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  • If you could restore a defunct Amtrak route

  • Discussion related to Amtrak also known as the National Railroad Passenger Corp.
Discussion related to Amtrak also known as the National Railroad Passenger Corp.

Moderators: GirlOnTheTrain, mtuandrew, Tadman

 #1380900  by electricron
 
bdawe wrote:How am I confusing passenger miles with train miles?
You can have high passengers miles on a train that has relatively low train miles, and vice versa.
The length of the trip isn't in play as much as you think when counting passenger miles.

For example, one passenger riding 100 miles is 100 passenger miles, but ten passengers riding 10 miles is also 100 passenger miles.
 #1380903  by leviramsey
 
Right, and if you find some way to change the route to take 10% longer, 10% more passenger miles without adding (indeed, almost certainly subtracting) any value. Not one passenger says, "I need to go x miles." They say "I need to go to __________".
 #1380906  by bdawe
 
You can, but as it is a focus on passenger-miles as a metric tends to inflate the relative importance of long distance trains hence why the folks at NARP are fond of reminding everyone that LD trains account for some 40% of Amtrak Passenger miles while they only actually accounting for 15% of boardings.
 #1380907  by Woody
 
bdawe wrote:How am I confusing passenger miles with train miles?
What a useful discussion this has become.

Can anyone essay an wide n deep answer about train miles?

Neroden says Amtrak apportions its massive overhead by "train miles" and that ain't fair. But I'm befogged about how to play with that info, where to find it published by route, and even, what would be a better way to apportion Amtrak's massive overhead?
 #1380910  by Suburban Station
 
Woody wrote: Neroden says Amtrak apportions its massive overhead by "train miles" and that ain't fair. But I'm befogged about how to play with that info, where to find it published by route, and even, what would be a better way to apportion Amtrak's massive overhead?
This is incorrect. I can't remember if it was an FRA or GAO document (or OIG) but Amtrak uses a mix of statistics depending on the type of indirect cost. "overhead" is allocated based on direct expense. the larger issue has been that Amtrak does not have enough direct expense although between 2006 and 20013 that amount went from 8 percent to 20 percent...of course I don't know if that is 20% of Amtrak's total expense or 20% of Amtrak's route expense (exclusive of any commuter or other outside contracts).
 #1380912  by CComMack
 
Gilbert B Norman wrote: In Europe, away from the UK, which hasn't got any HSR, the Sleeper is dying with the last remaining hurrah being Couchettes - did that once in this life during 1990 when I was 48. Now closing in on 75, "uh, not about to".
To expand on the point, EU sleeper service survives where governments are willing to finance or fund the specialized rolling stock. In most of Western Europe, governments are no longer interested, preferring to invest in new 200+mph high speed lines that put sleepers out of business.

This is unfortunate for a lot of successful sleeper markets like Amsterdam-Copenhagen or Zurich-Prague, where the majority of the line is in Germany, meaning DB is the operator, but the German government isn't paying to renew the CityNightLine fleet, so it's all going away shortly. Paris-Berlin already met that fate, although the route has been taken over by Russian Railways' Trans-European Express (Paris-Berlin-Warsaw-Moscow) three times a week; notably, Russian Railways is running almost brand-new sleepers on the route.

The UK example is instructive; Scotland cannot persuade England to build HS2 any faster than it already is, and even after all the upgrades to the ECML it's still 4:15 King's Cross-Edinburgh and 7:00 King's Cross-Aberdeen, well over the <3:00 sweet spot of the HSR day train. So the Scottish Government is investing heavily in the Caledonian Sleeper fleet, to retain the commercial links to London, and the service is flourishing, even in the face of aggressive competition from both rail and air.

So, it is suggestive, but of course not conclusive, that if the US Federal Government (and also possibly state governments) agreed to buy an adequate supply of rolling stock, Amtrak ought to be able to run a financially stable National Network. It requires a sustained commitment from government that is there when needed, though, which is hardly what one can expect from the present political climate. As a comparison, many on this board might remember the story of the SOU-operated Southern Crescent, which the company was happy to run on their own account until 1979, at which point the fleet aged out and they quickly joined Amtrak. Had the powers that be instead elected to overhaul or replace SOU's tiny passenger fleet, service WAS-NOLA might still be in private hands. I'm not saying that such a decision was ever likely, nor would it have been correct, but it is an alt-historical point of divergence.

On the converse side, I will be shocked if the Coast Starlight continues south of the Bay Area longer than one timetable change after the first CAHSR Bay-to-Basin service begins, if not before. Splitting the train into a Seattle-Bay Area sleeper, and a Bay Area-SLO-Santa Barbara-LA day train (or two), only makes sense once the endpoint traffic is going over a different route in only 3 hours. Traffic from the Central Coast to OR and WA is very, very light; worth maintaining the connection but not worth worrying about a one-seat ride. Nor is it wise of California to invest in a Spirit of California revival, such a short time before CAHSR would doom the train.
 #1381521  by Philly Amtrak Fan
 
gokeefe wrote:Perhaps that really is the "big answer", time for Amtrak to restore service on the Inland corridor in order to better serve the Northeast Corridor travel market. The other limitation worth remembering is that for the moment Amtrak cannot service trains beyond 9 cars long at Southhampton shops in Boston. Consequently the long distance options are very limited out of BOS.
How about running the NYP-SPG-BOS portion as a through car branch off the Silver Meteor (call it 497/498) similar to the Boston leg of the LSL? In this case, the BOS leg comes off the SM at NYP and the rest of the train stays and gets serviced in NYP. Right now, I could see stops at Stamford, Bridgeport, New Haven, Springfield, Back Bay, and Boston South Station. All of those cities would then have a one seat ride to/from Florida.
 #1381528  by Woody
 
On a thread very recently active, like last week, members far better informed than I am were explaining the travails of Albany-BOS, as well as the shorter segment Springfield-BOS, and therefore the headache of the Inland Corridor.

Short form: Half of it is super congested (could change), another half has plenty hills of pure hard rock and plenty curves among them (will cost HUGE money to change), and the other half, everybody in the neighborhood is busy spending big on other rail stuff. Springfield-BOS is nobody's Billion dollar baby now. Maaaybe later.

Good news is that MBTA took over the CSX route BOS-Worcester a year or two back, and has been spending serious effort and money to make it a strong commuter route. Every minute the MBTA can cut is a minute cut out of the BOS section of the Lake Shore and of a future Inland Corridor train (along with smoother track and other shared bennies).

More widely known is the hundreds of millions being spent right now to upgrade New Haven-Hartford-Springfield, which will save about half an hour right there, iirc. So at some point it could be worth it to try an Inland Corridor train, even if slo-go thru those hills. A second daily train Springfield-BOS sure would help build local traffic on the Lake Shore's BOS section, growing a customer base and political support for future corridor service.

But it could be a looong time before the Inland Corridor can compete with the current Coastal Route.
 #1381534  by Philly Amtrak Fan
 
Amtrak can't run any more trains along the current Coastal Route and probably aren't going to replace any of the NE Regionals and no way any of the Acelas so the Inland Corridor is the only possibility for through cars from the Silver Meteor. While the Inland Corridor isn't as ideal, I still think to get Boston/New England to/from Florida it's better than nothing.

Attached is a proposed schedule.
Attachments:
(132.25 KiB) Downloaded 70 times
 #1381583  by gokeefe
 
I am not convinced that Amtrak would keep all of their Northeast Regional trains on the Coastal Route. I think they would in fact move at least two trains (one roundtrip) to the Inland Corridor in order to allow an extended Silver Meteor to serve those areas. But that's it. No more than that. The compromise would be that the Inland Corridor would have some very substantial service indeed. Probably 5 - 10 roundtrips per day between BOS - NYP and points south. It just makes more sense for the Long Distance train to serve the full corridor than it does to send it Inland. The intermediate point ridership really matters for Long Distance trains and I think somewhat less so for the Northeast Regionals, especially in the context of a more complete and balanced schedule over the two routes.
 #1381612  by mtuandrew
 
Philly Amtrak Fan wrote:Amtrak can't run any more trains along the current Coastal Route and probably aren't going to replace any of the NE Regionals and no way any of the Acelas so the Inland Corridor is the only possibility for through cars from the Silver Meteor. While the Inland Corridor isn't as ideal, I still think to get Boston/New England to/from Florida it's better than nothing.

Attached is a proposed schedule.
Amtrak can't run more via New London and Providence, but they can't really run much more along the MNRR New Haven Line either. What do you suggest for NYP-NHV?
 #1381647  by F-line to Dudley via Park
 
State-of-repair limits the New Haven Line more than raw capacity right now. It's crowded, but as long as it's moving without decay-related outages it can take more trains. Get those 3 unfunded movable bridge replacements cued up pronto, sink some coin into shoring up the electrical/signal reliability, etc. and it'll be able to stave off total oversaturation for another 15 years. You certainly won't be at a loss for the meager number of slots it takes to introduce a new LD train.

The Shoreline gains more slots when the decrepit Connecticut River Bridge gets replaced by a faster moving span and all the commuter rail passing sidings specced in the Infrastructure Improvements Master Plan get dropped in Shore Line East territory and Rhode Island. CT River potentially an imminent fix as final design is due this year and construction can start +18 months after the $400M in construction funds get appropriated; ball's in Congress's court whether that project can happen in 2 years or 10.
 #1381674  by east point
 
New Rochelle - New Haven will take a lot of work. Replacing all the swing bridges with 2 separate lift bridges is the number one priority. The CAT upgrades will be finished in another 15 months (?) which will reduce the 2 tracking delays at upgrade locations. But still it is the bridges the number one slow down. Each bridge replacement will require 2 tracks out of service some times and one track always out of service. Depending on how close existing CPs are to each bridge might require new CPs near bridge to be replaced.

The cost of a 5th track seems to be out of reach ?.
 #1381678  by east point
 
Another thought. When the Conn river bridge is replace it would be prudent to at least build the piers for another future 2 track bridge. Underwater pier work at each location would only require a bit more work whereas later work will require more work. From what others have posted commuter traffic on the NH - BOS is going to increase and will soon be in the same position that MARC is having into WASH on its 2 track areas.
 #1381807  by F-line to Dudley via Park
 
east point wrote:Another thought. When the Conn river bridge is replace it would be prudent to at least build the piers for another future 2 track bridge. Underwater pier work at each location would only require a bit more work whereas later work will require more work. From what others have posted commuter traffic on the NH - BOS is going to increase and will soon be in the same position that MARC is having into WASH on its 2 track areas.
Probably not. The schedule constriction at the CT River is way more about how slowly that bridge mechanism operates than track capacity into the bridge. Because of how big and busy the river is, maritime priority forces the bridge up every time there isn't an adjacent train schedule. Its old bascule mechanism moves agonizingly slow, and the bridge tender has to do time-consuming mechanical checks because of its declining reliability. That's what harms the train spacing. The replacement is going to be exactly the same height and require similar total number of openings because during design they couldn't find a workable taller height that would meaningfully cut down on the openings; there's that much tall-mast traffic on the river that another 20+ feet of underclearance wouldn't make enough difference. So the main improvement with the new span is going to be a much faster moving section with a widened shipping channel underneath so the boats can scoot through less speed-restricted. Final design due in several months will make a final recommendation on whether it's another bascule or an adjustable-height lift like the new Thames span. Per usual practice with new bridges, it'll also be separate moving spans for each track for redundancy.

Just getting optimal efficiency on the speed of openings/closings is enough to open up a bunch of new Shoreline slots by packing trains closer. Amtrak dispatch will no longer have to over-space below native track capacity because of a need to pad around these slow bascule openings. If the new bridge opens/closes twice as fast and boats can move 30% faster through the widened channel so it's in the open position for shorter durations, dispatch can pack the train spacing by roughly equal amounts on the schedule since the CT River is the Shoreline's ruling bridge amongst the 5 moveables in frequency of openings (Mystic might surpass it on 4th of July + Labor Day weekends, but all other times CT River rules the roost).

More tracks over the span really aren't necessary as there are current, future, or current-and-to-be-upgraded passing tracks spanning any 2 moveable Shoreline bridges. The upgrades specced in the NEC Infrastructure Master Plan for those passer upgrades pretty much bump the Shoreline to its max feasible track capacity within its geometric constraints, so doing quad-track bridges doesn't add anything when time on the stopwatch for the openings is the true service limiter. Passers current and future are positioned:
-- existing Old Saybrook quad-track + tri-track station, adjacent to CT River
-- planned center passing track at proposed South Lyme commuter rail station, which gives the CT River-to-Niantic stretch a traffic-sorting passer
-- planned 1.5-miles of triple-track in Waterford spanning Niantic-to-Shaw's Cove
-- existing tri-track NLN station, spanning Shaw's Cove and Thames
-- existing 3.5-mile Groton 3rd and 4th track, to-be-electrified and upgraded to full speed for a passer between Thames and Mystic
-- *un-proposed* but likely center passer when CDOT rebuilds Mystic station for commuter rail service. They probably have to relocate the platform to the other side of the grade crossing in order to knock down the curve enough to fit a full-high. That shifts it onto the former freight siding land with room for a short center passer at the foot of the bridge.

This all brings the Shoreline pretty much up to tippy-top native capacity, with tighter packing and all the passing opportunities Amtrak needs over SLE commuter rail. You still hit a pretty obvious capacity ceiling when that traffic fills out, but it's not bridge-specific...it's the whole damn Shoreline in Connecticut and its whole bag of limitations. That's why interior Connecticut is the likeliest NEC FUTURE bypass that'll actually get built. Short-term, however, there's healthy increases to be had if that $400M in CT River reconstruction gets appropriated and the much smaller-potatoes passing tracks get laid down with enough due diligence to stay ahead of congestion. Plenty of breathing room for adding an LD from Boston, a Cape Codder, BOS extensions of a few currently NYP-terminating Regionals, and a substantial step-up in Shore Line East length and frequencies.
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