Commuter Rail’s Potential Is Untapped
Commuter Rail’s Potential Is Untapped
Sep 26, 2019 By Aaron Short Read More: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/09/...l-is-untapped/ Quote:
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Can commuter rail save our suburbs?
https://www.curbed.com/2019/10/8/208...opment-suburbs Quote:
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I agree that Caltrain has a capacity problem during rush hour and should expand to 6 or 7 trains per hour southbound and possibly 8 trains per hour northbound.
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The Seattle metro has an extreme lack of rail ROW. There's literally one heavy rail route northward. It's along the waterfront (vs. in the middle of the population), heavily used by freight, and prone to small landslides in the winter despite some upgrades. Southward it's better but not that good either. As for eastward...that starts at Everett and Tacoma, not Seattle.
This means it's next to impossible to get expanded time for passenger rail service amidst the freight. |
Perhaps re purpose or utilize road ROW. It will have a high cost due to lack of existing rail ROW but far cheaper and likely to succeed than buying up properties for a rail ROW.
The computer rail could be built elevated in middle of street ROW. Think something along the line of what the rail in Hawaii is doing. Rail could be put in the center of freeway ROW and take advantage of the grade separation the freeway ROW has. Either is not a perfect solution but at least gets a rail network going. |
Something to keep in mind here is that most large prewar cities have both extensive radial rail networks and former railroad suburbs along those networks. This is true not just of cities like NYC, Boston, Philly, and Chicago, but also cities like Detroit, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, etc. Cities like Phoenix, Las Vegas, or Seattle, with relatively limited railroad corridors are, in the American context, more an exception than a norm.
It's also worth keeping in mind that the "small town America" ethos is largely one of railroad suburbs, "towns" whose wealth is a byproduct of their proximity to a major city. It's not an accident that New Urbanism developments ape those of railroad suburbs! A good argument to be made here is that there are two major investments we need to make in our suburban rail infrastructure: (1) return rail alignments that serve obvious railroad suburbs to active passenger use, and (2) modernize commuter rail movements through the core in accordance to European norms (e.g. Germany's S-Bahn or Paris' RER networks). The latter is actually surprisingly easy in practice in most American cities, as the large railroads liquidated the bulk of their stub terminals in favor of through stations during the early 20th century. It is not a question of whether the infrastructure for commuter rail exists at all in a place like Kansas City; rather, it's one of whether there's popular and political will to rebuild it. |
I would hope to see commuter rail playing a bigger role in the future since many of our major cities are too expensive to build on at a rate to offset the supply/demand imbalance to a moderate level. As suburbs continue to grow and increase in density and highways continue to have deep traffic and commute times, it’s now important than ever.
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Missing from this discussion is Salt Lake City, which is home to the UTA FrontRunner. In the first half of the year this one 89-mile line in little ol' Utah carried over 2.5 million passengers, which is makes it the 11th busiest commuter rail line in the country. It beats out Sound Transit in Seattle, Virginia Railway Express near Washington DC, Trinity Railway Express in Dallas, and Tri-Rail in Florida, just to name a few. These cities are much larger than Salt Lake City, so how is UTA able to get more riders?
The answer is they run a lot of trains: Sixty three departures from Salt Lake City every weekday, and 42 departures on Saturday. People hate being trapped by a transit schedule, so the best thing to improve ridership is to run more often and expand the hours in which trains operate. |
Sound Transit in Seattle is bullcrap. Really low frequencies and really weak hours of service. I wish they could extend it down to Olympia and make it more usable.
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Electric Multiple Units are used extensively in Europe and Asia but are little used in the US outside the NE (for a variety of reasons). These are what we should be using a lot more. Denver was smart to go this approach for many corridors but too often light rail is the default option.
Much of Seattle's Link system really would have been better suited to EMUs instead of light rail (although generally using the current and proposed Link route) because of the long distances to Everett and Tacoma. (I am not referring to the Sounder corridor, although if built this way they could have been somewhat interchangeable). What this also would have been, had they used EMUs, is a second and passenger-only major rail corridor north and south that could have also been used for Amtrak Cascades. |
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The average retail price for diesel fuel in the USA is around $3 per gallon ($0.79 or E0.72 per liter), in France the retail price for diesel fuel is $6.10 per gallon (E1.46 per liter, E5.542 per gallon, $6.10 per gallon). Railroads in America buy diesel fuel at wholesale prices by the truckload, I assume that also holds true in France. With diesel fuel costing twice as much in Europe than in America, that is going to effect the economics over using DMUs or EMUs, and even in Europe you are going to find DMUs running just about anywhere. Light rail is not only cheaper to build than EMU commuter trains, they are also cheaper to operate and maintain. Most high speed commuter EMUs trains running significant distances use several thousand ac volts on the catenaries above the tracks, most light rail trains running shorter distances use 600-750 dc volts. Most commuter trains sharing tracks with heavy freight trains require 130+ pound tracks vs the 110 pound tracks required by light rail trains. So, building light rail systems is cheaper than building EMU systems. Denver RTD uses a mix of light rail and EMU trains, depending mainly on sharing the tracks or not with freight trains, along with who owns the tracks. At a mile above sea level, it’s thinner air affected their decision on using DMUs or EMUs. Most American cities are not located a mile above sea level. New York City also discourages using DMU or diesel locomotives and it is located at sea level, but access to Manhattan using mostly tunnels resulted in a local law encouraging electric power over steam and diesel locomotives. Both Denver and New York City have different reasons why because of different physical conditions, conditions not found elsewhere in America. Every train company and transit agency should look at its own needs and requirements over and beyond a national one size fits all mind set. if a one size fit all mind set overrules local requirements, many New Yorkers would be choking on diesel fumes at Penn Station and Grand Central. |
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What was mentioned often was the train frequency. RTD was planning on (and is curently) running their commuter rail at RER/S-bahn frequency levels. They did the math, and saw that at that frequency with projected fuel costs it made sense to electrify over the long run. Because RTD isn't sharing tracks on the G, A, the open portion of the B line, and the under construction N line it was easy to electrify. If they ever are able to fully extend the B line they will have to share tracks with the BNSF and plan to use DMU's. In short, as a generalization the more frequently you run commuter rail the more electrification makes economic sense. Obviously, if you are sharing tracks that may not always be feasible. |
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They're bringing all the different modes under the same payment system (septa key), which might help too, but all modes should cost the same within the city limits whether it's subway/trolley or rail. It's not much of a difference anyway, so not sure why they just don't simplify it. Also, PATCO would be used more if it wasn't on a completely different system as SEPTA. |
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What I was taking exception with is that it takes special conditions such as tunnels or high altitude for EMU's to make sense. If you plan on running high frequency commuter rail at some frequency (each city will have a different break even point) it will make sense to use EMUs. Provided of course you can on that track. |
The things that make an EMU different from an LRT don’t seem important for urban transit.
A bigger(for purposes of having toilets and more leg room) faster train that can share tracks with freight would be useful for regional or short distance intercity, but a local and frequent urban train doesn’t need any of those features. |
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yep great example -- and another way to grow it is to add more in-town stations. this is what mta is doing with mnrr in the bronx adding four stations with the new budget. :tup: |
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In many cases light rail would be both better and cheaper to operate. |
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