Other People's Rail: Amtrak, commuter rail, rapid transit news & views outside New England

[DominusNovus]

Freeway ROW allow typically up to 6% grade. High Speed Rail usually tries to come in under 2% grade. So you are going to have many sections of the highway ROW where the grade is too steep and needs to be (massively) leveled.

Highway ROW does not equal HSR ROW.

Question: why does the rail have to follow the highway grade? It could go at a more gentle grade easily enough.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Question: why does the rail have to follow the highway grade? It could go at a more gentle grade easily enough.

It's a huge amount of concrete pour for sinking the gentler rail grades into retaining-walled cuts and elevations. And, when the grade difference is significant...outright MOAR TUNNEL.

The NEC FUTURE Commission did a lot of MOAR TUNNEL on its various Shoreline bypass crayon alignments along an Inland route of I-84 and the Mass Pike medians, because the highway grades were so much stiffer than the allowable rail grades. So it does lead to lots of cost blowouts in the real world.


EDIT: Don't forget as well, curve allowances hurt when you're trying to shiv an 80-160 MPH design rail line along a 65-75 MPH design highway curve. So you end up MOAR TUNNELING a lot around banking curves as well.

 

[DominusNovus]

It's a huge amount of concrete pour for sinking the gentler rail grades into retaining-walled cuts and elevations. And, when the grade difference is significant...outright MOAR TUNNEL.

The NEC FUTURE Commission did a lot of MOAR TUNNEL on its various Shoreline bypass crayon alignments along an Inland route of I-84 and the Mass Pike medians, because the highway grades were so much stiffer than the allowable rail grades. So it does lead to lots of cost blowouts in the real world.


EDIT: Don't forget as well, curve allowances hurt when you're trying to shiv an 80-160 MPH design rail line along a 65-75 MPH design highway curve. So you end up MOAR TUNNELING a lot around banking curves as well.

Why tunneling and not elevating?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Why tunneling and not elevating?

You can elevate. That's also a shitload of concrete for retaining walls and new overpasses, and limits to how high you can elevate when there are pre-existing road overpasses of the highway.

Incompatible grades and curves are big cost blowouts any which way...that's the point.

 

[DominusNovus]

You can elevate. That's also a shitload of concrete for retaining walls and new overpasses, and limits to how high you can elevate when there are pre-existing road overpasses of the highway.

Incompatible grades and curves are big cost blowouts any which way...that's the point.

Allow me to phrase the question this way:
Take your typical stretch of highway. Which is easier/cheaper, elevated or tunnels to smooth of the grade? Does the answer change if the highway is windy enough that track would have to cross over/under the road?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Allow me to phrase the question this way:
Take your typical stretch of highway. Which is easier/cheaper, elevated or tunnels to smooth of the grade? Does the answer change if the highway is windy enough that track would have to cross over/under the road?

It depends entirely on the application. The NEC FUTURE inland routing along I-84 and the Mass Pike would've had to have long tunnels through the steep hills in Tolland, CT and gone off the highway alignment through some banking curves that were mid-climb on the hills. The Pike would've required tunnels in Sturbridge-Charlton and Auburn-Millbury for sure, and required going off-alignment with flyovers/duckunders for several curves in Worcester County. That was to be a 165 MPH ROW, so the curve tolerances were especially brittle and problematic where the highways twist while on steep grades. That would've cost billions of dollars, and be complicated construction because of the glacial rubble composition of those hills.

On the Los Angeles Metrolink example, the I-10 alignment does some tricky flyover/flyunder action near Cal State L.A. at the I-10/I-710 interchange to pound out a sharp S-curve curve on the highway. That was done 30 years ago commensurate with a big highway widening project, so the costs were buried in a far larger pie but were significant despite the flat grades, relatively few curves, and lower Commuter Rail speeds.

 

[Koopzilla24]

Helpful tool for highway gradients HERE

 

[Stlin]

Not a serious transport development in any way, but sort of fun; Out in the bay area, BART today announced a series of new anime mascots. Apparently reasonably well received, but admittedly BART is also suffering from reliability issues of their own so some apparently see it as a bit of a panacea, but I would love to see the MBTA also do *something* to liven up it's image in the near future.

Since COVID, BART's rider demographics have changed considerably. It's gotten much younger, more diverse in race and less likely to own a car. We are working to meet them where the young riders -- especially Gen Z -- are and speak their language, even if it is kind of weird.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1662259308438999040

Anime Mascots | Bay Area Rapid Transit

www.bart.gov

 

[Arenacale]

That PR department better get ready for when those are Rule 34'd...

 

[HenryAlan]

BART has a consistently good social media presence. That definitely doesn't make the service better per se, but does help quite a bit with engagement and overall communication effectiveness.

 

[stick n move]

NYC's subway is testing platform gates in a few stations to prevent people from being pushed onto tracks

“A project to save New York City's 3 million daily subway riders from being pushed onto the tracks or in front of moving trains is moving forward a year after one of the most disturbing of the tragedies motivated officials to find a solution.

The city will start installing barriers on three platforms in the months ahead, a spokesperson for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority told The New York Post. The idea comes at a cost of $100 million and was conceived in the weeks after Michelle Go was killed after a homeless man pushed her in front of a moving train at the the Times Square subway station, which is slated to get the screens, the Post reported.

The MTA's project is meant to boost safety in parts of the subway system, where the pushing incidents and other crimes have fostered a growing sense of fear among some New Yorkers and tourists since the beginning of the pandemic. Just last month, a woman was shoved into the side of a moving train, leaving her hospitalized in critical condition.

The safety of New York's subway has come drawn intense scrutiny since the beginning of the pandemic when crime, overall, spiked. Assaults jumped by nearly 30% in 2021, and in number far exceeded increases in murder and sexual assault. To address the issue, New York City Mayor Eric Adams and New York Governor Kathy Hochul last year boosted the number of police officersthroughout the nearly 250 mile system.


A spokesman for Riders Alliance, a group that advocates for riders of public transit, told the Post the new barriers won't be enough.

"While platform screen doors might have prevented [Go's] killing in the way that it happened, It happened on the same subway platform where there were police officers," Pearlstein told the Post.

Still, Janno Lieber, the MTA's chairman and CEO, told The City last year that system was "always looking for ways that we can make the system safer," while flagging challenges with implementing the platform gates in New York…..”

https://www.businessinsider.com/nyc...ates-riders-pushed-onto-tracks-mta-2023-6?amp

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

The crime framing is really incoherent, though it's typical of the Adams (NYC) and Lieber (MTA) Administrations' incessant scaremongering about crime on the system. Platform screen doors' benefits are mostly for controlling crowding (and safety concerns therein) at very busy stations. You don't burn $100M in astronomical NYC construction costs for statistically extremely rare push-in-front-of-train crime incidents. That's an absolute wrongheaded way to try to sell it on the public.

 

[bigeman312]

Personally, I like the climate control angle. I have a wide temperature band of comfort and enjoy the act of dressing for the weather, but there are many people who are discouraged from using transit, in part, due to having to wait on a freezing cold or burning hot platform. It may or may not be worth the cost, but platform screen doors is one step towards breaking down another incentive against using transit.

 

[millerm277]

Personally, I like the climate control angle. I have a wide temperature band of comfort and enjoy the act of dressing for the weather, but there are many people who are discouraged from using transit, in part, due to having to wait on a freezing cold or burning hot platform. It may or may not be worth the cost, but platform screen doors is one step towards breaking down another incentive against using transit.

Is NYC actually planning on doing full-height/solid platform screen doors? Because I'd expect them to just do the cheaper/easier/simpler half-height ones - but those aren't going to do anything fro climate control.

 

[bigeman312]

Is NYC actually planning on doing full-height/solid platform screen doors? Because I'd expect them to just do the cheaper/easier/simpler half-height ones - but those aren't going to do anything fro climate control.

Ah good point. I didn’t consider that, but I bet you’re right.

 

[fatnoah]

You don't burn $100M in astronomical NYC construction costs for statistically extremely rare push-in-front-of-train crime incidents.

This was my thought as well. If the goal is to save lives, it seems like $100M could save a lot more lives used in any number of other ways. It boils down to 20-25 incidents out of 640 million rides, and only a fraction of those result in death.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Brakes put on Amtrak Adirondack line

Amtrak once again suspends its “Adirondack” service between New York and Montreal less than three months after resuming again.

www.adirondackexplorer.org

Amtrak Adirondack service, which just resumed to Montreal after a nearly 3-year COVID suspension, is now suspended again because of track conditions in Canada. Landlord Canadian National imposed a 10 MPH speed restriction on the entire Rousses Point Subdivision from suburban Montreal to the NY border covering all days when it's 86 degrees or higher, basically making it impossible for Amtrak to schedule for the entire summer season because the schedule on hot days will no longer stay within mandated crew work hours. The train has to terminate in Albany until further notice and can't serve upstate at all during peak tourist/weekender season because of lack of turnbacks south of the border. Lots of finger-pointing ensuing over this truly stupid restriction, much of it being pointed at CN and utterly inept Transport Canada (the lead Canadian fed gov't agency for transit).

Not a good omen for things like the Montrealer restoration north of St. Albans, VT that has to use the same track that CN is taking hostage. And a reminder that as backward as pax rail transportation is in the U.S., it's much worse in Canada.

 

[#bancars]

Brakes put on Amtrak Adirondack line

Amtrak once again suspends its “Adirondack” service between New York and Montreal less than three months after resuming again.

www.adirondackexplorer.org

Amtrak Adirondack service, which just resumed to Montreal after a nearly 3-year COVID suspension, is now suspended again because of track conditions in Canada. Landlord Canadian National imposed a 10 MPH speed restriction on the entire Rousses Point Subdivision from suburban Montreal to the NY border covering all days when it's 86 degrees or higher, basically making it impossible for Amtrak to schedule for the entire summer season because the schedule on hot days will no longer stay within mandated crew work hours. The train has to terminate in Albany until further notice and can't serve upstate at all during peak tourist/weekender season because of lack of turnbacks south of the border. Lots of finger-pointing ensuing over this truly stupid restriction, much of it being pointed at CN and utterly inept Transport Canada (the lead Canadian fed gov't agency for transit).

Not a good omen for things like the Montrealer restoration north of St. Albans, VT that has to use the same track that CN is taking hostage. And a reminder that as backward as pax rail transportation is in the U.S., it's much worse in Canada.

It strikes me as odd how Canada seems to outperform comparably-sized US cities at urban transit construction and per capita ridership, but somehow does a worse job than Amtrak at providing intercity rail services.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

It strikes me as odd how Canada seems to outperform comparably-sized US cities at urban transit construction and per capita ridership, but somehow does a worse job than Amtrak at providing intercity rail services.

If this had happened in the U.S., Amtrak would've dragged CN in front of the Surface Transportation Board pronto with a filing of providing substandard service on its host trackage and had a reasonable chance of success at getting an immediate favorable ruling. That tends to curtail a lot of these types of procedural shennanigans from ever happening in the first place. But the equivalent Canadian enforcement authorities are much weaker, so the host RR has a lot more latitude to degrade service. CN and Amtrak overlap quite a bit in the Midwestern U.S., so it's all one big political game and a tit-for-tat elsewhere might get CN dropping this restriction in Canada in short time. But it sucks that the Canadian feds and Quebec Province are borderline useless at mediating something as basic and stupid as this.

The NNEIRI study wanted to add 3 Montreal frequencies from New England, and all the upgrades to NECR in MA and VT put us well on our way to achieving some or all of that. But the Canadians are doing nothing to help it. As is, the Adirondack drops from 59 MPH to 30 MPH at the border and doesn't pick back up again until it's in the inner Montreal suburbs. These schedules could be pretty good if they gave two shits about providing equivalent physical plant as New York and Vermont, but everything current and projected has to lard on like 2 hours of padding forevermore because of the crap track conditions persisting forever north of the border.

 

[Riverside]

BART has a consistently good social media presence. That definitely doesn't make the service better per se, but does help quite a bit with engagement and overall communication effectiveness.

BART, Caltrain, and LA Metro all have very active and lively social media presences. They've clearly been given latitude to be personal (and on occasion even sassy), in a way that the T never has.