Acela & Amtrak NEC (HSR BOS-NYP-WAS and branches only)

No, no, I couldn't ride on THAT one! Not even from Savanna to Washington! So basically, that is a no-frills train, since it has no sleeping cars or a dining car. The food is all BOB (buy on board).

I rode the Acela from 128 to Washington many, many, many times, even some of them in first class.

I'm going back to Washington next month for Memorial Day weekend, but this time, I'm taking the Northeast Regional in business class, to save some money. :cool:
 
Jahvon09 said:
I rode the Acela from 128 to Washington many, many, many times, even some of them in first class.
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Point remains: Going end to end is rare on all NEC trains (whether they are 100% on-corridor, or feed in from South-of-DC). Living in Boston we may think it natural to use extreme endpoints (we live in one!) but the reality is it is not common.

This is particularly true for Acela. In the last stats I read, 93% of all Acela trips were either Northside (having both origin and destination on the NY-BOS segment) or Southside (starting and ending on the NY-WAS segment).

Only 7% of Acela trips involved people who kept their seat as it transited Penn Station. Of these, most were 3/4 length trips like BOS/PVD-PHL or WAS-STM/NHV. Throw in PHL-STM/NHV and that rounds out the train's sweet spots.
 
Arlington said:
Point remains: Going end to end is rare on all NEC trains (whether they are 100% on-corridor, or feed in from South-of-DC). Living in Boston we may think it natural to use extreme endpoints (we live in one!) but the reality is it is not common.

This is particularly true for Acela. In the last stats I read, 93% of all Acela trips were either Northside (having both origin and destination on the NY-BOS segment) or Southside (starting and ending on the NY-WAS segment).

Only 7% of Acela trips involved people who kept their seat as it transited Penn Station. Of these, most were 3/4 length trips like BOS/PVD-PHL or WAS-STM/NHV. Throw in PHL-STM/NHV and that rounds out the train's sweet spots.
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I have to change trains at Penn Station if going to Savanna or Fort Lauderdale.
There is no seat assignment on the trains. You just go on and take a seat that is available.

I like the NER, mainly because I like Amtrak anyway, since there are no metal detectors to have to go through, and no hassles to be bother with! :cool:
 
Some Amtrak Action at Newark Penn Station on Saturday

Eastbound Amtrak Regional train # 140 to Springfield,MA
Stopping at :
New York
New Rochelle
Stamford
Bridgeport
New Haven
Wallingford
Meriden
Berlin
Hartford
Windsor
Windsor Locks
Springfield,MA
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140 Northeast Regional Arriving at Newark Penn Station by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr

Amtrak's Silver Meteor # 97 to Miami

Stopping at :
Trenton
Philadelphia
Wilmington
Baltimore
Washington DC
Alexandria,VA
Richmond,VA
Petersburg,VA
Rocky Mount,NC
Fayetteville,NC
Florence,SC
Kingstree,SC
Charleston,SC
Yemassee,GA
Savannah,GA
Jesup,GA
Jacksonville,FL
Palatka
DeLand
Winter Park
Orlando
Kissimmee
Winter Haven
Sebring
West Palm Beach
Delray Beach
Deerfield Beach
Fort Lauderdale
Hollywood
Miami
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Amtrak Cities Sprinter # 600 pulling Amtrak # 97 Silver Meteor at Newark Penn Station by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr


Amtrak Cities Sprinter # 600 pulling Amtrak # 97 Silver Meteor at Newark Penn Station by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr


Amtrak Cities Sprinter # 600 pulling Amtrak # 97 Silver Meteor Departing Newark Penn Station by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr


161 by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr


Amtrak Cities Sprinter # 600 pulling Amtrak # 97 Silver Meteor Departing Newark Penn Station by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr

Westbound / DC Bound Acela Express
Stopping at :
Metropark
Philadelphia
Wilmington
Baltimore
BWI Airport
Washington
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Westbound - DC Bound Acela Express at Newark Penn Station by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr


Westbound - DC Bound Acela Express departing Newark Penn Station by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr


Westbound - DC Bound Acela Express departing Newark Penn Station by Nexis4Jersey09, on Flickr
 
Arlington said:
Point remains: Going end to end is rare on all NEC trains (whether they are 100% on-corridor, or feed in from South-of-DC). Living in Boston we may think it natural to use extreme endpoints (we live in one!) but the reality is it is not common.

This is particularly true for Acela. In the last stats I read, 93% of all Acela trips were either Northside (having both origin and destination on the NY-BOS segment) or Southside (starting and ending on the NY-WAS segment).

Only 7% of Acela trips involved people who kept their seat as it transited Penn Station. Of these, most were 3/4 length trips like BOS/PVD-PHL or WAS-STM/NHV. Throw in PHL-STM/NHV and that rounds out the train's sweet spots.
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Arlington -- its very very simple -- NE Corridor is mostly business related and that means its very time sensitive

4 hours travel time South Station to Penn Station is tolerable -- it means you can leave early have a full day of meetings and return home all in one 24 hour period -- done it many many times

I used to commute on some projects to DC 3 or 4 times a week by air -- leave Lexington at about 5 AM and be home for dinner at 8 PM with a full day in the DC area

8 or 10 hours travel time to DC is not tollerable unless you were just to take a sleeper over night

If you want the BOS to DC crowd who fly to take the train -- its simple -- you need to get the speed up so that it takes of order 4 or less hours
 
Agreed, it's too slow for most people. 6.5 hours on Acela, 8 hours on Regional. Amtrak clearly doesn't expect most people to be making the full trip.

I do know some people who use it, but mostly because they are afraid of flying. I've done the WAS-BOS trip myself, but mostly as a novelty and because I had time.
 
Hell, even just getting the Acela trip time down from 6.5 to 5 would produce a big jump in the mode share numbers for Amtrak versus flying - if you're figuring an hour on either side for getting to/from and negotiating the airports, then the total time you're planning on "flying" is 3.5 hours. There are very few people who are willing to tack three extra hours on to their trip time, but if it's only 90 minutes...? As was mentioned, there's plenty of "mid-range" travel between Boston and Philadelphia, which is a 5 hour trip right now.
 
Commuting Boston Student said:
Hell, even just getting the Acela trip time down from 6.5 to 5 would produce a big jump in the mode share numbers for Amtrak versus flying - if you're figuring an hour on either side for getting to/from and negotiating the airports, then the total time you're planning on "flying" is 3.5 hours. There are very few people who are willing to tack three extra hours on to their trip time, but if it's only 90 minutes...? As was mentioned, there's plenty of "mid-range" travel between Boston and Philadelphia, which is a 5 hour trip right now.
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160 MPH territory is opening up on a tangent stretch in New Jersey when they complete some ongoing overhead wire replacement funded by a stimulus grant. Maybe 2 years. And they did several weeks of successful non-revenue tests on 160 MPH on the Attleboro-Sharon straightaway that's currently 150. I'm not sure what the holdup is there on making that go live, since it was supposed to happen by now. So there's a maybe 5-10 min. shave in the offing coming soon. Then speed restrictions on Walk Bridge and CT River Bridge in Connecticut getting whacked in 3-5 years as both of those are replaced. Then the Portal Bridge speed restriction in New Jersey getting whacked permitting 90 MPH. Not funded for construction but nearly in final design.

Then add the 2017 completion of the wire replacement on the New Haven Line which will take a slight edge off the speed restrictions, especially in summertime when wire sag is a current issue.

Half-hour might be realistic by decade's end just from the churn-through of these mostly funded state-of-repair projects. More than that's going to require a dramatic step-up in funding to take care of the other bridge state-of-repair needs to eliminate more speed restrictions. And more high-speed passing track downwind in Delaware, Maryland, etc. So < 5-1/2 is still hazy. And there's definitely a ceiling around 5 where the current infrastructure isn't going to allow much more at perfect state of repair. But given how much more painful air travel is getting and how early one has to arrive at the airport that does pretty much accomplish the equal-or-better goal.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
But given how much more painful air travel is getting and how early one has to arrive at the airport that does pretty much accomplish the equal-or-better goal.
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This. Acela doesn't have to beat foreign trains, it has to beat domestic airlines and cars.

Is the BOS-WAS (endpoints) air market worth having if it takes $117b, versus more like $40b to squeeze the airlines of nearly every other market up and down the coast?

In another generation, the bridges in Maryland between Baltimore and Wilmington will have to be replaced. That's also territory that should get up to 165mph under "normal" replacement cycles.

I think the last piece will come when they finally build a pristine new stretch of track from Hartford to Providence combined with a toll road along the original I-84/684 alignment (discussed upthread). This will cut off most of the curvy stuff on the CT coast between New Haven and Westerly RI. It may still not quite give BOS a trip to WAS by train, but it'll sure suck up a lot of road and air traffic.
 
Oh, it's not another generation. Susquehanna River movable bridge, Gunpowder River fixed bridge, and the Baltimore & Potomac tunnels are replacements that absolutely have to be done with design in 8 years and staging activity for construction starts within 10 or their fast-deteriorating condition starts the doomsday clock. B&P an especially dicey one if they wait. Other stuff like Portal and Walk are higher in the actual construction queue, but they are in a heap of trouble if it's 4 years from now and not a dime has been approved to kick off the design process for the Big 3 Maryland structures. It's not an infinitely delayable queue if the stuff at the front of the line moves slower than it should. It just starts piling on top of itself.


B&P replacement would be an especially big help on speeds. It's a 30 MPH restriction today. New alignment would be straight while the current tunnel has a painfully awkward bend in the middle. And the old tunnel would be taken offline, rehabilitated, then reopened so they can boot MARC commuter rail traffic and all non-overheight Norfolk Southern freights out of Amtrak's way (Port of Baltimore one of the few unavoidable freight congestion spikes on the NEC because of all the splits and merges to get between freight branches). New tunnel would be almost exclusively intercity and graveyard-shift Norfolk Southern tall freights that can't fit through the old tunnel and as of today are missing a last mile(s) link from inland to the port. During the service day Amtrak would be able to go 90+ in the new tunnel and leave any MARC traffic on the old alignment in the dust by the time it spits out the other side.
 
Crap.

My friend was one of the passengers on the exploding bus yesterday.

I told him he should try Amtrak next time.
 
Matthew said:
Crap.

My friend was one of the passengers on the exploding bus yesterday.

I told him he should try Amtrak next time.
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The death toll for the train derailment now stands at 6.

Speed might be the deciding factor, as the train was entering a sharp curve just before the accident. It was supposed to be a lower speed zone at that point than the normal speed at which the train operates. There are STILL scores of passengers unaccounted for!

One of the other sad things about it is that it was one of the NEW locos involved in the crash, so we know that it was not the engine that failed.

This incident seems all to powerfully familiar with & similar to the commuter rail accident in New York last year, except in THAT one, the driver had zoned out just before the train had entered the curve and was going too fast to be able to get over it safely!
 
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Listening to Gov. Ed Rendell on MSNBC right now calling for mass investment in infrastructure and the need for a "dedicated high speed passenger rail corridor," citing the NE Corridor's dangerously curvy, speed-limiting tracks. Cited his time in PA when Amtrak came to him and wanted to straighten the Harrisburg corridor to reduce travel time from 2 hrs to 1.5, asking for $75 million which they'd match. He approved it, Amtrak built it and ridership went from 800,000 to 1,000,000 within 3 years.

Hopefully this sparks the debate again about our country's crumbling outdated rail infrastructure. It is so sad that it takes a tragedy for this discussion to happen.
 
Scalziand said:
Not the kind of breaking news we want to see. :(
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Maybe not, but I thought that this might be the best place for it, since the thread talks mainly about the Acela, both a possible new high-speed track line, newer & faster train sets and the normal Northeast Regional services.
 
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Curve, speed, cracked rail (rapid change in temp), and new-locomotive bug are all still in play as causes. I think direct freight collision is the only thing ruled out.
 
I recall reading after the derailment last year that the Amtrak trains don't have automated speed control and they don't have the money to install it. After this latest incident, I wonder if that will change. (Assuming speed was the reason for this crash as well...)
 
WSJ is reporting:
"Amtrak officials notified some employees on a Wednesday conference call that excessive speed was believed to have contributed to the crash, said one of these people, who was briefed on the contents of the call.
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Sure, this is going to call for Congress fully funding PTC, but what we really need is Congress fully funding curve-straightening. This stretch of ROW, or the whole stretch from a "Market East" station is what really needs to be implemented.
 
datadyne007 said:
Listening to Gov. Ed Rendell on MSNBC right now calling for mass investment in infrastructure and the need for a "dedicated high speed passenger rail corridor," citing the NE Corridor's dangerously curvy, speed-limiting tracks. Cited his time in PA when Amtrak came to him and wanted to straighten the Harrisburg corridor to reduce travel time from 2 hrs to 1.5, asking for $75 million which they'd match. He approved it, Amtrak built it and ridership went from 800,000 to 1,000,000 within 3 years.

Hopefully this sparks the debate again about our country's crumbling outdated rail infrastructure. It is so sad that it takes a tragedy for this discussion to happen.
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It's sad that it takes an event like this, where people lost their lives, to spark the debate.
 
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