Penn Station Emergency Repairs: Trackwork, etc.

EuroStar wrote:And then you have the capacity constraint at Hoboken which will only be alleviated by the filling of the Long Slip canal and the installation of another 6 station tracks there.

There are a lot of 3-car trains out of Hoboken, even at rush hour. Hopefully some of those can be upgraded a bit.

Hoboken is vastly running inefficient. Our view is that inbound trains wait too long before going back out to either outbound trips or to storage. NJT might have to hire a few engineers to immediately turn a train instead of waiting for inbound crew to change ends.

BlendedBreak wrote:As stated, capacity will not allow for most work to complete or even begin.
In order to begin upgrade modification, the post office platform will need to be put in service to turn NJT equipment, Empire-Service will have to return to GCT for a time, Amtrak catering will have to fully move to Sunnyside(delays on both arrivals and departures), and long distance and terminating trains will have to be shuttled to Sunnyside quickly(baggage work and catering delays). Also, rescue/protect motors will have to be repositioned to either Sunnyside or Secaucus JCT.

Well i called it, albany service has made a return to gct.

Bids are up T&E pilot jobs 2 morning round trips and one late afternoon. Ive heard through the rumor mill next summer all ALB NYP will be GCT except 63/64 69/68 49/48. So there is a possibility we may all be qualified into GCT once again. The more things change the more they stay the same.

It's the right move, no pun intended... Something has to give, and the upstate services are going to cause the least amount of disruption.

The conversation about off-peak pricing is interesting and might work. I know Metra is considering the same in Chicago, mostly because they are short on seats vs. overloading station infrastructure.

The problem is that it will just cause half-empty trains during the peak, which does nothing to eliminate movements.

When are the revised schedules expected to be released by Amtrak and the commuter agencies? Curious to see how the Empire Service will be restructured.

Moving and rerouting the Empire line services also removes a major cork in doing the work. Not only does it allow work to be done on the double ladder to tracks 1-9 and the corresponding east-end ladders, it makes tracks 5-9 available to replace other, out-of-service tracks.

Not sure about timings, but it appears a lot of the North of Penn to Albany service are going to be using GCT instead, so traveling through NYC this summer is certainly going to be interesting.

What were the schedules like for the Clocker service in the past?

I don't know how logical this scenario is considering I know very little about how the Clocker service, but could that be something worth looking into bringing back? The use of Amfleets seems unlikely, but what about a 12-16 car set of Multilevels, NYP to Philly. Cut back the Keystone trains to Philadelphia and just have these trains fill in the slots.

How are they dealing with the no-front-door-no-GCT problem that posters had previously identified?

Tracks one and two are ok for Amtrak service through the tunnels. The RTCs are pretty good about lining it up.

Albany Times Union appears to have confirmed Mr. Junkie's reports.

Fair Use:

Amtrak plans to undertake a massive track and switch replacement project at Penn Station that will cut its train capacity by as much as 25 percent. The work follows two derailments this spring. To relieve pressure at Penn, Amtrak has been studying switching at least some of its trains from the Empire Corridor back to Grand Central.

While Amtrak officials didn't confirm that some trains will use Grand Central, a source said train crews are being offered the opportunity to bid for those runs

The article is Paywalled!

Gilbert B Norman wrote:Albany Times Union appears to have confirmed Mr. Junkie's reports.

More Fair Use:

The move was made possible after an out-of-service freight connector track was restored.

bratkinson wrote:Reading ThirdRails' post got me to thinking about what E Hunter Harrison did at CN and CP and now CSX...change the pricing structure to increase traffic on Saturday and Sunday...non-peak days.

Translate this to Penn Station...offer the commuter agencies reduced 'service costs' if they effectively 'spread out' the rush hour. Take a commuter from NJ that usually gets on a train at 7:30 AM and gets to NYP at 8:30. If NJT were to offer a passenger discount of, say 10-15% for taking the inbound train at 5:30 instead, I'm sure there'd be takers. Untimately remove a couple of rush hour trains from the peak times and add some earlier.

Do the same thing in the reverse as well. Lower the ticket costs after 7:00 PM. That would help ease the 'crush load' times at NYP, and would allow a couple of tracks to be out of service for a few weeks/months at a time.

Similarly, Amtrak and LIRR would have to do the same.

Once they start closing a couple of tracks for a while, the choice is simple. 'Force' as many peak-time passengers to schedule different times to/from/through NYP, or everyone should expect a 1-2 hour delay on most trains in or out!

NJT had off peak fares until 2010.