Regional Rail (RUR) & North-South Rail Link (NSRL)

[roy_mustang76]

Folks, I am referring to the news about MBTA looking at eelctric trains to run express service on the Providence line. I am thinking an Acela running Providence-128-Boston back and forth 2-3 times a day.

So you're saying only half of F-Line's objections apply to the idea, as opposed to all of them. The configuration would be nice as a traveler, but it doesn't make any sense to maintain a small, issue-riddled unicorn fleet just for 3x daily express service between Boston and Providence... especially when the whole benefit to the Acela sets (speed) is wasted on the short distance. Acela sets only beat Regionals over BOS-BBY-PVD by about 5 minutes, so clearly even with the express service there's little benefit to running those particular sets.

You could extend the life of the sets, much the way you could extend the life of a 20-year old car by only driving it a few miles each day, but why would you want to take the 20-year old car that only has a few years left instead of just taking the new car you know you will need to buy soon anyway and keeping that for 25 years?

 

[jass]

So you're saying only half of F-Line's objections apply to the idea, as opposed to all of them. The configuration would be nice as a traveler, but it doesn't make any sense to maintain a small, issue-riddled unicorn fleet just for 3x daily express service between Boston and Providence... especially when the whole benefit to the Acela sets (speed) is wasted on the short distance. Acela sets only beat Regionals over BOS-BBY-PVD by about 5 minutes, so clearly even with the express service there's little benefit to running those particular sets.

You could extend the life of the sets, much the way you could extend the life of a 20-year old car by only driving it a few miles each day, but why would you want to take the 20-year old car that only has a few years left instead of just taking the new car you know you will need to buy soon anyway and keeping that for 25 years?

Because this allows you to start service next year rather than wait 5 years for the whole funding-procurement-testing process. It's not about offering commuters 150mph service, it's about offering commuters an electric powered rail set that is available NOW.

Amtrak California, in 2012, bought some NJ Transit Comet cars from 1968 that were parked in some yard since 2008. The idea was to run them until 2016 when the new fleet came online. Many folks said it was a mistake to buy something so old.

Comet (railcar) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It's 2019 and the cars are running back and forth in reliable service because that 2016 delivery date for the new cars is now late 2020.

Sometimes it's worth thinking outside the box.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

It's moot. When their AMTK tenancy is over Bombardier owns the sets lock, stock (after a loooooong handoff period where they will mostly be collecting bird poop motionless in a yard). You couldn't lease them for ANY role that doesn't involve taking on Bombardier's intrusive S&S package. At terms that would have to guarantee BBD hits a duty cycles target they can make money on for maintenance of those unicorns...which in turn guarantees that ANY lessor on the planet would take a bath doing business with them.

There's no "a little bit Acela" here. Those sets are literal financial poison to anyone who touches them. This is not news to Amtrak itself. I'm not sure why it is to folks making apples-soyburger comparisons with ex-NJT coaches.

 

[Rover]

So....I understand Raimondo has a job to do, but I'm not sure I understand what the end game is here. A quick look at the MBTA Providence line schedule shows me 3 trains leaving between 7AM and 8AM and one more around 8:30. It takes a little over an hour. Are they trying to run more frequently or make the ride quicker? If so, how much faster do they think they can make the trip after accounting for 1) rail traffic, 2) the need to stop at least at 128 and Back Bay, and 3) the slow crawl into South Station from Back Bay (really, you could walk faster!). I just took the Acela from NYC a couple of weeks ago and the trip from PVD to BOS seemed like a good 40-45 minutes which surprised me (I thought it would be quicker).

 

[roy_mustang76]

Because this allows you to start service next year rather than wait 5 years for the whole funding-procurement-testing process. It's not about offering commuters 150mph service, it's about offering commuters an electric powered rail set that is available NOW.

Amtrak California, in 2012, bought some NJ Transit Comet cars from 1968 that were parked in some yard since 2008. The idea was to run them until 2016 when the new fleet came online. Many folks said it was a mistake to buy something so old.

Comet (railcar) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It's 2019 and the cars are running back and forth in reliable service because that 2016 delivery date for the new cars is now late 2020.

Sometimes it's worth thinking outside the box.

I'm no stranger to thinking outside the box (my post history is short here, it's pretty much all outside the box thus far), but in this case I've got to say, instead of wondering if we can, we need to wonder first if we should. First, why do we want to put in express service PVD-BBY-BOS specifically? Rover scooped me as I was responding, but a normal Providence Line train takes about 1h 10m. I don't doubt that there is demand for a faster trip, but given that by definition this proposal can't cut travel times by 20-30 minutes for everyone, is buying that 20-30 minutes on one rush trip in each direction worth bringing on the unicorn fleet? Is there that much demand in that specific city pair, or is the demand a bit more evenly split along the intermediate stops? Does it make sense to switch one of the existing schedules to provide one morning rush express and one evening rush express instead, given that you probably aren't getting more than that anyway?

Remember that Acelas are also a dedicated set that can't be broken apart and substituted, so it's fundamentally different from Amtrak California buying unpowered coaches that don't much care what power is pulling them.

 

[jass]

I just took the Acela from NYC a couple of weeks ago and the trip from PVD to BOS seemed like a good 40-45 minutes which surprised me (I thought it would be quicker).

Looking at the Amtrak schedules, it is showing me Providence to Boston taking between 48 minutes (Acela) and 62 minutes (Regional) which is....astonishingly slow for a 42 mile trip.

Am I imaging it, or is this not a good 10 minutes slower than a decade ago?

In my mind, I was thinking the Acela doing the trip in 35 minutes compared to 70 for the MBTA trip, which is substantial.

Edit: I was right. Exactly 35 minutes!

The Museum of Railway Timetables (timetables.org)

www.timetables.org

Edit 2: Wait, the current timetable also shows 35 minutes, why does the ticket purchase screen show much longer trip times?

https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/public/documents/timetables/Northeast-Schedule-W04-071319.pdf

Edit 3: Apparently northbound takes significantly longer than southbound, which is why I was seeing different numbers.


But regardless, the fastest Acela on the schedule is 33 minutes, while the fastest MBTA is about 68 minutes. Thats a significant time savings. A round trip commuter would save 1 hour a day, and I would estimate they would pay a premium - but not an Acela premium (Amtrak charges $40 for a value seat on an Acela between Boston and Providence...one way)

 

[whittle]

The better comparison is Acela vs NE Regional, which is a difference of 5 minutes.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

So....I understand Raimondo has a job to do, but I'm not sure I understand what the end game is here. A quick look at the MBTA Providence line schedule shows me 3 trains leaving between 7AM and 8AM and one more around 8:30. It takes a little over an hour. Are they trying to run more frequently or make the ride quicker? If so, how much faster do they think they can make the trip after accounting for 1) rail traffic, 2) the need to stop at least at 128 and Back Bay, and 3) the slow crawl into South Station from Back Bay (really, you could walk faster!). I just took the Acela from NYC a couple of weeks ago and the trip from PVD to BOS seemed like a good 40-45 minutes which surprised me (I thought it would be quicker).

There's almost nothing you can do to speed it up. PVD station to the Blackstone River bridge @ MA state line is a 70 MPH speed limit with 30 MPH restriction immediately exiting PVD station, 60 MPH restriction at the curve where I-95/RI 146 split, and 60 MPH through Old Pawtucket/Central Falls station. It's 125 MPH on the entirety of the Attleboro Cutoff to East Junction, then 150 (rated 165 MPH) from East Junction for 13+ miles to the mild curve just south of Sharon station. The 70 MPH segment isn't as bad as it seems since every single passenger train regardless of stripes starts from dead stop at Providence and spends most of that slow zone in acceleration. And it's impossible to modify on-footprint with I-95 and/or Downtown Pawtucket walled up tight around it. Alon Levy calculated that the NEC FUTURE-proposed East Providence/East Junction Branch bypass--which would add another 5+ miles of 165 MPH territory--would have relatively minor effect on HSR schedules because enough of that tangent track coming off the reanimated tunnel + new river crossing would be spent in acceleration, and the rest just isn't a consequential enough difference from the 125 MPH Attleboro Cutoff. (There are other pretty good reasons taken together for building the east bypass, but raw clock time on an Acela schedule isn't the primary one.) Likewise, I doubt you could do very much to zip up Sharon to 128. Canton Viaduct can't be bypassed without silly-stupid amounts of property-taking, and the other minor curves are already gentle enough to sustain >100.

It's City of Boston where everything gets real slow because of congestion. While NE Regionals most definitely do have a longstanding constituency at 128 Station, it's dubious whether the Acelas truly do. But that stop has to get used by Amtrak dispatch @ SS as a timing mechanism to pace the enormous traffic volumes inbound, so every Acela stops there and always has. There's a lot that can be done to help this, and it's all things we've been talking about in this RER/NSRL thread. Get the perennial toilet-clog Needham Line off of the SW Corridor so track-switching and track-sharing in the 3-track tunnel isn't so constipated. Implement the RER plan to interline Forge Park + Foxboro via the Fairmount Line (at least on most regular slots...targeted NEC-Franklin supplementals are OK at select conflict-free times)...vacating the second-most invasive branchline from fouling faster-moving traffic with its track-switching games. Close all stations with squished-to-one-side island layouts requiring track-switching to reach: Forest Hills, and Hyde Park if the only 4-track rebuild config for it is "squished". Make it so that all traffic is sorting itself after Ruggles and that when future 4-track territory starts at Green St. the Amtraks can split off onto 2 center tracks to get off to the races while the Providence and Stoughton/South Coast locals hug the outer tracks for denser-stop commuter rail. Then I think you can make a judgment call about whether it's okay to drop 128 from the Acela schedule and blast on through, because the timing mechanism won't need to be deployed and you took out the trash on all those crossover-against-traffic moves Ruggles-Readville that make accelerating to higher speed a futile game inside the city. None of it would be 165 MPH territory by any means, but a crapton of unnecessary lowest-common-denominator padding--all of it inside Route 128--would go away and you'd see a bigger schedule lead start to open up for Amtrak vs. the CR locals on those last few miles.

This is very doable. But we have to implement RER without pussyfooting, and find permanent homes for the SW Corridor branchlines in the process to set up that no-cross-traffic track layout that segregates the intercity vs. local speeds.

 

[roy_mustang76]

Looking at the Amtrak schedules, it is showing me Providence to Boston taking between 48 minutes (Acela) and 62 minutes (Regional) which is....astonishingly slow for a 42 mile trip.

Am I imaging it, or is this not a good 10 minutes slower than a decade ago?

In my mind, I was thinking the Acela doing the trip in 35 minutes compared to 70 for the MBTA trip, which is substantial.

Edit: I was right. Exactly 35 minutes!

The Museum of Railway Timetables (timetables.org)

www.timetables.org

Edit 2: Wait, the current timetable also shows 35 minutes, why does the ticket purchase screen show much longer trip times?

https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/public/documents/timetables/Northeast-Schedule-W04-071319.pdf

Edit 3: Apparently northbound takes significantly longer than southbound, which is why I was seeing different numbers.


But regardless, the fastest Acela on the schedule is 33 minutes, while the fastest MBTA is about 68 minutes. Thats a significant time savings. A round trip commuter would save 1 hour a day, and I would estimate they would pay a premium - but not an Acela premium (Amtrak charges $40 for a value seat on an Acela between Boston and Providence...one way)

@whittle has got it right though, it doesn’t matter the time difference between an MBTA local and an Acela express unless your contention is that the only way to pull off an express service is by using the Acela trainsets. Using the Acelas would only save you 5 or so minutes in savings over operating that same express using a diesel-hauled consist. The equipment is not the service, not over the distances we’re talking about within the T’s remit. We don’t need electric equipment of any form just to run express service between Boston and Providence, just like in a reasonable world you don’t need to electrify to implement South Coast Rail. So the option isn’t “there is this electric equipment that if we pass on it there is no hope”, it’s “hey we can get these Acelas, but we might be able to snag someone’s old diesels as well to run express for 2/3/10 years until the next procurement round”. I’ll allow that I have no idea if there is any other stock out there that could be procured other than the Acelas, but if there is literally any, it can be acquired and operated just 5 minutes slower than the Acelas.

And that assumes there is even schedule space for these additional expresses, which isn’t a given with Amtrak’s desired expansion of service themselves.

 

[jass]

@whittle has got it right though, it doesn’t matter the time difference between an MBTA local and an Acela express unless your contention is that the only way to pull off an express service is by using the Acela trainsets. Using the Acelas would only save you 5 or so minutes in savings over operating that same express using a diesel-hauled consist. The equipment is not the service, not over the distances we’re talking about within the T’s remit. We don’t need electric equipment of any form just to run express service between Boston and Providence, just like in a reasonable world you don’t need to electrify to implement South Coast Rail. So the option isn’t “there is this electric equipment that if we pass on it there is no hope”, it’s “hey we can get these Acelas, but we might be able to snag someone’s old diesels as well to run express for 2/3/10 years until the next procurement round”. I’ll allow that I have no idea if there is any other stock out there that could be procured other than the Acelas, but if there is literally any, it can be acquired and operated just 5 minutes slower than the Acelas.

And that assumes there is even schedule space for these additional expresses, which isn’t a given with Amtrak’s desired expansion of service themselves.

It's not about the Acela specifically, its about this:

Baker later expounded on the cross-border rail project, which he said would require discussions with Amtrak about obtaining electrified locomotives and coach capacity, as well as considerations about schedules for the train line that the T’s commuter rail shares with Amtrak. The governor also contemplated the possibility of an express train along the line that connects the two state capitals – the last leg of Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor – but he said scheduling would be an impediment to that.

The only excess Amtrak capacity in the next decade is the retiring Acela fleet.

So you either pick them up used and cheap, or you get in line in the procurement process and now it's 2030.

 

[HenryAlan]

Why do you think Amtrak doesn't have a couple of spare electric locomotives? I'm not saying they do, but do you have some kind of equipment list or other data to back your statement?

 

[Rover]

There's almost nothing you can do to speed it up. PVD station to the Blackstone River bridge @ MA state line is a 70 MPH speed limit with 30 MPH restriction immediately exiting PVD station, 60 MPH restriction at the curve where I-95/RI 146 split, and 60 MPH through Old Pawtucket/Central Falls station. It's 125 MPH on the entirety of the Attleboro Cutoff to East Junction, then 150 (rated 165 MPH) from East Junction for 13+ miles to the mild curve just south of Sharon station. The 70 MPH segment isn't as bad as it seems since every single passenger train regardless of stripes starts from dead stop at Providence and spends most of that slow zone in acceleration. And it's impossible to modify on-footprint with I-95 and/or Downtown Pawtucket walled up tight around it. Alon Levy calculated that the NEC FUTURE-proposed East Providence/East Junction Branch bypass--which would add another 5+ miles of 165 MPH territory--would have relatively minor effect on HSR schedules because enough of that tangent track coming off the reanimated tunnel + new river crossing would be spent in acceleration, and the rest just isn't a consequential enough difference from the 125 MPH Attleboro Cutoff. (There are other pretty good reasons taken together for building the east bypass, but raw clock time on an Acela schedule isn't the primary one.) Likewise, I doubt you could do very much to zip up Sharon to 128. Canton Viaduct can't be bypassed without silly-stupid amounts of property-taking, and the other minor curves are already gentle enough to sustain >100.

It's City of Boston where everything gets real slow because of congestion. While NE Regionals most definitely do have a longstanding constituency at 128 Station, it's dubious whether the Acelas truly do. But that stop has to get used by Amtrak dispatch @ SS as a timing mechanism to pace the enormous traffic volumes inbound, so every Acela stops there and always has. There's a lot that can be done to help this, and it's all things we've been talking about in this RER/NSRL thread. Get the perennial toilet-clog Needham Line off of the SW Corridor so track-switching and track-sharing in the 3-track tunnel isn't so constipated. Implement the RER plan to interline Forge Park + Foxboro via the Fairmount Line (at least on most regular slots...targeted NEC-Franklin supplementals are OK at select conflict-free times)...vacating the second-most invasive branchline from fouling faster-moving traffic with its track-switching games. Close all stations with squished-to-one-side island layouts requiring track-switching to reach: Forest Hills, and Hyde Park if the only 4-track rebuild config for it is "squished". Make it so that all traffic is sorting itself after Ruggles and that when future 4-track territory starts at Green St. the Amtraks can split off onto 2 center tracks to get off to the races while the Providence and Stoughton/South Coast locals hug the outer tracks for denser-stop commuter rail. Then I think you can make a judgment call about whether it's okay to drop 128 from the Acela schedule and blast on through, because the timing mechanism won't need to be deployed and you took out the trash on all those crossover-against-traffic moves Ruggles-Readville that make accelerating to higher speed a futile game inside the city. None of it would be 165 MPH territory by any means, but a crapton of unnecessary lowest-common-denominator padding--all of it inside Route 128--would go away and you'd see a bigger schedule lead start to open up for Amtrak vs. the CR locals on those last few miles.

This is very doable. But we have to implement RER without pussyfooting, and find permanent homes for the SW Corridor branchlines in the process to set up that no-cross-traffic track layout that segregates the intercity vs. local speeds.

Thanks for the good info. Two questions. 1) Do you consider all of the improvements listed above as part of different projects and high speed from BOS to PVD is just a secondary beneficiary, or is that route meant to be the primary beneficiary and the main driver of all that work? 2) Regardless of question 1, how much speed would you expect the route to gain with these improvements? What I'm trying to sort out is in a realistic world how much faster can that 40 mile trip happen given a couple of stops along the way and the aforementioned slow crawl into South Station.

 

[jass]

Why do you think Amtrak doesn't have a couple of spare electric locomotives? I'm not saying they do, but do you have some kind of equipment list or other data to back your statement?

I don't have a list, but this is based off the current Amtrak order-book for new train-sets (delayed of course), Amtrak's continued use of NJT and MARC trains for Thanksgiving service , and their standard response for why they can't ever increase service.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Her

It's not about the Acela specifically, its about this:



The only excess Amtrak capacity in the next decade is the retiring Acela fleet.

So you either pick them up used and cheap, or you get in line in the procurement process and now it's 2030.

There is no "used and cheap" option. None. Why is it so difficult to acknowledge that simple fact? Bombardier has the contractual ownership, and won't lease them out unless they recoup a stupid-costly S&S contract. Otherwise the Acelas are worth more as scrap than running because of how costly they are to run after parts supply has dwindled.

There is no other option. These are the insurmountable economics of those trainsets as they enter their fourth calendar decade.

If there were a Plan B it would be leasing some retired HHP-8 electric locos. But those things have similarly bad Bombardier contract tentacles, and are similarly unreliable pieces of crap. MARC picked up a few ex-AMTK rentals because it was already in deep with BBD on its own legacy fleet of them, using the opportunity to restructure its S&S deal a little more favorably. But there is no "used and cheap" pathway here, either. They're unicorns with bad reputation and sunset parts supply whose only means of running is paying BBD's life-support price.

Sometimes there is no easy answer, and sometimes there isn't someone fun/easy/readily available to blame for it

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Ye

Why do you think Amtrak doesn't have a couple of spare electric locomotives? I'm not saying they do, but do you have some kind of equipment list or other data to back your statement?

There are equipment lists, and there are tracker threads on RR.net. They do have a few Sprinters to short-term lease because they were loaned to SEPTA when the Silverliner V EMU fleet was pulled for design flaws, and AMTK has made overtures about short-term leasing them again.

The 15 retired HHP-8's are returned to Bombardier off-lease and are no longer AMTK property, even if a few of them may still be sitting around in Delaware.

The AEM-7's are largely scrapped, and any of the remanufactured AEM-7AC's that were most desireable for continued service have been scrapped for parts. There may be a couple (emphasis: low single digits) old non-rebuilds left intact at Bear, DE but they're so shot they're inoperable. The last time one of them moved pantograph-up was a Sprinter-assisted tow move to D.C. Union Station so it could star in a Xmas lights static display.

That's it. There's one Sprinter wreck from the Philly train disastet, and I think another that may have been warranty-replaced, but otherwise that whole order and the entire original Acela order are in-servicr.

 

[HenryAlan]

All right, so it seems this is a pointless discussion, then. The two governors made a statement for political reasons but can't cash the check. We may as well move on if that's the case.

What about equipment from other CR operators? Is any of that available? What happened to the electric locos that MARC discontinued?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

All right, so it seems this is a pointless discussion, then. The two governors made a statement for political reasons but can't cash the check. We may as well move on if that's the case.

What about equipment from other CR operators? Is any of that available? What happened to the electric locos that MARC discontinued?

MARC's AEM-7's were ailing and out-of-service at the time of their retirement. They're already scrapped. SEPTA kept its AMTK loaner Sprinters for its push-pull sets until its own order of Sprinters got delivered, because their AEM-7's were also dropping like flies. SEPTA's fleet was loaned to NJ Transit to be used for non-powered PTC tests, and are now back in storage with SEPTA pending scrap bids. There might be a couple usable SEPTA Toasters left in storage, but they can only be plugged by parts stripped from other units...and there are now too few of those left between AMTK, MARC, and SEPTA to stock parts. Unfortunately the remanufactured AMTK AEM-7AC's were the only ones in halfway decent shape at retirement with a sustainable parts supply chain, but the value of those newer parts (for very similar Scandanavian locos still running today) was why those were scrapped first before the much junkier DC fleets.

The only other electrics "available" are NJ Transit's ALP-44 fleet (an AEM-7 derivative), which have been stored for 8 years now without moving in Stanhope, NJ...after a planned rebuild of part of the fleet was canceled for not being economical (they ordered more new ALP-46's instead). And those get the air-quotes treatment because they were notoriously unreliable when they were still in-service with quirky early-90's computers that would be very hard to replace/reengineer today. Also, a decade is really pushing the bounds of how long you can leave complexly-built power sitting absolutely motionless in the wild and be able to easily revive it. As evidenced by NJT leasing SEPTA's broken-down Toasters for PTC testing instead of using a few of these. The track they're sitting on is in a heavily wooded area. Vandals, rodents, vegetation, and weather have taken their toll, and since the parts supply chain overlapped heavily with the AEM-7's their retirements by AMTK/MARC/SEPTA has dashed what incredibly small chance there is left of doing something with the 44's. Scrap contract is next, though after 8 years of sitting they're in no big hurry to tow them.


There simply isn't anything roadworthy available, unless it's paying the Bombardier tax for some HHP-8's. The offer for renting a few Sprinters isn't a service enhancement because there's too few of them available to shorten the Providence schedule when all other trains are still running diesel. And it's not a service enhancement because the slowness inside of 128 is a function of crossing branchline traffic, not Corridor traffic. It's merely a technology demonstrator should they agree to buy their own Sprinters or buy off a few of SEPTA's unexercised Sprinter options. And, yes, the push-pull electric demonstrator can be informative for an EMU purchase (like laundering a bunch of NJT's MultiLevel EMU power cars on the sprawling option end of that deal). So it's not a useless exercise to try a few Sprinters out, so long as they're honest about what they hope to learn from the experiment. But it's a far cry from saying "express service is coming to Providence!" because not only is the loco rental not large enough to matter...but it isn't even asking the right questions (e.g. NEC congestion and getting the branchlines out of the way, RER, balance between stop spacing and top speed when the Providence Line intermediates are some of the highest-demand anywhere) on what one needs to do to have an express-ier Providence Line flavor.

 

[Java King]

This whole discussion reminds me when "government officials" mentioned the Back Bay to Convention Center Shuttle using Track 61. We all saw where that went.

I don't know who's been updating this, but I found it quite informative and up-to-date:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_61_(Boston)

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

I don't know who's been updating this, but I found it quite informative and up-to-date:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_61_(Boston)

EGE, unless he's now deputizing others to handle Wiki chores on the region's n'eer-will-be industrial tracks.

 

[The EGE]

Yep, still mostly me. I live in SF now, but I'm back in Boston once or twice a year and try to catch up on photos then.