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

bdurden said:
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.
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It "closes at midnight" but in reality the system is functionally useless by 11:30pm. Since the lines are so long, service at an outer station like Dulles will end by 10:45pm in order to reach the other end of the line by the midnight closing time. I've been stranded countless times throughout the system when it's nowhere near midnight.

The T gets a lot of grief (rightfully so), but it is much more reliable between 11pm-1am than DC's Metro, and that counts for something.
 
lexicon506 said:
It "closes at midnight" but in reality the system is functionally useless by 11:30pm. Since the lines are so long, service at an outer station like Dulles will end by 10:45pm in order to reach the other end of the line by the midnight closing time. I've been stranded countless times throughout the system when it's nowhere near midnight.

The T gets a lot of grief (rightfully so), but it is much more reliable between 11pm-1am than DC's Metro, and that counts for something.
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The last train leaves each end of the line at closing. All stations close down at the same time so if you are not already in the metro by that time, you won’t catch the train. There may have been and are exceptions due to staffing shortages, but that doesn’t sound like what you are suggesting.
 
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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It's in a better state of repair at the moment, and also seems to be ahead of the MBTA on staffing. That said, I think the MBTA, when running well, provides much better coverage of the core urban areas. So much of DC Metro is focused on suburban services compared to the 'T's rapid tranist lines.
 
WarpedReality said:
Officially, the final inbound train from Dulles leaves at 11:08pm Sunday-Thursday. Compare that with Braintree's final inbound train at 12:05 am. An extra hour of service really counts for a lot.
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The reason this is a bigger problem at Dulles than National is that WMATA times the final train each evening so that trains pass through either Metro Center or L'Enfant Plaza (depending on the line) at roughly closing time. As the system has expanded farther into the suburbs this has led to some pretty significant extremes at the farther branches, especially on the western leg of the Red Line and the Virginia leg of the Silver Line. WMATA publishes estimates for when the last train departs, and you can see this looking at the second-to-last station on each line. At Rockville, the last inbound train on weeknights is at 11:30 while the last outbound going one more stop to Shady Grove is at 12:41 AM, more than a half hour after the midnight closing. At Loudoun Gateway, the final inbound is almost a full hour before closing at 11:03 PM while the last outbound going one more stop to Ashburn is at 1:10 AM, a whopping 70 minutes after closing time.

Across the system, station managers close the gates in a rolling fashion as the last train passes through, although they will start pulling the gates across when there are just a few trains left - I know because I've had to scramble to catch the last train from U Street after a night out!

I think it may be worthwhile for WMATA to revist its practice of targeting closing times on the core stations. System expansion has led to some enormous divergences on the tail ends. And from a maintence standpoint, there is only so much crews can do with one track open and safety protocols in place because the other track is still active. WMATA could even things out by using stations and yards closer to the core to short-turn trains: A later inbound on the Silver Line could terminate at Stadium-Armory and layover on the pocket track. A later inbound from Shady Grove could terminate at NoMa and proceed to Brentwood Yard. The Yellow Line basically already does this at Mt. Vernon Square and is therefore less affected by the issues I describe here.
 
If anyones interested the maryland purple line had an online meeting where they discuss the progress of the project, timelines, progress photos/videos etc.. They also show some never before seen renderings which is pretty cool. It actually starts out with the new renders, some progress videos, and photos so its not as dry as many of these types of presentations tend to be.

Its very nice to see radial metro lines picking up steam in the us like the purple line, inter borough express, and the Crenshaw line in LA. Hopefully the successes of these lines will get other cities to realize their utility and propose their own.

 
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stick n move said:
If anyones interested the maryland purple line had an online meeting where they discuss the progress of the project, timelines, progress photos/videos etc.. They also show some never before seen renderings which is pretty cool. It actually starts out with the new renders, some progress videos, and photos so its not as dry as many of these types of presentations tend to be.

Its very nice to see radial metro lines picking up steam in the us like the purple line, inter borough express, and the Crenshaw line in LA. Hopefully the successes of these lines will get other cities to realize their utility and propose their own.

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Remember a time when the MBTA was seriously studying Urban Ring?
 
stick n move said:
Its very nice to see radial metro lines picking up steam in the us like the purple line, inter borough express, and the Crenshaw line in LA. Hopefully the successes of these lines will get other cities to realize their utility and propose their own.
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In addition to the K-Line (Crenshaw), which is going to be extended further north after they complete the last section of phase 1, the C-Line (FKA Green) is also a crosstown route, rather than hub and spoke. LA MTA has further plans for at least two more crosstown routes. Eventually, the rapid transit map for LA should resemble Paris or London (not in totality of coverage) to the extent that it will look like a networked system without any obvious core.
 
An additional $3.8 billion of federal money has been announced for the Gateway Tunnel Project in New York

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, announced the latest grant on Friday, just before he and Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, proclaimed that work would start this month on the next phase of the $16.1 billion tunnel known as the Gateway project.
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Digging is expected to begin in 2025. The new tunnel is scheduled to open 10 years later.
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www.nytimes.com

New Phase of Gateway Tunnel Project in Hudson River to Begin

Work on the long-delayed rail tunnel is set to speed up this month, as Senator Chuck Schumer announces an additional $3.8 billion in federal funding.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
 
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Related to the recent discussion on fare gates for GLX: Seattle is now considering installing fare gates to their light rail stations, after using an entirely proof-of-payment system for long.

www.theurbanist.org

Is Sound Transit Closing In on Fare Gates for Link and Sounder? - The Urbanist

An agency report obtained by The Urbanist lays out three key scenarios to implement fare gates with the goal of driving up fare compliance and revenue. Fare policy has a been a hotly contested issue at Sound Transit for the past few years, due in large part to concerns with punitive penalties...
www.theurbanist.org www.theurbanist.org

Sound Transit currently has a fare compliance rate of 55%, and its fully proof-of-payment system has come under scrunity in recent years due to "concerns with punitive penalties and racially disproportionate impacts of the old fare enforcement paradigm". A report found that even installing fare gates at all stations (which costs $306 million) will break even in 6-7 years, while installing fare gates at the top 5 stations will break even in 2 years.

Having experienced the Link light rail myself, I was pretty impressed with the payment system and its ease of use, but even I myself forgot to pay a couple times despite good intentions. I was quite surprised to see this, but I guess it makes sense.
 
Teban54 said:
Related to the recent discussion on fare gates for GLX: Seattle is now considering installing fare gates to their light rail stations, after using an entirely proof-of-payment system for long.

www.theurbanist.org

Is Sound Transit Closing In on Fare Gates for Link and Sounder? - The Urbanist

An agency report obtained by The Urbanist lays out three key scenarios to implement fare gates with the goal of driving up fare compliance and revenue. Fare policy has a been a hotly contested issue at Sound Transit for the past few years, due in large part to concerns with punitive penalties...
www.theurbanist.org www.theurbanist.org

Sound Transit currently has a fare compliance rate of 55%, and its fully proof-of-payment system has come under scrunity in recent years due to "concerns with punitive penalties and racially disproportionate impacts of the old fare enforcement paradigm". A report found that even installing fare gates at all stations (which costs $306 million) will break even in 6-7 years, while installing fare gates at the top 5 stations will break even in 2 years.

Having experienced the Link light rail myself, I was pretty impressed with the payment system and its ease of use, but even I myself forgot to pay a couple times despite good intentions. I was quite surprised to see this, but I guess it makes sense.
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That's disappointing to hear, but I can see why. 55% compliance rate and concerns about racially disproportionate impacts? That's the worst of both worlds.

But that reminds me, I do want to circle back to my off-hand idea to implement single-direction fare collection on the T to get some of the benefits of a PoP system without going all out.
 
ritchiew said:
And a $3.4 billion grant from the feds for the next phase of the Second Ave Subway. Looks like that's actually moving forward
gothamist.com

Buttigieg approves $3.4B grant for 2nd Avenue subway, less than half the project’s cost

The line is on track to be one of the most expensive mass transit construction projects in the history of the world.
gothamist.com gothamist.com

Makes me wish Massachusetts was fighting for more of that money.
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Jeez, just another thihg NYC has to be better at than Boston. We build the Green Line ext at 600,000,000 per mile and they have to up the ante to 4.3 billion per mile of track.
 
beck4537 said:
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Incredible! I lived in Versailles car-free for a year and share the pain of the woman interviewed. Getting anywhere by bus would take easily 1.5-2 hours. It discouraged me to the point where I rarely went anywhere but central Paris.

This makes me long for that outer ring MBTA line around the Boston metro (that, let's face it, we'll never get in our lifetime).

Are there any US city proposals to connect suburbs with metro lines? I can only recall the Purple Line in the DC Maryland suburbs.
 
bdurden said:
Incredible! I lived in Versailles car-free for a year and share the pain of the woman interviewed. Getting anywhere by bus would take easily 1.5-2 hours. It discouraged me to the point where I rarely went anywhere but central Paris.

This makes me long for that outer ring MBTA line around the Boston metro (that, let's face it, we'll never get in our lifetime).

Are there any US city proposals to connect suburbs with metro lines? I can only recall the Purple Line in the DC Maryland suburbs.
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Versailles appears to have a population density of ~8,200/sqmi (and real-world numbers are probably more like ~16,000+/sqmi, since half the place is parkland from the famous palace, so the population is all concentrated in the other half). That may be the "suburbs" of Paris, but those are some pretty urban population densities.
 
Dorchester, Roxbury, Mattapan, Somerville, Lynn, Everett all boost population densities within that range.
By that measure, outer ring lines (within the beltway) could be supported.
 
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