CSX opposes NYS high speed plans

In my days working between Selkirk and Buffalo most of the ROW was still there for four tracks. The only remedy for New York State is to come up with a lot of, lot of money to buy the ROW on the north side of the existing two tracks and build an entirely new railroad for CSX to run their freight trains on then after they have finished that take over the two existing tracks on the south side of the ROW for whatever they want to do with them. By doing this both CSX and New York State can have their way and the two can co-exist on the same general ROW. The reason I say freight tracks on the north side of the ROW is simple, the freight facilities are on the north side and most of the passenger facilities are on the south side. In order to accomplish something of this magnitude a huge amount of money would be required and I wonder just where they expect this money to come from?? I think better cooperation between the state and CSX would help, make some improvements to the existing set up and co-exist.
Noel Weaver

Adirondacker wrote:

Railjunkie wrote: Frequency not speed is the key the more choices a consumer has the more likely they'll use the service.

Nope, people pick the fastest mode. If it's slower than driving or flying people will fly or drive.

In fact, you're both off target. There are a mix of factors that dictate why an individual picks a particular mode for a particular trip. Speed (and the associated factor of timekeeping) is one, but only one, of the factors. It's much less of factor for an LD rider--to possibly overgeneralize, there is no time-sensitive traffic on the Cardinal. It's a much bigger factor for corridor trains--people going from DC to NY generally want to get there pretty quickly. But it's only one among many--cost, frequency of service, available connections, convenience of terminals, aversion to a particular mode (e.g., I really dislike flying [not afraid of it, just don't like it], and will trade off a certain amount of speed for more comfort).

To bring this back on topic, I don't think we'll ever see rail service that is time-competitive with air from Buffalo to NYC, but I'd wager there would be lots of people who would take a 79mph or 90mph train (with relatively good timekeeping) from Buffalo to Rochester, Syracuse of Albany [EDIT, meaning lots more than use the current Empire Service trains].

Adirondacker wrote:

Railjunkie wrote: Frequency not speed is the key the more choices a consumer has the more likely they'll use the service.

Nope, people pick the fastest mode. If it's slower than driving or flying people will fly or drive.

New ridership? see those folks most everyday. They most certainly didn't walk up the ticket counter or call Amtrak and ask how fast does this train go? 79mph you say ohh that's much too slow. Price may have been the deciding factor, perhaps not wanting to get groped by some idiot TSA agent may have been another.

As for the amount of traffic CSX is moving on this portion of RR I believe traffic may be at an all time high, &5 to 80 trains aday

Greg Moore wrote:Ultimately, NYS needs to pony up and go with the new ROW.

But where would you put it? There are several potential routes, but all of them would be exponentially more expensive than using the CSX ROW. The only other option I see is the old Lackawanna route through Binghamton, but then you'd miss the major Water Level cities.

Mcoov wrote:

Greg Moore wrote:Ultimately, NYS needs to pony up and go with the new ROW.

But where would you put it? There are several potential routes, but all of them would be exponentially more expensive than using the CSX ROW. The only other option I see is the old Lackawanna route through Binghamton, but then you'd miss the major Water Level cities.

Parallel to the existing CSX ROW. That's really not a huge issue. Most of the 4 track ROW exists, it's simply down to 2 tracks in many places. CSX wants a wider than average spacing, so you could probably only put one of the tracks back.

As a previous poster pointed out though, in most cases the "wrong" 2 tracks are still in place.

So the ROW itself isn't a huge issue.

Station Aficionado wrote: It's a much bigger factor for corridor trains--people going from DC to NY generally want to get there pretty quickly.

Then why do people who could take the train from Buffalo to Syracuse drive instead of taking the train and fly or drive to New York when they could take the train? Google's drive time estimates are notoriously optimistic but according to Google it's two hours faster to drive from Buffalo to New York.

Station Aficionado wrote:To bring this back on topic, I don't think we'll ever see rail service that is time-competitive with air from Buffalo to NYC, but I'd wager there would be lots of people who would take a 79mph or 90mph train (with relatively good timekeeping) from Buffalo to Rochester, Syracuse of Albany [EDIT, meaning lots more than use the current Empire Service trains].

Almost nothing doubled is twice as much almost nothing. Three times as much is triple almost nothing.

Railjunkie wrote:New ridership? see those folks most everyday. They most certainly didn't walk up the ticket counter or call Amtrak and ask how fast does this train go? 79mph you say ohh that's much too slow.

They didn't call up and ask what speed the trains travel at. They did call up or look at the schedule on Amtrak.com and ask how long it takes. How long it takes is a function of what speed the train. ( or plane or bus or car or canal boat ) can travel at. People who decide it's going to take too long to take the train don't show up at the train station. They are out at the airport or on the Thruway.

If they didn't care about how long it takes, the railroads would have been a miserable failure and this would be canal.net where we could discuss how adding a rock facing to the Erie canal will allow the canal boats to travel 15 MPH and that will cut days off the trip between New York and Buffalo.

Question about CSX apparently demanding a wide separation between high speed and freight track centres. What is their concern - is it derailment? Is the concern justified by practice on other RRs or evolving FRA standards?

dowlingm wrote:Question about CSX apparently demanding a wide separation between high speed and freight track centres. What is their concern - is it derailment? Is the concern justified by practice on other RRs or evolving FRA standards?

Partly derailment, but also cars or loads on cars swinging into the path of the other track. They don't want to assume liability if a piece of cargo has shifted and is overhanging their train on a curve and an Amtrak train comes by at 120mph (or really any speed) and the cargo rips into the car killing passengers. (worst case scenario).

Take a ride on AMT 288 and look at the local traffic between BUF and SYR. That was one of the easiest trains to work back in the day. Folks got on sat down and rode to Penn, now your getting as many off as you get on at most stops.

As for the 79mph vs 90mph argument. Its 45sec/mile vs 40sec/mile over 300 miles you save 1500 sec.

Spend billions to save 20ish min yup sounds like an excellent idea Im all in

Greg Moore wrote:

dowlingm wrote:Question about CSX apparently demanding a wide separation between high speed and freight track centres. What is their concern - is it derailment? Is the concern justified by practice on other RRs or evolving FRA standards?

Partly derailment, but also cars or loads on cars swinging into the path of the other track. They don't want to assume liability if a piece of cargo has shifted and is overhanging their train on a curve and an Amtrak train comes by at 120mph (or really any speed) and the cargo rips into the car killing passengers. (worst case scenario).

Certainly have a shifted load of, say, metal pipes rip open a passenger car going 120mph would be horrific. But CSX already faces that problem where the passenger train is going up to 79mph. Does anyone know the current division of liability between Amtrak and CSX have for such occurrences? While an incident at 79mph might not be as bad as one at 120mph, I'd think it would still be pretty awful--but we currently have lots of passenger trains going that fast and meeting freight trains.

Mcoov wrote:

Greg Moore wrote:Ultimately, NYS needs to pony up and go with the new ROW.

But where would you put it? There are several potential routes, but all of them would be exponentially more expensive than using the CSX ROW. The only other option I see is the old Lackawanna route through Binghamton, but then you'd miss the major Water Level cities.

What about the old West Shore grade that paralleled the Central all the way to Buffalo?

Railjunkie wrote:Take a ride on AMT 288 and look at the local traffic between BUF and SYR. That was one of the easiest trains to work back in the day. Folks got on sat down and rode to Penn, now your getting as many off as you get on at most stops.

As for the 79mph vs 90mph argument. Its 45sec/mile vs 40sec/mile over 300 miles you save 1500 sec.

Spend billions to save 20ish min yup sounds like an excellent idea Im all in

Two trains being on the same track as the same time is a very very bad thing. If the 90 MPH train is behind a 60 MPH freight it can only do 60.

Spend 1.6 billion to save an hour, spend 5 billion to save an hour and half or spend 6 billion to save two hours. They would be raising average speed which involves making the places where they can run at 79 MPH or 90 MPH longer. Instead of running at 60 behind the freight train for miles and miles. Only to get stuck behind another 60 MPH freight once they pass the first one.

What about an elevated right of way above the CSX tracks?

Since the existing thread on this route has apparently been abandoned, I'm reposting info to help inform this discussion.

Re: Empire Corridor (HSR) (was Improvements ALB - BUF)
Postby BenH » Fri Jan 31, 2014 11:42 am

The Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for improvements to the Empire Corridor is now available on-line. . . .

The full EIS, which is a whopping 1,772 pages in length, can be found on this Federal Railroad Administration web link:
https://www.fra.dot.gov/Page/P0679" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

An interesting news reports on this topic can be found on this link:
"New York’s forgotten high-speed rail study"
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/a ... rail-study" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Capital - 01/30/2014

I only read the Executive Summary of the proposals, not the 1,772 pages of the full EIS.

Several options are given, with costs and benefits of each. I focused on three of them:

Re: Empire Corridor (HSR) (was Improvements ALB - BUF)
Postby Woody » Fri Jan 31, 2014 6:40 pm
Here, in rough outline,. . .

The "base" do-nothing option, with average speeds of 51 mph
and nine-hour travel times from New York City to Niagara Falls.

There's a $1.66 billion option that would add 64 miles of new
mainline track, allowing speeds of up to 90 miles per hour
between Schenectady and Buffalo, but with an average speed
of 57 mph. The New York City to Niagara trip would take eight hours.
. . .
. . .
And, finally, the $14.71 billion option: a two-track, grade-separated,
283-mile corridor between Albany and a new Buffalo station, some
of it along new elevated tracks. Average speeds would hit 108 mph
for non-Amtrak trains between Albany and Buffalo. Trains in some
places would hit maximum speeds of 125 miles per hour, with the
overall average speed hitting 77 mph on the express track (53 on
the local). The travel time to Niagara would, on the express tracks,
fall to six hours.

Matt, the "new elevated tracks" you envision are part of the studied $15 Billion option.

Woody wrote:Since the existing thread on this route has apparently been abandoned, I'm reposting info to help inform this discussion.

Re: Empire Corridor (HSR) (was Improvements ALB - BUF)
Postby BenH » Fri Jan 31, 2014 11:42 am

The Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for improvements to the Empire Corridor is now available on-line. . . .

The full EIS, which is a whopping 1,772 pages in length, can be found on this Federal Railroad Administration web link:
https://www.fra.dot.gov/Page/P0679" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

An interesting news reports on this topic can be found on this link:
"New York’s forgotten high-speed rail study"
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/a ... rail-study" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Capital - 01/30/2014

I only read the Executive Summary of the proposals, not the 1,772 pages of the full EIS.

Several options are given, with costs and benefits of each. I focused on three of them:

Re: Empire Corridor (HSR) (was Improvements ALB - BUF)
Postby Woody » Fri Jan 31, 2014 6:40 pm
Here, in rough outline,. . .

The "base" do-nothing option, with average speeds of 51 mph
and nine-hour travel times from New York City to Niagara Falls.

There's a $1.66 billion option that would add 64 miles of new
mainline track, allowing speeds of up to 90 miles per hour
between Schenectady and Buffalo, but with an average speed
of 57 mph. The New York City to Niagara trip would take eight hours.
. . .
. . .
And, finally, the $14.71 billion option: a two-track, grade-separated,
283-mile corridor between Albany and a new Buffalo station, some
of it along new elevated tracks. Average speeds would hit 108 mph
for non-Amtrak trains between Albany and Buffalo. Trains in some
places would hit maximum speeds of 125 miles per hour, with the
overall average speed hitting 77 mph on the express track (53 on
the local). The travel time to Niagara would, on the express tracks,
fall to six hours.

Matt, the "new elevated tracks" you envision are part of the studied $15 Billion option.

"Grade separated" != "elevated over CSX tracks"