New Dinky to Nassau Street

[Rodney Fisk]

Hey, this is the USA! In a market economy, if one offers a service for which there is a legitimate demand, and one can sell that service for more than it costs to deliver, then the service provider should earn a nice profit. Why should rail transit be exempt from this fundemental element of our economic system? Because of rigid work rules and negotiated wages.

The current Dinky operates with a two-person crew, each with a labor cost exceeding $120,000 per year; five crews total per week. The current Dinky sucks $630,000 in electrical power from the catenanry evey year (NJTransit's number). So, in a nutshell, cutting propulsion cost to $20,000 per year and operating the service with a single driver, earning (a mere) $45 per hour, brings cost of delivery to the level where the operator can earn that "nice profit" while reducing the one-way fare from $2.75 to a paltry two bux.

Some may not "buy that", but it's a fact recognized world-wide, with the exception of in the United States. Consider this: If the base-level employee, in the case of commuter railroads, the conductor, costs the state $120,000 per year, then his boss should earn more, then her boss even more, until you reach the Executive Director, who becomes the highest paid state imployee, earning vastly more that the governor.

This is luncacy on flanged wheels

[loufah]

What does the labor contract say about the possibility of ending the existing service?

[Rodney Fisk]

According to the Railway Labor Act, the ONLY way around the existing, restrictive work rules and labor costs negotiated to a very high level by threat of system shutdown [current LIRR situation] is to abandon service!

That's not anything unusual: hundreds of freight short lines have been created out of "abandoned" branch lines of Class 1 carriers. The trunk lines' labor contracts mandated eight hours' pay for (say) two hours' work, separate crews for separate "crafts and classifications" (as defined by the RLA). To the point that Conrail, NS, CSX, et al. encouraged these spinoff opportunities.

The newly established short lines, beginning with no interruption of service and operating smaller, more economical locomotives, with the owner as the engineer and his son as the conductor, switchman,etc., earned a fair return; the new Class 3 provided retail feed to the wholesale trunk carrier, and both sides won.

The analogy to the proposal for a New Dinky to Nassau Street is direct and irrefutable.

[25Hz]

Show me a link to LRV's that can serve BOTH high and low platforms on the SAME LINE. I have never seen any ever anywhere online or in person.

Supercapacitors? None exist that can propel a vehicle the size of a bus. The most powerful supercapacitors only turn over diesel locomotive & mine truck prime movers. Running a huge heavy vehicle on them with ights & HVAC and seasonal temperature fluctuations..... Pure fiction. NJT not paying to operate it? Who will pay then? These things don't materialize out of thin air. Channels in the pavement, you're joking right? Trains of any type need lateral bracing in the tracks they run on. Simply putting U rails in the pavement is beyond daft.

The more i hear details of this concept the more i'm certain it will never happen. Have fun with it though, seems like a hobby you're really into.

If the main issue is service, then they should rework the agreement or whatever needs being done to provide 5-8 round trips an hour.

[amtrakowitz]

Show me a link to LRVs that can serve BOTH high and low platforms on the SAME LINE. I have never seen any ever anywhere online or in person

Well, Pittsburgh Light Rail has doors for both high and low platforms, albeit separate doors. So does the Karlsruhe Stadtbahn (tram-train) in Germany, those being the same doors. So does the San Francisco Muni light rail, also the same doors.

[ExCon90]

In France, the light-rail system in Nice has two stretches crossing very wide plazas where overhead wire was rejected for aesthetic reasons. The cars drop the pans and operate on stored energy in some form, then when they get under the wire on the other side they raise the pans to recharge the batteries or whatever they are while powering the cars. Seems to work OK.

[Rodney Fisk]

Continuing what seems to have become mainly a dialog (diatribe) between me and 25Hz: As Amtrakowitz points out there are LRVs (streetcars) than currently operate from both high- and low-level platforms, but that question is moot in the current situation. The New Dinky will operate between two high-level platforms ONLY.

Based on the current proposal for GRT coordinating with LRT, supercaps will no longer be required for operation beyond the catenary. But if they were still in the picture, energy would be stored not in one, but in a series of off-the-shelf supercaps, just as electric buses use a series of batteries for energy capture and storage. Furthermore, the VLRTs we are proposing are neither huge nor heavy; they weigh 22 tons. (The current Dinky weighs 140 tons.) Fact after fact, compared with your progressively more hare-brained assumptions and suggested alternatives. Extending Jersey-Avenue trains with a new wye at Princeton Junction: sheer lunacy. Additional operating subsidy would approach $5 million a year, all to serve fewer passengers. Now that goes beyond lunacy to being truly daft.

The New Dinky system will be independently operated with input from NJ Transit limited to schedule coordination, with no financial contribution whatsoever. The widely used Federal "Small Starts" program is designed to provide capital support for projects just like this. Princeton University's capital expenditures for the new station and surrounding infrastructure will provide more than the required "local match".

The LR55 system (concrete lintels in pavement with steel track laid in a polymer matrix) has been in service for 18 years in England with no maintenance, even around curves, with no lateral bracing. In Princeton the entire length of the track extension is on a straight alignment. However, the new track would be obviated by the use of GRT instead, so this also is moot.

Between this topic and the one on NJ Transit Rail, serious comments and criticism seem overwhelmed by petty bloviation.

[Rodney Fisk]

The more i hear details of this concept the more i'm certain it will never happen. Have fun with it though, seems like a hobby you're really into.

If the main issue is service, then they should rework the agreement or whatever needs being done to provide 5-8 round trips an hour.

Hobby? My entire professional career has been devoted to transporting passengers for hire under the provisions of the Railway Labor Act. I organized the National Interurban Consortium, including Siemens and GE Signal. I convinced Bucks County to contribute $2 million and PennDOT to contribute $7 million, with Lehman Brothers underwriting the entire project for $45 million. In addition, Siemens redesigned their European DMU for our needs and contributed $16 million in shadow equity.

Rework the labor agreement? SEPTA has been trying for forty years and NJ Transit for thirty to do just that. If the unions gave in on this, it would be the dreaded "foot in the door". The only way around this impasse is to start anew, and that's what we're working with stakeholders to do.

[dowlingm]

How many miles of LR55 have been laid at this point? My understanding was that it only existed in small stretches of the Sheffield system, and a test installation somewhere else.

[Rodney Fisk]

You're correct. What is so surprising to me that this new concept hasn't been more widely adopted.

[Matt Johnson]

I'm still curious as to whether a solution similar to this could be implemented for relatively low cost and also be operated by non-union hourly wage employees, greatly reducing labor costs.

[Rodney Fisk]

I guess cuz any train as slow as the Toonerville Trolley just ain't worth running, but of course your post was a joke. . .

[25Hz]

The more i hear details of this concept the more i'm certain it will never happen. Have fun with it though, seems like a hobby you're really into.

If the main issue is service, then they should rework the agreement or whatever needs being done to provide 5-8 round trips an hour.

Hobby? My entire professional career has been devoted to transporting passengers for hire under the provisions of the Railway Labor Act. I organized the National Interurban Consortium, including Siemens and GE Signal. I convinced Bucks County to contribute $2 million and PennDOT to contribute $7 million, with Lehman Brothers underwriting the entire project for $45 million. In addition, Siemens redesigned their European DMU for our needs and contributed $16 million in shadow equity.

Contribute to what?

Also, why is anything in pennsylvania paying for a princeton light rail system? What happened to no subsidy?

Again, the more i learn the more i'm convinced that this is a farce beyond logic & reason. In all likelihood, the rail branch will be totally shut & a bus put in if anything were to change.

[Rodney Fisk]

Siemens contributed to the viability of the proposal by agreeing to buy back its DMUs at their purchase price, depreciated over 25 years. The county and state contributed the local match. This was a Pennsylvania project, rejected after a year's refining the contract when Septa determined that having non-union crews operating through its territory (even if closed-door) would be untenable during upcoming union negotiations.

The Princeton project is a completely separate proposal, capital financing by Princeton University (local match) and the Federal "Small Starts" program covering all other capital costs. The New Dinky will cover all operating costs with fare-box revenue, thus requiring no operating subsidy whatsoever, a first in seventy years.

When NJ Transit proposed converting the Dinky to BRT, some 200 townsfolk turned out a a public meeting (and some 7000 more on Facebook) to argue for continuing the Dinky as a rail link to the Junction. NJ Transit conceded and has not even mentioned BRT as an alternative since--and never will.

With a New Dinky meeting every train on the NEC and returning $2800 per day in operating subsidy to the state, this is a win-win for everyone concerned. Your farcical logic and illogical reasoning seem to have convinced no one but you. By the way, what are your credentials beyond membership in the American Luddite Association?

[25Hz]

So there is a subsidy. Farebox won't be enough to cover operating costs. Public passenger transportation is a money losing paradigm. t's not meant to make money, it's meant to serve the public. Electricity costs alone will eat up farebox revenue.