UP/W & BNSF: All schedules aren't created equal...

I've long suspected that the significant amount of padding for BNSF's schedules, especially off-peak inbounds, are a big reason why that line has a decent OTP. Yes, the heavy freight traffic plays a role here, but it's just as prevalent on my home route (UP/W), yet that line has very little recovery time built into its schedules for off-peak trains and I've never understood why. Especially since the route structure on the Geneva sub is nowhere near as flexible compared to BNSF...

What's unusual about off-peak inbounds are heavy boardings or long dwell times at the 5 outer most stations incrementally add up and cause a train to run anywhere between 5-10 minutes behind schedule. Time is recovered at the stations where boardings and dwell times isn't as significant and when train speed is increased, usually between Berwyn and Cus.

Case in point: I rode inbound train #1318 this past Saturday to get downtown. When the train arrived in Lisle it was already running 5-6 minutes late. At one point the automated announcement came on and said the train was running 12 minutes late due to track construction, although heavy passenger loading probably also contributed. We had a 4 minute station dwell time in Downers Grove alone. Saw only one freight train and it was a westbound Powder River empty. Ultimately when we arrived CUS it was 5:46pm, published arrival time is 5:42pm. I wasn't really paying to attention as to how we picked up time, my guess was between Berwyn and CUS. I think the schedules need to be adjusted for the stops between Aurora-Downers Grove to reflect longer station dwell times therefore better OTP between stops. Although what matters is when the train arrives at its final destination vs the published schedule.

MetraBNSF wrote:What's unusual about off-peak inbounds are heavy boardings or long dwell times at the 5 outer most stations incrementally add up and cause a train to run anywhere between 5-10 minutes behind schedule. Time is recovered at the stations where boardings and dwell times isn't as significant and when train speed is increased, usually between Berwyn and Cus.

And I'll never know why this theory isn't consistently applied to UP/W. My main gripe with the UP/W schedules is that there is little to no recovery time built in, particularly for most off-peak inbounds. The exceptions to these are the late afternoon/early evening runs 56 & 58 which get a little more padding between Oak Park & Kedzie, but otherwise, the recovery time for the other inbounds is only about 3 minutes on average. Even though this route sees only half the ridership as BNSF, those three minutes are usually already eaten up by the time it hits Elmhurst, most trains are commonly 3-5 minutes late leaving here. I just hope the pending improvements to this route will help the OTP, but somehow, I'm still a bit skeptical.

But I agree Metra should tweak the BNSF inbound off-peak schedules a bit by adding a little more time on the front end so that you won't need as much recovery time on the back end. If it's spread out a little more evenly, maybe then they won't have to publish those ridiculous 14 minute running times on some trains between Halsted and CUS...

Metra seems to have some issues when scheduling some lines, I've always wondered who is responsible for making a certain schedule. SWS has way too much padding between Manhattan-Chicago Ridge, there is no need for padding when there is no other traffic besides what is already scheduled by Metra. The same is the case on RID, though they did make some weekend arrivals more accurate, they added padding at the incorrect locations. I'm also surprised that Metra has not removed some of the padding between La Salle and Gresham as the speed limit has increased significantly, up to 79 from what was 45 in 1995. The new Gresham interlocking should also reduce slow delays, if Metra does whats logical and has the mainline tracks at a mainline speed.