Project Prioritization

Diesel fuel costs are about 3 times electric costs, but electrification has a high initial capital cost

The difference shrinks when DMU operation is employed.

Irish Chieftain wrote: The difference shrinks when DMU operation is employed.

True, you'll save a few million in initial costs and use less fuel, but you won't be able to have a one-seat ride into the Center City tunnel with a DMU.

However, if you want people to transfer, you could use one of those new $2.9 million DMUs that South Florida RTA was testing.

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archiv ... 0490.shtml

Why bother even investing in rail service for 6 trips a day. That's a waste of a lot of money for equipment that will, because of the nature of the service, simply sit around and rot all day. You waste fuel idleing trains, the equipment spends most of it's time rotting in the yard, and you attract little ridership, and you're still stuck with the costs of regular inspections, etc. on top of that, a diesel fleet would be captive to the line, thus doubly useless, since it couldn't be used elsewhere.

Airlines keep their planes flying virtually all the time and can't break even, they learned long ago that a plane sitting is losing MORE money than one flying - it's not moving passengers, thus it's not taking in money. Really, with the costs of recent rail equipment in the US, plus stations, plus signalling, etc, it's much the same with rail transit. The inferstructure and equipment is too expensive to not use constantly.

I don't see NS really doing any better than Septa, especially if saddled with Septa's union agreements. They have zero experience running passenger service, and for that matter, not much experience running scheduled trains of any type. Septa's infamously slow speeds are due more to the close station spacing and dwell issues than anything operational anyway. Close stations and figure out a way to get passengers on/off faster, you'll bring up the average speeds. Change operators, nothing's going to be different. And let's be frank, the Class Is aren't any model of competent operation either - witness the mess out west, and a general inability to compete with trucking. If not for coal, grain, and containers, there would be no UP, NS, BNSF, etc. But that's a management issue, not a physical one.

If you run 6 trains a day, you'll never build the ridership to justify hourly operation. You just won't. And even houry operation really isn't enough to get discrecionary riders anyway. Looking once again at the NY region, there's a very large discresionary ridership, mostly because of high frequency durring the day and weekends. Running trains every 20 minutes all day may seem silly, but it attracts riders, which is what the goal of the system should be.

I woud not lump NS in with UP and BNSF. NS has not been as bad with delays as the other freight railroads. The congestion issues are the result of more economic activity and more companies viewing railroads as the most efficient way to ship goods. This is good for the railroads' bottom lines, as long as they don't drop the ball by taking on more freight than they can handle.

True, you don't want diesels to be sitting around all day, but I think NS should be able to use the locos for freight operations when not needed for passenger operations. They're not going to take up a contract that loses them money.

The biggest thing going for Norfolk Southern is that it is a publicly traded company. SEPTA isn't. SEPTA doesn't have to answer to anybody. I would try to keep SEPTA as far away from this operation as possible. I don't see what average running speeds has to do with this, but maybe you should start a new thread on it. I'm talking about all new service between Norristown and Reading on the NS-owned line that is intact and in use. Everything would be run by NS on NS equipment and NS track up to the changeover at Norristown.

Nasadowsk wrote:I don't see NS really doing any better than Septa, especially if saddled with Septa's union agreements.

My understanding from folks who work under these agreements is that SEPTA has the lowest payscale of any railroad around, with salarys more along the line of transit workers than other railroad crews. Is this not correct? Or are you refering to the attitude among some employees that work is to be avoided and some of the ingeneous ways they have devised to avoid getting caught sleeping on the job?

Nasadowsk wrote:Septa's infamously slow speeds are due more to the close station spacing and dwell issues than anything operational anyway. Close stations and figure out a way to get passengers on/off faster, you'll bring up the average speeds.

I disagree. The RDG and PRR managed to run the same trains on the same railroads faster from endpoint to endpoint and they had more stations to serve than at present. SEPTA has operational problems and closing stations eliminates ridership. SEPTA needs to learn how to move trains over the road quickly.

Take the SEPTA mainline trunk, for example. Why shouldn't that piece of railroad be 90+ MPH? Sure, there are a few stations there but many trains skip North Broad (using express tracks) and some skip Wayne Junction leaving lots of room for those MUs to open up and move! I thought the point of MUs was to use the quick acceleration inherent in them. Why not use it?

Nasadowsk wrote:Looking once again at the NY region, there's a very large discresionary ridership, mostly because of high frequency durring the day and weekends. Running trains every 20 minutes all day may seem silly, but it attracts riders, which is what the goal of the system should be.

I couldn't agree with this part more. If SEPTA had more trains per hour running, they would get more passengers, more passengers would bring more fares, but more importantly more political clout.

If SEPTA could walk into a room in Harrisburg and say "we serve 70% of your constuants" they would have a lot more bargining power when it came to budgets than they do currently.

The trick is getting there.

More trains per hour will require more money which isn't going to just land in their lap. They need to pick some of the low hanging fruit; improvements that can be made without spending much money:

- enforce timetable discipline
- get rid of employees who sleep on the job (sounds like a no brainer to most people)
- listen to constructive criticism from the ridership and then work to incorperate the suggestions.
- etcetera.