Railroad Forums
Moderator: GirlOnTheTrain
JCGUY wrote:Looking at the PATH's website, it appears that they have taken away mentions of longer train sets under "Capacity Upgrades", so I guess we're stuck with the current sets more or less forever.They cannot have longer train sets realistically till grove street is lengthened.
Thomas wrote:1. When will Newark-WTC Trains become 10 car trains?Why does no one discuss Hoboken-WTC being expanded?
2. When will Hoboken--33rd Street trains become longer--and how long?
zerovanity59 wrote:Because both hoboken (terminal) and pavonia newport (through station for 2 lines) need longer platforms as i said a while back. Newport leaks like a sieve & would need extensive ground treatment (be it grouting or freezing) to allow more excavation there. You would also need to modify the tunnels which are iron ring sections on the outward sides in the station, and tubes on either end of the station. Not an easy thing to pull off without having super high tides fill the station and the stuff up above to worry about. Then hoboken sits near the water, is a busy terminal station, and would need the approach tubes moved back to allow for proper turning radius. That will be a major, major roject, and they may end up shutting NJT track 1 and doing it all from excavating. During this time neither station could be used. In the case of newport station, this would end through service to journal square, and everyone would need to use HBLR or some other option to get to/from the nwk-wtc line. HBLR rider numbers would spike with the closure of the PATH station there even without the AM & PM rush. Thankfully they are getting those extensions soon, which needs to happen before any of the PATH stuff does.Thomas wrote:1. When will Newark-WTC Trains become 10 car trains?Why does no one discuss Hoboken-WTC being expanded?
2. When will Hoboken--33rd Street trains become longer--and how long?
25Hz wrote:[The uptown stations are all in rock, which means they just gotta drill/blast/whatever, Not sure if they can remain open during the rebuild or be closed or trains pass through or what.Of the midtown stations, 9th is likely the easiest, since there's a removed crossover just to the west. 9th can't extend to the east as the line turns to go up 6th Avenue there. I'm not sure about Christopher St. The other stations (14/23/33) have the problem of the MTA being next to them - there are some holes in the wall where light shines through, so there is something close on the other side.
JSQ & nwk are all ready long enough, and harrison is currently being replaced entirely. Not sure what the deal is with EXP though, as one side seems to have a longer platform than the other...Exchange Place has no problem with longer trains. Both platforms were extended as part of the post-9/11 reconstruction:
JCGUY wrote:In connection with future Grove Street expansion, is any thought given to making the station bi-level or adding an island platform, such that EWR-WTC trains can be separated from trains running JSQ to 33rd Street? I imagine that this would cost a fortune, but so would any expansion of the station, and they'll likely only get one shot at this. The confluence of the two movements around Grove Street creates a bottleneck-slowdown situation during peak travel times.Wouldn't they need to build the 2 additional tracks all the way from JSQ to where the trains to midtown split? It seems much cheaper to decrease headway with new signals and increase car length first. There also would not actually be that much of a difference anyway unless headway to and from Hoboken were increased.
JCGUY wrote:Ideally, yes. But I see the worst of the bottlenecks at entry to Grove Street, so creating the additional dwell space would probably go a long way. Based on personal experience, I don't see the start-stop routine occurring in the vicinity of JSQ. But, yes, I'd love to see separation from JSQ all the way to Grove. This would also allow operational flexibility on weekends and allow for skip-stop service from Newark to WTC.NWK-WTC runs every "4-5 minutes" during peak. JSQ-33st also runs every "4-5 minutes" at peak. This means between 24 and 30 trains per hour at peak between JSQ and Grove Street. (The time table is very unclear as to where between 4 and 5 minutes it is.) Both Hoboken lines run every 6 minutes at peak. Meaning 20 train per hours service at Hoboken and 22 to 25 trains per hour through each tube to/from Manhattan. If the entire bottleneck between JSQ and Grove was removed, each tunnel could increase service by 2-5 trains per hour. This improvement is comparable to 10 instead of 8 car trains and less than 10 instead of 7 car trains; however, it would cost a lot more as two entire tracks would have to be tunneled and laid between JSQ and Grove.
25Hz wrote:There were plans to build to communipaw and add tunnels and track connections between communipaw and hudson terminal. That plan was abandoned before it ever got started.I'm not aware of any plan to tunnel from the Central RR under the river. There were provisions at Grove St. for a diverging route on the west end of the station to go to CRRNJ, as well as a partial provision to go straight southbound at the junction where currently left = EXP and right = Grove. There's a brief section of the eastbound Grove/EXP line that is in rings for added reinforcement in case there was a future tunnel to CRRNJ crossing over/under it.
If they had dug those 2 additional hudson river tunnels with the aldene plan you'd have 4 downtown tunnels, which could instead have been hooked to two brand new tunnels between exp and the portal, but that's all moot because it never happened. To extend two new tunnels between the portal and exp would mean a lot of complicated below grade doings under columbus ave & re-working the portal area to accommodate the 2 new tunnels. Currently grove street is a single island. This would need to be changed to two islands. I don't even know if that is possible especially taking into account ADA requirements plus all the infrastructure located above and below grade there.There were actually plans to convert the entire H&M system to 4-track. Different alternatives were considered, and I have 2 different drawings for Grove St in my collection. Here's the title for one of them:
Terry Kennedy wrote:It was not from communipaw under the river, it was from communipaw to exchange place.25Hz wrote:There were plans to build to communipaw and add tunnels and track connections between communipaw and hudson terminal. That plan was abandoned before it ever got started.I'm not aware of any plan to tunnel from the Central RR under the river. There were provisions at Grove St. for a diverging route on the west end of the station to go to CRRNJ, as well as a partial provision to go straight southbound at the junction where currently left = EXP and right = Grove. There's a brief section of the eastbound Grove/EXP line that is in rings for added reinforcement in case there was a future tunnel to CRRNJ crossing over/under it.
The only fully-surveyed and started "extra" tunnels* were the ones from Hudson Terminal to Erie (Pavonia/Newport). The bellmouths were constructed in Hudson Terminal, and short segments of the two tunnels were built and lined where they crossed E and F (the two existing downtown tunnels). These would have run to a dedicated platform at Erie and then joined the main line at the junction leading to Hoboken or 33rd - that's why the Scribner's drawing shows an X crossover and not a Y.
If they had dug those 2 additional hudson river tunnels with the aldene plan you'd have 4 downtown tunnels, which could instead have been hooked to two brand new tunnels between exp and the portal, but that's all moot because it never happened. To extend two new tunnels between the portal and exp would mean a lot of complicated below grade doings under columbus ave & re-working the portal area to accommodate the 2 new tunnels. Currently grove street is a single island. This would need to be changed to two islands. I don't even know if that is possible especially taking into account ADA requirements plus all the infrastructure located above and below grade there.There were actually plans to convert the entire H&M system to 4-track. Different alternatives were considered, and I have 2 different drawings for Grove St in my collection. Here's the title for one of them:
However, the opening of the Hudson River Vehicular Tunnel (Holland) and the stock market crash and ensuing Depression essentially put an end to any H&M expansion plans. And then the New York City IND subway rearranged the H&M stations from 14th to 33rd, preventing any expansion there.
* Trivia - there are 3 H&M tunnels that go partially out into the river but which were "completed". There are the inlet and outlet lines for the powerhouse cooling water, which are miniature versions of the standard E/F iron-ring-segment tunnels, and there is a vertical tunnel just south of the Exchange Place station, with a concrete cap. This is where the excavated material from the original station construction was offloaded onto barges. It ends up near the river end of the eastbound platform - there are 2 stainless steel doors on the wall which lead to a horizontal drift to that vertical section.
