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

bigeman312 said:
  • Interborough Express Light Rail Transit: A new light rail line through Brooklyn and Queens connecting 17 subway lines and the LIRR.
    • Essentially their version of the Urban Ring.
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Compared to Urban Ring, they have the big advantage that the Interborough Express is on a continuous railroad ROW, with just a few grade crossings. (Even then, a lot of transit fans were complaining they weren't doing heavy rail or mainline rail.)

That's not the case for us. The southern half or Urban Ring has no existing ROWs at all (mayyyyybe except Track 61). And while Grand Junction conveniently exists, it's filled with grade crossings, some of which can't be eliminated.

bigeman312 said:
  • Utica Alt A (BRT): Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) route from Kings Plaza to Woodhull Hospital in Brooklyn, with center running BRT lanes and stations. This project would have 16 new BRT stations.
    • This is exactly the type of project we should be emulating here on Blue Hill Ave and Warren St from Mattapan to Nubian.
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Also in NYC fashion, rail fans have complained that a subway was deemed too expensive when it's arguably very much needed. The $15 bil cost is likely overblown, and if it could have been reduced to a more reasonable cost (cut and cover or elevated), it would have been very competitive.
 
Teban54 said:
MTA just released their 20-year Needs Assessment (PDF), which evaluates many rapid transit and commuter rail expansion projects. They include a mix of popular projects that may already be in planning (Interborough Express, fixing Rogers Junction) and projects that are clearly dumb and confirmed to be low value by these studies (W to Red Hook).

While there are obvious issues such as extremely high cost estimates (almost $2 billion for a 2-stop elevated extension or to add an infill station on an underground line) and even possibly sandbagged projects (Utica Ave), I think the important thing is they're at least actively planning future transit extensions amid the cost blowups.

Does MBTA even have such a list of projects that they're looking into for the future, other than BRT like SL6? I feel that with the exception of Red-Blue, the T has expressed almost zero interest in expanding the system in recent decades. Even projects that did get completed, such as GLX and Silver Line Transitway, were more because they were forced to due to Big Dig.

There are a lot of low-hanging fruits (GLX to Route 16 and Porter, Needham rapid transit conversion) and important projects (regional rail and electrification, BLX to Lynn, GL Nubian branch) that the T really should have started thinking about right now, and that's before we consider more transformative, long-term stuff like NSRL, Urban Ring and GL Reconfiguration. Right now, I'm not even seeing any signs of it. Most studies that examined them seem to be from almost 20 years ago or even older.

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Update: The Program for Mass Transit (PMT) is probably the closest we have for MBTA:

However, the most recent PMT was from 2009, even though they're supposed to be updated every 5 years. The most recent PMT that included a cost-benefit analysis of transit projects was from 2003, and that's the one that F-Line quotes often.

Edit: Added correct link
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Would love to get @vanshnookenraggen's take on the MTA's analyses. Aside from the 125 St SAS extension and the Utica Nostrand Junction improvements, it seems like every rail project was deemed as "not cost effective", which seems... wrong? I mean, if subways really aren't cost effective, then why does New York already have so many of them and why are they so heavily used?
 
My take is that it's a political document more than anything, and it's proof that the MTA has no intention of fixing its crazy cost issues. Many of these proposals were made to look so much worse than they are based solely on high costs, and much of these estimates are laughably high. These planners had a job, and it was to deliver the projects their bosses wanted. Now, it is true that there are limited funds out there, but to outright lie about the costs of these is almost criminal.

BTW, subways AREN'T cost effective. NYC has so many of them because property values in Manhattan were so high that it skewed the numbers, and subways made the most sense to transport the greatest number of people into such a dense area. The early subway companies always built elevated lines in the outer boroughs where it was more economical. The only company not to do so, the IND, was chartered by the city and was built intentionally to remove the elevated tracks. These subways drove up costs wildly, and the project had to be bailed out by the WPA. It's no wonder, then, that more subways weren't built.
 
Regarding cost effectiveness, I think part of what @Riverside might be getting at is that in the long term, and especially with a density like NYC, subways are the most cost effective at transporting this many people around the city, compared to other means like roads for cars, surface-level transit, etc. The only things that are even more cost effective is elevated heavy rail and grade-separated surface ROWs, but they come with their own problems regarding political feasibility and impacts on urban planning.
 
Riverside said:
Would love to get @vanshnookenraggen's take on the MTA's analyses. Aside from the 125 St SAS extension and the Utica Nostrand Junction improvements, it seems like every rail project was deemed as "not cost effective", which seems... wrong? I mean, if subways really aren't cost effective, then why does New York already have so many of them and why are they so heavily used?
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Utica Alt C scores well (and is a 2 stop extension as part of it), Alt B (a much larger extension) + SAS south to Houston don't seem to score badly, just not the top of the list.

I'm not really seeing any other major subway projects that anyone seriously thought would score very well on this list?

I also feel like part of the answer here is that NYC has until now, done basically nothing with large scale BRT and there's some good candidates for it like the SI proposal.
 
RAIL is cost effective. Subways and tunnels really depend on the ridership and land value.

The Rockaway Beach Branch (I'm the co-founder of a proposal to reactivate that) was, as we feared, spiked. They reduced the cost a bit, but it is still waaaay out of line with other projects which include far more tunneling. Some of their scores, especially when it comes to time saved, are highly questionable. We are talking about a 3.5 mile long above ground embankment, not 3 miles of tunnels (there would be a short tunnel connection, but this is far from something like 2nd Ave). We still stand by the fact that the MTA hasn't considered a lot of the potential regional benefits to building the only north-south rail line in Queens, and the potential ridership comes from only the new station, not the added service throughout the borough.

Utica Alt C is... strange. I get that a full subway to Kings Plaza is prohibitively expensive (it always was, hence why they've never built it), but I'm not sure what a half assed stub will really do. The MTA never publicly released their study on the Utica Ave corridor, so we don't know what other options there are.

NYC has botched almost all of its BRT projects. They could have had dedicated center running lanes, but chose to cheap out and just paint lanes where drives double park. The SI proposal is something that should have been done a decade ago, but the mayors always ignore SI.

The Lower Montauk service has low ridership, but they doubled the cost from the 2018 study for no discernible reason.

This is one of those things where the average person will always take at face value, but people who are paying attention know to call out.
 
Alon Levy has a takedown of the defeatism in the MTA20 doc, and how it's designed to reinforce a "can't-build" attitude that's already well-entrenched in NYC. Basically, the list of expansion projects is superficially straightforward and correctly prioritized on cursory glance...but the superamped costs and lowballed ridership estimates put such an extreme skew on things sharply favoring preordained "no-build" conclusions.

pedestrianobservations.com

The MTA 20 Year Needs Assessment Reminds Us They Can’t Build

The much-anticipated 20 Year Needs Assessment was released 2.5 days ago. It’s embarrassingly bad, and the reason is that the MTA can’t build, and is run by people who even by Northeaste…
pedestrianobservations.com pedestrianobservations.com
 
Unrelated to the previous article, but the Washington DC subway even it's current state puts the MBTA to shame. Spent the the majority of last week in DC and took the train everywhere. Every line had 7 minute headways. Makes me yourn for a functioning, efficient subway system.
 
beck4537 said:
Unrelated to the previous article, but the Washington DC subway even it's current state puts the MBTA to shame. Spent the the majority of last week in DC and took the train everywhere. Every line had 7 minute headways. Makes me yourn for a functioning, efficient subway system.
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Yeah but if I’m not mistaken the FTA assumed control of WMATA in 2015 or so when they were having a horrible time. I’m not saying it’s equivalent but if you recognize the FTA coming in this year and telling the MBTA to get their act together as—we have some years to get to WMATA 2023 status

EDIT: something like this seems similar. FTA safety blitz uncovers more problems with Metro safety.
 
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stick n move said:
Maryland purple line construction progress fall 23’

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I live and work in College Park and it has been really exciting to see the platforms and shelter standing at Riverdale Park North–UMD station. Despite the delays and cost overruns, I am still looking forward to riding this train when it is complete.
 
I’m currently living in Capitol Hill and when necessary, I fly out of Dulles and the Silver Line extension has been hugely helpful. My only gripe is that they do not have express trains from DC to Dulles so you need to plan ahead significantly. Obviously DCA is much more convenient.
It is very nice to have direct access to either airport without having to exit a train and then get on a shuttle to the main terminal
 
beck4537 said:
Unrelated to the previous article, but the Washington DC subway even it's current state puts the MBTA to shame. Spent the the majority of last week in DC and took the train everywhere. Every line had 7 minute headways. Makes me yourn for a functioning, efficient subway system.
Click to expand...

DC's Metro has its pluses, but one of my main issues is that it shuts down ridiculously early. I had a flight land at Dulles at 10:20pm and wasn't able to make the last train into DC, which is absurd. The T's ~1am closing time feels enlightened in comparison to DC.
 
lexicon506 said:
DC's Metro has its pluses, but one of my main issues is that it shuts down ridiculously early. I had a flight land at Dulles at 10:20pm and wasn't able to make the last train into DC, which is absurd. The T's ~1am closing time feels enlightened in comparison to DC.
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DC Metro closes at midnight Sun-Thurs and 1am Fri/Sat. While it would be great if it ran much later to at least 3am when bars shut down, it’s really not much different from the T in that regard.

I’m not sure when you were at Dulles but the Silver line extension had a plethora of challenges during the opening, which may have contributed to trains not running at least until midnight.
 
At least the T — AFAIK — has never done this: https://x.com/sinwagon14/status/1712226767476252852?s=46&t=BftsCnAlkCvA1VBAf0kXSg

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Nothing new here but an interesting look at high speed rail across the globe.

 
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