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

Apparently cafe cars are part of the order but get delivered near the end of the run (late 2023?)
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Lost amongst all this discussion is, unfortunately, the fact that the 60-mile Springfield Line doesn't even have anything resembling an electrification plan yet. Cart-before-horse and all...and MassDOT spitting in ConnDOT's eye with the E-W switcheroo over the wholly interstate-collaborative NNEIRI doesn't help with settling that pressing bucket-list item sooner rather than later. You won't have a fully electric Inland Route corridor to tinker with at your heart's content until TWO wire-ups meet at Springfield Union. And as for BEMU's...the 50-mile gap might be something to play with, but if a majority of the total travel demand is going to be bending south thru Hartford rather than terminating at Springfield it would royally help to have the wires re-pickup at Springfield Union because the BEMU is most definitely not going to have enough juice to get all the way from Worcester to New Haven.

Let's get the way way easier line with rapidly densifying commuter traffic settled up before we get too precious here about CSX. The B&A outside of MBTA territory is by no means the higher-priority leg in this game of tinker toys. Springfield Line is the highest-priority wire-up in the whole Northeast outside of the T mainlines.


They literally addressed this last week during the STB hearing on the Pan Am merger. Amtrak/MassDOT came in looking for concessions on E-W and other passenger deals, stating they'd oppose the merger if they weren't granted concessions. CSX spent the last several months negotiating with them. They reached a framework agreement behind the scenes last week, and the Amtrak/MassDOT objection was formally dropped ahead of the hearing. During the hearing CSX sang about how the Virginia deal and negotiating process for the Virginia deal being the model template for delivering on those promises, and folks as born-obstinate as saber-rattling Rep. Neal issued statements in the hearing dripping praise on CSX for being such a good-good partner in all these passenger dreams. It's largely settled business, except for hashing out the on-the-ground backfill details of dispatching whatever the Preferred Alts. service schedules end up being. Preferred Alts. from the existing studies that de-emphasized electrification for all its complications. So, yes, CSX most definitely got its run-on-any-track service indemnities too in the deal for when their assigned track isn't available on a given day.

It's not a blank slate or open bully pulpit anymore. The pax-freight negotiations are literally about 95% done now between all parties. The merger itself is slated for an up/down approval vote before the end of this month and only has one remaining objector (arch-rival Canadian Pacific, no surprise) they haven't pre-settled with...so we might know by the end of next week whether CSX has a rubber-stamp for taking the keys to Timmy Mellon's castle and enacting everything they just agreed to.
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Herzogs abound!
I will say it again... really glad to have you and your inside baseball back in the mix, F-Line!

It is really astonishing how much you know. It's like you're telling us where the weak scales are on the Rail Dragon's soft underbelly.
I wish I could take your knowledge and plug it in to my brain Matrix-Kung-Fu style!

Carrying through the baseball theme, it'd be really cool to bring a case of Harpoon over to your house and watch the final hearings on some Amtrak VPN back channel like bootleg NESN
For real! I would love to see the players in action and know how to heckle properly.

"Mellon! You lazy overpaid BUM! Wish we coulda traded you two years ago!"
<eats handful of Doritos>
"Jimmy Foote is looking weak out there... C'MON JIMMY... Just gotta keep him healthy enough to make it through this"
<drinks>
"Hey MELLON! MELLON..... You SUCK!"
 
Brattle Loop said:
I wonder how they managed to lose seat width, wider aisles or are the cars themselves actually narrower than the Amfleets/Horizons?
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All of the seat reductions were put into additional aisle width for wheelchair accessibility. Fully unfurled wheelchairs won't fit down the aisle of an Amfleet, only at the ends by the vestibule doors. That meant their ADA compliance, while legally kosher, was only partial...as wheelchair patrons could only sit either in the rows closest to the doors or required staff to shuffle them down the aisle on a specialty cart. The Ventures have exactly the extra 8 inches of aisle width to take a wheelchair anywhere in the car. Amfleets and Ventures are exactly the same width in the middle, so 100% accessibility compliance is the entirety of the explanation.

The Brightline and VIA Rail Venture orders have the same aisle width for the same reason. So there's not really a gripe to be had about getting those extra 2 inches of seat width back, as the cars had to by-law be 100% accessible. (The reduced reclining thing, on the other hand...hopefully they respond to customer feedback about that before the East Coast order hits and make any necessary changes).


EDIT: As the article briefly states, 100% accessibility on all aisles in all cars is a key get. Because the cafe car doors are going to have full folding wheelchair lifts for working low-platform territory, meaning Amtrak no longer has to have cumbersome portable lifts stocked at every single station platform served by Chicago Hub trains (all of them 8-inch low platforms). Which is a big gripe for accessibility advocates when the station lifts are invariably unavailable for one chintzy reason or another. Wheelchair entry via the cafe car lifts thus requires all of the aisles on the adjoining coaches to be fully passable by wheelchair to make the all-onboard accessibility work. It's integral to how they make single-level cars with normal high floors work with accessibility out in low-platform territory.
 
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jass said:
The "recline" looks atrocious.

The Spirit Airline of railcars
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The recline is the same on the ICE3 and ICE4. It's like why even bother trying, and that is including First class on the trains.
 

Annotated video review of the Venture coaches aboard a CHI-STL Lincoln Service train. Click on the chapter headings in the video summary to see the individual parts of the cars.

Summary: Reviewer was overall very impressed....but again found the seats a little underwhelming.
 
In this week’s post, I’m sharing something I spent a long time working on last year, and which eventually became part of the inspiration for creating the blog itself: a map (and commentary) on New York’s “Super Commuter” Rail Network.

In short, there is a underpublicized network of modestly frequent Amtrak routes stretching from Boston to Harrisburg that enable someone to do a “super commute” into New York – something like, get on the train at 7:30, answer emails and write reports on the train, arrive in midtown at 10:15, have a morning meeting, a business lunch, an afternoon meeting or two, hop on a 4pm train out of Penn and be home by 8pm. It’s a long day, but it’s doable. And it’s clear that Amtrak’s (pre-pandemic) schedules were intended to accommodate this kind of travel.

The travel times are (in some cases) longer than traditional commuter rail, the fares are (usually) higher than traditional commuter rail… but super commutes are longer than conventional commutes, and super commutes are less frequent than conventional commutes and so can afford higher fares. Is Amtrak’s New York network meaningfully a “commuter rail” network? I’m not sure. But it definitely is a network, with very clear boundaries and pretty consistent tiers of service.

So here's the map:

AmtrakNEC.png


This project was a lot of fun. As outlined in the appendix of my blog post, there are all sorts of little details that become apparent through this analysis. For example -- what's going on with those stops between Philadelphia 30th and Trenton? Who is using those stops? In 2019, they had 1 or 2 trains each northbound in the morning and 2 or 3 trains southbound in the evening, suggesting they are indeed geared toward NYC "super commuters" (although with journeys of 70-80 minutes, it's hardly a super-commute in travel time). The preponderance of "few trains stop" stations between NYC and Philly also probably speaks to the linking SEPTA and NJT commuter rail networks that cover that same stretch, meeting in Trenton with timed transfers available (albeit for a more longer travel time -- well over two hours). In some alternate universe where SEPTA and NJT coordinate express single-seat through-runs, it's possible that the Northeast Corridor intercity trains would be fully limited to Newark Penn, Newark EWR, Metropark, and Trenton -- making for a much simpler timetable!
 
I wonder how the bizz class seats will look, since you pay more for those seats to be a little more comfy. :unsure:
 
Jahvon09 said:
I wonder how the bizz class seats will look, since you pay more for those seats to be a little more comfy. :unsure:
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The Acelas only offer Business or First Class — on the existing trains, First Class has fewer seats per carriage as they have more single seats on each side of the aisle, and a meal and drinks are included, which are served at your seat.
 
GIL said:
The Acelas only offer Business or First Class — on the existing trains, First Class has fewer seats per carriage as they have more single seats on each side of the aisle, and a meal and drinks are included, which are served at your seat.
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So let me get this straight;

Bizz class seats are only offered on the Acela trains. The Amfleet 1's, as they will be retired, will no longer feature Bizz Class. Coach Class will take over in all of the new cars, so that means that when the NER starts service with the new cars, it will be all-coach class, right?

When the older Acelas came into service, first class was switched from another train. Forgot the name of them. Now that the newer Acelas are about to come into service, bizz class will only be featured on THOSE trains? And if you want to go bizz class, you'll soon have no choice but to ride on one of the new Acelas, right? :unsure:
 
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