In keeping with its Boston-centric attitude, the Baker campaign is all in a tizzy trying to trash the administration’s plan to bring more trains to commuters traveling between Boston and the Central Mass regions.
The Patrick-Murray plan, which was made possible by a long awaited agreement with CSX, will increase the number of round trip trains between Worcester and Boston to 20 per day, and will ease congestion on our highways. Baker is also against the Patrick-Murray plan to bring commuter rail back to the SouthCoast.
Maybe Baker has a better plan to bring quality transportation options to commuters in the Central Mass region, which has for decades been starved of infrastructure improvements, thanks to Baker's Big Dig boondoggle.
Perhaps as Governor, he will encourage commuters to buy Segways to drive down the shoulder of I-90 each morning.
Honestly, I don’t know why Charlie Baker is against commuter rail expansions. Maybe it’s because he’s worried that people can’t listen to Howie Carr on trains. But the truth is, thanks to Tim Murray’s work to get Wi-Fi on trains, commuters can now listen to Howie on their laptops via wrko.com.
(Full Disclosure: I work for Lt. Gov. Tim Murray's Committe)
Guess where GOP support comes from in this state?
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p>The suburbs of Worcester, South of Boston, and, to some degree, North of Boston.
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p>Even for the Northeast, the lack of GOP registration in Boston is pretty striking.
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p>I like this; I want Patrick to get re-elected.
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p>But now we know, Baker’s strategy is NOT to propose showering his electoral base with “pork” and “goodies”.
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p>And maybe people who live in these areas will get the message that voting for cheap labor conservatives means no new things being set up for you.
for state wide office as a Republican these days–balancing between the tea party base and the reality-based world. A political neophyte, which is what Baker is, can have a hard time pleasing the baggers and appealing to the rest of the electorate. To an extent that remains to be seen, Brown will have this problem when he runs in 2.5 years.
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p>Brown won because Coakley ran a shit campaign, and he ran an excellent campaign (or I should say, their handlers did). Brown isn’t deep, but had some experience, and he at least knew what not to talk about.
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p>Chuckles doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about 9/10 of the time, doesn’t know what to say or not say,
and his campaign management is evidently not good to enough cover up for his weaknesses as a candidate.
Charlie is still trying to figure out the difference between Grafton and Western Mass. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
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p>We can’t expect him to learn about our geography and transportation all in one summer.
“Western Mass.” or “South Shore” are not clearly defined terms. He said nothing that is clearly false.
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p>That being said, he is a lousy candidate running a lousy campaign.
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p>All Patrick supporters have to do is LIST THE FACTS, such as the fact that a Governor Baker would not support new projects that make TRANSPORTATION TO YOUR GEOGRAPHY EASIER.
when asked about Western MA. Heck Worcester is Central MA. Well, at least he didn’t say anything west of 128.
Even by the most loosely defined terms, Grafton is not part of Western Mass
I recall a statewide candidate who made a comment that a Western Mass candidate was in the race for party chair. I was surprised since I thought I knew who was running. He says the “new” candidate is from Clinton.
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p>I did make the comment that Clinton was indeed not in Western Mass, but Central Mass.
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p>Good recovery though. He says, that’s why I’m out here, going to picnics like this, talking to people, learning about the issues all over the state.
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p>This was more than two years before the election. Baker should know better by this time in the race.
Reliable public transporation for those of us who live “beyond 495” is key. Fuel conservation, congestion, parking in Boston. There are many imporvements when we reduce the number of vehicles in Boston and move people towards public transportation.
I doubt at his income level that he’s depending much on public transportation.
There are members of the public there to transport his mint julep to the polo field so he doesn’t have to dismount his polo pony.
When he announced increased rail traffic from Worcester to North Station by 2012.
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p>It sounds good to increase commuter rail use from Central Mass to Boston, but there are many potential unintended consequences from having commuter trains run through Cambridge during the morning and evening commuting hours. The path the trains would require many at grade crossings of main streets throughout the Eastern half of Cambridge, including:
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p>- Mass Ave between Vassar and Albany Streets
– Main Street next to Technology Square
– Broadway in Kendall Square
– Binney Street next to One Kendall Square
– Cambridge Street at Cardinal Medieros
– Gore Street at Warren Street
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p>These crossings would have negative impacts across Cambridge from people commuting through the City, including the growing number of people who take bicycles (yes, even bicycles need to stop for trains). Not having discussions with Cambridge representatives (as reported in the press accounts) is not only bad form, but smells of the Lt. Governor making an announcement without having his ducks in a row. This is very unlike him so may just be a mistake, may be the new transportation departments getting in their own way or other potential reasons why this seems so sloppy.
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p>Yes, less car traffic is good, but need to understand the impact on all the commuters in the path of these new trains.
Personally I think that track is under utilized. It’s the one connection between the North and South rail networks and right now it gets maybe two or three trains a day.
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p>According to the Telegram, the state is going to spend $5-10 million on improvements to the Cambridge track. I’m not sure if that’s enough to get us grade separations on the major roads, but it should at least get us some improved signaling. (Right now there aren’t even gates.)
http://www.telegram.com/articl…
It would take hundreds of millions to do enough work so that cars would not have to wait at those train crossings. I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
The rail is in a dense area. To create an over/underpass would take years, be extremely disruptive to both the transportation and the surrounding buildings, and cost too much.
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p>Instead, cars (and cyclists and peds) will have to wait at those train crossings. A few times a day. For about 30 seconds to a minute. Them’s the brakes.
The cars already stop and start on each of those roads at nearly every intersection. The roads are already clogged with single-occupant cars — and a significant number of those commuters live in areas served by the improved commuter rail.
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p>Consider a Kendall Square or Central Square worker who lives in, say, Framingham or Wellesley. The only commuter rail choice available to the worker today arrives in South Station, where the worker must transfer to the Red Line and travel to Cambridge. If the proposed extension were added, and those trains made a stop somewhere between, say, Vasser Street and Binney Street, that same worker could take the train directly to that stop and then walk a few short blocks to their office.
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p>The entire point of the exercise is to get those workers out of their cars and get their cars off the streets of Cambridge. The result is better for the commuters, better for Cambridge, and better for all of us.
Are not well known beside what he said and what was reported in the press. It is clear from the Lt Governor’s comments that he wants service from Worcester to Boston – North Station in place by 2012. Such a time table, less than 2 years, when there have been no public discussions, no discussions with Cambridge officials (per the news reports) and probably no discussions with the property owners on which any station would have to, at least partially, rest leads me to believe that there is no Cambridge station in the plans being considered by the Lt. Governor.
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p>If that is the case then the people working in Kendall who would benefit from this new train service would have to go to North Station and then take the Green or Orange Line to the Red Line to Kendall or take the Green Line to Lechmere and either walk or catch a shuttle bus to Kendall. Either way, the North Station option is worse than the South Station option without even considering the impact on local bike, car and foot traffic.
I am sure that there are indeed some people who commute from Worcester/Framingham etc. to Kendall Square by car, but I really doubt that this train would make a very noticeable impact on the number of cars in the Kendall Square area. I have been working in Kendall for 15 years or so and can only think of one colleague who lived along that route.
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p>Furthermore, its not like it is difficult to switch to the Red Line at South Station. I do it every day. So its not like commuters from the Worcester/Framingham line had now way to get to Cambridge previously.
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p>I am not saying this is necessarily a bad idea, but I am highly skeptical that we would actually see much traffic reduction.
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my bet is that since we’re talking about a commuter rail train (and not a 50 to 100 car freight train) that the interruption is actually pretty brief — including warnings, maybe a minute? It only takes a few seconds for the train to get by… each car is under 100′ IIRC, so the whole thing is what, 700 or 800 feet? At 20 mph and 800 feet, it takes 27 seconds to pass. I have no idea what the crossing speed is for commuter rail, and the length is a guess. Of course, you need to “clear the rail” before the train gets there, so let’s say that takes another 33 seconds (it takes less I’m sure). That’s a minute of blockage.
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p>I’d bet it’s closer to 30 seconds though, which isn’t much different from a traffic light along the route.
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p>This is a negative repercussion of the project, but it’s minuscule in comparison to the benefit of the folks riding in the train instead of driving. I’d also add that while it may not be polite nor good politics, the MBTA can make this change without so much as a discussion with Cambridge — they own the right of way, and they are ‘immune’ from local ordinances.
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p>I’d be shocked if those crossings are changed so that they are no longer at-grade. Best case scenario: for crossings near intersections of roads parallel to the track, the light timings are upgraded so that the folks crossing the track get a green before the gates come down for say, 30 seconds to make sure that it’s clear… and then get a green again immediately afterward. Of course, improved notice (gate, lights, bells) are a given.
Obviously it will be more convenient for some people, but if not for the shortage of platforms at South Station, it would seem that adding more trains there would be just as good if not better given the larger concentration of office buildings near Back Bay and South Stations.
…if serving the Merrimack Valley, the North Shore, and maybe eventually New Hampshire.
But I thought we were talking about routing the Worcester trains through Allston and Cambridge to N Station.
I would assume the trains would go wherever the tracks take them, though I suppose something could be said for Worcester passengers being given the option of stations.
but the existing tracks are at street level and cross several busy streets so their would be issues both with safety and with disruption to traffic.
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Or that’s what Murray’s statement seems to imply
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but that would probably greatly increase the amount of time that people would be delayed waiting for the train to go by.
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p>I also think that given the high number of pedestrians and bikes that cross those tracks during rush hour that you would need a pretty fancy gate system to prevent people from crossing when they should not. Or perhaps you just make the trains run really slowly through that stretch to minimize the chance that some idiot in a hurry will get killed.
There are no at grade crossings between the Charles River and Mass Ave. Furthermore that stretch of rail is double tracked and does not bend, so it would be perfect for a station. Presumably you would build it as close to Mass Ave as possible to better serve MIT and the Kendall Square office parks. The stretch between Mass Ave and Main Street would also be feasible.
over by Fort Washington Park, but other than that there are no official crossings. But the issue isn’t whether the train will block the roads when it is stopped, but the fact that it will have to stop will probably mean the gates further up the track will have to be down longer than if the train never stopped. I could be wrong, but I would guess that if a train is going to be pulling into a platform just short of Mass Ave, that the gate blocking Mass Ave will already have to be down (just in case the train can’t stop for some reason) and won’t go back up until the train has passed.
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p>I am not trying to say that this makes the idea totally impractical.
If you look at Waltham, the station there is very close to an at grade crossing at Moody Street. They solve the problem by having a platform for inbound trains on one side of the crossing and one for outbound trains on the other. Presumably you could do the same thing on Mass ave, putting the outbound platform by the “ire proof” storage and the inbound platform by the high voltage lab.
If they do build a station there, be assured that it won’t result in a road obstruction.
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p>As for gates, lots of fancy gates have already been invented. I’d bet that the trains won’t be going very fast there either — maybe no faster than the green B or E line.
I just meant they will probably need gates fancier than what is there now.
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p>Re speed, the commuter rail already does not go any faster than the green line trains when traveling through the denser parts of their routes. I am sure the train doesn’t go any faster than 20 mph near my stop, and yet a kid was killed crossing the tracks there a year or so ago.
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both public and private. That’s the reality.
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p>Intentional or not, you seem to be imposing awfully high standards on the MBTA for this proposal — far higher than society currently places on autos or private delivery vehicles.
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p>They will need fancier gates — and they will be installed. No big deal.
I am pointing out the reality. I believe the T already has high standards for safety. My point is that I do not believe the current infrastructure meets those standards and will need to be upgraded. I did not say it couldn’t or shouldn’t be done.
Until we fund a North South Rail Link at the very least. Should it use this particular plan? No idea — I haven’t seen the plan, the 100s of pages of analysis, etc.
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p>Conceptually, absolutely. For folks who want to get to a job on the orange or green, North Station is likely quicker and requires one fewer switch. Why does it matter? Make it too hard (time consuming, frustrating, convoluted) and folks will drive instead.
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p>Giving people from Worcester the option is the best case — some going to NS, others to SS. That of course presumes frequent enough service.
Either live closer to work, work closer to home, or don’t work at all.
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p>But people traveling any long distance like that should be able to get on a train. It doesn’t have to be a super fast train for commuters, it is more important that it goes where people need to go.
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p>And we should make the driving option less appealing with a big hike in the gas tax, maybe with some kind of mileage surcharge for heavy drivers.
she doesn’t do it every day — about once a month for the day. This game of “shouldn’t” is nonsense. I’m a urban guy myself, but not everybody is. Some folks work in more than one place — an office in Boston, and another in Worcester. Still other households have two wage earners, and the commuter rail would allow those families to have one job in each city. Remember, you don’t have to go the whole way — if half the folks mid-way between the two work in Boston and the other in Worcester, then you’ve got an awfully good reason to just connect the two and allow for transit.
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p>As for making the driving option less appealing, there’s a really functional system in place; two actually:
i. gas tax.
ii. tolls.
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p>Neither is popular, but both are quite effective. Still, we’ve got a bit of a pickle, because it’s not fair to jack up private auto operation prices without the transit in place to give an alternative, and it’s impossible to get the alternatives in place with cheap auto operations.
On the American rail system, I think in the Economist. While our system of transportation of passengers by rail has atrophied, we do a much better job transporting freight by rail than anyone else.
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p>Useful efforts to increase passenger service and usage must take measures to limit negative impact on the existing freight infrastructure. It will do no good to reduce car traffic and replace it with increased truck traffic. The point wasn’t to discourage improved commuter rail efforts such as the Worcester MBTA line, but to raise caution about dreams of establishing European-style bullet train service in North America, where it makes little sense outside of certain limited contexts.
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p>The Lt. Gov’s efforts have accommodated this with what could be (if Worcester can get out of its own way for a change) a double win for Central Mass.– a new CSX yard in Worcester, and vastly improved commuting ability to Boston.
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p>For me, this issue alone–important as it is to those of us on this side of Lake Quinsigamond, is enough to cause me to vote for the present Lt. Governor for a second term, along with whomever else appears on the ticket.
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p>Given that Baker will require a lot of support from this area, it is remarkable that he would take this position, if he did (the article only refers to the South Coast project). People here are smart enough to recognize that “expand the economic opportunity here by expanding the local community college” is a dud, except maybe for the owners of crappy bars.
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p>Note that the posting immediately pounces on this as a “Boston-centric” position by Baker– which suggests to me that the Lt. Governor’s campaign, at least, is going to bring their A game this fall.
CMD: you raise common points, and I’ll address them as I can. I appreciate the open dialogue…
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p>This is a bit skewed, as a result of America’s geography. We transport two things by rail very well:
* coal from Pennsyltucky/WV along the Eastern seaboard and from Wyoming/Montana to the mountain west and plains
* grain from the plains to the coasts
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p>This works for two reasons:
1. Those commodities are grown in specific areas
2. Those commodities are stable — not terribly sensitive to weather, temperature, time, etc.
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p>We’re not particularly good at transporting finished products via rail. Almost all of that goes from cargo ship to truck.
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p>If the result of decreasing our transportation carbon footprint is that the price of coal goes up thereby providing market pressure to decrease our electricity carbon footprint, I’d call that a double win. Keep in mind that the rail right-of-ways weren’t purchased on the open market. They were purchased with the backing of state and federal government forcing land owners to sell to the rail, as well as rails behaving in “robber barron/antitrust” ways to get what they wanted. If the nation is better served by the rails doing something else, there’s nothing immoral about America forcing the current private owners to re-purpose them, by using eminent domain a second time.
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p>Neither corn nor coal will ever be transported long distances in America by road. It’s just too expensive that way.
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p>As for bullet trains — keep in mind that the vast majority of Americans live in one of four places: east coast, west coast, Great Lakes, and Texas. Nobody is suggesting a bullet train for people going from one region to another. The suggestion is for high speed rail within regions — situations where high speed rail is as fast as an airplane (once you include the pre-board and deplane times). The idea is to reduce the demand for flights like SF-LA, BOS-NYC, DC-ATL, Madison-Chicago, POR-SEA, San Anton-Dallas. This does a few things:
1. It reduces demand on airports, which allows them more runway slots for the longer flights
2. It clearly reduces carbon
3. It also reduces roadway congestion
4. It provides for a more robust transportation infrastructure — when flights are grounded or the price of gas shoots up, this allows more choices and for consumers to face smaller price swings due to those choices
5. It’s more productive for business travelers — getting work done on the train, etc etc
6. It provides a transportation option for folks who can’t/won’t fly, for reasons ranging from fear, medical, religious, etc. This isn’t a lot of people, but particularly for those with handicaps which make flying extremely difficult and for those who can’t board a plane for specific medical reasons, this helps accommodate.
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p>Mr. Murray’s position on rail was why I voted for him at the Democratic Convention four years ago, and in the primary. It’s visionary, it’s solid long term thinking, and it’s important for urban areas not named Boston.
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p>I can’t speak for him, but I think his angle is that the folks who are on the fence don’t see this as a long term win for them. They are immediately willing to believe the story that it will be a fiscal boondoggle, and the final product will be slow, unreliable, smelly, and expensive. I don’t think that need be the case, but I’m not exactly in Mr. Baker’s target audience.
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p>P.S. As to “measures to limit negative impact,” one thing that was part of this deal was to rebuild some bridges which cross the tracks so that they’re higher off the ground, thereby allowing CSX et al to run trains with double stacked cars, thereby almost doubling their capacity.
I agree, almost. I suppose that it isn’t surprising that bulky commodities– coal, lumber, agricultural products, chemical products (plastic resins, etc.) are shipped by rail for efficiency’s sake.
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p>I support sensible, reasonable expansion of single-city commuter rail service, as has been advocated by the Lt Gov. I can see how high speed inter-city passenger service might be a vast improvement, but I am skeptical that it can be accomplished at anything like a reasonable cost, as the Acela experience demonstrated, and that was in the NE corridor, which is THE single region where it should work, and have enough demand not to bankrupt the government. (I’m skeptical of the other regions, which are less densely populated and have fewer “major” urban centers, but don’t know enough to form a firmer opinion than that.) Inter-regional rail service for passengers, at any speed, should end. In other words, I don’t support the vision of a European-style passenger rail network in North America, except in specific instances.
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p>In addition, I would not support any of these to the extent that they harm what has become an efficient and successful freight system. Indeed, in my view, the de-regulation of the railroad industry is one of the great achievements of the great de-regulator, President ReaganCarter. Even if it might have the indirect effect of increasing the cost of coal (want to increase the cost of coal? tax it. Don’t distort one industry in an attempt to correct the distortion of another.)
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p>I don’t know how much the shipment of commodities like coal and grain account for the revenues of the railways. But, having lived in Texas near what I believe were Union Pacific tracks, I saw long-haul trains that seemed to carry an awful lot of “intermodal” transport containers and automobiles in addition to the commodities. It was this that I had in mind.
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p>I don’t know how to balance reducing cars with increasing diesel-powered trucks, but it doesn’t strike me as a very good tradeoff unless it is an awful lot of cars.
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p>The Acela experience is working. They turn a profit on the route, and will continue to improve as they upgrade both policy (in CT, for example) and infrastructure (in PA, for example). There is equally sufficient density in other regions of the country — the Southeast could have an Acela South running on a DC-Richmond-RTP-Greensboro-Charlotte-Atlanta run, for example.
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p>Remember that the roads haven’t self funded, nor have the airports, nor has the infrastructure which supports either of those methods of transportation. For the same reasons that those were supported (economy, safety, security), rail should be upgraded and supported… and that has a few extras (mainly environmental, but also it provides an option for those who can’t do the others).
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p>I don’t agree with the “at any speed” comment, but I do agree that the vision of a E-s… in North America shouldn’t happen. Nobody doing policy thinks that it should either. The interest is in plucking off the prime routes — short/mid distances, high direct traffic, easier right of ways, etc. Again, high speed regional transit, not national.
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p>I’m not particularly interested in regulating the railroad industry. I am, however, interested in using the right of ways as efficiently as possible, and the fact is that currently the railroads aren’t interested in doing that. They’re (understandably) interested in collecting economic rent from their local monopoly. As a result, mass transit suffers tremendously. Amtrak gets stuck behind freight, and in ways which are unpredictable. Given that the owners of that rail didn’t build it on their own — they had tremendous government help — I’m of the opinion that they either need to bend over backwards cooperating or be subject to eminent domain, where tUSA buys the rail from them and then leases space in a way which doesn’t impede transit traffic. Coal doesn’t much mind being transported at 3 in the morning — people do. Corn doesn’t have a particularly tight schedule — people do. Chemicals aren’t generally bothered by an overnight stopover — people are.
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p>Remember, it doesn’t have to be the either/or that you’re worried about. There’s no reason why both can’t be done, especially because people travel on predictable schedules, and commodities don’t care about their schedule nearly as much.
You wrote:
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p>The NE corridor was among the worst choices to demonstrate cost-effective use of high-speed rail.
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p>The expensive aspects of high-speed rail only pay off in track segments where the train operates at speeds high enough to utilize them. In the NE corridor, this is a tiny portion of the route — especially between NY and BOS.
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p>In the NE, especially between NY and BOS, the great bulk of the ACELA upgrade was in electrification of the right-of-way, replacement of antique bridges that limited train speed to 5-10MPH, and in eliminating the enormous number of slow-order segments (due to obsolete track and roadbed, failed signal systems, and unprotected grade crossings).
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p>Even after the massive infrastructure investment in the NE rail corridor, the right-of-way between NY and BOS is still filled with tight curves that drastically limit top speed. It is still densely-populated, which also limits top speed.
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p>The lion’s share of the improvement in “timetable speed” in the NE corridor — the scheduled arrival times between two points divided by the distance in miles — was accomplished by raising the average minimum speed, not the maximum.
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p>In fact, during the 2005 Acela outage, Amtrak operated conventional Metroliner equipment on the NE corridor at very close to the Acela timetable.
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p>The regions where high-speed rail returns the most benefits are, in fact, the long stretches in the west where the right-of-way is straight and level, where the region is unpopulated, and where maximum train speed is limited by the equipment and right-of-way.
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p>The choice to deploy high-speed rail in the NE corridor, instead of the west, was driven by political considerations (especially visibility), rather than technology.
I guess you have identified the problem that makes me skeptical. The problems with Acela are because it runs in a densely developed region. It has the prospect of making sense because it is in a densely populated region.
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p>I consider it a debacle because, as you note, it is too slow. It is still faster for me to drive to Logan, park, get to a gate, take shoes off, get on a plane, take off, land at Laguardia, and get a cab into the city than it is to take a train from South Station to Penn Station. So, when the need arises, I take the shuttle. If Acela was close, I would do it so that I could have workspace and wifi, but it isn’t, at least the last time I scoped it out.
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p>I remain skeptical of these other places because I have insufficient knowledge of how much travel happens. I think there would have to be planes leaving at the frequency of shuttle flights from DC-NYC-BOS, and the ability for rail travel to meet or exceed the time of the trip for it to make sense for business travel. If it doesn’t make sense for business travel, it doesn’t make sense at all.
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p>I’m not saying that I’m opposed, I’m just saying I would require more information to support.
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p>My wife does both, on a regular basis. She says the train buys her about 20 minutes, and is more comfortable, and she can get more work done. Hell, the cab from Laguardia to Penn Station takes 30-60 minutes. If you live in Winthrop your results may vary; from our home her T ride to Back Bay is about as fast as her taxi ride to Logan. Keep in mind too that there’s a stop at 128 — those folks don’t have to drive in to Boston (or Providence) to fly to NYC or Philly.
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p>BrooklineTom is right that the infrastructure required for Acela was really expensive due to the reasons he outlines. Still, the NE is a nice spot because
(a) the cities are close together
(b) plenty of folks in the area already ride public transit some of the time, even the suits in NYC
(c) similarly, folks in NE are more likely to be multi-modal than simply bi-modal (car + plane). More likely to regularly use feet, subway, train, even taxi.
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p>The upshot is that this problem is similar nearer Chicago and Atlanta+Charlotte, but generally speaking the regional high speed could be done much more cheaply (with faster runs) in the southeast, Texas, and California. I’m not sure about the Great Lakes region.
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p>I do agree about your business traveler metric — but I do think that the train can out-do the airplanes. There’s a reason why Acela often sells out for business trip timed runs, even though it’s often priced more expensive than airline tickets.
The train can out-do the plane, but it doesn’t. For me, the shuttle was faster by about half an hour, regularly traveling from Watertown to 8 blocks from Penn Station. I prefer the train, it meant I could work up to 18 minutes before I was set to leave, I could spread out, grab a drink and take my shoes off when I wanted to, but it took longer – not much longer, but still. The frustrating thing about it was that I knew it could be faster – if it was really high speed rail rather than just a really fast express train, we could probably shave an hour off the trip. It’s good, but in the case of the Acela, I think good is the enemy of great.
lots of folks consider it better.
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p>That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t improve more… it should improve to the point that nobody flies from BOS to NYC unless they’re then switching to another flight. Getting there isn’t easy, because each investment of $x millions will only shave a few minutes off of the trip. It’s hard to argue to spend millions on saving minutes. They add up to be sure, but still…
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p>Personally, this is why I’m convinced that building Acela South is the key. Get folks in VA, NC, and GA interested in the train, and you’ve got a few more solid Senate votes and more in the House. That helps support more spending for rail across the country.
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p>Again though, as you point out, there’s a threshold it has toe meet — it has to provide better service than the airplane does. Close enough renders it relatively useless. Acela BOS-NYP has passed that threshold, albeit barely. It’s at the point where if it could shave a few minutes here and there, it’d pick up quite a bit more riders.
There is a “fast enough” level– where flying might be shorter, but has a lot of useless time because of the journey has more “segments”– better to be in one place for all of a slightly longer journey.
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p>I do this trip less frequently than I once did, so perhaps things have improved. My experience was that things were very hit-or-miss, with this trip making it seem like This Is Going To Work! and then, full of expectations, waiting for an hour and change for a new engine in new Haven.
The change of equipment in New Haven was eliminated a decade ago when the right-of-way north of New Haven was electrified.
The improvements to Acela have been steady over the past decade. They take time, and no one improvement perfects the run. But, it has gotten better, to the point where it’s the first choice for a number of regular users. If it could shave another 10-20 minutes, it’d be far more popular. If, in doing so, it could make more runs per day and therefore be even more accommodating to schedules, it would be more popular still.
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p>Doing so will take serious investment, and each of those investments will only shave a few minutes. Still worth doing though, especially considering that the northeast airspace is the most crowded in the country, so decreasing congestion has a dramatic impact on air travel as well.
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p>I’d also note that while extending northward from South Station toward Portland wouldn’t result in a dramatic increase in demand even if the North/South Rail Link was built*, extending it further south to Richmond and then RTP (Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill) would result in an increase in the demand from Delaware, Baltimore, and DC to points south. It’s a bit like an avalanche — start with a few pebbles, but the momentum generates even more momentum. Keep improving it and you’ll get more and more demand (and more positive cash flow), and then more incentive and political will to improve it even more.
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p> * It’s a shame — because if the N/S Rail Link existed now, there would be pressure to extend Acela to NH and ME. That’d be four more votes in the Senate to improve Amtrak — and approximately 3 of those votes are GOP… the party who consistently favors spending money on roads without the drivers paying for those roads but oppose any subsidy of Amtrak. With 3 more consistent votes for Amtrak in the Senate, they’d be in far better shape to get the funding to expand it even more (IMO, southward) to pick up even a few more Senate votes. Again with the momentum. But I digress.
… the long term do something now to reap political rewards later. Heck, look at the Bush tax cuts. Not only do they get to say they cut taxes, then they get to say that the Democrats raised em 10 years later, despite the reality that doing nothing is not raising taxes; the GOP passed a bill that called for the taxes to be increased in 2010/11.
Intermodal rail accounts for 21% of all rail revenues, second only to coal. Agricultural products, which appear to be included in that 21%, food products account for 11.4%, which indicates we ship as much finished goods as we do agricultural products.
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p>You can’t really compare truck trailers and container to carloads, especially in places where you can double stack, but for what its worth, in 2008, rail transported 2.3 million carloads of food and food related products and over 11 million truck trailers and containers of finished goods. If we generously assume that those 11 million only equal 7 million rail carloads, that’s still only a third of the total shipments – which says something about the profitability of shipping finished goods versus agricultural goods.
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p>All that being said, it’s true that too much freight is moved directly from container ships to trucks. Our policy decisions should work to increase the use of freight rail, by fixing bridges, making long haul truck transport more expensive, AND improving commuter rail service.
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p>What’s nice is that we have a Lt. Governor who seems to understand this and is working towards addressing it.
it’s the simple fact that people shouldn’t be commuting for work, whether it’s twice a day or once a month. The problem is that acute, we need to get half the cars off the road immediately! That includes your personal acquaintances and family, and mine too. It’s not a personal insult, this isn’t the Climate Trials of 2016. That we shouldn’t be commuting is a fact, and something that you shouldn’t be denying if you don’t want to be on trial in 2016. Most of the jobs that people are doing shouldn’t be being done anymore, and the ones that still need to be done need to be done by people living nearby.
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p>Life as we knew it is quickly going to be replaced by a new life, and the sooner we transition to it the better, because it will ease the transition, as well as reduce the harshness of the new life a tiny little bit.
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p>Things have got to change, and saying that it is a “game of nonsense” is freaking outrageous.
Happened to be on Cambridge Street when a commuter rail train happened to come through. Here is the rough timing of events:
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p>1) Flashing lights started and gates came down. All the cars stopped with the flashing lights and gates. However, there were 4 eastbound and 2 west bound bikes that weaved through the gates rather than wait for the train to pass, etc. A couple of pedestrians also scurried across rather than wait.
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p>2) Train came by about 45 seconds later and was going somewhere between 5 and 10 MPH which looks very slow. Took the train about 45 seconds to a minute to cross the intersection.
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p>3) Lights and gates went up about 30 seconds after the train had gone by.
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p>All in all 2 minutes is not bad for a train to pass. However, by the time traffic had come to a complete halt for 2 minutes it was a mess with traffic jams everywhere. I was walking and there was traffic backed up all the way to Fifth Street (the tracks are closest to Fulkerson which used to be Ninth to provide rough idea of # blocks).
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p>All this for a train on which I saw less than 10 people which may make sense seeing that it was headed towards North Station.
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p>Not completely opposed to the idea, but it needs lots of work which equates to money in the MBTA arena. There is much work to be done on other projects already in the works to throw this one to the front of the line.
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p>There is a process for reviewing these projects and it looks as though the Lt. Governor just tried to circumvent it for a pet project. Doesn’t seem to have gone over all that well.
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p>Finally, even though the MBTA does have certain rights on the tracks, etc. I do not appreciate finding out about transportation projects that would affect my neighborhood when a couple of weeks ago the T stated that the only project in the works is the Green Line Extension and that we should focus our attention on that for now. I would imagine that they were surprised by Murray’s comments too.
The MBTA doesn’t run any scheduled commuter rail service that crosses Cambridge Street (see this Google Earth photo). The current commuter rail service goes from West to East across the linked photo.
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p>You saw a string of equipment being moved from North to South station. That was MUCH slower than revenue service would be. The “less than 10 people” you saw on the train were probably MBTA employees.
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p>The MBTA has used that branch to move equipment between North and South station for decades. For what it’s worth, the Ringling Brother’s circus trains are also parked on the double-tracked section for extended periods while the circus is in town. Freight trains use the branch at least several times a week.
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p>Establishing direct commuter rail service between Metro West and Cambridge is a great idea that will benefit a huge number of people (see my comment up-thread).
The deadheading makes sense given the #s I saw. Doing it late afternoon is poor planning by the MBTA, but I fear I ask too much from them sometimes.
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p>I did see you comment and am not sure that the proposal being pushed by the Lt Governor is more THROUGH Cambridge than TO Cambridge which makes a world of difference. Without that answer and a whole lot of detail, this is a proposal in a vacuum that the Lt. Governor made with an air of certainty, including a date, when he should have said it would be a great thing if … and I plan to ….
Hogwash. The MBTA has enough problems — planning their entire staff around not holding up a few dozen drivers for two minutes should decidedly not be another one.
The train stopped traffic across multiple streets that serve large volumes of traffic at that time of the day including, cars, trucks (Binney Street is a MA Truck Route), buses (Mass Ave and Cambridge Street are major bus routes), bicyclists and pedestrians all to move an empty train from one location to another. This is something I expect the T to be able to plan for within the lower traffic parts of the day when it would only be a few dozen cars held up. Instead it is done during a peak travel period holding up far more than some cars. The ripple impact on commuters from delayed buses alone can be enough to throw the whole system out of whack for the rest of the day.
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p>Yes, the T has enough problems. I ask that they not increase them through poor planning on when to move a train. A movement likely to increase their problems for the rest of the day is not the way to help the rest of their colleagues.
How many times a day does the MBTA have to deal with the impacts of poorly behaved autos? I’m not just talking about the B and C and E green lines stopped because autos get stopped on the tracks “blocking the box”. I’m also talking about folks who mess with the buses, ranging from parking at the stops to not letting the buses back out again to cutting them off.
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p>Methinks that MBTA riders suffer far more at the hands of poorly “planned” motorists than vice versa.
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p>They were likely deadheading the train so that they could get it to the station to load it up again and send it out full of passengers. They were likely doing it then because, well, it had only arrived at the other end of the line earlier that day. They don’t have enough storage in all of their stations to be able to avoid the deadheading — and when they do it during the day, they do it then because they’ve got to get the train to a station to load up with passengers that day.
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p>It’s not poor planning. It’s closer to Just In Time planning. That it has negative ramifications for motorists is unfortunate, but it can’t be easily or cost-effectively avoided.
yes, even bicycles need to stop for trains
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p>The hell with that idea then.