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

[Teban54]

Obviously the NSRL should be an El down Congress St and then we can just Urban Renewal anything that ends up in the way /s

It's actually quite ironic and sad that, after the widespread urban renewal efforts to enable Robert Moses-like highways and car-dependent infrastructure half a century ago, the very safeguards we've put in to prevent such episodes from happening again have now become hurdles in building transit infrastructure to correct yesterday's mistakes.

Not saying that elevated NSRL is a good idea (it's not), but this is on a much broader level: dealing with property rights, NIMBYism, etc. has become much harder than in the 1960s, even in cases where they have much less (or negligible) harms to local communities compared to their benefits for better, cheaper transit expansions and other non-car infrastructure.

 

[TheRatmeister]

It's actually quite ironic and sad that, after the widespread urban renewal efforts to enable Robert Moses-like highways and car-dependent infrastructure half a century ago, the very safeguards we've put in to prevent such episodes from happening again have now become hurdles in building transit infrastructure to correct yesterday's mistakes.

Not saying that elevated NSRL is a good idea (it's not), but this is on a much broader level: dealing with property rights, NIMBYism, etc. has become much harder than in the 1960s, even in cases where they have much less (or negligible) harms to local communities compared to their benefits for better, cheaper transit expansions and other non-car infrastructure.

The problem is that technocratic planning inevitably leads to these problems. There's a reason we ended up with these urban freeways, and it's because ultimately, from a technical perspective, they are the fastest way to move cars across a city. It's tempting to think: "But what if we could just build the solution?" But this is no better than Robert Moses, who probably would have considered himself to be doing the same. Who's to say in 50 years we won't regret things done today?

 

[Teban54]

The problem is that technocratic planning inevitably leads to these problems. There's a reason we ended up with these urban freeways, and it's because ultimately, from a technical perspective, they are the fastest way to move cars across a city. It's tempting to think: "But what if we could just build the solution?" But this is no better than Robert Moses, who probably would have considered himself to be doing the same. Who's to say in 50 years we won't regret things done today?

I'm not saying technocratic planning is good, but as it is, way too many projects get worsened or canceled due to NIMBYs. I think there's a difference between (reasonable) community backlash and concerns vs. (often questionable or outright ridiculous) NIMBYism; my point is regarding the latter, not the former, and such crowds have become a bit too influential in recent times. The irony also comes from how transit projects are more likely to be affected by this than highway projects, even today.

 

[stick n move]

It's actually quite ironic and sad that, after the widespread urban renewal efforts to enable Robert Moses-like highways and car-dependent infrastructure half a century ago, the very safeguards we've put in to prevent such episodes from happening again have now become hurdles in building transit infrastructure to correct yesterday's mistakes.

Not saying that elevated NSRL is a good idea (it's not), but this is on a much broader level: dealing with property rights, NIMBYism, etc. has become much harder than in the 1960s, even in cases where they have much less (or negligible) harms to local communities compared to their benefits for better, cheaper transit expansions and other non-car infrastructure.

Its also just as ironic how the environmental review process is used to block environmentally friendly projects like transit expansions, dense housing, dense housing around transit..etc.

 

[FK4]

It's actually quite ironic and sad that, after the widespread urban renewal efforts to enable Robert Moses-like highways and car-dependent infrastructure half a century ago, the very safeguards we've put in to prevent such episodes from happening again have now become hurdles in building transit infrastructure to correct yesterday's mistakes.

Not saying that elevated NSRL is a good idea (it's not), but this is on a much broader level: dealing with property rights, NIMBYism, etc. has become much harder than in the 1960s, even in cases where they have much less (or negligible) harms to local communities compared to their benefits for better, cheaper transit expansions and other non-car infrastructure.

We dont have a powerful centralized government, that is a fundamental problem. In the two decades following WWII, there was a continued New Deal-type acceptance of the government being a significant force in planning the economy and the infrastructure. The specific infrastructure might have been imperfect, but dont mistake the type of infrastructure with the very fact that the government had a much more significant role in projects than it does now. Since the 1970s, the erosion of the fed and state governmental powers to regulate and plan has left a weakened state that, despite its weaknesses, is mired in all sorts of bureaucratic red tape. A lot of the red tape, though, essentially just makes it easier for private citizens and entities to delay and block centralized planning. I.E, neoliberalism. It's the worst of both worlds.

Having a more powerful central government aint perfect. Sometimes bad stuff happens, like the West End. But it's still better than what we have now. There never will be a way out of the mess we're in until we have more significant economic redistributive powers and a greatly reduced role of private enterprise. Regulate the corporations, regulate airlines, higher taxes, more redistribution, and more central support of education, housing, jobs, and infrastructure.

 

[aquaticko]

It should be said that technocratic planning isn't inherently a bad thing, either. The problem is from a category error: we treat cars as mass transportation, use them as such, when at most a car holds 9 people per vehicle. Buses can hold many dozens, and trains can move hundreds per vehicle. Yes, cars will get us the "last mile", but we have legs (or cheaper wheels; bicycles, wheelchairs, scooters, etc.) that can do the same thing for negligible resource investment.

I call cars the ultimate gadgetbahn, not because of what they are, but because of how we use them. Cars are not mass transportation; no amount of highway building or vehicle automation will change that.

 

[lainpimicaja]

Has anyone been following the FRA Long-Distance Service Study? I was looking at the Northeastern regional slides from the recent February meeting and couldn't really make heads or tails out of the direction they're going in / what's on the table for potential New England benefits?

Something I desperately want is better MA-VT-Montreal service (I dare not wish for anything better connecting Boston-NH). The New England-Canada transportation market is so egregiously under-served. Would be grateful for any takeaways from anyone following this more closely than I!

 

[Stlin]

Has anyone been following the FRA Long-Distance Service Study? I was looking at the Northeastern regional slides from the recent February meeting and couldn't really make heads or tails out of the direction they're going in / what's on the table for potential New England benefits?

Something I desperately want is better MA-VT-Montreal service (I dare not wish for anything better connecting Boston-NH). The New England-Canada transportation market is so egregiously under-served. Would be greatly from any takeaways from anyone following this more closely than I!

My understanding is that is one of the things that is driving East-West Rail being pushed out to Albany; that a substantial part of the rationale is to create the connection to the Empire Corridor and consequently enable a better connection to Adirondack service. (I think given the existing service timings that meeting the maple leaf might be a stretch too far)

Also, speaking of Canada... it appears that the T isn't the only system so afflicted by systemwide slowzones. the TTC announced a whole slate of slowzones today.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1756425238319898696

 

[stick n move]

Brightline west is under construction

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[F-Line to Dudley]

My understanding is that is one of the things that is driving East-West Rail being pushed out to Albany; that a substantial part of the rationale is to create the connection to the Empire Corridor and consequently enable a better connection to Adirondack service. (I think given the existing service timings that meeting the maple leaf might be a stretch too far)

The Adirondack takes 7:30-7:50 to go between Albany and Montreal, 6:20-6:40 if Customs preclearance ever gets enacted on the Canadian side. To go along with 5:05-5:20 between Boston and Albany. Even if BOS-ALB shed an hour or more with a speed uprate from Class 3/60 MPH to Class 4/80 MPH (already planned Worcester-Springfield, but still many steps out SPG-ALB), that's still a punishingly long trip of 11+ hours with the Albany layover. With little to no affinity between Massachusetts and the Upstate NY intermediate stops on the west shore of the lakes. The NNEIRI study proposed a 9:00 total trip on the BOS-MTL direct, and you could beat 9:30 handily doing the alternative of a timed Springfield transfer between an Inland and/or East-West slot and the Montrealer. With enough calculated travel demand between Boston and the Knowledge Corridor + Vermont to have given it an official recommended rating. We've got lots of pent-up demand Boston/Worcester to Holyoke, Northampton, Greenfield, Brattleboro, White River Junction, Burlington/Essex Junction, etc.

I really don't see why Adirondack connectivity is seen as any sort of 'get'. We have the intra-New England route to do this way better. The Maple Leaf I agree is an aspirational target if the Class 4 uprate across the whole B&A allows for a post-5:00am departure for South Station (it would currently have to run in the wee hours when all connecting local transit is shut down for the night in order to time with the New York half @ ALB). We support our leg of the Lake Shore Ltd., Toronto is an equally large city as Chicago that's slightly closer to us, and funding an extra Albany lash-up is a low barrier for entry for us. But Montreal? Never Albany Hub, always Springfield Hub. There's not enough Upstate NY ridership from Massachusetts to even make a cross-ticketed combo work all that well, and nobody's going to ride it all the way to Montreal when the much schedule-superior route exists in our own backyard.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Has anyone been following the FRA Long-Distance Service Study? I was looking at the Northeastern regional slides from the recent February meeting and couldn't really make heads or tails out of the direction they're going in / what's on the table for potential New England benefits?

Something I desperately want is better MA-VT-Montreal service (I dare not wish for anything better connecting Boston-NH). The New England-Canada transportation market is so egregiously under-served. Would be grateful for any takeaways from anyone following this more closely than I!

There really isn't anything affecting New England with the FRA study, since those were strictly focused on 750+ mile routes and the Lake Shore Ltd. is the only one of those current or former going to our region. Boston-Montreal (or even Boston-Toronto) would be state-sponsored routes, because the connecting corridors are all state-sponsored. The NNEIRI study does have a full service development plan for Boston-Montreal from 2016 that's a good read. But for LD's the feds are only looking at new routes originating in New York or Washington, D.C. for connections to the Northeast region. Getting to Boston would be done by transferring, with NEC service improvements making that a perpetually easier task.


Post-Gateway, there'd be enough capacity through the Penn Station bottleneck to start thru-routing more NYC-terminating trains to Boston. Most of those would be statie routes, though...Keystones, Pennsylvanian, Carolinian, etc. For true LD's I could see a market for extending Miami Silver service trains to Boston since we have snowbirds here too. But that's probably it. I doubt the Palmetto (Savannah), Crescent (New Orleans), or Cardinal (Chicago via Indianapolis) would rate at all, and neither would any of the NYC revival routes up for study by the FRA. But even getting 1-2 more long distance trains into Boston would depend heavily on whether a post-Gateway schedule's Southampton Yard has enough capacity to spare to start servicing the LD fleet, which might be doubtful. Amtrak has active plans to expand the yard, but there's only so much room to expand and the NEC + statie routes will take up most of that leaving little bandwidth for true LD's. Today they just handle the lone Viewliner sleeper car that comes in and out every day on the LSL...no baggage cars, no full dining cars, no crew dorm cars, and only 2-3 LD-configuration coaches. Pulsing up more of the NYC-terminating LD's to here would increase that ops overhead considerably, probably beyond their ultimate capacity.

 

[Stlin]

In news to watch for how it impacts the T's CR electrification plans, yesterday Metra announced the purchase of 8 Stadler Flirt BEMUs as 2 car sets, with options for 8 more trainsets and 32 trailers that can be inserted to expand the sets. Using previously announced federal funding, apparently they need winterization mods to operate in the Chicago climate. Metra currently expects to deploy them on the Beverly Branch of the Rock Island Line.

Metra buying battery-powered trainsets | Metra

metra.com

Stadler also put out a video with more views, including the interior and as an expanded set.

 

[Badusername]

In news to watch for how it impacts the T's CR electrification plans, yesterday Metra announced the purchase of 8 Stadler Flirt BEMUs as 2 car sets, with options for 8 more trainsets and 32 trailers that can be inserted to expand the sets. Using previously announced federal funding, apparently they need winterization mods to operate in the Chicago climate. Metra currently expects to deploy them on the Beverly Branch of the Rock Island Line.

View attachment 47848

Metra buying battery-powered trainsets | Metra

metra.com

Stadler also put out a video with more views, including the interior and as an expanded set.

Do these support in motion charging? The video shows what appears to be a normal pantograph but only mentions stationary charging.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Do these support in motion charging? The video shows what appears to be a normal pantograph but only mentions stationary charging.

They do natively support IMC, but since Metra has no overhead in the district this is planned to run the only places that are going to be electrified are at station stops.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

In news to watch for how it impacts the T's CR electrification plans,

I hope not. Stadler is one of the vendors that de-powers sets of bogies on their straight KISS and FLIRT EMU's to create the battery compartment space for the BEMU variants. It serves the modular design of the vehicles well to not have to custom-shuffle as many components on the underside to fit in the bulky batteries, but it comes with a considerable performance hit vs. the straight EMU variants. The vehicles are significantly underpowered, and would perform worse on Regional Rail schedules than any of the straight-EMU makes the T was bid in its RFP. They're like halfway between a DMU and a true EMU, which is going to result in a refactoring of all Regional Rail schedules to be a few minutes worse. Plus they're 2 to 2.5 times as expensive as straight EMU's for all that performance demerit.

 

[aquaticko]

I know little enough to ask: is a half-measure not better than none? After all, considering that we know it's just physically impossible to overhead any railways in America beyond those that already have it--it just can't be done; it's science--electrifying with a model that could--hypothetically--be re-modified for higher power via overhead electrification--if it were possible, which it's not--seems at least a useful step in the right direction.

I only say this because the alternative is that battery-electric locomotive BS that we keep hearing whispers about. The subpar improvement that a BEMU represents would still be better than that embarrassment.

 

[JeffDowntown]

I know little enough to ask: is a half-measure not better than none? After all, considering that we know it's just physically impossible to overhead any railways in America beyond those that already have it--it just can't be done; it's science--electrifying with a model that could--hypothetically--be re-modified for higher power via overhead electrification--if it were possible, which it's not--seems at least a useful step in the right direction.

I only say this because the alternative is that battery-electric locomotive BS that we keep hearing whispers about. The subpar improvement that a BEMU represents would still be better than that embarrassment.

The upcharge in BEMU rolling stock would pay for a lot of miles of catenary, just saying. BEMUs are foolish, bad investments anyplace rational * catenary deployment is possible.

* Rational as in not prohibited by physical constraints on the line. Political and NIMBY stupidity not withstanding.

 

[HenryAlan]

Stadler also put out a video with more views, including the interior and as an expanded set.

Their promotional materials make it look really good! I wonder what an independent review would conclude.

 

[ritchiew]

I know little enough to ask: is a half-measure not better than none? After all, considering that we know it's just physically impossible to overhead any railways in America beyond those that already have it--it just can't be done; it's science--electrifying with a model that could--hypothetically--be re-modified for higher power via overhead electrification--if it were possible, which it's not--seems at least a useful step in the right direction.

I only say this because the alternative is that battery-electric locomotive BS that we keep hearing whispers about. The subpar improvement that a BEMU represents would still be better than that embarrassment.

I get your skepticism. But FWIW, Denver has electrified lines and built out a commuter rail network in the past 10 years. Caltrain is electrifying. Painfully slow, but it is happening.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

The upcharge in BEMU rolling stock would pay for a lot of miles of catenary, just saying. BEMUs are foolish, bad investments anyplace rational * catenary deployment is possible.

* Rational as in not prohibited by physical constraints on the line. Political and NIMBY stupidity not withstanding.

It also doesn't save that much money on electrification. You still have to string up enough overhead to charge them, and pay for 25 kV substations to provide that charging juice. And BEMU's will suck up more juice than a straight EMU when they are under overhead, because of the need to fast-charge the batteries at any given opportunity. Where an EMU will spend a lot of its time coasting at little power draw or regenerative braking at putting power back into the grid, a BEMU is going to voraciously gobble the watts at all times until it nets a fully-charged battery. That means the substations have to be beefy despite only a handful of the route miles being electrified. OCS is a fixed linear cost that increments slowly and predictably. Subs are very costly single items with siting issues because of the need to tie into nearby high-voltage feeder lines.

In the end we end up paying almost the same for a much worse product. The only places they make good sense are lighter-service un-electrified branches off electrified mainlines, which is where the rest of the world uses them. The T is trying to do it as a Get Out of Jail Free card on electrifying the mains, which is ass backward.