NEC gap

How come MN does have a connection to Penn station? This is i believe is the last gap in the NEC.

Amtrak owns the tracks from Penn Station to CP 216 at New Rochelle NY. The MTA owns the tracks from CP 216 to Stateline (NY/CT) and CDOT own the tracks from Stateline (NY/CT) to the Division Post (Amtrak) at MP 72.9 in New Haven Ct. So of the 457 miles from Washington DC to South Station Boston, only 56 miles are not owned/controlled by Amtrak.

This has been going around a lot lately...for some reason we suddenly need to bridge the unbridgeable gap between New York Penn and Grand Central. There is no gap in the NEC...we have the Hell Gate Line and that works perfectly fine for Amtrak trains. There may be a gap in the commuter railroad coverage of the NEC, but when you think of it, who in their right mind really wants to go from Dover to Milford by commuter rail? We may want to for our railfan fantasies, but do we really want to spend 4 hours in a Comet/Shoreliner seat? Not likely.

Commuter railroads should function as they do in the rest of the world. They take you from a station near your house to someplace where you can catch intercity services. You then take the intercity service (i.e. Amtrak) as close to your destination as possible, then you transfer to a different commuter rail system again to get you even closer to your destination.

There is no need to spend gazillions of dollars to link NYP and GCT when you can take the subway for $2.50 or a taxi for slightly more and call it a day.

^ but there is Penn Station Access, which will allegedly bring Hudson and NHV line trains into NYP. That might work, but I have my doubts.

there is also the huge gap new london to providence

And there's one in Maryland too.

I don't count that as a gap, since MN and NJT both go within the city limits of NYC. The gap I want to see filled is OSB-PVD (there is limited service OSB-NLC and PVD-Wickford, and nothing between Wickford and NLC).

Amtrak runs frequent service between Old Saybrook, New London, Westerly, Kingston, Providence, and Boston, and stops some trains at Mystic too. MBTA commuter service is available between Wickford Junction, Providence, and Boston. There are better places to spend tax money than on adding commuter service along the least-populated section of the Shore Line between New London and metropolitan Providence.

We make a lot of "there should be" statements based on gaps and lack of service. I think it's important to look at the numbers - is there a study showing a large need for GCT-NYP connections by commuter service, or a study that shows a large need for closing the SLE-MBTA gap with commuter service? Maybe there's a reason we don't have those services because they're just not needed.

kitn1mcc wrote:there is also the huge gap new london to providence

I think you mean New London to Wickford Jct.

lirr42 wrote:This has been going around a lot lately...for some reason we suddenly need to bridge the unbridgeable gap between New York Penn and Grand Central. There is no gap in the NEC...we have the Hell Gate Line and that works perfectly fine for Amtrak trains. There may be a gap in the commuter railroad coverage of the NEC, but when you think of it, who in their right mind really wants to go from Dover to Milford by commuter rail? We may want to for our railfan fantasies, but do we really want to spend 4 hours in a Comet/Shoreliner seat? Not likely.

Commuter railroads should function as they do in the rest of the world. They take you from a station near your house to someplace where you can catch intercity services. You then take the intercity service (i.e. Amtrak) as close to your destination as possible, then you transfer to a different commuter rail system again to get you even closer to your destination.

There is no need to spend gazillions of dollars to link NYP and GCT when you can take the subway for $2.50 or a taxi for slightly more and call it a day.

You do realize that if you go to penns station either LIRR or NJT, and go to lets say it pelham park. Its still in the same city ?

me thinks this crap belongs elsewhere as it has nothing to do with Metro North.

TomNelligan wrote:Amtrak runs frequent service between Old Saybrook, New London, Westerly, Kingston, Providence, and Boston, and stops some trains at Mystic too. MBTA commuter service is available between Wickford Junction, Providence, and Boston. There are better places to spend tax money than on adding commuter service along the least-populated section of the Shore Line between New London and metropolitan Providence.

Amtrak is not commuter/ local service like SLE and MBTA are. The problem that we have in this country with rail is that we think all or nothing. We think we have to a big 4600HP diesel engine and 8 double-decker cars (MBTA), or else nothing. Even SLE, with 4 cars on it, needs about 100 people on it just to break even on fuel vs. them all driving. That's insane, broken thinking.

First of all, the MBTA Providence line should be electrified. That should have been done in 1999, they are WAY overdue now. It's an easy one to do, as they need wire over the third track, a few sidings, and a few yards, and plop some ALP-46's, or ACS-64's or something on there, and contract out the maintenance to the corresponding agency that runs similar equipment (NJT, Amtrak, etc), since MBTA is a diesel operation through and through. The infrastructure, other than the actual wire is there, it's pretty much plug and play. Same for SLE, they should pick some old toasters up in a few months when they are for sale, throw some wire up over the 4 Track in Guilford, and the third track in New London, and maybe a couple other places so trains can get out of the way, and they're ready to go.

Secondly, why do we need massive push-pull diesel sets going everywhere? Electrics fix a lot of issues on the NEC, since they are so efficient. Off the NEC, like on NHHS, they should look at DMU's that can be scaled back to 1-2 cars. NHHS is a small enough operation that they could run all DMU, as could Waterbury.

The connection between SLE and MBTA would be great, as it would enable people to go to and from intermediate stations. However, I do believe that you need 30-minute headway service to really make the services popular and make sense. And you need the sidings and infrastructure to support it. Westerly is also a commuter market to PVD, more than NLC is a commuter market to anywhere. Also, NLC is a complete waste until they get intermediate stations in Niantic, East Lyme, and Waterford set up, and full bi-directional operation going as well. And once they extend to Westerly, you now open up Groton, Mystic, and Stonington, in addition to Westerly proper. The connections on the two ends would help mobility to both Boston and NYC a lot from this area.

I'm not saying that making SLE and MBTA link up is more important than the Penn MN connection or anything like that. NYC infrastructure is way more important than pretty much anywhere else, and the amount of money it's worth to spend there is way higher, since way more people are there to use it. The big projects from NYC north that I see as critical for our regions infrastructure, along with tons of incremental improvements to existing lines and services listed in no particular order are:

1. $117B new NEC that goes through NYC, Danbury, Waterbury, Hartford, Storrs, Worcester, Boston
2. North-south rail link in Boston with through service from the NEC to Maine
3. NHHS and corresponding electrified MBTA service from Boston to SPG on the Worcester line forming inland route
4. Electrification and double-track (loco-hauled) of NHHS
5. Electrification and double track of Danbury
6. Electrification of SLE (loco-hauled with 125mph equipment)
7. Full build expansion of SLE to Westerly, meeting MBTA
8. Electrification of Providence Line MBTA
9. Speed up the New Haven Line
10. Speed up the LIRR and drag it out of the last century
11. MN to NYP for Hudson and New Haven
12. Improved connection at New Rochelle
13. ARC Tunnel
14. 7 train to NJ
15. New rail line over Tappan-Zee to STM, 25kV overhead to Suffern, DMU scoots to Port Jervis, M-8's and interchange to Harlem Line to get to GCT, station with elevator connection to Hudson
16. Transit-oriented development projects everywhere, especially along the New Haven Line and Danbury branches
17. DMU scoots on improved Waterbury branch with station at Devon (the parallel one, not the T-shaped one)
18. Cross-harbor freight tunnel, connection to New Haven Line, and better overnight NEC access for freight
19. Electrified freight from NJ to Queens double-stack and single-stack/spine cars to Cedar Hil
20. Waterbury branch to Hartford when Busway fails
21. Willimantic-Hartford DMU commuter service

Tadman wrote:We make a lot of "there should be" statements based on gaps and lack of service. I think it's important to look at the numbers - is there a study showing a large need for GCT-NYP connections by commuter service, or a study that shows a large need for closing the SLE-MBTA gap with commuter service? Maybe there's a reason we don't have those services because they're just not needed.

First of all, it's not GCT-NYP, that already exists and it's called a subway. It's MN to NYP. And yes, there is a good demand for it. Plenty of people who work farther downtown and live in CT, as well as people commuting to/from Co-op city and the Bronx, which would be intermediate stops.

DutchRailnut wrote:me thinks this crap belongs elsewhere as it has nothing to do with Metro North.

This forum is for MTA Metro-North and CDOT.

NYP MN service = MTA Metro-North
SLE to Westerly = CDOT

Was it not enough to gripe about this on the NJT board?

DutchRailnut wrote:me thinks this crap belongs elsewhere as it has nothing to do with Metro North.

me agrees with Mr. Railnut, but against my better judgment:

NHAirLine wrote:1. $117B new NEC that goes through NYC, Danbury, Waterbury, Hartford, Storrs, Worcester, Boston
2. North-south rail link in Boston with through service from the NEC to Maine
3. NHHS and corresponding electrified MBTA service from Boston to SPG on the Worcester line forming inland route
4. Electrification and double-track (loco-hauled) of NHHS
5. Electrification and double track of Danbury
6. Electrification of SLE (loco-hauled with 125mph equipment)
7. Full build expansion of SLE to Westerly, meeting MBTA
8. Electrification of Providence Line MBTA
9. Speed up the New Haven Line
10. Speed up the LIRR and drag it out of the last century
11. MN to NYP for Hudson and New Haven
12. Improved connection at New Rochelle
13. ARC Tunnel
14. 7 train to NJ
15. New rail line over Tappan-Zee to STM, 25kV overhead to Suffern, DMU scoots to Port Jervis, M-8's and interchange to Harlem Line to get to GCT, station with elevator connection to Hudson
16. Transit-oriented development projects everywhere, especially along the New Haven Line and Danbury branches
17. DMU scoots on improved Waterbury branch with station at Devon (the parallel one, not the T-shaped one)
18. Cross-harbor freight tunnel, connection to New Haven Line, and better overnight NEC access for freight
19. Electrified freight from NJ to Queens double-stack and single-stack/spine cars to Cedar Hil
20. Waterbury branch to Hartford when Busway fails
21. Willimantic-Hartford DMU commuter service

1) NIMBY's, we're broke, centuries worth of construction
2) virtually impossible
3) that's a lot of electrification for not a lot of trains
4) bring back the inland Regionals! only they take twice as long as the others
5) Only to be electrified again in a few decades; too much money for too few riders; comparatively low MAS on the branch would hurt more than help
6) word is SLE's going to get some M8's to play with at some point, continuing w/ coaches will require new ones, the current ones are getting old
7) you say people in Westerly want to go to PVD and people in NLO want to go nowhere, so why expand SLE east?
8) word is Amtrak is going to have some toasters for sale pretty soon...
9) And straighten the whole Conneticut Shoreline and Long Island Sound at the same time? Get the diggers out!
10) Relieve the chronic capacity constraints before we increase speeds and make signal blocks any longer...
11) Fat chance!
12) For what and between what?
13) How about Son of ARC?
14) not in this lifetime
15) What's the point of having overhead wire when everything else on the H&H is third rail? There are to many ST riders to shove them into DMU's and make them transfer at Suffern. Through service to either GCT or NYP/HOB is the only possible option
16) That one I could go for
17) Unless you want to throw in passing sidings, a signal system, and other speed improvements, it won't help.
18) Where to begin on that one!?
19) Isn't that the same as 18?
20) boondoggle is such a fun word to say
21) we still don't have any DMU's