Category: Good Transit

New Rochelle-Penn Station Regional Rail

Last week, the MTA again floated proposals for connecting Metro-North to Penn Station once East Side Access comes online and frees track space currently used by the LIRR. The New Haven Line is to be connected to Penn Station via Northeast Corridor trackage that only Amtrak uses today, with four new stations in the Bronx. The new station locations include one near Co-op City, a dense middle-class housing project that is underserved by transit, and three more neighborhoods that are inconveniently between the 5 and 6 or on the wrong side of a freeway. In sum, it is a positive development.

However, since the New Haven Line already has a Manhattan terminal at Grand Central, this project involves splitting the line in two in its inner section. Thus, frequency will be cut in half, unless there is extra service added north of the merge point at New Rochelle. At the peak, this is not a very big problem, since the New Haven Line runs 20 trains into Grand Central between 8 and 9 am every weekday; although this is misleading since most stations are only served by a small subset of these trains, it is not difficult to have trains make a few more stops to restore the existing frequencies.

The problem is off-peak service. The current pattern is one train per hour serving stations north of Stamford and running nonstop between Stamford and Harlem-125th, and two Grand Central-Stamford locals per hour in the weekday off-peak and one on weekends. While poor by any international standards, the service afforded to the lower New Haven Line is tied for best in the US with just a handful of lines with half-hourly off-peak service. Splitting frequency in half would be a disaster for such service, to say nothing of not being useful to regional riders in the Bronx. Moreover, adding service just so that it can be split south of New Rochelle is counterproductive: the greatest need for frequency is close to the center rather than in the suburbs, because the shorter the trip time, the more pronounced the effect of a long wait time is.

I claim that the best way to compromise on frequency under the current service paradigm is to run short-turning trains terminating at New Rochelle, with timed connections. Since some passengers prefer a one-seat ride, half the local trains should serve Penn Station and half should serve Grand Central. In other words, frequency should be split among the two Manhattan destinations, but each branch should have a short-turning train connecting with the other branch’s trains. Express trains should make a station stop at New Rochelle with a reasonable connection from the local trains, but should otherwise only serve one destination. Then, Grand Central is the better destination for express trains, since it minimizes interference with intercity trains.

The alternative is to turn New Rochelle-Penn Station into a modernized regional rail line, run somewhat independently of the rest of Metro-North, with through-trains from the rest of the New Haven Line only at rush hour. Maybe select few off-peak trains, no more than 1 per hour, could extend to Stamford. This requires a change in paradigm; it cannot be done with the current staffing levels or turnaround times, but since it’s a service expansion, it’s plausible if unlikely that the union will accept reduced staffing, in line with best practices.

I envision the following scenario for modernized regional rail:

– Trains go from New Rochelle to Penn Station and beyond, to New Jersey. Through-service to the Hudson Line via the Empire Connection avoids agency turf battles but is less useful for passengers. They can hook into existing services and go all the way to Trenton and Long Branch, or provide new service and only go as far as Newark.

– Minimum off-peak frequency is one train every 15-20 minutes, or perhaps 30 late at night. 10 is aspirational, if the service proves popular.

– Fares are integrated with local transit. This means intra-city trips cost the same as subway or not much more, and in either case, transfers to the subway or the buses are free. If people can ride trains and a ferry from Tottenville to Wakefield on one fare, people should get to ride direct from Co-op City to Penn Station on one fare.

– Trains make stops that interface with other transit options. A Sunnyside stop meeting with the LIRR is a must. In addition, if the grades permit, there should be a stop in Astoria meeting the subway, and perhaps one in Port Morris, so that the trains can offer fast frequent service between Queens and the Bronx. Perhaps there should also be a restored station meeting buses from City Island.

The Sunnyside stop has value no matter what: for one, it allows trains to Penn Station to also work as Grand Central trains, making the transferring process easier to implement. The other extra stops are not really useful unless commuter rail is made an attractive option for local trips – in short, an S-Bahn or RER rather than a traditional American commuter service.

I hope to discuss compatibility with modernized intercity trains tomorrow. Although half-hourly service is so infrequent there is no real interference with intercity trains, more frequent service could pose problems. This is not an issue if Amtrak is not modernized: the speed limit south of New Rochelle is at most 160 km/h and even that is only between the Hutchinson River and Pelham Manor, with 100-110 km/h on the rest of the line. Thus the only speed difference between regional and intercity trains comes from making station stops, and a glance at existing schedules shows that when the top speed is 130-140 km/h trains lose about 1.5 minutes per stop. Of course high-powered noncompliant trains lose much less time, but for the purposes of running punctually on a shared line, the M8s are good enough. Losing 6 minutes from the four planned station stops is not a problem even with the proposed peak frequency, once one remembers that most peak trains are not going to stop in the Bronx at all.

Highways and Cost Control

I’ve been reading Earl Swift’s The Big Roads, and the early biography of Thomas MacDonald had passages that jumped at me. Unlike Owen Gutfreund, who focuses on MacDonald’s industry ties and use of astroturf, Swift portrays MacDonald as a Progressive reformist who believed in better engineering as a way to improve society, literally paving the way to the future.

While he used special interests to further his goals, he was also concerned with efficiency. He first made his name as the chief of the Iowa State Highway Commission, where he built a road system with virtually no budget; neighboring states had several times the planning budget Iowa had. At the time, the building contractors had colluded, dividing the state into regions with each enjoying a local monopoly; this drove up costs twice, first by increasing construction costs, and second by requiring more maintenance since the work was shoddy. MacDonald’s contribution was to break up the monopolies and demand that contractors compete.

MacDonald also believed in personally instructing local officials and contractors in good road construction methods. He’d often be visiting construction sites and participate in construction, partly for the photo-ops but partly for showing the locals how good engineering is done.

As a result, MacDonald became famous among road builders for his success in building roads, and was made the head of the Bureau of Public Roads. Iowa at the time had one of the highest car ownership rates in the US, about 1 per 7 people (about the same as Manhattan today). The person who became Governor toward the end of his tenure in Iowa was anti-roads, but this did not slow down highway and car growth.

The importance of this for good transit advocates is threefold. First, it shows that it is in fact possible for government officials to promote good government and increase efficiency. Of course we must not neglect broader social trends, but sometimes well-placed competent individuals can make a major difference.

Second, it reminds us that many of the rules that are currently associated with government dysfunction were passed with opposite intent and effect back in the Progressive Era. Lowest-bid contracts were an effort to stamp out corruption; civil service exams were an effort to reduce patronage; teacher tenure was meant to make teachers politically independent; the initiative process was intended to give people more control over government. All of those efforts succeeded at the time, and took decades of social learning among the corrupt and incompetent to get around. Although programs built under these rules often turned out badly, such as the Interstate network, with its severe cost and schedule overruns, this was not due to the contractor collusion seen in the 1910s or today.

And third, it’s a warning to those who hope that placing well-meaning individuals in power is enough. Every person with power thinks that his power is used for good and wants to extend it. Thus, once MacDonald became head of the Bureau of Public Roads, he made sure to maintain control over highway funding and gave himself the power to sign contracts with states, which Congress was then obligated to fund.

Good engineering can improve engineering standards, but it cannot improve society. Although the decisions to tear apart neighborhoods were made by local officials more, of whom Robert Moses is the most infamous, the idea that a cadre of technocrats who look at cities on maps and in models know what cities ought to look like more than the people living in them was an inherent part of this attitude. Indeed, the 19th century impetus for suburbanization, using rapid transit rather than roads, came from the same class of reformists. The Interstate system was simply when they had enough money and power to impose their modernist vision nationwide.

Followup on the Providence Line and Woonsocket Trains

There’s a pretty bad mistake in my post about MBTA-HSR compatibility: the length of the Boston-Providence line is 70 kilometers, not 67 as stated in the post. In my defense, 67 (42 miles) is what the official mileposts say, on Wikipedia and on the catenary poles along the line. In calculating travel times I used a mix of milepost and Google Earth data, leading me to slightly understate the travel time difference between future high-speed trains on the corridor and improved regional rail. The difference is small, but is important for choosing overtake locations.

The correct technical travel times for nonstop 300 km/h HSR and 160 km/h regional trains making all current MBTA stops are 19.25 and 38.75 minutes, respectively. It’s offset by just half a minute from the technical time I originally thought was correct, but more of the difference occurs near Providence than near Boston. The upshot is that the single-overtake option in Sharon is loose in the north, allowing an additional Boston-area stop, and extremely tight in the south, requiring 200 km/h trains and not necessarily allowing regional trains to stop at Pawtucket.

This doesn’t directly affect Woonsocket trains, for which my example schedule is based on Google Earth lines and should be considered accurate given the assumptions. However, in a comment, I’ve been linked to a 2009 Providence Foundation study of the feasibility of a regional train to Woonsocket, under present FRA regulations, achieving similar trip times to those I propose but with fewer stops. The service proposed is very good relative to the regulatory and organizational environment it has to deal with – the projected cost per rider is about $25,000, fairly low by US standards.

The Providence Foundation study also includes a timed transfer at Pawtucket between Woonsocket and Boston, something I did not originally think of. Since the exercise on this blog assumes organizational competence on the MBTA’s behalf, we can choose an overtake option that makes this work optimally with short turnaround and transfer times. We should also include fare integration in the scenario, something that doesn’t currently exist even just between the MBTA and Amtrak. Under some HSR operating scenarios, it could charge the same fare as low-speed rail on the same corridor and have integrated ticketing, making a Pawtucket transfer less useful than an HSR transfer at Providence. Under others – for example, an HSR fare surcharge as currently practiced on the Shinkansen or ICE – it is not possible, and while integrated ticketing is still possible and desirable, cost-conscious commuters would need a solution not involving intercity trains.

It turns out that a single-overtake option does not accommodate Pawtucket transfers well, even if a Pawtucket stop could be squeezed into the schedule. Consider the following 200 km/h schedule north of Providence, with the 7% pad, rounded to a half-minute:

Providence 0:11:30
Pawtucket-Central Falls 0:15
South Attleboro 0:18
Attleboro 0:22:30
Mansfield 0:28
Sharon Arrive 0:33:30, Depart 0:37:30
Canton Junction 0:40
Route 128 0:44
Readville 0:46:30
Hyde Park 0:48:30
Ruggles 0:54
Back Bay 0:56
Boston South 0:58

It’s possible to replace Readville with Forest Hills; the point is that there’s room in the schedule for it. The times above were chosen to make :00 the symmetry axis – i.e. southbound regional trains leave Boston at :02. Moving the symmetry axis is possible but requires giving up through-service to Warwick – the timetable would be too tight. Under this schedule, southbound regional trains would arrive in Pawtucket at :45, and HSR trains would arrive immediately after, at about :48; thus, southbound Woonsocket trains would arrive at the earliest at :50 and :20, timing them to just miss the northbound connection to Boston. Clearly, under such an option, the only way to provide satisfactory Woonsocket-Boston service is to connect to HSR at Providence.

The two-overtake schedule looks much better. It’s a tighter fit for Woonsocket trains between the faster MBTA and HSR trains, but once they fit, the transfer works well. Consider the following 160 km/h two-overtake schedule, with four-tracking between Readville and Route 128:

Providence 0:07
Pawtucket-Central Falls 0:10:30
South Attleboro 0:13:30
Attleboro Arrive 0:18, Depart 0:22
Mansfield 0:27:30
Sharon 0:33:30
Canton Junction 0:36:30
Route 128 Arrive 0:40, Depart 0:41
Readville Arrive 0:43, Depart 0:45
Hyde Park 0:47
Forest Hills 0:51:30
Ruggles 0:54
Back Bay 0:56
Boston South 0:58

Southbound MBTA trains arrive at Pawtucket at :49:30 and southbound HSR trains pass by Pawtucket at :44. Southbound Woonsocket trains have a window of about 1.5 minutes – they can arrive at Pawtucket between :51:30 (after the MBTA) and :53 (before the next HSR) to fit in on the same track pair used by the MBTA and HSR – but within that window they have a convenient transfer: 2.5-4 minutes to the next northbound MBTA train, at :55:30. Note that even in the off-peak, when MBTA trains would come every 30 minutes rather than every 15 minute, this works – we can just shift the slots used by MBTA and Woonsocket trains. Earlier arrival is good for the entire turnaround schedule for Woonsocket trains, which based on trip times would “like” to arrive at Providence at :58 and at Pawtucket at :51, though, if the Mineral Spring stop for Woonsocket trains is dropped, then :52 arrival is very comfortable at all ends.

The inclusion of Woonsocket service also favors ant6n’s proposed no-overtake schedule, in which Boston-Providence trains run at 200 km/h and skip stops near Boston and let Stoughton trains provide local service, and trains run every 20 minutes. It’s tight if MBTA trains stop at Pawtucket, but gives Woonsocket trains ample time for anything. Assuming a Pawtucket stop can be squeezed, for :58 Boston arrival northbound regional trains would depart Pawtucket at :27, i.e. southbound MBTA trains would depart at :33 and HSR would pass by at :35, right on their heels. Woonsocket trains could be slotted anytime between :37 and :47:30, where :41 would be optimal for their own turnaround times and :45-46 would provide the shortest robust connection.

MBTA-HSR Compatibility

There is going to be major investment in the Northeast Corridor, and several possibilities, including Amtrak’s NEC Master Plan, call for running trains at higher frequency and somewhat higher speeds than today on the Providence Line, and assumes electrification of commuter service. Since the line is already being used by the MBTA, which according to Amtrak is limiting the number of intercity train slots for capacity reasons, this calls for a good measure of schedule integration, based on the principle of organization before electronics before concrete.

Amtrak’s Master Plan calls for three-tracking the entire Providence Line south to Attleboro (one viaduct excepted) instead, at a cost of $464 million – $80 million in Phase 1, $384 million in Phase 2 – in addition to money spent on unnecessary expansion at South Station. Such a cost is excessive, suggesting that better MBTA-HSR compatibility is required. Full-fat HSR programs go even further and avoid the Providence Line in favor of a greenfield alignment or an I-90 alignment, instead of making use of the existing high-speed track in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. To reduce costs, a better plan would four-track short segments for passing sidings, and time the overtakes. The principle is similar to that of the blended Peninsula plan in California, in the version proposed by Clem Tillier.

In many ways, for example the metro area populations involved and the current ridership level, the Providence Line is similar to the Caltrain line. The main difference is that the Providence Line has fewer stops and therefore can expect higher average speeds. In addition, the Providence Line is straighter and passes through less developed areas, so that even today Acela trains plow it at 240 km/h, and about 330 km/h is possible with true high-speed trains and higher superelevation.

In Switzerland, trains run as fast as necessary, not as fast as possible. In this context, this means running just fast enough to meet a good clockface schedule. Boston-Providence travel time on the MBTA today is about 1:10; for a good takt, this should be cut to about 55 minutes, allowing hourly service with two trainsets and half-hourly service with four.

For the purposes of schedule symmetry and avoiding switching moves at high speed, passing segments should have four tracks rather than three when possible. Costs should be controlled by making those passing segments much shorter than the three-tracking Amtrak proposes.

Finally, the timetables proposed here are based on the following performance assumptions: regional trains have a top speed of 160 km/h, accelerate like a FLIRT (45 seconds acceleration plus deceleration penalty), have an equivalent cant of 300 mm, and dwell at stations for 30 seconds. Intercity trains accelerate like an idealized N700-I, have an equivalent cant of 375 mm, and dwell for 60 seconds. The equivalent cant is by and large unimportant; the acceleration and dwell times for regional trains are. The approach into and out of South Station has a speed limit of 70 km/h through the 90-degree curve toward Back Bay, and 100 km/h to south of the curve at Back Bay; intercity trains are limited to 200 km/h south to Readville and 250 km/h south to the Canton viaduct, and, at the southern end, 225 km/h west of the curve in Attleboro and, curves permitting, 200 km/h in Rhode Island. Regional trains turn in 5 minutes, or 4 at a minimum, and intercity trains turn in 10 minutes at a minimum. Signaling allows a headway of 2 minutes at a speed of 200 km/h and 3 minutes at higher speed, but if a regional train starts from a siding stop, it can follow a high-speed train more tightly initially, say 1 minute, still far higher than a safe stopping distance, since the spacing rapidly increases over time. Grades are ignored; the Providence Line is flat enough that they’re not an issue. Timetables should be padded 7% from the technical time.

With the above assumptions, the technical time for regional trains is 38 minutes with the present stopping pattern, which yields 41 minutes with padding; this compares with 46 minutes for the fastest Acela. Clearly, if Acela service levels remain similar to what they are today – which includes the Master Plan, which calls for a 10% reduction in Boston-New York travel time (see page 40 on the PDF linked above) – there’s no need for passing segments. To raise travel time to 55 minutes, trains should make more frequent stops, and/or run to T. F. Green Airport always. Although the speed profile of regional and intercity trains would be different, the average speed would be the same, and given that the corridor has a small number of trains per hour of each type, this mismatch is no cause for concern. The $464 million Amtrak is proposing would then be a complete waste, and the federal government should spend any money toward this goal on electrifying more MBTA lines and funding EMUs.

However, in a scenario involving a significantly improved intercity service, the best technical time for nonstop Boston-Providence service with a top speed of 300 km/h decreases to about 19 minutes (20.5 with pad), and this makes overtakes necessary. A slowdown to 250 km/h only adds about one minute of travel time, so the operating pattern is almost identical.

If 15-minute service, both regional and high-speed, is desired, then regional trains can be about 11 minutes slower between successive passing segments, since 11 = 15-3-1 or 15-2-2. A single mid-line overtake is theoretically possible: 41-20.5 = 20.5 < 2*11. However, such an overtake would have to be exactly at the midline, and, in addition, there could be merge conflicts at Providence, whose station tracks include two on the mainline and two on one side of the mainline as opposed to one on each side.

It’s still possible, but tight, to have a single overtake at Sharon. The immediate station vicinity would be four-tracked; this is no trouble, since the area around the station is undeveloped and reasonably flat. In addition, there’s more than enough time in the Providence area, making the merge conflict a lesser problem. However, this is very tight near Boston South, beyond signaling capability unless four-tracking extends a few kilometers further north. One way to counter this problem is to slow high-speed trains by making them all stop at Back Bay and/or Route 128, adding precious minutes to the schedule but reducing the speed difference. Conversely, the current weekday pattern of Providence Line trains skipping Ruggles could be made permanent. There is no room for infill stops; the overtake would only add 4 minutes to regional train travel time, so there’s time to run further to the airport at 160 km/h, and even make an extra stop at Cranston.

Another possibility is to have two overtakes, taking advantage of existing four-tracking around Attleboro. The capital costs are similar; it would require four-tracking around Route 128, possibly extending north to Readville if an on-the-fly overtake is desired. The operating complexity is much higher, since there’s one more opportunity for a late train to mess up the entire schedule. However, there is plenty of slack south of Attleboro and north of Route 128 allowing for additional stops. Under this option, the train loses 4 minutes waiting at Attleboro and about 2.5 at Readville, since the overtake is not completely on-the-fly, raising travel time to 47.5 minutes. There’s no time for airport trains, not on the same takt. However, there’s space in the schedule for 5-6 infill stops in addition to Readville; Forest Hills, Pawtucket, Central Falls, and perhaps one more in each of Boston and Providence closer to city center.

In principle, it’s possible to extend this analysis to 10-minute service, with three overtake segments, at Route 128, Sharon, and Attleboro. In practice, this is operationally cumbersome, and the operating profits coming from filling six full-length high-speed trains from New York to Boston ought to be able to pay for four-tracking the entire line, even the viaduct.

Not included in this analysis are the branches. Those are not a worry since north of Readville there are three tracks, and frequencies on the other lines are low. The Stoughton Line is a bigger problem; however, with the three tracks through Boston, it could still be shoehorned. Electrifying it should not be difficult due to its short length, though the proposed Taunton extension would make it harder.

National Low-Speed Rail Network Proposal

With all the focus on high-speed rail and urban transit, it’s easy to forget the low-speed rail that forms the backbone of every good national transit network. Switzerland, whose high-speed infrastructure consists of shared passenger and freight rail base tunnels, has a national rail ridership that puts the rest of Europe to shame. Japan may be famous for the Shinkansen, but the enormous low-speed networks surrounding Tokyo and Osaka are the two busiest in the world. Although intercity travel produces disproportionate revenues, most trips are local, even on mainline rail, and government rail planning should make sure to prioritize regional travel.

While the main intercity routes in the US should be eventually upgraded to high-speed rail, rather than rapid legacy rail, the low-speed network should dominate regional traffic as well as intercity gaps in the high-speed network. This means two traffic classes: regional and intercity. The intercity travel in question is for the most part short-distance – for examples, lines in Michigan fanning out of Detroit and not reaching any future high-speed lines to Chicago, lines in Georgia fanning out of Atlanta, and the portions of Amtrak California that won’t be replaced by HSR. The service level on the intercity lines should be a more modern version of the Regional, Keystone, and Empire South services; the service level on the regional lines should be the same as that of regional lines in Continental Europe.

The standards for the low-speed network should be based on the best industry practices. Because those lines are by definition not the highest-volume routes, it’s important to plan them with utmost care to keep costs under control. Federal assistance should aim to do the opposite of what FRA regulations do today. Instead of encouraging outdated practices, the federal government should on the contrary promulgate a set of good practices, based on what is done in Switzerland and other countries with good regional rail.

This is similar to what the various good roads bureaus did in the early 20th century, creating a unified set of standards. That said, the roads movement should only be an inspiration in the vaguest sense, since in reality US road building was much heavier on concrete than necessary and lighter on organization, leading up to the overbuilt Interstate network. This means that, whereas federal-aid highways are required to meet minimum standards for width and speed, federal-aid low-speed rail should be required to meet minimum standards for schedule and fare integration with local transit, signaling, and punctuality. The German motto, organization before electronics before concrete, rings truer here than for other kinds of transit investment, and agencies that ignore it should not receive funding for concrete before they complete the cheaper fixes.

Scandinavia is of especial importance as a rolemodel, because the lower density of its metro areas forces its regional trains to be faster, as they ought to be in the US. Combined with the wider loading gauge, it means that Swedish and Norwegian orders should be one of the sources of early American rolling stock. The lower speeds of Continental Europe (excluding Scandinavia) are not sufficient for more sprawling American urban areas. Instead, regional trains should have a top speed of about 160 km/h or just a little less, except on branch lines. A good example for the service quality to aim for is the Caltrain-HSR Compatibility Blog plans for trains from San Francisco to San Jose: local trains, stopping about once per 3.5 km, average 59 km/h, and express trains average 85 km/h.

While some regional lines in the US already average 60 km/h or even more, the cost is a very sparse station spacing, such that walking to stations is infeasible, even if the station areas are walkable, which they usually aren’t. For example, the Providence Line from Providence to Boston averages 58 km/h, with one daily late-night train with less schedule padding and another that skips stops achieving 65 km/h; however, the average interstation is 6.8 km, and requires skipping or closing down entirely several urban stations (Forest Hills, Ruggles, Readville, Pawtucket).

Instead of current practices, I would recommend a program of federal standardization based on the idea that transit should be able to compete with driving and provide meaningful transportation at all times of day. Federal action means that a few best practices could be violated: most prominently, rolling stock doesn’t have to be completely off-the-shelf if the federal government can induce transit agencies to combine and buy in bulk. However, the most important of the general best practices – perfect schedule and fare integration, allowing seamless intermodal transfers regardless of which agency operates the vehicles – are as important as ever. This leads to the following set of suggestions, in addition to the aforementioned set of best practices:

1. The main lines, both regional and intercity, should be electrified, with 25 kV 60 Hz.

2. Trains’ design speed should generically be 160 km/h, or a little lower on unelectrified branch lines and regional lines with frequent stops, though the track speed could be lower if increasing it is not worth the extra cost. Acceleration should be high, to allow average speed to remain high even with a few more stops. The ideal train should look like an M-7 with bigger doors from the outside and have the performance of a FLIRT. On unelectrified lines, good choices include the diesel Talent, GTW, Desiro, and Coradia. Bilevel trains are useful only in narrow circumstances in which passenger volumes are very high and the higher dwell times coming from the double-deck configurations are not a major problem; with a few exceptions such as the MI 2N used on the RER, this is practically never the case.

3. Subsidies should still be acceptable for regional services, though relative to passenger volumes they should be lower than they are in the US today; they should not be acceptable for the intercity network, though weak lines within a network could be subsidized by stronger lines they connect to.

4. In urban areas, regional service should function as urban transit and not just as peak-period commuter rail from the suburbs to the city center; therefore, there should be frequent stops in the city, replacing the longer-distance functions of American light rail lines. In-city fares should be identical to those of local urban buses and rail.

5. Regional trains should have just one operator, with the fare enforced with random fare inspections; intercity trains, which have lower traffic, can have one operator and one conductor.

6. There shouldn’t be any distinction between regional, intercity, and high-speed rail stations. High-speed rail should be able to seamlessly run through to lower-speed territory when necessary – for example, surplus Northeast Corridor trains that do not need to go to Boston should serve Jamaica at least (with catenary strung over the LIRR Main Line), and possibly even Mineola, Hicksville, and Ronkonkoma.

7. Construction projects should prioritize lines that serve markets that cars can’t, e.g. travel that passes through CBDs or parallels roads that are not freeways.

8. Signaling should be either ERTMS or ATC. Unless the two systems can be made to talk with each other, the federal government should invite delegations from the vendors, pick one, and mandate it. (And unless Hitachi can provide a convincing explanation for why its vendor-locked system is better, the pick should be ERTMS, which has eight vendors.) It can squeeze amazing capacity out of two tracks and, when enabled, provides absolute crash protection.

9. High punctuality is non-negotiable, especially when timed transfers or overtakes are involved. Trains should be able to stick to their clockface schedule and passengers should be able to rely on transfers even with short connections. Here is a list of ways to maintain punctuality. The ultimate goal is Japan, where, barring suicides and natural disasters, late trains are almost unheard of.

Those requirements are deliberately meant to be as scalable as possible. Although the rolling stock I’m implying is very ambitious for small-scale operations, the advantage of the high top speed is that such operations could piggyback on larger orders by the main established agencies, which could make great use of the extra speed and acceleration and get a more rationalized schedule as a result. The point is to give agencies pricing power coming from pooling together to order multiple thousands of more-or-less identical EMUs.

Although the investment described here is much more intensive than anything done in the US up to now, the true cost is not high. Restoring regional branch lines should be doable for a million dollars per kilometer, bulk electrification of main lines can be done for not much more and has been done on $3 million/km on the NEC, and mainline ETCS installation costs $1–1.5 million/km. It’s comparable to the per-km cost of the diesel-only, single-track, low-platform, commuter-only Lackawanna Cutoff, and if past results are any guide would lead to a sharp increase in transit ridership, measured in hundreds rather than tens of percent.

The ultimate goal of low-speed rail is to make it convenient to use regional transit. With speeds comparable to those of driving, local fares comparable to those of buses, and a frequent, memorable clockface schedule, transit would be a realistic option for many more people in the US than it is now. Every trip should be serviceable by transit, or else people will find it more convenient to buy a car for their irreplaceable car trips and then drive it for other trips. SBB claims that 32.7% of Swiss travel to work is on mass transit; this is higher than the figure for Greater New York, and about seven times the figure for the US.

Some of this is, to quote James Kunstler, Bill Lind, and other supporters of transit who look backward to the industrial era, merely restoring what the US had in the 1920s and 30s, before cars made all but the most traffic-intensive rail travel unprofitable. But the operating practices I’m proposing are modern, in line with today’s labor and capital costs and with innovations in countries that have kept improving their rail systems. Modern low-speed rail shares many characteristics with old local trains, but it’s fundamentally something that’s never really existed in North America. It’s about time to try it.

EMUs Versus Locomotives

I keep getting pushback from Amtrak defenders about my article about its locomotive order. I think I addressed most points, but one that I didn’t that keeps coming up is whether electric multiple units are really better for train service than locomotives hauling unpowered cars. The answer is in Amtrak’s case an unambiguous yes, but it requires more argument.

Ordinarily, the cost tradeoff between multiple units and locomotives is that unpowered cars are less expensive and lower-maintenance than EMUs while locomotives are much more expensive and higher-maintenance. EMUs have definite advantage in performance; they accelerate faster, and, when the consists are short their energy consumption is much lower, since most modern locomotives are optimized for longer freight trains. Because the advantage is the most pronounced for short consists, Amtrak asked Vermont to buy US Railcar’s FRA-compliant DMUs for the Vermonter train, replacing the current diesel loco-hauled setup; Vermont itself puts the breakeven point between DMUs and locos at 4-5 cars, but the DMUs in question have just one vendor and are extraordinarily expensive by global standards.

Conversely, locomotives require much more track maintenance than EMUs, because of their higher axle load. Road wear is proportional to the fourth power of axle load, so the less even the weight distribution is, the higher the road wear is. Track wear does not satisfy such a neat formula; all old comments of mine stating the contrary should be ignored. However, for freight traffic such a formula does hold, and locomotives have axle loads comparable to those of freight trains. One could also observe that in Japan, railroads make every effort to keep axle load low, and therefore avoid articulated bogies; furthermore, almost all Shinkansen axles are powered to keep weight distribution even, whereas European high-speed EMUs only power about half the axles (Siemens’ Velaro has a maximum axle load of 17 t, and an average load of 14 t).

Generally, the trend in countries with well-run passenger rail systems is away from locomotives and toward EMUs. The exceptions come from three cases:

1. Some technologies, most notably the Talgo tilting wheels, can’t be used with powered bogies. The same is true of the tilting TGV test train.

2. Some railroads ignore track maintenance costs and focus on train maintenance. This includes SNCF, since the tracks are the responsibility of RFF.

3. Cultural inertia may make railroads too used to separate power cars. This again includes SNCF, which needed power cars for the TGV because of the technological limitations of the 1970s and 80s, requiring very large transformers.

In the specific case of Amtrak and the Northeast Corridor, not only are reasons 1-2 not an issue, but also the cost question favors EMUs. Look again at Vermont’s report, which seriously posits unpowered coaches costing up to $5.5 million each, more than a standard off-the-shelf EuroSprinter loco; Amtrak’s recent order is much cheaper, at $2.2 million per car, but still comparable to the FRA-compliant M7 EMU and not much less per meter of car length (and more per car) than the Coradia Nordic EMUs used in Sweden or the FLIRTs used in Finland.

In comments elsewhere, I’ve heard that one reason to keep the locomotives is that they can be detached and replaced with diesels on through-trains to unelectrified territory. This is pure cultural inertia; EMUs, and even power cars that are permanently coupled to unpowered coaches, can be attached to a diesel locomotive, as the TGV did to reach Sables d’Olonne. More cynically, the cost of Amtrak’s locomotives is $466 million, which, at Northeast Corridor electrification cost (about $3 million/km), could electrify 155 km of route, almost all the way from Washington to Richmond. At the cost of electrifying the line to Sables d’Olonne (about $1.2 million/km), it could electrify nearly 400 km. Amtrak’s insistence on locomotives is reducing flexibility here rather than increasing it.

But in general, the move toward EMUs is not about flexibility; railroads around the world deprecate it and have semi-permanently coupled trains. It comes from the fact that, outside Amtrak’s uniquely bad experience with Metroliner EMUs, they work better. I’ve already mentioned higher acceleration. In addition, all else being equal, they’re more flexible, and can be scaled to any length: the M7s are married pairs. I’ve seen commenters that claim the exact opposite, by looking only at EMUs with articulated bogies; those have nothing to do with the question at hand (the TGV has articulated bogies, too), and indicate that the operator cares about other things more than about flexible length, for example a walk-through train or reducing the number of bogies.

Another problem with locomotives, besides inferior performance, is limited capacity. A single-deck 200-meter long AGV has 466-510 seats, compared with about 350 for a single-deck TGV and 545 for a double-deck TGV. SNCF is still eschewing the AGV because its capacity limit is so great it needs double-deck trains, but Alstom is developing a train with standard, unarticulated bogies that it claims can reach 600 seats with one deck.

Although Amtrak does not have the capacity problems of the LGV Sud-Est, it too is capacity-constrained, in another way. The limiting factor to Amtrak’s capacity is the lack of cars; as a result, buying EMUs instead of locomotives and coaches would add more capacity per dollar spent. It’s brutal, but true. Even the slightly more expensive Nordic EMUs would be an improvement; they’re still cheaper than coaches plus a single locomotive for all train lengths up to 14 cars (if the loco is an Amtrak Cities Sprinter) or 9 cars (if it’s a TRAXX or Prima).

In reality, the reason Amtrak uses locomotives is entirely cultural inertia. It was burned with the Metroliners, and thinks that unpowered cars last longer because, well, they have to. The reality that the M7, or the average European EMU, lasts 40 years, the same as Amtrak’s coaches; however, that idea was not invented by Amtrak, and is therefore out. It thinks that unpowered coaches are cheaper, while buying coaches that cost the same as EMUs. And so on. This is yet another bad US rail practice, hindering rail revival by making it too expensive and reducing performance.

Quick Note: Barcelona Rail Tunnel

Barcelona’s rail tunnel connecting the existing high-speed rail station, Sants, with city center, has just been completed. The tunnel’s total length is 5.8 km. As for cost:

The tunnel has cost over €179·3m to build, including extensive measures to protect historic buildings such as Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia from any settlement.

I believe this sets a new modern-day record for low construction costs – about $40 million per km – certainly in cases of inner-urban construction. It balances out the city’s Line 9 boondoggle, which has run so many times over budget it’s now a full $180 million per km.

Airport Access vs. City Access

New York’s MTA and Port Authority have just released slides from a meeting discussing alternatives for transit access to LaGuardia. While the airport is the nearest to Midtown Manhattan by road and thus the option of choice for many business travelers, its transit options consist of local buses within Queens or to Upper Manhattan, and as a result its passengers are the least likely to use transit: about 10%, vs. 15% for JFK and 17% for Newark. Transit to the airport has been on and off the agenda for quite some time, with the most recent attempt, a Giuliani-era proposal to extend the Astoria Line, torpedoed due to community opposition to elevated trains.

Regular readers of this blog know that I have little positive to say about transit geared toward airport travelers. Business travelers are much better at demanding airport transit than using it. However, LaGuardia’s location is such that it could serve as a useful outer-end anchor for multiple lines providing transit to underserved areas. One is north-south service in Queens east of the Astoria Line, for example along Junction Boulevard; there’s already a bus that goes on Junction, but it’s slow and infrequent, and the lines do not combine into a single trunk except on airport grounds. Another is east-west service along 125th Street, which is replete with traffic and supports higher combined frequency on the four lines serving it than any other bus corridor in the city. Yet another is any service to East Elmhurst, which is a very dense neighborhood far from the subway.

The alternatives analysis seems biased in favor of Select Bus Service, i.e. not quite BRT, but such a question can just as well be asked of any mode of transportation, up to and including subways. However, even if the proposal is to physically separate the bus lanes, much good can be done on those corridors, independently of airport traffic. Because BRT can be done open rather than closed, the airport travel market could in principle even be served by a few direct buses from 1st/2nd Avenues through the Triboro Bridge, or perhaps over the Queensboro if the city adds physically separate lanes on Northern or Queens Boulevard. Those business travelers who are willing to use airport transit put a premium on direct service to the CBD: circumferential lines such as those proposed here would do more good for ordinary city residents than for air travelers.

In a world in which New York’s construction costs are normal rather than very high, it would be possible to speculate about subway extensions. Although city officials have favored an extension of the Astoria Line, there are better ways to serve that segment of Queens, providing north-south service to East Elmhurst and perhaps additional east-west service north of the Flushing Line. My preference is something like this: a shuttle under Junction intersecting all existing and possible future radial subways, and a continuation of Second Avenue Subway along 125th Street. Although it has a gap in service from Harlem to the airport, Second Avenue Subway Phase 2 has a natural tie-in to 125th, making the airport less important as an anchor than it is for surface transit; and even with a subway, 125th may well have enough remaining bus traffic to justify physically separated median bus lanes.

Although the possibility of subway extension is remote given current construction costs, an SBS extension is likely. It’s affordable at current costs and willingness to pay, and provides lines on a map that political leaders can point to and say “I did it.” In addition, boosters and business leaders tend to like airport expansions, and those are sometimes useful for the city.

Although New York currently prefers closed to open BRT, it’s still possible that airport access will indeed be used as an excuse to improve city transit with circumferential SBS routes in Queens and Harlem. It’s unlikely much good will come of it – note how the slides talk about “service to the airport and Western Queens” instead of “service to Western Queens and the airport” – but it’s feasible.

24/7 Rapid Transit

It’s a commonplace in New York that the New York City Subway is almost the only one that runs 24/7, and that the rest – PATH, PATCO, and two lines of the Chicago L – are small operations. The reason for this operating plan is that the main Manhattan trunklines have four tracks, making it feasible to shut down tracks for weekend and late-night maintenance and skip a few stations in one direction. Occasionally, even midday midweek service is disrupted. This leads to complaints from passengers who actually ride transit in the off-peak, as well as various politicians, and exhortations from political defenders of the MTA that it’s a necessary byproduct of 24/7 operation.

In fact, there’s one additional system not mentioned above: the Copenhagen Metro, which began 24/7 operation in 2009. Although around-the-clock operation on weekends is common in some European cities, such as Berlin, Copenhagen took the extra step to run 24/7 reliably. It has only two tracks, like some lines in New York, but made sure it would be possible to single-track at night for maintenance. Late-night headways in Copenhagen are 20 minutes, like in New York, and this gives enough time to reduce long segments to a single track and run wrong-way service. Copenhagen’s trains are automated and this helps with wrong-way signaling, but it’s not a prerequisite and wrong-way operation is already done late at night on the subway in New York.

What this means is that there’s a technical solution to the problem of late-night and weekend service disruptions: make sure that there are crossovers placed at regular intervals to allow 20-minute service on single track. Installing switches requires extra capital construction money, but is orders of magnitude cheaper than building extra tunnels, and would make late-night maintenance much easier. Headways are such that a switch would be required every 7 or 8 minutes, which means every 2.5-5 km. At some places, crossovers already exist at that density, for example at all four tunnels from Queens to Manhattan, and all that’s required is schedule modification.

The result would still not be as satisfactory as in Copenhagen, ironically because of the multi-track trunklines. Under the slow-fast-fast-slow system used in New York, as well as most other four-track lines, it’s impossible for a local train to cross over to the opposite track without fouling the express tracks. This would create serious problems even on the three-track lines in Queens and the Bronx, since extra switching moves would be required, shortening the acceptable crossover spacing. It would still be possible, say with crossovers 6-7 minutes apart, but the maintenance requirements would be higher.

On the four-track mainlines, I don’t see any solution that unequivocally improves on the status quo. It’s possible to have the same crossovers, but at even tighter spacing, and without any express traffic. Weekend express traffic could possibly still be retained, but not late-night express trains, and late-night frequency would be reduced to 20 minutes even on combined lines, for example the local 1/2 in Manhattan.

What this means for future trunklines is that, if four-tracking is required for capacity or for express service, it should not run as was built in New York a hundred years ago. Instead, the slow tracks should be in the middle, and the fast tracks on the outside; this allows more operational flexibility as well as short-turning local trains, at the cost of making it harder to build infill stations. While the subway short-turns some local trains, for example the C at 168th and at Euclid, this requires flying junctions, which contributed to the IND’s excessive cost.

Maximum flexibility could be obtained by building every station with two island platforms, as if it were an express station, and having express trains skip low-traffic stations. This way, two tracks could be shut down for maintenance along the entire line with no ill effect on reliability, except that retaining express service would required timed overtakes. The problem is of course the much higher cost of such a line, especially if it is underground.

For underground lines, there’s very rarely a reason to four-track. Washington may complain about lack of flexibility and express service, but modern subway lines with good rolling stock and wide curves can achieve acceptable average speed even with medium stop spacing. The Copenhagen Metro averages 40 km/h, a speed previously reserved for systems with very long (~1.6 km) interstations such as the Moscow Metro, even though its stop spacing is just 1 km. Capacity is the only serious drawback of two-track lines, but if it is so pressing then the city should built two separate two-track lines, which with tunnel boring machines cost about the same as one four-track line.

Is Technical Activism Necessary?

Since my post on technicals and politicals is getting some wider traction, with a discussion on Auckland Transport Blog, I should raise the question of whether technicals are even necessary. Recall that technicals are the transit activists who tend to mistrust transit authorities, especially when they claim a certain project or project component is required when it is unnecessary abroad or just very expensive. It’s a sort of activism that’s created by agency incompetence. I can imagine being technical about New York; I can’t imagine the same about Zurich.

Not knowing enough about the level of government competence in New Zealand, I can’t know how relevant what I’m going to say is to Auckland. Reading Auckland Transport Blog suggests that Auckland’s expansion projects are well-run, and the primary obstacle is political opposition by the National Party. In Auckland based on the impression I get from the blog, or in most major European cities (for example, Paris), the major divisions among transit advocates are either about pure politics (social services versus profitability) or value questions concerning how express lines should run or whether there should be more investment into buses or rail. Once the investment plan at each given level of funding is optimized, the question becomes how much funding to provide.

The political/technical division thus seems to be primarily North American and maybe Australian/New Zealander, certainly not European. In Europe, because the average quality of local projects is much higher, it is much easier to tell the bad projects apart.

Take Stuttgart 21, an expensive boondoggle that only looks good on a map. The need for massive takings and the high and escalating cost of the project led to massive protests, catapulting the Green Party to a state election victory for the first time in German history. But unlike unpopular rail projects in the US, the response was not to cancel all investment (the Green-SPD coalition wants to give more priority to rail investment and put it on equal footing with roads) but instead look for better solutions, hiring Swiss rail experts and coming up with an alternative plan. In other words, there was no difference between politicals and technicals.

In the US, such a response would be unthinkable. There’s no way for a mass movement to support transit investment in general but also oppose specific projects that are bad and promote more cost-effective alternatives. The Tea Party is heavily against all transit and urbanism, regardless of merit, and should not count. The opposition to Stuttgart 21 gathered in weekly protests by the tens of thousands; the opposition to ARC gathered in small rooms with about ten people in attendance.