I literally broke out laughing when I saw their "straightening" proposal for southeast CT. I'll take things that would never fly in a million years for $500 alex.
also, the massive tunnel through the woods in eastern CT is a funny idea, more practical than the LI tunnel at least.
Yep. Elevation?...what the hell kind of wild and crazy concept is that? I go climb rock walls for exercise when I'm on-break from using Adobe Illustrator. A train can do that, right?
Even some of the good ideas are fucked nine different ways. Example (I could go on all day, but I'll just pick one):
That bypass on Appendix p. 11 of the Gunpowder and Bush Rivers using curve-straightened parts of the CSX Philadelphia Subdivision freight mainline that parallels the NEC here. Good idea! Now, it's a little bit of a wash on curve-straightening, and I think they're being a little over-optimistic on how straight they can hug US 40 near the MD 43 parkway because they'll have to stick to the little bulge on CSX to avoid abutting development. But this is good. It completely eliminates two problematic, capacity-constrained, falling-apart bridges by using a pre-existing rail line, and saves boatloads of money in life-of-infrastructure maintenance costs. 2 of the 3 MARC commuter rail station bypassed can just flip a few blocks over to the other side of their downtown density to the new line at no loss of mobility; the 3rd, Martin State Airport, is a crappy parking sink that would do much better relocated to nearby downtown Rossdale. And a busy freight yard on the NEC-proper that freights have to cross to reach Port of Baltimore gets bypassed.
Everybody wins!
Except:
1) When exactly do they plan to do this? Soon, or 2040? Gunpowder and Bush bridges need replacement NOW; they're two of the worst-condition spans on the whole NEC. Are you planning to fast-track this bypass so it can be EIS'd and designed within 10 years, or did the Commission fail to read the Amtrak mothership's infrastructure improvements report that goes for plowing full speed ahead on new fixed bridges? How is that not totally duplicating efforts and nullifying the supposed advantage of this bypass? If new bridges with newly-minted 75-90 year lifespan are built without speed restrictions the time savings of the bypass won't amount to more than a useless few seconds.
C'mon! This needs a when and how, not just a what.
2) What are you planning to do if the new bridges get built? Try to shove property Amtrak owns on MDOT and ban MARC from the bypass so they end up paying the maint on new infrastructure that's no longer needed because you bypassed it? It's Amtrak's property; MDOT can't be forced to eat Amtrak's dogfood and sack them with unfair costs because of some stupid turf war. The feds can't
reverse eminent-domain property off their books on an unwilling party. And MDOT has no reason to be willing when the NEC's track capacity can be replicated 1:1 on the CSX bypass.
What's the goal here? Lowering the cost of infrastructure? Stupid turf wars with other railroads? Keeping political cronies busy building duplicate infrastructure? This is a short-term action item because the bridge decision needs to be made now; where's the short-term plan?
3) Have they considered how they are going to accommodate the freights? This isn't just any ordinary CSX main; it's part of their National Gateway, their primary intermodal freight route up/down the entire East Coast from Tampa to Albany. Billions and billions of dollars in freight revenue. And they're just going to be hunky-dory with that getting grabbed for an NEC bypass? When they supersized the line in the first place so they could
themselves bypass the NEC and stay out of the passenger trains' way?
How do they plan to do this? They aren't eminent domaining them into a shotgun marriage with MARC on the old alignment with *gift* of onerous bridge maintenance costs. They will sue to stop that, and rightly so. How do you plan to accomodate them? It's a pretty wide ROW despite being just 2 tracks. Can they do 4 passenger tracks equaling NEC capacity for intercity and commuter rail...AND do a single slow-speed unpowered track (possibly with one freight-on-freight passing siding) to retain CSX's capacity and clearances while keeping traffic segregated? Why doesn't the doodle on a map show the width such a bypass would take through wetlands and one potentially problematic residential neighborhood in Aberdeen right before it meets back with the NEC?
How does this Adobe Illustrator doodle of nothing give CSX the slightest clue whether it should feel threatened by this or not? Or how it would even work with traffic separation? Or whether they're going to get bullied with MARC into eating Amtrak's leftover dogfood on the old NEC alignment with an eminent domain punking after they invested millions raising bridge clearances on this bypass?
4) If they aren't attempting to segregate everybody and this bypass is an outright replacement for the NEC, with the old alignment + bridges being abandoned...why doesn't it say so? Some of these slides are bypasses where the vacated section is retained for bona fide other use. Some of these could go either way, but absolutely no attempt is made to explain whether it's an augmentation or replacement. This matters! MARC and CSX need to know this right now today, and if it is a true replacement-not-augmentation you can't include that rendering without showing the width of all the tracks on the new Philly Sub alignment.
^^^YOU CAN'T LEAVE ALL THIS SHIT UNANSWERED! There is nothing to wrap brain around for action items, nothing for all the stakeholders to measure by.
Keep going through every slide and it's the same dog-ate-homework clownshow on such basic-ass coverage. To go along with all the violations of laws of physics with the geology. And they call this a Draft Environmental Impact Report???
