Regional New England Rail (Amtrak & State DOT & NEC)

Re: Amtrak / Regional Rail Discussion Thread

http://www.cambooth.net/2016-amtrak-subway-map/

Amtrak2016_4000px.jpg


(Sorry if this has been posted.)
 
Re: Amtrak / Regional Rail Discussion Thread

Cam Booth is probably one of the best living transit map designers. His day job is "Senior Graphic Designer at Parsons Brinckerhoff’s Portland office", but his side hobby is designing maps. Some are large-scale maps like this and similar ones of US highways and French HSR; others are more conventional like his excellent MBTA map redesign.
 
Re: Amtrak / Regional Rail Discussion Thread

chmeeee said:
Boston is the only disconnect in the entire Amtrak network. Awesome.
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Build the Inland Route at the study's recommended Alternative 2 (or the super-duper Alt 3) and that disconnect is an easy solve:

  1. Upgrade the Grand Junction to passenger spec.
  2. Run a daily New York-Portland train glommed onto a semi-express Inland Regional + Downeaster, with Grand Junction diversion and reverse move at North Station. No Brunswick...just stick to bread-and-butter Portland for service starts.
  3. Hide the operating costs for the extra distance and any extra coaches for a relatively low-demand end-to-ender by disguising the schedule as much as possible buried within standard Inland and DE slots...spaced on the daily schedule like standard Inland and DE slots. There'll be a little bit of extra standard Inland/DE demand attracted by the somewhat faster skip-stop trip, and demand for the standard services will overchurn at the same typical places (New Haven, Springfield, Boston) backstopping the fare recovery.
  4. As above, hide the operating costs for any crew changes (if necessary) by changing during the North Station layover and taxiing the Inland crews from NS to Southampton.
Above-and-beyond capital costs are just for the Grand Junction upgrades, which you can fold in with that proposal for 5 Worcester Line commute-direction trips at each rush to defray the minor costs and maximize its fed grant chances. Infill the Kendall CR station later if that spreads the funding field better for quicker service starts. So long as the state commits to the recommended Alternative for the Inlands, this system gap is easily closable within 10 years at very short additional money for the above-and-beyond capital and operating costs. Really, really low-hanging fruit for NNEPRA and MassDOT to jointly pursue if the main Inland project happens.
 
Re: Amtrak / Regional Rail Discussion Thread

From RR. net:

First of the extemely late Viewliner II dining cars was finally picked up from the CAF factory for testing. This after a clownshow of delays on the modular interior sections: first, A/C vents angled wrong that blew straight onto the food tables...then snap-in sections that didn't fit because of a grade-school units conversion error on the measurements. The Heritage diners are so shot they've had to be mostly pulled from service and replaced by quickly tarted-up Amfleet dinettes with microwaved food from lack of real ovens (and lots and lots of apologies to customers for the inconvenience). Lake Shore Limited is one of those routes suffering from dorm-room caliber eating, so these ViewFoods can't get graduated into service fast enough.

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Re: Amtrak / Regional Rail Discussion Thread

Does any one else find it fucked up that the Northeast Corridor makes money? Half of road costs are paid for using the general fund (and not a user fund levied on road users). That means that the government is subsidizing driving over public transportation. Why is our government so backwards?
 
Re: Amtrak / Regional Rail Discussion Thread

tysmith95 said:
Does any one else find it fucked up that the Northeast Corridor makes money?
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I find it the natural consequence of the whole northeast being starved for infrastructure. We've constrained supply of mobility, so, yeah, Amtrak is master of a small domain and makes money.

tysmith95 said:
Half of road costs are paid for using the general fund (and not a user fund levied on road users). That means that the government is subsidizing driving over public transportation. Why is our government so backwards?
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Because suburban & rural voters really like
- Getting more road than they pay for
- & Still believing that they are ruggedly self-reliant & thrifty

Why do politicians get away with lies? Because it is important to suburbanites to be lied to.

But the reality is that all transport is underfunded and underpriced
 
Re: Amtrak / Regional Rail Discussion Thread

100% of road infrastructure should be paid for using the gas tax and tolls. I understand that people will say it's a backwards tax but government can increase benefits to make up for it. Also move closer to work if you can't afford it.
 
Re: Amtrak / Regional Rail Discussion Thread

tysmith95 said:
100% of road infrastructure should be paid for using the gas tax and tolls. I understand that people will say it's a backwards tax but government can increase benefits to make up for it. Also move closer to work if you can't afford it.
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I do see a role for a land tax. The reality is that transportation creates nexuses that are more valuable than regular land, and the land should pay for that.
 
Re: Amtrak / Regional Rail Discussion Thread

jass said:
Why does it look like it was built in 1976
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Phase III retro paint job. From 1979.

Nobody knows why they picked that for all V2 bags and diners. It looks absolutely ridiculous on a train full of Phase IVb cars like the trailing coach in that pic.
 
Re: Amtrak / Regional Rail Discussion Thread

Not just the paint, but has window technology not evolved?
 
Re: Amtrak / Regional Rail Discussion Thread

Does anyone ride the Lakeshore end to end? 22 hours to Chicago seems like an absolute joke.
 
Re: Amtrak / Regional Rail Discussion Thread

jass said:
Not just the paint, but has window technology not evolved?
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They use the same carbody for baggage cars, diners, and sleepers and then just use different snap-in sections for the interior and cut holes for the default door/window positions for each car type. Windows have to be small because the sides of the car have to be load-bearing for holding up bunk beds, luggage racks, and wall-mount ovens and fridges. It's only the single-level specialty cars that have that structural limitation.

The next-gen single-level coaches won't be like that because they can shed all that load-bearing side skeleton. The specs call for "large picture windows"...but I don't know what that measures out to. It's somewhere in this 550 pages of light beach reading. Probably going to be like the Siemens Brightline cars being built for All Aboard Florida, because Siemens designed those so it could go hard at the Amfleet replacement.

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Not as luxurious as the double-pane windows of the Superliners (which I can attest are spectacular)...but probably as good as you're going to get for any high-level boarding flat that has to fit overhead luggage compartments.
 
Re: Amtrak / Regional Rail Discussion Thread

Shepard said:
Does anyone ride the Lakeshore end to end? 22 hours to Chicago seems like an absolute joke.
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Poor college kids/grads and poor old folks, mostly. My cousin did it several times right after she got her grad degree at BU and relocated from hometown Swansea to Chicago for job-hunting. As long as you approach it with a camping trip mentality and not "I wish I weren't so broke that I can't afford airfare on short notice", she says it's very enjoyable and there are enough chatty characters and friendly staff onboard to stave off boredom. Your mileage may vary.

The New York section is better patronized than the Boston section since it follows the Empire Corridor. They get the dining and baggage cars while Boston usually supplies one of the sleepers. Believe it or not it did 357K riders for FY2015. Down a little from its all-time high of 404K in 2012, but the best performing rider-per-mile ratio of any LD on the system. Which isn't saying much...except that it's a bit less of a lead anvil on the balance sheet than most of the LD's. I haven't been able to find a station ridership ranking. I imagine there's quite a lot of overchurn between the parts that replicate the Empire Corridor to Buffalo, the Buffalo-Cleveland section where it's the only train of the day, and the Cleveland-Chicago section that gets a second frequency out of the Capitol Limited.


Will be a tad more useful on the NY end when they finish upgrading Poughkeepsie-Schenectady to 110 MPH. And less excruciating slow and oft-delayed on the Boston end if the Worcester Line ever got fixed and the Inland Route upgraded to Springfield. Not ever going to be truly useful until New York State starts making progress on speeds on the Water Level Route out to Buffalo, but the cesspit of corruption in Albany won't even wipe its own ass with the state's depressingly modest Empire (not-)HSR plans. And is the polar opposite of Massachusetts when it comes to fighting petty name-calling battles with CSX instead of negotiating like mature adults.
 
Re: Amtrak / Regional Rail Discussion Thread

jass said:
file.php


Why does it look like it was built in 1976
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If the rolling stock is 1976, the bridge itself looks like 1876...
 
Re: Amtrak / Regional Rail Discussion Thread

CSTH said:
If the rolling stock is 1976, the bridge itself looks like 1876...
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Close...1875. That's the Portageville Bridge on Norfolk Southern's Southern Tier Line in New York. It's where all of NS's freight traffic from Chicago to New York goes (not a passenger route). CAF factory is in Elmira, NY and Amtrak took it to Binghamton then points unknown (Albany?).

No...they are not going to let the bridge fall over. Broke ground last year on its replacement, scheduled to open 2018.
 
Re: Amtrak / Regional Rail Discussion Thread

Shepard said:
Does anyone ride the Lakeshore end to end? 22 hours to Chicago seems like an absolute joke.
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I did it on my way to and from California in February of 2003. On the westbound journey, the Boston section was about half full, but the New York section was practically bursting at the seams. On the eastbound journey, both sections were pretty full.
 
Re: Amtrak / Regional Rail Discussion Thread

The LSL actually has one of the better operating loss margins among Amtrak's Long Distance routes. Lots of high-value demand given its anchor cities and dense population along it. While it is essentially 0% share of the air-rail-bus NYC-CHI market, the market is so huge that it nets enough that a decent fraction of the LSL's passengers do the whole length because the overnight schedule (sleep-while-you-schlep) appeals to enough people that it does OK.
 
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