yard.
6. Join with Caltrain, to have UIC buffing strength rules apply to equipment used on signaled lines interoperating with Amtrak and freight service. This would allow for lighter equipment and allow the Riverline to operate later at night.
Joe Versaggi responded on 08 Jan 2008 at 10:42 am #
I don’t know how you expect all those 3rd rail LIRR EMU trains, coming in at a rate of 30 per hour, to run to New Jersey. Where in New Jersey? What about MN EMU’s with fixed, under-sliding 3rd rail shoes no less ? The 2 railroads have collectively over 1,100 M-7 cars, a 30-40 year investment that isn’t going away, and they make up the backbone of their operation.
Loco-hauled trains cannot be split/merged without a time-consuming stop to make/break MU, signal, and air cables. That is not practical in a commuter environment. The only railroad that I know that does that in North America is VIA Rail in the Ontario Corridor. The short loco-hauled trains should be sent to Hoboken and not waste expensive slots into Manhattan. If that leaves Gladstone and Montclair with no Midtown Direct trains, so be it.
The reality is you have to deal with is here and now, not in Germany.
As for the Caltrain comparison, that means temporal separation with former eSPee freight operations, which is minimal. That is a non-starter with Amtrak passenger trains in the NEC.
cfmrail responded on 08 Jan 2008 at 5:54 pm #
In terms of the 3rd rail LIRR EMU’s, I would insert a pantograph equiped MU into each M7 set and electrically couple the 3 cars. Since this is already done in married pairs on the Arrows this should not be impossible. The under running shoes on Metro-North versions present problems if they can’t be replaced with versions that can handle both types of 3rd rail. If the Trans Hudson Express tunnels were connected with the current Penn Station, the Pantograph equipped M-7 sets could go anywhere on the NJT electric network. The major obstacle is not technical but rather getting 3 insular agencies to work together.
If they could split MU trains in 3 minutes at Summit with equipment that required manual effort (the old Lackawanna EMU’s) and join them in 6 or less, surely a better coupling system has been devised in the past 20 years. Also I believe that the current limitations on Midtown Direct trains are due to platform lengths on the M&E which may be only 7 or 8 cars, thus my reason for the make-break option. It also would allow consolidation of local trains from the Coast and Trenton at Rahway to save slots into New York.
As I understand the Caltrain idea, it is to allow interoperation with Amtrak and freight equipment with no temporal separation but rather depending on Automatic Train Stop or Positive Train Control. My reading of British and TGV crash reports is that FRA (and predecessor Association of American Railroads) buff strength requirements buy no improvement in passenger safety over the UIC buff strength requirements.
Joe Versaggi responded on 09 Jan 2008 at 8:41 am #
A heavy, transformer/pantograph car would have to be hauled dead all over the LIRR inhibiting performance. MN already rejected that concept for the M-8 cars. They also couldn’t clear 63rd Street or Flatbush tunnels. The LIRR would then essentially be balkanized into 2 systems while you are trying to marry it to NJT for no commercial purpose. Since few travel between LI and NJ, there is no point in sending the trains through. You would have lot of empty reverse peak trains running onto each other’s systems. By the time they get to an outlying terminal, the rush hour would be over. The pedestrian flows at NYPS would not work anyway. It would take 20 minutes to exchange 1,000 people, clear the platforms, and reverse all the escalators. The LIRR concourse only accesses tracks 13 to 21. Delays on one RR would project onto the other. Amtrak concourse doesn’t go over track 17. What then ? Where do people wait ? NJT has no operating plan with track assignments.
You can’t turn a RR terminal into a subway station like W4th Street. This RR thru-running is totally unworkable, expensive, and disruptive. It reflects too much obsession with running trains, not on passenger flows. SEPTA does it because they married 2 identical electric railroads. But most rush hour trains do not run through between the Pennsy and Reading. They are not known for great, speedy service either.
M&E should be a split/merge MU railroad. Dover yard tracks limit train lengths.
MU 3rd rail shoes don’t move and the 3rd rails are at different heights. Genesis shoes move, put can only run on one system or the other or require a couple of hours in the shop to adjust their shoes, like when Amtrak has to reroute into GCT when a barge knocks out their bridge. Even then, the Lake Shore, Adirondack, and Maple Leaf detour via Woodlawn and the Hell Gate.
Recent investments of billions of dollars have customized the motive power and MU fleets of 3 railroads. Every one of those M-7 cars has thousands of dollars worth of customizations for either the LIRR or MN. You cannot wave a magic wand, say “co-operate”, and it would all fit together.