Montauk line needs longer trains

Equipment on demand has not been a part of American business, especially railroads, for decades. It is a costly overhead to own hundreds of cars and engines (and have "stand by" crews) for a possible business upturn or emergency traffic. And this gas price situtation has caught many off guard. You can't blame railroad management becaue they are following the general contemporary rules of business whereby an emergency situation is a short term loss that can be recovered after the emergency is over. Therefore no redundency, no alternate routes, no excess capacity, no equipment or personnell beyond what is normally needed to maintain a daily service. Yeah, its a long term management philosophy and it is part of today's American business plan. And we...in the public sector...are stuck with it. So, the end result is that when you have a railroad system with a designed capacity and determined traffic load, you cannot increase its capacity and traffic without problems like overloaded trains, too few cars for actual train load, or ability to run additional trains.

Just as an update, our Intern came in today, since Thursday for us is a half day.

Today train 2704, had 3 cars, and it was SRO to Bridgehampton.

Yesterday, it had 4 cars, and was SRO to Speonk.

Ken

henry6 wrote:Equipment on demand has not been a part of American business, especially railroads, for decades. It is a costly overhead to own hundreds of cars and engines (and have "stand by" crews) for a possible business upturn or emergency traffic. And this gas price situtation has caught many off guard. You can't blame railroad management becaue they are following the general contemporary rules of business whereby an emergency situation is a short term loss that can be recovered after the emergency is over. Therefore no redundency, no alternate routes, no excess capacity, no equipment or personnell beyond what is normally needed to maintain a daily service. Yeah, its a long term management philosophy and it is part of today's American business plan. And we...in the public sector...are stuck with it. So, the end result is that when you have a railroad system with a designed capacity and determined traffic load, you cannot increase its capacity and traffic without problems like overloaded trains, too few cars for actual train load, or ability to run additional trains.

I don't buy it.. IMHO Ms. Williams needs to send some of the so called "transportation planners" back to planning school. Longer trains solve nothing.. What's needed is more frequent service. duhhh

As a TRB member, recently i had the opportunity to participate on an inspection tour of Amtrak California's Capital Corridor this past June. California Cars have power outlets and seats that are comfortable and get this; don't tear you're jacket pockets out. Our equipment was the Capital Clipper/Beech Grove inspection/biz car with a F59PHI for power.

Service is paid for by CalTRANS, operated by the Capital Corridor Joint Powers Authority via BART. Their route is owned by UP as well as dispatched.. mainly single track for 3/4 of the trip. Freight moves off hours & around schedules. They manage to run 34 trips a day between Emryville and Sacremento with a few trips further (due to UP capacity) weekdays with nearly 15 on the weekends. They've had healthy ridership growth -- around 140K + daily riders...

Now this is certainly a much smaller operation than the LIRR. What's this got to do with Montauk or even my old NFK home ( which probably has the lousiest service).

What can be learned from them is that they took a poorly performing service and turned it into the third fastest growing ridership in the country by basically using what they have.

They learned how to manage and allocate resources; both men, women, and equipment. Then management figured out how to employ those resources effectively. Equipment and crews are constantly in service, providing service instead of laying up in a yard and basically depreciating by the minute. I can't figure out why the LIRR can't do the same. Its the only railroad I know of that has a yard located in the highest value real estate market in the country (because 20 years ago an M1/M3 only went 20K miles before breakdown).

Some folks on the forum will say.. well now you've got empty trains running around.. who's gonna pay? well.. what's the difference between an empty train rotting in a yard and one roaming the rails? Railroads are capital machines.. Capital rots when sitting. Also I think that the public would not mind actually paying for service they can actually see and for equipment that is gonna be used.

Now had the LIRR bought the right equipment.. like standard engines.. and cars.. maybe half of what they bought and got some RDC's actual service could be provided more frequently which would induce demand.. much like highway capacity creates traffic..

The problem with your arguement is that it supports what I said. California put thier money where it counted to do the job right, not recently, but over the last several decades. To blame Ms. Williams cannot be supported because she did not invent or build the system she is managing. We in the east are way behind California, Washington and Oregon in modern equipment and service relying on old railroad systems (track, stations, routes, rolling stock, philosophies, manpower, rules, etc.) inherited from old railroads. Despite LIRR having been a NY state property (and NJT and MNRR have the same problems) management has been hampered by politicians, long time railroaders of the old school, and a very auto oriented, suburban society which did not give them the tools or money or personnell to do the job right.

henry6 wrote:The problem with your arguement is that it supports what I said. California put thier money where it counted to do the job right, not recently, but over the last several decades. To blame Ms. Williams cannot be supported because she did not invent or build the system she is managing. We in the east are way behind California, Washington and Oregon in modern equipment and service relying on old railroad systems (track, stations, routes, rolling stock, philosophies, manpower, rules, etc.) inherited from old railroads. Despite LIRR having been a NY state property (and NJT and MNRR have the same problems) management has been hampered by politicians, long time railroaders of the old school, and a very auto oriented, suburban society which did not give them the tools or money or personnell to do the job right.

Your points are well taken (which i should of credited earlier).. and I did not think of my initial post as an argument but rather an observation.. I stand by it.. maybe my writing will improve as I get older

Anyway what struck me was that if CA can do it,sh*t, than we NE'sters should be able to figure out something. CA's the most auto dependent culture in the US. Plus they are making something work with less cash (their operating situation is a bit different than the LIRR --I'd say more complicated since they don't own the ROW). Unfortunately, as you point out, they seem to be a bit more 'enlightened' than us..

Pardon the pun, but the 'collective' we has to get our asses back on track and make things work. And I mean a full-hearted effort - not some gee lets see if some Amcans can be pulled by a MP15 out to Montauk kinda effort, nope not gonna work wiring is different..

Someone has to got to break the cycle.. the stakes and challenges are hight. Energy prices are out of control, budgets are getting slashed, people out of work, economy crapping out. Trains as a mode of transport will become important again.

In the end, I don't think Helena can sit back and allow more of the same 'ole same.

-eric

I am not one to make decisions but DE402 has hit some valid points as well. Things do have to change and part of doing business is taking risks. Regardless if the LIRR is Taxpayer or Private the risks are the same. There needs to be more diesel equipment for Montauk trains and up to and including the implementation of DM service on weekends to get better usage out of equipment. There seems to be a cycle here that unless there is an emergency demand IE. Roslyn Rd crossing project last year. They seem to be terrified to even make an attempt on a DM run on the weekends. For example the following West Bound trains should be weekend DM's.
#8711[z] MTK-NYK Sun/Hol only.
#8713 summer months (Sunday)only.
#8715[z] MTK-NYK Sun/Hol only.
These are just 3 trains WB trains and I just improved quality of service by making these important trains DM's saving time by not having a "Change at Jamaica" for the Majority. This a a risk worth taking and should not cost the LIRR much at all to try. They tried the "east end shuttle" and it was an overall success That probably cost more then running these 3 trains as DM's. Ill let someone else start with East bound DM's
Experimenting one weekend will not hurt them on their Passengers.

Lets look at it this way-

23 DM's, allowing for 3 in Morris-
10 possible trainsets not needing cabcars.

24 DE's, allowing for 2 in Morris, 2 in GP scoot-
20 possible trainsets needing cabcars. (23 cabcars total)

C3-129, allowing for 5 in Richmond-
15 8-car trainsets
-OR-
20 6-car trainsets
-AND-
2 cars for GP

Try to get one weekend DM per direction per line (MTK, PJ, OB) Due to capacity constraints, replace existing trains, not use new slots in Jamaica and NYP.

"... part of doing business is taking risks. Regardless if the LIRR is Taxpayer or Private the risks are the same."

Unfortunatealy Workextra, the public sector does not work the same. Risks may be the same but the ability to take those risks aren't. Simply in this case, the private sector can do what is needed to raise funds and answer to their stockholders in the end (if indeed there are stockholders). But public sector financing means you have to answer to your stockholders in the beginning and and that doesn't often bear all the fruit you have to pick to fill the basket.