Grade crossing elimination?

doepack wrote:

GWoodle wrote:Then you have the many lift bridges that are becoming a century old. There has been a huge need for former C&NW lines to be rebuilt. It will take a lot of money & time to do it.

And that's especially true for the bridges in Evanston on UP/N, but unfortunately, CREATE doesn't address that. But in looking over the plan, there seems to be more emphasis on eliminating grade crossings (i.e., roadways for autos) than on reducing the number of intersecting railroads at grade on Metra's network, and replacing them with flyovers instead. Focusing on the latter would go a long way towards speeding things up for routes like MD-W and HC...

A big problem right now for Metra is that at the Western Avenue junction, you have the 3 tracks from Union Station and the 4 tracks from Ogilvie going west parallel to each other, with the Union Station tracks south of the Ogilvie tracks. Right now, only one Metra line, the UP/W actually goes west at Western. The NCS, MD/W, and MD/N all head north. So you essentially have, for all intents and purposes, a diamond, which during peak times has to handle roughly 15 trains on the UP/W line in 1-2 hours, and around 40 trains on the other lines, not to mention 16 Amtrak trains per day. The solution, of course, is for the trains heading north to all keep to the north tracks (and use Ogilvie), while the trains from the West would use the south tracks (and go to Union Station). Ogilvie Station is definitely capable of handling at least one of the extra lines, probably two. If idle time on the platforms were decreased (trains at Ogilvie usually sit at platforms for 30-40 minutes), the capacity would definitely be there.

The crossovers needed to do the switch are already in place. From what I've heard, Metra has been digging in their heels about it.

superjoo wrote:

doepack wrote:

GWoodle wrote:Then you have the many lift bridges that are becoming a century old. There has been a huge need for former C&NW lines to be rebuilt. It will take a lot of money & time to do it.

And that's especially true for the bridges in Evanston on UP/N, but unfortunately, CREATE doesn't address that. But in looking over the plan, there seems to be more emphasis on eliminating grade crossings (i.e., roadways for autos) than on reducing the number of intersecting railroads at grade on Metra's network, and replacing them with flyovers instead. Focusing on the latter would go a long way towards speeding things up for routes like MD-W and HC...

A big problem right now for Metra is that at the Western Avenue junction, you have the 3 tracks from Union Station and the 4 tracks from Ogilvie going west parallel to each other, with the Union Station tracks south of the Ogilvie tracks. Right now, only one Metra line, the UP/W actually goes west at Western. The NCS, MD/W, and MD/N all head north. So you essentially have, for all intents and purposes, a diamond, which during peak times has to handle roughly 15 trains on the UP/W line in 1-2 hours, and around 40 trains on the other lines, not to mention 16 Amtrak trains per day. The solution, of course, is for the trains heading north to all keep to the north tracks (and use Ogilvie), while the trains from the West would use the south tracks (and go to Union Station). Ogilvie Station is definitely capable of handling at least one of the extra lines, probably two. If idle time on the platforms were decreased (trains at Ogilvie usually sit at platforms for 30-40 minutes), the capacity would definitely be there.

So if I'm understanding this right, you're basically switching the downtown terminals of MD/W, MD/N, NCS, and UP/W. Pretty radical. However...

--Right now, OTC handles 194 revenue moves daily. Add in the equipment moves to/from the coach yard, plus all the lite power moving about, and you're looking at around 240 total moves in & out of OTC daily. That's quite a bit. Yes, some of the equipment does sit in the terminal for 30 minutes on average, some sets sit there all day, and there's six sets that are stored overnight. But during rush, the vast majority of the trains only hold a slot in the terminal for 20 minutes or so, and it's usually only 10-15 minutes in the mornings, as most equipment heads straight to the yard after discharging passengers. From what I've observed, Lake St. usually lines these yard moves up fairly quickly for the most part, around 8-10 minutes after the train arrives, because the windows for these moves are pretty tight during AM rush with all the inbound traffic from three routes bearing down on it; and it gets especially hectic between 8:15 and 8:45. If you were to move UP/W to CUS, while adding both Milwaukee District lines plus NCS, that would raise the total revenue count at OTC to 275; factor in the lite power/equipment moves, and you're easily over 300 trains. While hosting two additional routes would be feasible during off-peak/weekend service, rush hours is another matter entirely. At OTC, you've got 16 tracks to play with, but I'm telling you, during rush, that isn't going to be nearly enough to handle the significant increase in traffic. By my estimate, you'd need at least two additional tracks. The only possible way it could be done without physically adding more terminal capacity is if you were to "double up" the high capacity tracks of 4 thru 7 (each of which can berth at least 10 cars) and place 2 four or five car sets there (btw, Metrolink does this at their LAUPT during rush). And even then, you're still going to have bottlenecks..

--This would also mean that the north concourse of CUS would have a lot more capacity, since it would just be one route (UP/W) plus Amtrak. Could definitely host expanded service on both carriers in the future, but you'd have a lot of unused space in the meantime. Not very efficient...

A better solution, to me, would be to re-route some rush hour NCS trains into/out of OTC via Deval, so you'd have express service between OTC and Prospect Heights. Use the center express track on UP/NW between Clybourn and Deval, then cross over to the regular route from there. Plenty of room to build a turnout there to connect the two routes. Then maybe train 120 wouldn't have to use that funky routing over MD-N at Grayslake to the C&M at Rondout...

doepack wrote: So if I'm understanding this right, you're basically switching the downtown terminals of MD/W, MD/N, NCS, and UP/W. Pretty radical. However...

--Right now, OTC handles 194 revenue moves daily. Add in the equipment moves to/from the coach yard, plus all the lite power moving about, and you're looking at around 240 total moves in & out of OTC daily. That's quite a bit. Yes, some of the equipment does sit in the terminal for 30 minutes on average, some sets sit there all day, and there's six sets that are stored overnight. But during rush, the vast majority of the trains only hold a slot in the terminal for 20 minutes or so, and it's usually only 10-15 minutes in the mornings, as most equipment heads straight to the yard after discharging passengers. From what I've observed, Lake St. usually lines these yard moves up fairly quickly for the most part, around 8-10 minutes after the train arrives, because the windows for these moves are pretty tight during AM rush with all the inbound traffic from three routes bearing down on it; and it gets especially hectic between 8:15 and 8:45. If you were to move UP/W to CUS, while adding both Milwaukee District lines plus NCS, that would raise the total revenue count at OTC to 275; factor in the lite power/equipment moves, and you're easily over 300 trains. While hosting two additional routes would be feasible during off-peak/weekend service, rush hours is another matter entirely. At OTC, you've got 16 tracks to play with, but I'm telling you, during rush, that isn't going to be nearly enough to handle the significant increase in traffic. By my estimate, you'd need at least two additional tracks. The only possible way it could be done without physically adding more terminal capacity is if you were to "double up" the high capacity tracks of 4 thru 7 (each of which can berth at least 10 cars) and place 2 four or five car sets there (btw, Metrolink does this at their LAUPT during rush). And even then, you're still going to have bottlenecks..

Maybe you only switch one or two lines. OTC does have extra capacity right now, whereas Union is too crowded, so maybe you switch the UP West into Union, and move the MD/N and MD/W into Ogilvie.

doepack wrote: --This would also mean that the north concourse of CUS would have a lot more capacity, since it would just be one route (UP/W) plus Amtrak. Could definitely host expanded service on both carriers in the future, but you'd have a lot of unused space in the meantime. Not very efficient...

Amtrak is probably going to expand northbound Chicago service within the next 2-3 years, depending on ARRA, whether Chicago gets the 2016 olympics, etc., not to mention that if an O'Hare-Downtown shuttle was (finally) done, it would pretty much have to run out of Union to allow connections to other trains, like Amtrak's corridor routes. Assuming they don't do West Loop Transportation Center, there's going to need to be a four-station layout: LaSalle handles southbound commuter trains, OTC handles northbound commuter trains, and Union becomes the intercity station. Millennium Station continues being Millennium Station.

doepack wrote: A better solution, to me, would be to re-route some rush hour NCS trains into/out of OTC via Deval, so you'd have express service between OTC and Prospect Heights. Use the center express track on UP/NW between Clybourn and Deval, then cross over to the regular route from there. Plenty of room to build a turnout there to connect the two routes. Then maybe train 120 wouldn't have to use that funky routing over MD-N at Grayslake to the C&M at Rondout...

Having a few NCS trains end up at a different downtown station would be confusing for passengers. Most people in the morning just "get on the next train" so one day ending up in a different station a block away could confuse people (even though it's only a block). I think creating a new route doing that sort of thing might be the better idea since a lot of the NCS stations are under-served.

superjoo wrote:Amtrak is probably going to expand northbound Chicago service within the next 2-3 years, depending on ARRA, whether Chicago gets the 2016 olympics, etc., not to mention that if an O'Hare-Downtown shuttle was (finally) done, it would pretty much have to run out of Union to allow connections to other trains, like Amtrak's corridor routes. Assuming they don't do West Loop Transportation Center, there's going to need to be a four-station layout: LaSalle handles southbound commuter trains, OTC handles northbound commuter trains, and Union becomes the intercity station. Millennium Station continues being Millennium Station.

So, by your logic, UP/W moves to CUS, while MD/W and MD/N move to OTC. Interesting. Your original concepts seemed to center on reducing the strain on CUS (north), using the additional capacity at OTC, while also reducing traffic at A2. Here's another solution to that:

Following through on your suggestion that OTC handles northbound traffic, you'd have three routes operating from it: MD/N, UP/N, and UP/NW. The north concourse of CUS would have UP/W and MD/W, plus Amtrak. This would require a reconfiguration of A2 into more of a junction (primarily for Amtrak) than a diamond, but its doable. Then, both MD/W traffic and UP/W traffic would run west of A2 on UP's Geneva sub, but MD/W would diverge onto the BRC 3 miles west, which crosses overhead just east of Cicero. Build a new connection there, (or more accurately, restore a portion of CNW's old Cragin line) then you could run MD/W trains on the BRC north about 2 miles to Cragin junction, where it would rejoin its current ROW west to Elgin. NCS would either follow the new route for MD/W, and still divert north at B12, or continue on the Geneva sub west to River Forest, and connect to the old WC, then head north. Now owned by CN, and sometimes used for transfers to/from Clearing, it's a single track that crosses overhead just east of the River Forest depot; no physical connection exists, and building one would be very complicated. But either way, NCS would stay at CUS. Frankly, I'd love to reroute the entire service via Deval, and move all trains to OTC, but despite the fact that it's underserved, you still can't skip O'hare. Then upgrade Western Ave. into a real transfer station, and off you go.

superjoo wrote:

doepack wrote: A better solution, to me, would be to re-route some rush hour NCS trains into/out of OTC via Deval, so you'd have express service between OTC and Prospect Heights. Use the center express track on UP/NW between Clybourn and Deval, then cross over to the regular route from there. Plenty of room to build a turnout there to connect the two routes. Then maybe train 120 wouldn't have to use that funky routing over MD-N at Grayslake to the C&M at Rondout...

Having a few NCS trains end up at a different downtown station would be confusing for passengers. Most people in the morning just "get on the next train" so one day ending up in a different station a block away could confuse people (even though it's only a block). I think creating a new route doing that sort of thing might be the better idea since a lot of the NCS stations are under-served.

True. But then, building new stations at Rosemont, Schiller Park, and Franklin Park really wasn't a good idea...

doepack wrote:then you could run MD/W trains on the BRC north about 2 miles to Cragin junction, where it would rejoin its current ROW west to Elgin.

That's just what the Belt and Metra need ... 60-some passenger trains a day to squeeze through Cragin, which is already a bottleneck at times with just freight trains.

Whatever happened to the idea for a flyover at A-2?

MikeF wrote:

doepack wrote:then you could run MD/W trains on the BRC north about 2 miles to Cragin junction, where it would rejoin its current ROW west to Elgin.

That's just what the Belt and Metra need ... 60-some passenger trains a day to squeeze through Cragin, which is already a bottleneck at times with just freight trains.

No, I actually meant building a new connection to the Elgin sub at the site where the CNW crossed the Milwaukee Road as it headed north towards Mayfair along the old Cragin line; it's about 2 blocks east of the current junction. Further, the restoration of this route would include 2 new tracks (used solely by Metra) just to the east of the current Belt ROW, between the connection with UP's Geneva sub and Cragin. I know it ain't gonna happen, but just thought I'd clarify...

doepack wrote:
So, by your logic, UP/W moves to CUS, while MD/W and MD/N move to OTC. Interesting. Your original concepts seemed to center on reducing the strain on CUS (north), using the additional capacity at OTC, while also reducing traffic at A2. Here's another solution to that:

Following through on your suggestion that OTC handles northbound traffic, you'd have three routes operating from it: MD/N, UP/N, and UP/NW. The north concourse of CUS would have UP/W and MD/W, plus Amtrak. This would require a reconfiguration of A2 into more of a junction (primarily for Amtrak) than a diamond, but its doable. Then, both MD/W traffic and UP/W traffic would run west of A2 on UP's Geneva sub, but MD/W would diverge onto the BRC 3 miles west, which crosses overhead just east of Cicero. Build a new connection there, (or more accurately, restore a portion of CNW's old Cragin line) then you could run MD/W trains on the BRC north about 2 miles to Cragin junction, where it would rejoin its current ROW west to Elgin. NCS would either follow the new route for MD/W, and still divert north at B12, or continue on the Geneva sub west to River Forest, and connect to the old WC, then head north. Now owned by CN, and sometimes used for transfers to/from Clearing, it's a single track that crosses overhead just east of the River Forest depot; no physical connection exists, and building one would be very complicated. But either way, NCS would stay at CUS. Frankly, I'd love to reroute the entire service via Deval, and move all trains to OTC, but despite the fact that it's underserved, you still can't skip O'hare. Then upgrade Western Ave. into a real transfer station, and off you go.

I'd REALLY love to see a new connection built at that allows northbound trains on the CN line to switch over to the UP north/south line. That would potentially allow a reroute of the Hiawatha so it stops at O'Hare transfer. This would also, coincidentally, require Amtrak to abandon its current Glenview station, but I actually think the Shermer Road station or Lake Cook road stations would work much better due to better road access and parking facilities. The latter being especially true for the Lake Cook Road station.

The combination of your NCS reroute idea AND my Hiawatha reroute would also be interesting, but it would also be tough to engineer due to the limited space. It would be doable to have both turnouts, but speed going through the turns would probably be limited to maybe 15 mph at best if you did both.

But if we really want to get into the realm of ideas so crazy they just have to work, here's my weird hypothetical: Let's suppose there's some nice tracks on the south side that just so happen to parallel the Orange Line. And let's just pretend that those Orange Line tracks go straight to Midway airport. And finally, let go of all sense of reality and/or common sense and pretend that the other tracks go straight to Union Station, and that there are one or two existing through tracks at Union Station already. Wouldn't it be great if all those things existed and you could have O'Hare-Downtown-Midway shuttle trains?

Edit:

Batman2 wrote:I'd REALLY love to see a new connection built at that allows northbound trains on the CN line to switch over to the UP north/south line. That would potentially allow a reroute of the Hiawatha so it stops at O'Hare transfer. This would also, coincidentally, require Amtrak to abandon its current Glenview station, but I actually think the Shermer Road station or Lake Cook road stations would work much better due to better road access and parking facilities. The latter being especially true for the Lake Cook Road station.

And that's not the only problem. Also, I really don't think there's any practical place to put a station for O'hare along UP's Milwaukee sub (ex-CNW new line), even though the ROW curves along the western border of the airport property. Looking at it via Google Earth, assuming you could squeeze in a station north of Irving Park road (which would involve some pretty complex engineering from the looks of it) it's still too far removed from the terminals and people mover system. No, you'd be better off trying to upgrade service to O'hare via NCS, at least it's in a better location...

doepack wrote:

Batman2 wrote:I'd REALLY love to see a new connection built at that allows northbound trains on the CN line to switch over to the UP north/south line. That would potentially allow a reroute of the Hiawatha so it stops at O'Hare transfer. This would also, coincidentally, require Amtrak to abandon its current Glenview station, but I actually think the Shermer Road station or Lake Cook road stations would work much better due to better road access and parking facilities. The latter being especially true for the Lake Cook Road station.

And that's not the only problem. Also, I really don't think there's any practical place to put a station for O'hare along UP's Milwaukee sub (ex-CNW new line), even though the ROW curves along the western border of the airport property. Looking at it via Google Earth, assuming you could squeeze in a station north of Irving Park road (which would involve some pretty complex engineering from the looks of it) it's still too far removed from the terminals and people mover system. No, you'd be better off trying to upgrade service to O'hare via NCS, at least it's in a better location...

No, that's not what I'm talking about, sorry if I confused you. The idea is that you keep the existing NCS line from downtown to Deval, then add a connection to the UP milwaukee line at Deval for the trains to switch over to. You'd then have the Hiawatha trains and/or other airport trains switch off that line at Techny and use the existing MD/N tracks to go north.

I don't know. Diverting the Hiawatha trains in this manner would easily add 15-20 minutes to the schedule. The main draws of this service are that it's reasonably quick and that it has good on-time performance. As other "corridor" and L-D trains demonstrate, every additional junction point and additional host railroad/dispatcher adds to the potential for delays. It should also be noted that the Techny line is fairly well-trafficked just by CP trains alone, not even mentioning the UP's own traffic. And obviously the CN is somewhat busy - otherwise Metra would be able to negotiate for better NCS service.

Also - while the idea of an O'Hare transit connection from the north seems attractive, I'm not sure many people would use it. Case in point: hardly anyone traveling from Chicago gets off at the Mitchell Field stop to actually catch a plane. It's really more like the "south side of Milwaukee stop" for most people. This probably isn't helped by the fact that the station lays at the border of airport property and requires a shuttle ride to reach the terminal (oh, hey, that sounds familiar!)

EricL wrote:I don't know. Diverting the Hiawatha trains in this manner would easily add 15-20 minutes to the schedule. The main draws of this service are that it's reasonably quick and that it has good on-time performance. As other "corridor" and L-D trains demonstrate, every additional junction point and additional host railroad/dispatcher adds to the potential for delays. It should also be noted that the Techny line is fairly well-trafficked just by CP trains alone, not even mentioning the UP's own traffic. And obviously the CN is somewhat busy - otherwise Metra would be able to negotiate for better NCS service.

The problem with the CN route is that in my opinion every single intercity train that leaves Chicago going northbound should be using it to stop at O'Hare, but it's still only 2 tracks. There's definitely a strong case for adding at least a 3rd track and even a 4th.

As for the scheduling and delay issues, there's room along almost all of the section of the Techny Line in question to add a third track, and a bit of it could also be 4-track. Also, we're only talking about a 6 mile section of what would be a 95 mile route. Finally, just because the schedule would be lengthened, doesn't make it a bad thing; Acela trains could cut a good 20 minutes off their trip time by not making any intermediate stops between DC and NYC, but the intermediate traffic justifies the stops. Likewise, I think Amtrak would have a lot to gain by rerouting via O'Hare. Not to mention it would justify increasing service to Milwaukee, as well as a bunch of other northern cities.

Finally, it looks like CN is likely to use the EJ&E more, which should ease up traffic on the NCS line. I'd like to see those tracks get grade separated in the northwest suburbs and for CN to relocate a bigger portion of its freight traffic to that line.

EricL wrote:Also - while the idea of an O'Hare transit connection from the north seems attractive, I'm not sure many people would use it. Case in point: hardly anyone traveling from Chicago gets off at the Mitchell Field stop to actually catch a plane. It's really more like the "south side of Milwaukee stop" for most people. This probably isn't helped by the fact that the station lays at the border of airport property and requires a shuttle ride to reach the terminal (oh, hey, that sounds familiar!)

The O'Hare stop would likely work better due to the presence of United and American Airlines. Both of these airlines (especially United) are trying to shed off excess domestic capacity and a stop at O'Hare would be a perfect excuse to code-share with Amtrak. Further, the People Mover is probably going to get extended to the existing Metra stop soon. Sure, they've been talking about it pretty much since the NCS started (and even a little bit before then), but I think it's more likely in the existing climate. Either way, I think the most relevant factor isn't the shuttle ride but the presence of code-sharing; Newark, and a number of European airports have seen huge increases in train usage since major airlines "outsourced" regional service to the train lines.

I'd also like to (what an odd phrase since I am, weird how people always seem to use this phrase) point out that Milwaukee isn't an ideal case study. It has one airline based there (Midwest Airlines) that's a fringe carrier at best (they now have only 9 aircraft of their own and are a subsidiary of Republic). The multi-modal option works best (and many would say only) at hub airports where a large number of passengers connect from long-distance flights to shorter ones and vice versa. Chicago is the second most heavily used airport in the country, I see no reason why the connection would be an issue.