Combined, Washington-Baltimore now outsizes Chicago as America’s 3rd largest CSA

[jd3189]

Originally Posted by Crawford

It would be nice if NJT and SEPTA worked closer together. Yeah, their schedules align, and they meet in Trenton (and hopefully West Trenton, one day, if NJT finally completes that line, as has been promised for decades), but it would be great if there were co-branded, thru-running express trains from NYP to 30th Street.

This may not be on topic, but has there been plans in NJ to build more TODs around the NJT stations? Seems like a no brainer to control growth for the foreseeable future.

[EastSideHBG]

Originally Posted by Investing In Chicago

To me, 70 minutes of train time is insanity. If we assume 15 min to drive and park at a station, then 10-15 min walk once you're off the train, you're looking at over an hour and a half of commuting each way, over 3 hours round trip. That is a psychotic lifestyle, even for 2 - 3 times per week.

Not for here, pretty normal. My old 12 mile commute would take me 30-45 min. and if there was bad weather it would be an hour+, easy. Some of my old coworkers were one hour+ and then during beach [shore] season that would almost double because of the direction they had to travel in.

Even pre-pandemic we had to get creative with schedules, WFH policies, etc., to try to retain talent due to pain points with commutes.

Originally Posted by 3rd&Brown

You act like the alternative is a 5 minute walk to work.

For me, the alternative was a 10 minute walk to the subway followed usually by 50 minutes underground on the subway itself book ended by another 10 minutes to the office. The difference between my old commute from Brooklyn and my new commute from Philadelphia is less than 2 hours a week.

Everyone makes these assumptions, particularly about NY commutes. Unless you have the money to spend $7000 a month on a Tribeca apartment and you walk to work at your job in the financial district, then you're likely commuting 45-60 minutes door to door on the subway.

Exactly.

[chris08876]

Washington/Baltimore and its proxies no doubt will continue to climb up the ranks. Region is growing incredibly. DC's suburbs on the Virginia side especially. Solid amount of density with many of the projects there and also in the pipeline. Plus a major cultural center and educational center with history to back it up and strong job/business market, so it will continue to attract folks.

What the region needs to continue doing is to pump out the housing to keep prices at bay. That will help (as with many top 10 growing metros).

[bnk]

Originally Posted by chris08876

Washington/Baltimore and its proxies no doubt will continue to climb up the ranks. Region is growing incredibly. DC's suburbs on the Virginia side especially. Solid amount of density with many of the projects there and also in the pipeline. Plus a major cultural center and educational center with history to back it up and strong job/business market, so it will continue to attract folks.

What the region needs to continue doing is to pump out the housing to keep prices at bay. That will help (as with many top 10 growing metros).

We should expect so for all of the lobbies and Major businesses being inside of the Beltway for contracts and esp Military contracts

See Boeing as just one example.




30 years ago no one wanted to move into DC proper.

How things have reversed in the last 1.5 decades



DC reminds me of the movie Wall Street that was centered on NYC

Greed seems to be cool again.

[Steely Dan]

^ if "greed is good" = NYC

maybe "graft is good" = DC

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Crawford

It would be nice if NJT and SEPTA worked closer together. Yeah, their schedules align, and they meet in Trenton (and hopefully West Trenton, one day, if NJT finally completes that line, as has been promised for decades), but it would be great if there were co-branded, thru-running express trains from NYP to 30th Street.

Yeah, it was annoying when I used to travel to Philadelphia more frequently. I would often take NJT and transfer to SEPTA because it was much cheaper than Amtrak. If they just cobranded the NJT train from Penn to 30th Street it would be far more efficient. But my guess is the unions don't want that.

[Crawford]

Also, there might be some operational issues. NJT (and LIRR and Metro North) are basically all high-level platforms on the major lines, while I think SEPTA is almost all low-level platforms. Not sure if that means the same trains can seamlessly be used. Amtrak deals with both, but their rolling stock might be adaptive in a way that the commuter agencies aren't.

I'm sure it's a fixable issue, though.

I imagine the bi-level NJT train sets can be used on SEPTA routes, as SEPTA recently ordered some bi-level trains. I assume the SEPTA downtown tunnel accommodates bi-levels.

[Xing]

Originally Posted by bnk

We should expect so for all of the lobbies and Major businesses being inside of the Beltway for contracts and esp Military contracts

See Boeing as just one example.




30 years ago no one wanted to move into DC proper.

How things have reversed in the last 1.5 decades



DC reminds me of the movie Wall Street that was centered on NYC

Greed seems to be cool again.

The good old days. I lived there when I could say, “my mayor is a crackhead. What has your mayor been up to?” I also remember kids killing each other over shoes. I went from St Louis to Washington DC at a time when the US crime was at its worse.

I remember seeing so many murders being committed that the news seemed to be the same old thing everyday - caution tape and white chalk body outlines.

[nito]

Originally Posted by 3rd&Brown

I commute from Philly to NYC. I take the Amtrak Keystone Express from Cornwells Heights (lower Bucks County) instead of 30th Street and I get to Newark Penn in 48 minutes. There, I walk across the platform to the PATH and it gets me to my office in the Oculus 22 minutes later. That's 70 minutes of train time.

I don't have to do it every day but I consistently do it 2 days a week. Totally manageable.

70-mins train time plus getting to/from the stations at either end would place in you in a very small minority of super-commuters, the US Census Bureau puts the mean commute time for the New York MSA at 37mins.

Originally Posted by iheartthed

In addition, there are 4 SEPTA+NJ Transit journeys that arrive between 6am and 9:30. Then there's also probably a privately operated bus between Philadelphia and Manhattan leaving every 5 minutes during rush hour.

Anyway, I'm not saying that Philadelphia itself is a bedroom community of Manhattan, which it's clearly not. However, these two city pairs are very well integrated by transit. And there's also a substantial overlap in the commuting sheds of the metro areas.

I was under the impression that SEPTA’s Trenton Line and NJT’s Northeast Corridor Line both terminate at Trenton and don’t operate through-services, which would be an example of an interchange, but not of integrated transit. There simply is neither the quantity and quality of infrastructure, or the frequency of services.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by nito

I was under the impression that SEPTA’s Trenton Line and NJT’s Northeast Corridor Line both terminate at Trenton and don’t operate through-services, which would be an example of an interchange, but not of integrated transit. There simply is neither the quantity and quality of infrastructure, or the frequency of services.

Who cares if it doesn't meet your arbitrary metric? lol. You can purchase the trip on a single ticket, and the service is coordinated because people obviously use it.

[nito]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Who cares if it doesn't meet your arbitrary metric? lol. You can purchase the trip on a single ticket, and the service is coordinated because people obviously use it.

Because your own arbitrary threshold is set very low, which when applied elsewhere looks silly especially in scenarios where the quantity and quality of infrastructure is higher enabling more services and increased levels of interaction.

“Coordinated” services is being very loose with the term; the four pre-0930 services you refer to have transfer times at Trenton of 6, 15, 21 and 27 mins. Other countries such as the UK have national railway timetables where there is actual coordination of different trains services from different operators. Travelling on a single ticket is also hardly unique; you can travel from Exeter to London, Glasgow to London, wherever on the National Rail network on a single ticket. I still wouldn’t be making the argument that there is overlap despite the far higher level of integration.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by nito

Because your own arbitrary threshold is set very low, which when applied elsewhere looks silly especially in scenarios where the quantity and quality of infrastructure is higher enabling more services and increased levels of interaction.

“Coordinated” services is being very loose with the term; the four pre-0930 services you refer to have transfer times at Trenton of 6, 15, 21 and 27 mins. Other countries such as the UK have national railway timetables where there is actual coordination of different trains services from different operators. Travelling on a single ticket is also hardly unique; you can travel from Exeter to London, Glasgow to London, wherever on the National Rail network on a single ticket. I still wouldn’t be making the argument that there is overlap despite the far higher level of integration.

You tried to say there was only one train from Philadelphia to New York during rush hour. I pointed out that was wrong. I'm not sure why you need of all these words to acknowledge that your statement was incorrect.

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by nito

Because your own arbitrary threshold is set very low, which when applied elsewhere looks silly especially in scenarios where the quantity and quality of infrastructure is higher enabling more services and increased levels of interaction.

“Coordinated” services is being very loose with the term; the four pre-0930 services you refer to have transfer times at Trenton of 6, 15, 21 and 27 mins. Other countries such as the UK have national railway timetables where there is actual coordination of different trains services from different operators. Travelling on a single ticket is also hardly unique; you can travel from Exeter to London, Glasgow to London, wherever on the National Rail network on a single ticket. I still wouldn’t be making the argument that there is overlap despite the far higher level of integration.

This is about as good as you're going to get in America though in terms of coordination between different regional transit authorities. Yeah, by the definitions other developed countries with rail mostly use, it's not "coordinated." It's not the 33 different shinkansen trains running between Tokyo and Osaka every weekday morning from 6:00AM to 9:30AM, crossing 3 separate regional transit authorities in the process. There are 144 daily weekday shinkansen trains running between Tokyo and Osaka, which are almost the same distance apart as New York and Boston, as the crow flies.

Regional transit authorities are mostly state funded. Not many states in the US are blue enough to pay for what would pass as lower-tier systems in most of Europe or Pacific Asia. Pennsylvania is . . . Philly and Pittsburgh with a whole lot of Alabama in between. SEPTA will never be able to reach its full potential because it's stuck in Pennsylvania. You could probably say the same about Philadelphia on the whole. Awesome city, but PA holds it back.

[nito]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

You tried to say there was only one train from Philadelphia to New York during rush hour. I pointed out that was wrong. I'm not sure why you need of all these words to acknowledge that your statement was incorrect.

Actually I said that there was only one Acela service which is accurate, but even if we took all six pre-0900 pre-pandemic direct services between Philadelphia and New York, that pales in comparison to the level of connectivity elsewhere in the world. That is the problem here; the threshold and level of interaction you propose is so low that elsewhere in the world, the labour market would span far wider. This is further demonstrated by the example from Shawn of Tokyo and Osaka, and I suspect the level of interaction between Tokyo and other cities in Japan is higher than that between Philadelphia and New York.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by nito

Actually I said that there was only one Acela service which is accurate, but even if we took all six pre-0900 pre-pandemic direct services between Philadelphia and New York, that pales in comparison to the level of connectivity elsewhere in the world. That is the problem here; the threshold and level of interaction you propose is so low that elsewhere in the world, the labour market would span far wider. This is further demonstrated by the example from Shawn of Tokyo and Osaka, and I suspect the level of interaction between Tokyo and other cities in Japan is higher than that between Philadelphia and New York.

I read somewhere that every 10 minutes a Shinkansen leaves Tokyo to Osaka. That's a regular subway for US standards.

[Crawford]

The level of train service between Tokyo and Osaka is likely higher, but obviously the level of interaction is much lower. Japanese don't drive or fly or bus as much, they take the train.

The frequency of New York-London flights is much higher than the frequency of London-Manchester flights. That doesn't mean that New York has more interaction with London than London does with Manchester, it simply means that other forms of travel are largely impossible for NY-London, and England, domestically, doesn't have many flights.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by nito

Actually I said that there was only one Acela service which is accurate, but even if we took all six pre-0900 pre-pandemic direct services between Philadelphia and New York, that pales in comparison to the level of connectivity elsewhere in the world. That is the problem here; the threshold and level of interaction you propose is so low that elsewhere in the world, the labour market would span far wider. This is further demonstrated by the example from Shawn of Tokyo and Osaka, and I suspect the level of interaction between Tokyo and other cities in Japan is higher than that between Philadelphia and New York.

Tokyo and Osaka are 310 miles apart compared to the 90 miles separating New York and Philadelphia, so no, it's not a relevant comparison.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Crawford

The level of train service between Tokyo and Osaka is likely higher, but obviously the level of interaction is much lower. Japanese don't drive or fly or bus as much, they take the train.

The frequency of New York-London flights is much higher than the frequency of London-Manchester flights. That doesn't mean that New York has more interaction with London than London does with Manchester, it simply means that other forms of travel are largely impossible for NY-London, and England, domestically, doesn't have many flights.

Yes, but there's a massive flux of passengers by rail between London and Manchester. Despite being overlooked compared to their continental peers, British railways skyrocketed on numbers of passengers in the past 20 years.

And back to New York-Philadelphia, there are no flights either (there are still some left between Tokyo and Osaka). And I don't think there are so much people driving from Philadelphia into Manhattan daily.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Yuri

Yes, but there's a massive flux of passengers by rail between London and Manchester. Despite being overlooked compared to their continental peers, British railways skyrocketed on numbers of passengers in the past 20 years.

And back to New York-Philadelphia, there are no flights either (there are still some left between Tokyo and Osaka). And I don't think there are so much people driving from Philadelphia into Manhattan daily.

There are flights from NY to Philadelphia (there shouldn't be, but that's another topic), but they are just meant for connecting passengers. It would be pretty stupid to buy a plane ticket from NYC to Philadelphia. As I said above, there's probably a bus leaving New York for Philadelphia an average of every 10 minutes.

There's Megabus, Flixbus, Ourbus, Greyhound, Peter Pan, and various independent operators (the "Chinatown bus"). I struggle to imagine two major cities in the world that are easier to travel between than New York and Philadelphia.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Yuri

And back to New York-Philadelphia, there are no flights either

united has a couple flights on CRJs between PHL and NEW each day, but that's it for scheduled passenger air service between the two markets.