The flip side is that Chicago-Detroit has so many slowdowns, of which the worst is in Chicago itself, that the top speed isn't that important. At the upper limit of what you can do when you have no slow zones, Tel Aviv-Haifa express trains average about 120 km/h with diesel locos that top at 140 km/h. That line is straight, which helps, but it also has no terminal slowdowns, since Tel Aviv's stations were reconfigured as through-stations in 1996.
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Cleveland and Pittsburgh are noticeably different cities, but they are very close. Only 120 miles between the downtowns, so I bet there's enough traffic to warrant it if they build it. I'd like to see a high speed northeastern triangle: the NE corridor from DC to Boston, then a high speed rail link out west to Pittsburgh, Cleveland, then up to Buffalo (connecting with Canada and the Toronto area with transfers) then east toward Boston, and maybe a high speed service between NYC and Montreal connecting at Albany right in the middle. New York is a mountainous state, but the corridor that the train could travel is along the 'coastal plain' of the Great Lakes. Its relatively flat between the shores of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario and several miles inland, south of Buffalo and Rochester. Wouldn't be too expensive to cut through the northeastern rugged terrain in upstate thanks to the land between the lakes and the mountains. |
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Between CREATE and the IDOT rail projects, many of these slow zones will be eliminated. MDOT also has some money to reduce slow zones on the Detroit end, too. The general curviness of the line can't really be helped, though. It's not as bad as the Shore Line throuch CT/RI. |
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The Detroit part is awful. I very rarely ride past Ann Arbor but my past couple of rides have taken me to Royal Oak and the Chicago/Northwest Indiana sections were breezes compared to the sections east of Ypsilanti. We never broke forty between Ypsi and Dearborn, and once in Detroit the track is abysmal, rough and I presumed jointed. Couple this with 15 mph and 8 mph maneuvers and I was ready to get off by the time we reached Royal Oak. Track improvements and rehabbing the connection on Detroit's west side (forgive me I don't know what it is called), will really help with on time performance, especially on westbound trains. With that being said, I am glad that they are starting with the section between Kalamazoo and Battle Creek since it is so slow. The scheduled average speed is 35 mph. So immediately after sustained 100 mph operation, the train slows down and crawls the 22 miles between the stations. Finally, to bring it back around to overhauling Amtrak, one thing I wish Amtrak was better at doing is telling you where the trains are on their route. A few weeks ago, I was in St. Joseph, MI and wanted to take the Wolverine back to Chicago. The Wolverine low bucket price is about 22 percent lower per mile than the Pere Marquette, so I opt to take the Wolverine out of New Buffalo. Because of the Wolverine's tradition of tardiness, I waited until the last minute to buy my tickets. The train was 25 minutes late into Battle Creek and thinking that 25 minutes was not bad, I purchased my tickets. Print at home tickets are a game changer at unstaffed corridor stops. I arrived at New Buffalo about 15 minutes after scheduled departing time knowing that the train still had not made the stop in Niles(27 miles away) thanks to Amtrak app. However, the train had equipment problems around Niles and did not get to New Buffalo until an hour and a half later. The problem was the Amtrak website kept updating the estimated time of arrival by 5-10 minute increments. It would say estimate arrival 3 pm and once 3 pm rolled around would update to 3:10 and so forth for an hour and a half. Which means I just sat there the whole time. If Amtrak had some sort of gps tracking system, I could have grabbed a bite to eat or drink and then once the train started moving again, I could have made my way back. It was very frustrating not knowing where the train was. On short corridor trips, knowing when precisely a train will arrive is very important. |
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I wrote earlier increasing max speeds to what the owners of the corridors will allow. Both UP and BNSF have stated 90 mph as that limit on shared tracks. So, even 110 mph is unlikely on freight owned tracks (the sole exception being Chicago to St. Louis UP owned corridor). 110 mph speeds will only be reached on public owned corridors, ie the Michigan owned line to Detroit. FEC All Aboard Florida trains will reach 110 mph where their corridor isn't congested, and 125 mph where only passenger trains will be running. That's the best you"ll ever see on a freight owned corridor - and technically where they will be going 125 mph, that section of the corridor will be owned by Florida - FEC will only be leasing it. |
On the NEC, one straightforward thing Amtrak and the commuter railroads should do is let people know in advance which train is departing from which track. In Germany, Japan, Switzerland, and others, when you buy a train ticket it includes the track number, because part of the timetable is about how trains go through city stations, and when there are conflicts, station throat improvements are built with specific schedules in mind. At some major US stations, there is a natural division into tracks that makes it very easy to adopt this practice, including 30th Street (Amtrak gets 10 tracks all for itself), Grand Central (a gazillion tracks), and South Station (4 lines - Worcester, Providence/NEC, Fairmount, Old Colony - side by side). Penn Station's a bit harder, but it has 21 tracks, which is more than enough for the traffic it has; in Tokyo there are 4-track train stations with considerably more traffic and even 2-track stations.
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As for Milwaukee Junction - the junction Amtrak has to navigate to get up to the northern burbs - there isn't much that can be done, there. It's just how the metro is layed out. |
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A very straight forward example is a light rail system with a maximum velocity of 60 mph, and takes 20 minutes to go 10 miles, including stops. That's a 30 mph average. I apologist for being simplistic, but this illustrates the most important step in improving our passenger rail system: the need to increase the average speed through urban areas, including boarding and deboarding at stops, station approaches (through or stub), etc. This is the first area where progress can be made to get the fastest results. Let's say the freight railroads put a maximum speed of 90 mph even through urban areas which might then be maintained (i.e., 90 mph for a 100 mile stretch for example). If approaches to stations from 90 mph to 0 could be made in say 2 miles on either side of a stop, and, the stop could be made in 2 minutes or less (very routine time length), then for 4 miles out of 104, the average speed would be 15 mph, and the 104 miles traveled in 73 milnutes for an average speed of 85 mph* I have felt for a long time that what needs to be done is to increase the average speed on all Amtrak routes 1 mph per year. Amtrak has to take numerous small steps to repair damage caused by property development, tracks being ripped up or downgraded, etc., over almost 60 years. Amtrak (and the US in general) needs the humble approach. The public rail net work needs to both add new 79 mph routes, and, relentlessly remove bottlenecks to increase average speed. ** *(66.7 minutes for the 100 miles and 6 minutes for the 4 miles in a total time of 72.7 say 73 minutes or 1.22 hours which averages out to 85 mph over that 104 miles). **in 20 years the change would be very evident. |
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Don't forget another problem of Penn: there aren't a lot of official access points to most platforms. Amtrak funnels passengers through just one access point on the upper concourse, where employees check their tickets (in addition to an on-board check). This slows boarding by several minutes, minutes that are more comparable to lining up for security at airports than to sitting in a meter-pitch seat on a train. There are other access points on both concourses, but these are unannounced, and you need to know what you're doing to even know that there's a train at the platform you're going down to.
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A new report has come out about Amtrack's ridership numbers from the Brookings institute. http://www.brookings.edu/research/re...-puentes-tomer
Its a mixed bag but generally ridership numbers have gone up. I have to say being in Texas I had to do a double take at the DFW numbers. While DFW is not one of the 10 metro's they cite as being a major contributer to ridership, the overall increase from 97 to 2012 is substantial (482.9% up from 34K to more than 200K). Something to not be ignored and shows growing support of passenger rail at least in North and Central Texas. Houston had a growth of a little over 4,000 riders in the same period to a total of 20K plus riders, San Antonio 60% to 70K, and Austin 383% to about 54K. I'm a supporter of HSR, and now understand why Amtrack in Texas is concentrated more on connecting DFW with San Antonio / Austin with HSR. I always thought Houston / DFW was the first natural connection, but looking at the ridership numbers puts a new perspective on it. Still think Houston and DFW need to be connected as being the two primary metro's in the state. http://transportationblog.dallasnews...il-plans.html/ |
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On narrower platforms, multiple access points are even more important. The traffic on intercity trains isn't enough to overwhelm even the Penn platforms, as long as people can disperse into the concourse easily. The problem is when people from many different cars come together in search of one escalator.
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Got a chuckle watching the videos of the crowds at Penn Station. For NJ Transit trains...everyone just stands around trying to figure out what track their train may be leaving from and when they announce it it's this tsunami of humanity pushing towards the two little doors to get down to the train. It's just madness.
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