M9 and M9A Procurement & Acceptance

EM2000 wrote:Umm no. Whens the last time you ran an M7 with a pair on air and the rest of the consist in blend?

More than you, including test trains.

Obviously you have no basis for decent train handling. That's something even time cannot buy..

EM2000 you may have great confidence in yourself, but I forgot more about technical part and operations than what you will ever know.

lirr42 wrote:I listened to the most recent LIRR committee meeting in full for the first time in my life yesterday and it was quite comical at points It was funny to hear the board members talk about articulated trains and 14 car M7's. The video's on YouTube if you wanted to listen to it in full.

This Chuck Moerdler guy doesn't have a clue. If he really cared about the poor standees, he would learn a thing or two about the physical characteristics as well as some of the day-to-day operations of the railroad and not waste the board's time with ideas and complaints that were dismissed decades ago. Your blog post about the meeting was pretty spot on too. If a regular commuter such as yourself could figure all of this out just from reading message boards and observing your daily commute, it's inexcusable for Mr. Moerdler or any other member of the board to be so ignorant.

inthebag wrote:This Chuck Moerdler guy doesn't have a clue...it's inexcusable for Mr. Moerdler or any other member of the board to be so ignorant.

I think the idea behind appointing Charles Moerdler was to give the board the views of a non-expert. That he isn't an operations person is probably the whole point. For the Board to have a wide range of views is smart.

Btw I wouldn't be too dismissive of Moerdler. First he's 77-years-old. Second he's a very successful lawyer (one of his more noteworthy clients was the New York Post), he's volunteered a lot of his time to various city functions, he's a Republican and he's also a Holacaust survivor.

Tommy Meehan wrote:

inthebag wrote:This Chuck Moerdler guy doesn't have a clue...it's inexcusable for Mr. Moerdler or any other member of the board to be so ignorant.

I think the idea behind appointing Charles Moerdler was to give the board the views of a non-expert. That he isn't an operations person is probably the whole point. For the Board to have a wide range of views is smart.

Btw I wouldn't be too dismissive of Moerdler. First he's 77-years-old. Second he's a very successful lawyer (one of his more noteworthy clients was the New York Post), he's volunteered a lot of his time to various city functions, he's a Republican and he's also a Holacaust survivor.

I guess part of the blame should go on the MTA officials for not articulating the physical limitations in a clear and concise manner.

I've watched older board meeting videos. He brings up the standee problem very often and dismisses valid answers as "excuse after excuse". Someone on the MTA needs to drive it through to him that little bandage solutions like adding 2 cars to a consist will not do anything to address the problem. He's been on the board for 2.5 years as he said at one point in the 9/25/13 video and he's still harping on about lengthening trains? From his non-expert perspective, I think it's understandable that he'd at least ask about articulated trains, but why isn't Helena or Howard squashing his "petition and waiver" nonsense about the FRA crash worthiness standards? If you had articulated trains, that recent Metro-North crash with 72 injuries would probably be closer to 72 fatalities.

Someone from the LIRR should bring him down to track 15/16 during a weekday PM rush and walk him up and down the consist. Let him listen to the conductor make hopeless announcements about how there's more room in the rear of the train. Let him walk from the east end to the west end of the consist and watch as the number of empty seats increases. Passenger laziness does affect the loading distribution but another big part of the problem is the layout of Penn Station itself. The station encourages the build-up of passengers on the east end of the concourse so naturally that's where the bulk of people are going to wait and descend to track level. It also doesn't help that trains are posted ten minutes before departure.

People involved in operations already know that the only solution is more track and yard space. In one of the board meetings from this summer, Mr. Moerdler asked Helena to give him a wish list of things that the railroad wants the board to fight for. She told him straight to his face that additional track capacity was at the top of the list. He seems to have forgotten that in the short few months since then.

inthebag wrote:I guess part of the blame should go on the MTA officials for not articulating the physical limitations in a clear and concise manner.

I think that is part of the problem too. At a couple points in that meeting Ms. Williams had the opportunity to shut him down and she missed them. She didn't do all that bad, but the minute they first mentioned 14 car M7's somebody should have jumped in and said that is a sheer impossibility as they are not designed to work in consists longer than 12 cars.

There are a couple occasions here where the LIRR officials had prime opportunities to drive home the dire need for more track and yard capacity, but time after time they miss the opportunity by playing politics and not knowing their stuff.

He brought up 14 car M7's in July. Out of deference and in the name of public portrayal, the response by the bosses has to be "we'll look into it", or "we'll see what's possible", even though we all know it's impossible.

I can understand the need for lip service in front of the camera, but at least pull him aside and give him the straight story after the meetings.

14 Car M7's? The only station I can think of that can platform 14 EMU cars is Bellmore.

MattAmity90 wrote:14 Car M7's? The only station I can think of that can platform 14 EMU cars is Bellmore.

Bellmore, platform B at Hicksville, and platforms E, F, and G in Penn Station are the only ones that can handle 14 cars.

But I think Moerdler's point about the articulated trains was that you can have longer trains hanging off the platform (fouling switches, taking up extra signal blocks, etc., but I digress) and people will walk back to fill the extra seats (supposing they actually walk back)

inthebag wrote: Someone from the LIRR should bring him down to track 15/16 during a weekday PM rush and walk him up and down the consist. Let him listen to the conductor make hopeless announcements about how there's more room in the rear of the train. Let him walk from the east end to the west end of the consist and watch as the number of empty seats increases. Passenger laziness does affect the loading distribution but another big part of the problem is the layout of Penn Station itself. The station encourages the build-up of passengers on the east end of the concourse so naturally that's where the bulk of people are going to wait and descend to track level. It also doesn't help that trains are posted ten minutes before departure.

How many people even know that the West End Concourse exists? There are very few signs pointing it out. I think only regular riders use it.

and about 85% of riders are regular riders

lirr42 wrote:

MattAmity90 wrote:14 Car M7's? The only station I can think of that can platform 14 EMU cars is Bellmore.

Bellmore, platform B at Hicksville, and platforms E, F, and G in Penn Station are the only ones that can handle 14 cars.

But I think Moerdler's point about the articulated trains was that you can have longer trains hanging off the platform (fouling switches, taking up extra signal blocks, etc., but I digress) and people will walk back to fill the extra seats (supposing they actually walk back)

That explains the singlets. You don't have too much train hanging off the platform, etc. to accomodate X more riders.

This isn't necessarily related to the actual procurement particulars of the M9's, but just out of curiosity if the LIRR management were to ask the kind forum members here for suggestions to improve on the M9 design, what would you say? Aside from the big design flaws with the M7's (i.e. armrests, squeaky trucks), what would you do to improve on the M7 design?

One of my big things would be to have some sort of indicator within the cars that tell you the position of your car in the train (i.e. each car would have a display that would say this is car A, car B, car C, etc.). We've all head those announcements like "you must be in one of the first six cars to exit at St. Albans," etc, but if you're rushing to get on the train in Penn Station where you often can't see the entire train and where your car is, "first six cars" doesn't help too much. If they said "you must be in cars A through F to exit at St. Albans," that might help more, since I can tell exaclty where I have to go if I can see I'm currently in car H.