All Things Portal Bridge: Amtrak and NJT Status and Replacement Discussion

Nasadowsk wrote: ↑Wed Jul 31, 2019 9:28 am Portal needs replacement, but it needs to be better thought out than 1.6 (or is it 1.8 this week?) billion for a bridge that's got a football field long moveable portion, and itself is barely 3 football fields long. NJT's inability to get federal funding is because they proposed it as a capacity improvement, which is a laughable argument at best.

wait, what? since when is portal replacement not a fixed span bridge?

from the portal replacement website:

The two-track replacement bridge, known as Portal North Bridge, is designed as a high-level, fixed-span bridge, eliminating the movable components and risk of malfunction

Please, no fake news here.

Elephant in the room: IIRC, more people take NJT's buses into NYC every day than the trains, and by a good amount (I've heard a factor of 2:1). Maybe the real transit answer is a new vehicular tunnel under the Hudson, plus a new PABT. The proposed PABT replacement is obscenely overpriced (billions, for a low rise building in NYC without selling the air rights.), for no real reason the PA can put forward. Then again, the PA built a 4 billion dollar subway station for 35,000 riders a day, so...

no thanks. setting aside the dubious numbers (the *total* bus vs. rail trips in the entire NJT system isn't even 2:1 per the latest numbers), the capacity delivered by a rail tunnel vs. vehicular is night and day and doesn't exert any additional pressures on the already-overloaded connecting vehicular infrastructure on both sides of the river. add in emissions, operational costs, etc, and it doesn't come close in terms of cost per passenger.

Present Portal bridge MAS 60 and may slip to 45 from some source not very close. New Portal bridge MAS 90 to possibly 125 ? , That would increase capacity somewhat.

EP (and Everyone:) Interesting news about lowering the speed limit over the Portal Bridge from 60 to 45mph.
This could be due to the factor of the bridge's age (109 years) and current condition.

The only problem may be schedule keeping with the lower speed - when trains run closer together speeds are
lower in general so 45 mph may be a good average speed.

With the new future bridges no higher than 90 mph would work. Keep in mind that the line between NYP and
NWK is only 10 miles - it is about 5 miles between Secaucus Junction and Newark Penn Station. The Portal
Bridge is about one mile west of Secaucus or about four miles east of Dock Bridge...MACTRAXX

east point wrote: ↑Sat Dec 28, 2019 12:49 am Present Portal bridge MAS 60 and may slip to 45 from some source not very close. New Portal bridge MAS 90 to possibly 125 ? , That would increase capacity somewhat.

i wouldn't count on 125 especially since the track around it is 90 and SEC is not that far away.

Speeds from exit of Hudson river tunnels and Newark at present do not need more than 90 MPH because of Portal bridge and Sawmill bridge restrictions. Once they are replaced who knows ? /?

Given the proposed elevation of the new Portal Bridge, what will be the maximum grade between it and Secaucus station?

The bridge received medium-high rating. Portal Bridge Clears Last Major Hurdle ...

The Federal Transit Administration raised the rating on the bridge to medium-high, making it eligible for federal funding.

I want to underscore though that just by itself the higher grade does not guarantee federal funding. Indeed given that the Trump administration is hell bent on punishing the democrat voting states, I would expect that the bridge will not get federal grants for at least another 4 years.

While I am not big on the NY Daily News, their claims that the bridge fails the qualifications for the Core Capacity grants sound correct to me. As a result I expect that there will be no funds coming for the bridge construction any time soon. Indeed the only way that I could see for the bridge to qualify for the Core Capacity grants is for Amtrak to immediately lower the speed limit on the existing bridge to something like 35mph and then a claim can be made that the new bridge expands capacity by increasing the number of trains by permitting higher speeds. The kludge NJT is trying to pull here with the Multi Levels is not going to work. Whoever made the decision to cut the tracks on the Portal Bridge North from 3 to 2 messed this up, but again that was during the Cristie's years when cost cutting was all the rage regardless of the consequences.

I would take any opinion from the Daily News with a big grain of Salt,They are a tabloid fighting the NY Post for readership.
IF NJT mucked up the design for the bridge,someone there should catch the error.
Remember the plan is for 2bridges at portal.

This has been discussed at length in the NJTransit forum here. People here have been saying for years that it will not qualify for funding because it doesn't increase capacity. It is a project separate and apart from Gateway and provides no additional capacity on its own.

Isn't present Portal bridge now MAS just 60 MPH ? It was 90 in the past !

east point wrote: ↑Tue Feb 11, 2020 7:24 pm Isn't present Portal bridge now MAS just 60 MPH ? It was 90 in the past !

An ett from October 1956 shows 70 mph from the west portal of the North River Tunnels to the east limits of HUDSON interlocking, with a restriction of 45 mph over Portal Bridge. I don't think the PRR had any MAS greater than 80 mph (officially, at least) on the entire Corridor. (In 1963 I clocked a steady 90 from the observation car of a delayed Silver Meteor for long stretches between Baltimore and Philadelphia, but I'll deny it.)
Portal Bridge was less than 50 years old in 1963; nobody reading this is older than that bridge is now ...

Correction: meant to say 1956.

Interesting about ETTs maybe time to pull out some ETTs. I would gladly defer to ETT information.

True--it would be interesting to see what it was in the 30's, 40's, and early 50's if anybody has etts from that far back.

Both Portal and Gateway should be considered as 1 project,combined would increase thruput and Capy in 1 shot.