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A few things
First, it is just a study. It is good that they are proposing a study, so we can have hard data driving the debate, but that is only the first step towards actual electrification. Any proposal to move to electric power would be down the road.
Second, as the article noted, the Providence line is already electrified. Fairmount would be electrified, while electric locomotives (or hydrids) would be the other main capital cost.
True, the Providence line has overhead wires
But it has no locomotives to use them.
And
The T's yards and sidings aren't electrified either. The revenue tracks are electrified, the line is not.
Side note - With electrification, the T should do away with locomotives, and use Electric Multiple Units instead. Locos don't have anywhere near the performance of EMUs
That's true
But I'd guess that replacing locomotives costs less than replacing all the train cars in use on the line and could happen faster.
Maybe not on Fairmont
Smaller EMUs running more frequently would make a lot of sense on the Fairmont line... but whenever I say "running more frequently" I have to admit that capacity at South Station remains a key limiting factor.
Capacity
Capacity is limited at rush hour. We can (and should) pretty easily run more service outside of rush hour - on all lines, but especially the Fairmont.
Where is the magical $5 billion money tree
that will pay for this
If it costs that much
Then we shouldn't do it. But a substation and a few miles of wire don't cost that much, and at some point we're going to be buying rolling stock, and buying electric rather than diesel doesn't change the price much.
Is 2 billion too much?
How about a billion?
CT discovered electrification beyond NYMNR was way too expensive
And they have new EMUs (M-8s) and an electrified Amtrak line. The cost, supply, construction, and Amtrak oversight would have been in the billions.
Uh … no
SLE is getting electrified, it's just taking a bit longer than expected. Also, ridership growth on MetroNorth has required more cars to be deployed there. There's no talk of billions of dollars. Plus in Connecticut, Amtrak owns everything. Here, MBTA has a lot of leverage because they own the track. (Now, if MassDOT were smart, they'd go in on an order of M8s with Connecticut for Shore Line east and the T.)
Plus Amtrak should want the MBTA to electrify. If Commuter Rail trains ran electrics, they'd be significantly faster, and easier to slot in between Amtrak trains.
Wrong Ari. MNR Owns Their CT Tracks. SLE Cuts or Cancellation
Metro North (MNR) owns their tracks in Connecticut, not Amtrak. Every time I take Amtrak to visit family in Baltimore, we slow down or stop in CT so a MNR train can pass. The Amtrak crew always mentions that MNR owns the tracks, so they have preference. In addition, the Shore Line East (SLE) corridor is projected to be cut down or even cancelled completed. This is directly from Amtrak and the state's DOT. Kinda hard to electrify a service line when the service no longer exists. Sorry Ari. Facts are facts.
Cool facts
I assume you have links/citations to support your word salad.
Sounds like the state just passed a budget which funds SLE during the off-peak.
I don't remember what I was originally referring to in the thread (looks upthread) oh, yeah, that it will cost "billions" to electrify Shore Line East. Would love to see a link about that!
Ari...re: Mass. and M8's:
Ari...re: Mass. and M8's:
M8's aren't an off-shelf design replicable outside of Metro-North. Because of the need to carry 3 electrical inputs (DC third rail + 2 different voltages of AC overhead), switch on-the-fly between all 3 inputs, and package it all into Grand Central's very tight vertical clearances...all components are custom-designed and shivved in every possible nook and cranny above & below the car to fit. As a result those cars are hugely overweight for their class. They're the best things Metro-North could've ordered because of the one-of-a-kind constraints of their system. But they aren't 'off-shelf' in any practical sense, even though somebody could order a totally different car that superficially mimes the M8 look and feel.
Simply ripping out the unneeded DC and 12.5 kV AC electronics in an otherwise verbatim M8 order may net a cheaper unit price for the T than Metro-North pays, but they'd still be buying lots of custom-fit parts that are only sourced to 1 other customer in the world rather than getting optimally global supply chain to choose from. Worse, the component distribution in the M8's were so immaculately weight-balanced by Kawasaki that simply ripping unneeded stuff out and leaving electrical compartments blank can imbalance the weight distribution in the cars and leave them with crappier ride quality in their T form (e.g. more rocking, jerking movements) than in their smooth-riding but fully-loaded MNRR form.
SEPTA's Silverliner V's are no off-shelf option, either, since Hyundai-Rotem butchered those things even worse than the lemony-stink coaches they delivered to us. SL5's are already a dead-end lineage because Rotem has more or less run itself clean out of the North American RR market with disaster after disaster of low-bid swill. SEPTA will be starting all over again with a new design and a new vendor when it's time to do up the Silverliner VI's. Those will probably superficially keep the SL5 layout, but it'll be a brand new beast from the ground up.
Closest thing to a true FRA-compliant 'generic' is Montreal's MR-90's, which are basically the exact same vanilla aluminum carbody as the the T's circa- 1978-1990 single-level coaches but self-propelled for 25 kV AC overhead. But unfortunately you can't just put something dated from 1994 back into production like it's no biggie. Vehicle guts have advanced a lot in 24 years...more computers, more energy-saving regenerative braking now standard. And no one's produced aluminum RR coaches on this continent since 1998 as all subsequent orders have been for stainless steel, meaning it's no trivial matter to get an aluminum fabrication plant going when few builders still dabble in those railcar bodies. Stainless steel has different load-bearing properties, meaning there'd have to be a substantial body design update to have a clean starting template (something executed a whole lot better than NJ Transit's overweight and underwhelming Comet V's, which have garbage ride quality compared to their aluminum predecessors).
Most promising bet for a 'true' off-shelf make is the NJ Transit MultiLevel EMU, if they and Bombardier can execute it correctly. While quite heavy for its class, it's derived from a coach carbody that rides smooth as silk in-practice and has good rep for reliability. And their capability to sandwich unpowered off-shelf coaches (needing only light mods for the right kind of trainlining cables) in-between powered cars is very compelling for universal fleet management. It's going to be a generational effort to wire up the T and wean off of loco-hauled coaches, so they're the kind of customer who might be less fearful of taking the EMU plunge if a make were to offer some built-in flex of trainlining with some pre-existing fleet of coaches. Bombardier is hoping that if it can make a winner out of the MLV EMU it can package the exact same propulsion in its BiLevel coach body, used widely in non-Eastern regions where there's universal 8-inch platforms, and go after the humongous GO Transit electrification vehicle order (since they use almost 700 BLV coaches on their roster). Same exact EMU, just offered up in a high-level boarding package for the Northeast and low-level boarding package for everywhere else. Get a couple hundred of those examples running on NJT and a couple hundred on GO...and the long-term supply chain looks awfully sweet and quite very off-shelfy for other interested buyers.
The Providence Line also
The Providence Line also doesn't have enough power available to power both Amtrak and the commuter rail; they'd have to add a substation or two.
Second
Yup
The main lineside capital
The main lineside capital cost would be expanding Sharon substation (Google Maps aerial: https://goo.gl/maps/TCAoDasypgy), which powers all of the wires from South Station and Amtrak's Southampton Yard to a point in Norton a little north of Attleboro Station. In the mid-90's when Amtrak's New Haven-Boston electrification was being designed they only specced Sharon sub for enough power capacity to handle Amtrak-only traffic + 25 years of Amtrak-only growth, since the T had zero interest in electrifying way back then. Therefore, the state is going to have to cut Amtrak a big check to expand Sharon for all the extra generation capacity needed for commuter trains before there's enough juice to run them under the existing wires. As you can see from the Google Maps linky above, more than half of the land at Sharon sub was left empty to future-proof for exactly that commuter electrics expansion.
That's a substantial expense and design-build commitment that'll probably take 5 years to implement even if money were appropriated today, so a study is an administrative necessity even if the intent does come off as politically wishy-washy. It's not like they could ever borrow some of Amtrak's recently retired electrics and start running all-electric to Providence tomorrow morning even if they wanted to. The work is legitimately a lot more involved than that. The Sharon sub expansion will also have to incorporate how much more juice the terminal district at South Station will require if South Station Expansion happens and/or the T acquires land for a downtown electric yard at Widett Circle...though if either of those projects end up wobbly prospects for nearish-term completion they can just hedge on overbuilding the capacity at Sharon and be done with that piece.
The good news is that once they pay for that one key piece the electrification scales extremely well. The Fairmount Line would chain right off of Sharon and only need the actual running wires + 1 paralleling station (i.e. circuit breaker hut, like this thingy at Readville: https://goo.gl/maps/msrLQij9CgN2) installed near the midpoint of the line in order to be ready to go for whenever their new electric vehicles arrive. Very inexpensive intra-city costs, and probably no lineside structures that'll enflame the NIMBY's. Depending on how they plan out Sharon expansion they may even bank enough terminal district slack capacity to consider ALSO electrifying the Worcester Line out to Riverside for implementing a second intra-128 "Indigo" Urban Rail Line through Allston & Newton...thus netting capacity for 3 full electric schedules off just that one Sharon sub expansion. The only reason Riverside can't practically be built as a full-on three-'fer debuting on-electric the same time as Providence + Fairmount is that the Beacon St. overpass over the Pike would need its height restriction over the tracks fixed in order for newly-strung wires to clear a standard T bi-level coach. That's a job better off coordinating for when MassHighway's has to replace that decrepit overpass, but a funding decision on Providence + Fairmount electrics can easily bake in Riverside as a trailer and start the ball rolling for Allston/Newton.
The only other Providence-related work to settle up for electrics are:
Then for making the past-Providence schedules to T.F. Green & Wickford Jct. all-electric RIDOT would have to install the planned northbound platforms at each those two currently half-finished stations, and install a gauntlet track at T.F. Green so the autorack-carrying freight trains from Port of Davisville can avoid a wire clearance pinch point at the Coronado Rd. overpass adjacent to the airport stop. Not terribly expensive, but Rhode Island is more funding-constrained than Mass. and has to front-load the Pawtucket layover funding as its top-most priority. Those super-extended schedules to Wickford may need to malinger on diesel a couple years longer in order to give RIDOT time to catch up, but they'll get done with all due haste.
So wrong it hurts to read
You may want to brush up on.
Mass electricity supplies, Amtrak use charges, Height of the wires., Train types that can use the Amtrak wires. Track ownerhsip
Height of wires and train
Height of wires and train types that can use Amtrak wires?
Metro-North (the New Haven Line) electrics run off the same overhead electric as Amtrak - I think.
NJTransit definitely runs a variety of electric locomotives and electric sets on the same overhead lines as Amtrak.
The existence of equipment models that can use the same wires is not a problem.
If you're saying that there is some location, some bridge or overpass, on the Fairmount that doesn't have sufficient space for installation of overhead electric - that's a separate matter.
To defuse some of anon's
To defuse some of anon's willfully belligerent misinfo:
25 kV AC overhead, the kind in use on Amtrak from New Haven to Boston, is the de facto North American standard for all new & proposed RR electrification schemes. It is used or will be used by: Denver RTD, large portions of NJ Transit, Mexico City Tren Suburbano, Montreal AMT/RER, California HSR, Toronto GO Transit electrification, Caltrain electrification. And it's de facto standard here because it's the most widely-used electrification in Europe, too.
Every new build conforms to the same specs manual Amtrak ratified for NHV-BOS electrification as their design guide for the lineside infrastructure. That's the book Cali HSR, Caltrain, and GO Transit are all using for their electrifications. All electric locos and EMU's on the continent--as well as many unmodified Euro imports--can run here with only 3 exceptions: SEPTA's ancient Silverliner IV's (overdue for replacement with modern compatible stock); the DC third-rail -only M7's from LIRR and Metro-North Hudson/Harlem Lines; and Chicago Metra Electric's EMU's that run exclusively on DC overhead found only around Chicagoland. Indeed, ConnDOT has gone all the way to South Station before during non-revenue tests of its M8 EMU's in 25 kV mode.
-------------------------
Electric rate structure for the north-of-New Haven NEC was already settled 20 years ago for any participating commuter rail agencies. The main T expense is going to be the one-time capital upgrade to Sharon substation's capacity. NEC power east of New Haven is locally-sourced off the grid from Eversource, Nat'l Grid, etc. The only thing Amtrak has any high degree of rate control over are maintenance fees for the actual catenary structures, which scale by schedule usage and not market factors. I suppose they could play one-time hardball with that to call somebody's negotiating bluff, but those yearly maint costs are near-fixed so it doesn't lend itself well to recurring leverage games.
This is very different from the situation south of New York City where all NEC power is single-sourced from Safe Harbor Dam with monopoly-controlled Amtrak distribution. They gouge the crap out of NJ Transit, SEPTA, and MARC on market rates and use it for all the political leverage they can exert. That structure does not exist north of NYC. Cash-strapped ConnDOT is going to be quietly transitioning to EMU's on Shore Line East in the next 18-24 months after having done the same Sharon-equivalent substation upgrades in its territory. No drama there, even with ConnDOT in a weaker negotiating position not owning any of the land under the Amtrak-maintained tracks for Shore Line East like the T does with its Providence Line title deed in Massachusetts.
-------------------------
For overhead clearance heights, the math to remember for any electrification in MBTA territory is. . .
On the T, the only lines that don't currently have the 18 ft. minimum height for electrification are:
Beacon St. is a very near-miss fixable with bridge mods, and the fast-decaying span is coming due for total replacement in the next decade anyway. Memorial is not fixable because of a much more constrained fit...next to a riverbank where tracks can't be lowered...under a roadway that's already got such a wicked 'hump' over the span that it violates all modern road design standards. So you won't ever get an EMU shuttle pinging through MIT to North Station because it would cut off the T's ability to shuffle bi-levels from the shops to the southside.
All other commuter rail lines meet the minimum standards, including Fairmount. Fairmount's spate of rapid bridge replacements a few years ago knocked out the last of the potential problem-causing century-old overpasses.
The only MBTA lines with taller federally protected freight clearances to accommodate are. . .
Southside
Northside
Of these Worcester Line is all set from Allston to Westborough because CSX agreed to trade down its formerly taller clearance preemptions when it sold the line to the state, and there are only 6 overhead bridges of any kind west to Worcester Union Station to check. Franklin Line only has 6 overhead structures to check; Foxboro Line only 1. Northside's a much bigger pain in the butt overall on bridge quantities, but it'll be decades + many completed southside electrifications before it's time to seriously consider planting the electrification flag up north.
You're living in a fantasy world
The Commonwealth has over 20 billion in debt to pay for the Big Dig, is borrowing again to pay for its billion Green Line Extension match, and needs 5 billion at a minimum to get everything to S-O-G-R. Shouldn't we have a working core system first? Also, you should recheck your argument. Not to pile on, but, there are mistakes.
Em, he has no argument
He was making a statement about the technical issues surrounding the issue.
You, on the other hand, might want to recheck your argument, since you wrote nothing to contradict what he wrote.
Yes
I agree. I don't want to poop on anyone's parade but its just a study. We've had a lot of transit studies that go nowhere (Blue/Red Connector anyone?). So I wouldn't hold your breath just yet..
The North
South rail link too!
Hold your breath
Fairmount Line has been a proving ground. I'll count on this. Just a few years ago, gainsayers, the majority of riders and residents, pointed out it would never have the needed extra stations, nor more frequent service, and certainly never drop to subway fares.
Laugh while you can, monkey boy,. All of that happened as a result of the studies (and long work by CDCs and locals) . Seems like the T uses this line as a lab. Do it.
Too bad the level of
Too bad the level of ridership has yet to match the level of investments made so far
The Fairmount can't even get $350 million for DMUs
But lets push a $2 billion plus electrification proposal. Once again, Transit Matters didn't do their homework
And where are you getting your numbers?
The entire electrification from New Haven to Boston (156 miles) cost $1.6b in 2000, so $2.4b today, or about $15m per mile. A lot of that was track upgrades to run faster trains, but even still, at $15m/mi, the Fairmount Line would cost about $100m to electrify, and the sidings along the Providence Line another $100m. (In reality, it's a lot cheaper, because as FLTD notes, all the infrastructure is in place except for the substation in Sharon, although I'm not really sure where he gets the five year lead time: it's not off-the-shelf technology, but if we can get 120 Orange Line cars in 5 years, including building the factory, we can probably get a parallel station dropped in in that time.)
The $2 billion number is to electrify the *entire* Commuter Rail system, about 300 miles of track, not just Fairmount. The idea is that Fairmount and Providence are easy, and once electrified, you can move the diesel equipment to other lines and start retiring the oldest and least reliable equipment. (Also, electric equipment is an order of magnitude more reliable than diesel, while at the same time less expensive to operate.)
MBTA CR electrification requires rebuilding the entire line
There isn't enough power on the line for MBTA CR. Again, also directly from Amtrak. That's where the 2 billion number comes from. And yes, also from Amtrak
You don't need to rebuild the
You don't need to rebuild the entire line to get more power
You just add more power. In this case that means a new electric substation in Sharon. Not small money, sure. Not $2B either.
Assuming this is the same anon from upthread
Because there are no links or citations so I have to take your anonymous word (sidebar to Adam: some day I'd love to get rid of anon accounts).
Anyway, as for rebuilding the line, that's nonsense. You're right that there isn't enough power on the line. But adding more power is a relatively simple proposition. You don't have to touch the tracks: they're good for 160 mph (or more). You don't have to touch the catenary or the poles or the messenger wire (the power delivery system). You do need to add power capacity to the Sharon substation. A rough estimate of the full cost of a substation (from 2003 numbers in California) is about $500k/mile, and a substation serves about 40 miles of route, so the cost for a substation is about $20m in 2003 dollars, or about $27m today. But that number includes site acquisition and prep, and since the site is already fully built, it's probably lower. But, benefit of the doubt, the cost for a substation is probably in the $20 to $40 million range.
↑ Also, see what I did there with the little link button, so if you don't believe my numbers you can go and read the citations and see where they come from? It's kind of magic, isn't it?
Anyway, by electrifying the Providence and Fairmount the T would stand to save about $5 million in fuel costs annually, more if diesel goes up. So that would be cool, too.
(BTW, a larger cost would be rebuilding the stations on the line with level boarding platforms, which is the other cost involved, and each station would cost in the neighborhood of $20 million, so yes, that's another $200m or so for the line, but it has nothing to do with electrification.)
The priority sequence for
The priority sequence for electrifying lines ends up scaling best the most service increases you net for every additional substation, since those are the most expensive pieces of electrification hardware and have all the land acquisition & placement considerations. You also need paralleling or switching stations (i.e. circuit breaker huts) at roughly 6-mile increments on the ROW, so required number of those can also be a useful metric for benchmarking line-by-line bang for buck.
Sharon sub at NEC Milepost 17 already handles the whole of the South Station terminal district, and would be expanded anyway commensurate with SS expansion, new storage yards, and/or NSRL builds that likewise would live inside the terminal district. Fairmount fortuitously interconnecting with the Sharon-fed NEC and Sharon-fed terminal district at either end makes it a particularly cheap one to do. Only 1 circuit breaker hut required south of Talbot Ave. in the Milepost 5 vicinity to span the gap between the existing ones at Southampton and Readville. The rest of the electrification capital construction for Fairmount is entirely self-contained in the overhead wire assembly itself. Basically, except for that one extra circuit breaker hut in Dorchester, what Sharon sub would 'see' of the Fairmount Line would be virtually indistinguishable from there instead being 2 additional wired-up NEC tracks inbound of Readville. As close to a gimme as you're going to get for the costs.
After Fairmount, it's a choice of what other electric schedule possibilities you can glom onto Sharon sub before it's tapped out by running distance and number of branches. (Note: It's got more than enough expansion space to keep up with anything the terminal district throws at it IF the T invests accordingly to max it out.) The candidate schedules that fit within 35 running miles of Sharon sub are:
Of those 4, the Riverside option adds the most additional all-electric schedules and ends up moving the most people for its cost despite costing an extra circuit breaker hut in hardware. Needham is severely constrained by capacity in the SW Corridor tunnel to Back Bay and can't meaningfully increase thru frequencies to South Station. Augmenting with a Forest Hills-Needham Heights shuttle punishes the already severely overcrowded FH terminal, and enough would have to be spent on brand new double-tracking to even enable that not-very-useful backfill dinky service that outright conversion to far better rapid transit mode (Orange Line swallowing FH-West Roxbury + Green Line swallowing Newton Highlands-Needham Jct.) starts to converge in bang-for-electrification $$$. Most likely the only electrification you'll see Needham go to is 600V DC rapid transit, not 25 kV AC commuter rail. Stoughton is cheap but still somewhat schedule-limited to sub-"Indigo" frequencies by NEC congestion and has big will-they/won't-they question marks about South Coast Rail. Readville-Dedham Corporate extension would be dirt cheapest by far, but doesn't add any brand new schedules.
From there, it's by number of substations per line.
Clear hierarchy there: Worcester and Franklin head-and-shoulders over the rest of the southside. And Worcester more likely by the odds to get prioritized first because there's fewer executive decisions to ponder vs. Franklin (i.e. Franklin layover, electrical interconnect to the NEC)...as well as much louder political advocacy in MetroWest than Norfolk County. Clearly the Old Colony lines are too big to swallow as a whole and are a nightmare for picking winners/losers on who goes electric first and stays diesel last. And South Coast is the one you could make a strong economic argument for never electrifying, at least in its current form. That may not be worth it until they go completely back to the drawing board and figure out how to first cross Route 128 with a non-garbage schedule before branching off into infinity in the hinterlands.
Yup
Heard the same numbers from Amtrak
THE PEOPLE OF ROXBURY & MATTAPAN ARE NOT TEST SUBJECTS!
Roxbury and Mattapan are not testing grounds! Its something Transit Matters, Rafael Mares, Alon Levy, and the rest of these tone-deaf activists have to understand. Stop the Fairmount nonsense!
Um huh?
This is about trains. Nobody is tying people down and giving them ECT or anything like that.
Not that severe. But I get it
I remember when a NYC developer was pitching a new micro housing unit for Boston. Think Shark Tank, and I'm one of the investors. When we asked where they planned to deploy the test model unit. The developer, a white guy, said with a smile "I'm sure there's an abandoned plot in Roxbury where we can test things out without attracting the newspapers". We ripped into him and showed him the door.
Why would anyone from Roxbury
Why would anyone from Roxbury and Mattapan oppose investing in transit infrastructure which would:
- Improve the reliability and speed of the line,
- Reduce noise, and
- ELIMINATE diesel train exhaust from the neighborhood?
The problem I see is that the Fairmount Line doesn't have the ridership to make this a cost-effective investment. But that's a separate issue.
Let's break it down
The T and the state have been lying to Roxbury and Mattapan residents for decades about transit issues, starting with the claim that the Orange Line would be replaced by equivalent rapid transit when it was moved from Washington Street to the Southwest Corridor.
They got a bus.
Then the state (under the Patrick administration, no less), sprung this 28X idea on people one day at a press conference (I remember it well, I actually attended it), and people were immediately distrustful (and by "people," include Byron Rushing and Gloria Fox).
Faced with a decades-long legacy of lying to and letting down the community, the state simply couldn't convince people they were for real and the whole thing faded away.
So does that mean the
So does that mean the community will reject all future transit projects, even if it's a pure improvement?
No
Provided they don't get things shoved down their throat.
Except for one small problem.
Except for one small problem... the ONLY part of what you mentioned that has actually come true is the part where stations through Fairmount are subway fares. The rest is still untrue. There's not enough ridership, and considering the level of other service and connections throughout the area, the added stations were, and still are (and are likely to remain) unnecessary. Whereas my line (Franklin) is continually overcrowded, with much less overall service (especially past Norwood- I ride out of Norfolk), and I pay much more for less service.
Also, considering all the times that Amtrak suspends electric service (weather/winds, downed wires, etc), not sure I'd trust electrification.
Here's an idea
Let's do nothing. If we do nothing, nothing gets fixed.
If we electrify Providence and Fairmount, you know what happens to the equipment from those lines? The old, unreliable crap gets retired, the rest of it gets put on to other lines. Hello, less crowding in the Franklin Line!
Then when electrification is popular and extended to the Franklin Line, you get faster, more frequent service. Look, it's not overnight, but we have to crawl before we can walk. The status quo, as you point out, isn't working.
ummm....
ummm....
"Just a few years ago"? That and a couple of your other assertions are incomplete or off-track
My period of regular commuting on the Fairmount Line was 15 years ago - well before the repairs and improvements - and only intermittent use since. From that experience, I can tell you
- The fare was already the 1A/subway zone fare then
- Gainsayers? The riders and residents were the ones who had to tell the T back then that it was entirely possible to maintain the (admittedly low) level of service on one side while rebuilding tracks and building platforms on the other side instead of going to crappy bus service for months/year on end.
- "more frequent service" is half-and-half. It took years, but we finally got weekend service. Rush hour weekdays, though, is actually worse - used to have 30-minute headways, now 45 minutes.
Transit Matters' late night bus proposal: zero bids
Transit Matters never learns. Instead of reviewing what went wrong with their latest proposal failure, they're already on to their next proposal failure: piecemeal electrification
Exactly
Chandler should have been aware of Transit Matters late night bus failure
Ok so
what went wrong and how does that apply to this?
Are you part of Transit Matters? Then how can you know what kind of reviews they did or did not do?
And do you know why?
Because Governor Privatization wanted it to be a test bed of privatization. The T could certainly have run it in house (it's not like the buses are doing anything else overnight) but the went to bid it out to private carriers and … didn't get any takers. They have expanded early morning service (and apparently that has been quite popular, the T is very happy with the ridership). There are rumblings that some sort of overnight service will happen.
So apparently it was a failure because they tried to privatize it and it didn't get any bids. I think there's money in the current budget cycle to try something. Maybe, just maybe, they'll use the buses they have to put something on the road. Stay tuned.
So you were rejected by both the public and private sector?
Not good.
Rejected by the public sector?
The public sector, for political reasons, decided they wanted to push privatization before giving it a go themselves. When that didn't work out, they had to go back to the drawing boards. The public sector started running more early morning service, which people are using. Rejection sucks, I guess.
Money...
Gads...love the way y'all think we should do this or should do that.
Where does the MONEY come from for all these grand schemes???
We live in a commune that can't fund the homeless shelters or house the mentally ill,but we can afford to fully fund some politicians relative/construction magnates grand schemes to electrify a railroad that does not now,nor ever has run on time!!!
Can we please get our priorities straight...
Arguably...
and because Boston has gotten so expensive to live or build in, it's probably a good bet to say surrounding and outlying communities stand a better chance of helping house those populations - and to get into Boston for work or appointments those populations will need a reliable and frequently running commuter rail - which electrification will help.
Taxes
Electric trains are more likely to be on time. They break down much less often (fewer moving parts and they're not filled with a thousand explosions a minute), they accelerate faster and have high top speeds.
They're also cheaper to run. The initial cost of wiring the tracks can be high, yes, but:
So the money is probably a good investment for the state, in long-run cost savings, over and beyond the performance enhancements. The money comes from what we're already spending.
The T buys new rolling stock every few years?
I’ll remember that when I commute via subway cars purchased during the Carter administration tomorrow. While on the Orange Line, I’ll probably be able to see the Reagan era rolling stock of the commuter rail go by.
yes, yes it does
The T has lots of rolling stock. It replaces a small fraction of it every few years. That's by far the most efficient and safest way to do so. /smh
About every 2-1/3 years
They get either new coaches or locomotives on average every 2-1/3 years since 1973. The longest stretch, twice as long as any other, was between 1979 and 1987 - 8 years. If you disregard that outlier, the number falls to every two years.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MBTA_Commuter_Rail#Rolling_Stock. I compiled all the years the T received orders of locos or coaches, deleted duplicates,, found the differences, and averaged the differences.
We were talking about the commuter rail, not the orange line.
Your average is fuzzy math
The most recently purchased single level coaches were built in 1990, and aside from the most recent purchases and the UTA lease, we are talking a same lag for locomotives. My overall point is that the T does not do complete overhauls of its commuter rail fleet. Moving completely to electric would be a big move, while going to EMUs would be akin to building a fleet from scratch.
My math
isn't fuzzy. No one said anything about replacing the whole fleet (just yet). We're talking an order big enough to service two lines, one of which is really short.
And, now you're only considering purchases of single levels? And we need to exclude recent purchases? Why exactly?
We've bought locomotives twice in the last ten years. That's not particularly infrequent.
Go back to your Wikipedia link
The first generation of locomotives went online around 1974. The next generation came in two orders, on around 1988 and the other around 1992. The most recent order of locomotives went online around 2014 (I am using either the midpoint year of a 3 year period or the latter year of a 2 year period, hence “around.”). That’s gaps of 14, 4, and 22 years. The average for that is 10 years. And before you mention them, the UTA locomotives are leases, and are only 2 units, so they don’t count.
Admittedly, the passenger cars have an average of less than 10 years between orders, but we are talking about power units, so locomotives should be the metric.
The electrics will need a
The electrics will need a real south side maintenance facility, it won't be practical to tow them to/from BET via the Grand Junction when they need anything more than minor inspection work.
I'm not sure why you say elecytics will last longer when we have push-pull cars from 1979 and diesels from 1973 still in service, Metra in Cgicago has even older push-pull stock still in service, rebuilding a non-powered coach is much cheaper than keeping an EMU going, just look at the Metro-North/LIRR M3s from 1984-86 that are being retired now rather than rebuilt.
Nope
Look into MA's electricity providers. Your argument is DOA
Raise the gas tax. Drivers
Raise the gas tax. Drivers come nowhere near paying their fair share. T riders deal with price hikes all the time.
Better yet, how about we take
Better yet, how about we take all subsidies out of the T's budget and raise fares across the board. That way there the people who ride the T will be paying their fair share.
Well then
We need a surcharge on car use to make up for the externalized costs - costs like asthma ED visits due to emissions, costs of car accidents and emergency services for those, etc.
You want to play the "make it fair" game? Be ready to pay.
Well out here in WESTMASS as
Well out here in WESTMASS as you pinheads like to call it, we have regional bus lines. We don't "ride the T", but we pay for the T. So you can just go ahead and pay for your own asthma meds sweetie. MKay?
Aw, don't go confirming the backwoods stereotypes
Nobody in the eastern part of the state calls it Westmass. It was the Springfield chamber of commerce that tried foisting that on you (and they gave up).
Who do you think pays for I-91? Who paid for the repairs after the tornado?
Ditch the 'tude and maybe we can have a legitimate discussion about how the PVTA is getting screwed and how you might have more actual train service if it weren't for the owners of a Springfield bus company.
You don't pay for the T
No where near pay for the T
EASTMASS pays for the T and your transit and your roads and your Hurricane Irene damage and maintaining paved tracks for your isolated hamlets with few people, none of whom pay taxes because they are too old, etc.
As was said before - DON'T PLAY THIS GAME. Your little "I repeated it five times so it must be true" sayings about subsidizing us will shatter and fall in whirlwind of reality and income and tax revenue statistics.
If it wasn't for Boston - you
If it wasn't for Boston - you know, where all the economy and industry of the state happens, and which pays far more into the statewide tax base than they get out - WESTMASS would be fucking northern New Hampshire. Enjoy the teat but at least have the self-awareness to shut the fuck up about it.
If western Mass has so few
If western Mass has so few people, and so small an economy, can't the MBTA manage just fine without the miniscule amount of sales tax the miniscule western economy is paying in?
Let me take it a step further
The highways are full. The T brings more people in to the city than the roads do. If you increased the fares on the T to cover costs, a fair number (but certainly not all) the people on the T would try to get on to the roads. But guess what: road capacity is non-linear. Increase the number of people by 10% and congestion goes up by a lot more than 10%. So now you have even worse traffic. The economy grinds to a halt. Sound good?
Or … you could put in tolls on I-93 equal to what people already pay on the Pike inside of 128. That generates something like $300 million per year. Maybe make them congestion based: higher at rush hour. Bond against that and start out by buying a few more rail cars to make sure you have the capacity for the people now taking the T. The people on the highway have slightly less congestion for their $1.25 each day (which is nominal, compared to the cost of gas, wear-and-tear and parking). And that money goes to moving towards a real, world-class transo ortation system not based around putting more people on the road and praying.
Go ahead and do all that. I
Go ahead and do all that. I don't drive into Boston, nor do I ride the T, but yet my taxes pay for your shitty subway system and your pollution creating commuter rail trains and busses. Pay for your own shit, stop taxing the folks who have zero to do with Boston. Get it?
But you do drive, no?
If you do, than you would probably like less congested roads in general, no? So would you rather have more folks not being able to access reliable public transit so they stay off the roads, that will get more and more congested, that you still use or not?
People drive into Boston from usually a distance, many from a great distance. Some probably drive by where you live on the roads that you use. So instead of being "anti-tax" why don't ya take a broader picture of the situation?
Taxes are what we pay to live in a civilized society.
And my taxes …
… pay for state roads in Western Mass which see maybe 500 vehicles per day (and Chapter 90 funding for the less-used roads) but still have to be plowed and have foliage cut back and be resurfaced every few years when they get frost heaves or get washed away in a hurricane.
For instance: Monroe and Hawley each get more than $500 of Chapter 90 funding per person for road repairs. Meanwhile, Boston, Cambridge, Brookline and Somerville each get less than $25 per person. This despite the higher per capita income in (and therefore higher tax revenue coming from) BCBS. Now I could go on a rant about how the Boston area generates most of the tax base for the Commonwealth and then sends millions to little towns out west for roads no one drives on, or I could realize that the point of a larger state is that everyone sort of helps each other out.
How much do Boston, Cambridge
How much do Boston, Cambridge, Brookline and Somerville get per person in MBTA funding? How much do Monroe and Hawley get per person in MBTA funding?
What about the Comm Ave bridge replacement? Or 93 Fast 14? Or the 128 add-a lane? Or, you know, the Big Dig? Those are state projects, so they're not factored into your $25 per person Chapter 90 figure. But it's still tremendous amounts of money spent on eastern Mass roads.
How much
... effort did you put into looking these things up?
Ari very carefully backed up everything he said. Why don't you do the same.
You do realize
That more people live in Eastern Mass, right? And that I can make a list of projects in Western Mass, too. 91 Viaduct comes to mind.
I'm happy to subsidize your roads
Which I do to a considerable extent.
I like riding my bike on them. I like going camping and hiking and boating using them. My kids live out there several months of the year, too.
But if you want to play the "subsidizing" game, you had best look up the stats on where the money comes from and where it goes before the kickoff. Still time to forfeit, dear.
I'd hate to be your tenant
You seem to be the type of person who never changes, fixes, or replaces anything.
We cannot go on with this idiotic mindset of WE CAN'T DO ANYTHING BECAUSE IT COSTS MONEY OMG TAXES OMG!!!!!!! That has led us to crumbling infrastructure that costs MORE money that people like you never want to pay for.
A certain age group inherited all sorts of wonderful things that were rebuilt after WW II. Then they held a tax tantrum and have been pissing on everything ever since, trying to get through life without paying their fair share for infrastructure that they demand others pay to maintain. The bill is due - pay up for what you used so we can all go on.
West station
So they won't consider building a new station which would be easy to include in other construction but they will fund a pie in the sky study of something which should be lower on the needs list?
Electrification is great but there's a lot cheaper and more pressing improvements.
Like having a transit system that doesn't crash every week
Priorities. Priorities
Why?
Trains are already pretty efficient. I can't imagine electrification being that much an improvement, even in a best-case situation.
Trains are space-efficient, but diesels have problems
When you have to carry around a power plant, you are limited as to the amount of power you can generate, as well as adding a lot of weight. An electric engine is lighter and can pull down a ton more power. This gives you far better acceleration, and a much higher top speed (I've run a GPS on an MBTA Commuter Train and Amtrak Regional—not Acela—out of 128. Two minutes out, the T was at 60 mph and struggling towards a top speed of 75. Meanwhile the Amtrak train had topped 100 mph. Electric trains can cover a lot of ground.) What does this mean?
Right now, the 5:00 a.m. train from Providence runs to Boston, turns around, runs back to Providence, and makes a second run in to Boston at 8:55, making two round trips. Every other train on the Providence Line makes a single trip from Providence to Boston (I'm simplifying this and imagining that Wickford Junction doesn't exist for purposes of illustration), then either running midday service or pulling in to the yard.
An electric train—with level-boarding platforms—can make a trip that currently takes the T 1:05-1:15 in 45 minutes. It accelerates much faster, and it cruises at a higher speed, important since there are 6-9 miles between stations on the Providence Line. So now the 5:00 a.m. train gets to Boston at 5:45, turns around and runs outbound to Providence from 6:00 to 6:45, then turns around in Providence and runs inbound at 7:00. Since this "cycle time" of the train is 2 hours instead of 3, every train between 5 a.m. and 9 a.m. can make two roundtrips. So to run the same schedule you have today, you need half as many trains. Or, with the same number of train cars, and crews, you can double the amount of service. Which you might need, if you can get from Providence to Boston in 45 minutes four times an hour.
That's the efficiency. It doubles it.
Also: electric trains don't have to be refueled, which takes time and manpower.
Also, electric trains don't
Also, electric trains don't break down as often.
And they don't stink up Back Bay Station.
Nice job TransitMatters
The TransitMatters group has clearly done some well-thought out research and analysis, and great to see that their work is getting the attention of policymakers
Wasting taxpayer money is not commendable
This subject matter has been looked at 30+ times in the last decade. They're just wasting time and money
What taxpayer money?
I'd love to get my hands on some of this taxpayer money.
As for TransitMatters …
The organization is the only reason the state put a late stop order on the Auburndale project, which would have built a white elephant station which would have been unusable, thus wasting negative ten million taxpayer dollars.
The organization found the reason that trains held at Park Street for 20 minutes or longer every night, suggested a plan of action which the T adopted in tweaking schedules, which saves several hours of operation time every night (link to my blog, but a consortium of TransitMatters folks there). Those savings amount to negative hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in increased taxpayer subsidies.
RegionalRail has not been studied basically ever. Assuming this is the same anon (Adam please get rid of anons!) where's your link to any previous study? There isn't one, because there aren't any previous study. No one has every actually really looked at this. The point we make is that there are actually a lot of operational efficiencies to running a Regional Rail system, so you spend somewhat more, but you get a lot more (faster trips, less overhead cost per trip, etc).
Maybe the One Belt One Road Iniative would pay for it
Since the US has almost abandoned infrastructure unvestment perhaps China would step up....and they have so many residents that want to come here for the Boston schools......half kidding;)
Compliments
This may be the best comment thread ever to grace UHub. Almost all of the posts are thoughtful, informative, and polite. Hat's off.
It probably wouldn't be
It probably wouldn't be efficient to buy EMU trains at first. You have passenger coaches that are perfectly serviceable and will be for years.
An incremental approach would be better. As diesel locomotives reach the end of their useful life and would be replaced anyway - replace them with electric locomotives that can continue to use the same passenger coaches. As some of the coaches reach the end of their useful life, rotate in some electric sets.
Or
Move the currently coaches and locos running on the Providence line, which tend to be larger, newer, and nicer, because it's one of the busiest lines, to other lines, so they can run more service, or trains with higher capacity (I hear the Franklin and Worcester lines get pretty crowded). Or cycle out the crappier equipment that breaks down and causes the delays that are all too common. Or some combination.
The performance difference in diesel vs EMUs means it doesn't make sense to run both on the same line. Either the EMUs will be stuck going the speed of the diesels, or some trains will have vastly different schedules, and there would have to be timed overtakes, negotiated with Amtrak schedules, and cascading delays if the tight schedules aren't met.
And if you get electric locos, what do you do with them once you have the EMUs?
Why can't you have both
Start our with electric locomotives. Then, as it comes time to replace the passenger cars, replace them with EMUs instead.
MARC runs passenger cars with electric locomotives on the NEC line, and in theory they are the fastest commuter rail trains in the nation. Meanwhile, Metro North/CTDOT run EMUs on the NEC, and, well, I think it is well documented how slow that stretch of the NEC is.
You could
There's just no compelling reason to. There's enough crappy equipment and overcrowding and infrequent schedules in the system that distributing the locos and unpowered coaches to other lines makes sense.
Apples/oranges.
Apples/oranges.
North of Baltimore MARC has very wide stop spacing, which narrows the performance difference between loco-hauled push-pulls and EMU's. Most commuter rail systems don't physically have long enough gaps between stops to hit triple-digit speeds for more than inconsequential seconds even with an EMU, so generally the EMU's they buy top out at 90-100 MPH. MARC legitimately sees 110-125 MPH through the empty Chesapeake swamplands, and to do that on an EMU would require cars with much heavier overpowered propulsion. EMU's also suck more juice on average than a single electric loco-hauled set, with pronounced divergence the more cars the train has lashed up. That's a problem for MARC because they're on the south-of-New York half of the NEC where Amtrak has a monopoly on electric transmission and gouges its commuter rail partners accordingly. With the biggest bleed happening at rush hour. North-of-New York it's all local grid-sourced and more or less conforming to market-rate for all users, whether underneath the Metro-North owned wires west of New Haven or the Amtrak-owned wires east of New Haven.
While an argument can be made for MARC going all-EMU on the Penn Line because the denser-spaced and heavier-service segment south of Baltimore merits it, it isn't 100% clear-cut in their particular case because they're a small agency, their electric rates are very high and they'd feel that pain more acutely at rush hour, and some parts of the Penn Line are very different from others. There's a rational argument to be made that they picked the right technology for their needs. Maybe differing final opinions, but rational pros/cons nonetheless.
Every tool in the transit toolbox has its place, so "Any EMU is better than all locomotives" is an over-simplistic dismissal. Most places...yes, that's going to hold true. The lines on the T where EMU's are being recommended first?...definitely true. But every situation has to be evaluated on the merits. There are certainly places in T territory that are going to rate dead-last on a priority ranking of electrifications because the cost/benefit is too low and/or stop spacing too wide. It'd be hard, for instance, to envision wires being strung up all the way onto Cape Cod because of the distance involved past Middleboro, selective hours of demand (i.e. when the bridges aren't backed up there's not much need for a flush off-peak schedule slate past the mainland), and fact that practically keeping reasonable travel times to Hyannis requires some judicious skip-stopping of lesser M'boro Line stops to keep it brisk meaning the diesels don't lose nearly as much time as usual on starts/stops. Add it all up and that kind of looks like a forever-diesel route unless we have extra cash to burn. So does craptacular South Coast Rail where the whole route is so defective by design that the DEIR shows virtually no travel time difference between diesel and electric. Though oddly that's the one and only route the state has ever enthusiastically proposed electrifying...go figure.
Actually, my suggestion
Actually, my suggestion already presumed stock rotation and replacement assessing the systemwide fleet on basis of age/reliability/efficiency/cost. It would be stupid to treat each line as its own separate little fleet.
Since non-emu coaches can easily remain in service for 40 years, I think they can keep electric locomotives gainfully employed.
Somebody more railroad hardware-knowledgeable than I, maybe FLTD, could say for sure whether double-decker coaches are available with pantographs and would still be able to deal with overhead clearance. I don't think I've seen any myself, but I could be wrong on that. If I'm right, though, you'd certainly want electric locomotives so you could run double-deckers on those high-ridership lines. Otherwise, you'd spend a lot of money lengthening station platforms for longer single-decker trains.
...and to answer your comment to Waquoit - no compelling reason? Being economical isn't compelling enough?
Rob,
Rob,
There'll be no such thing as a Purple Line equipment 'surplus' through the lifespan of even the newest locos and bi-levels they just bought, so everything on the roster is going to live out its rated lifespan taking a daily pounding somewhere. Every set of new EMU's they order for Providence/Fairmount and the next-most obvious subsequent southside electrifications is one more diesel set that can be reassigned to the service-poorer northside to increase frequencies there. There will always be more mouths to feed than there are available cars to feed them.
One major thing to consider here is how few lines need to be electrified to scale a majority of the southside over to EMU's. Just the starter stuff that can be done with 1 substation upgrade--Providence + Fairmount + the upcoming RIDOT Providence-Westerly service--justifies a pretty large EMU fleet in itself. But after that, all you have to do is electrify Worcester...1 line, and all schedules therein...for almost 60% of the southside's vehicle requirements to flip to EMU. Trim Needham off the Purple Line by trading it over to the subway as separate Orange + Green halves and that number's over two-thirds. That's outstanding scalability for the capital cost...but also doubly outstanding scalability for diesel-land to be getting the massive reinforcements of reassigned stock. Mainly up north, but also figure that if the Old Colony electrification is going to have to wait until a painfully huge $$$ wad is spent fixing the Dorchester-Quincy single-tracking that the diesel reinforcements can give those lines (and extensions to Cape Cod) meaningful service increases much sooner.
Today's loco & coach roster still isn't big enough to cover true demand for more frequencies even after >half the south roster goes EMU. That's the hardest part: they have to do a full-on replacement-level buying spree of new diesels & coaches that are good for 30 years AND take the electrification plunge into substantial EMU fleet--simultaneously--to keep pace with the frequency increase targets that'll actually attract the ridership. It truly is an all-of-the-above thing, because the newest piece of equipment on today's roster will be past retirement age before enough of the system has been electrified to seriously slash back the size of the diesel roster.
--------------------
Until now the only bi-level EMU's in North America were on Metra Electric out in Chicago, where that system's DC electrification takes up less onboard component space than AC transformers do. That's changing now as NJ Transit has funded and bid out an order of 100+ NEC-compatible bi-level EMU's adapted from the carbody of their MultiLevel coaches, which are very much like the T's bi-levels. Slightly shorter (14'6" vs. 15'6" for T bi's), 2x2 instead of 3x2 seating, and a different vestibule door arrangement specific to NJT...but otherwise very similar to our bi-levels.
The EMU version they're ordering is going to be for single-ended power cars that can be lashed up in a 'hybrid' setup where the powered EMU cars can sandwich up to 2 unpowered coaches between every EMU in the set...such that NJT can take its existing MultiLevel coaches, install compatible cables, and use them with either loco-hauled or self-propelled sets. Slight performance penalty in that configuration for the EMU cars to be hauling some deadweight coaches, but still beats the pants off any loco-hauled electric or diesel. NJT is doing it that way so it can make its large existing installed base of MLV coaches "universal" cars, but you can pretty much mix/match them for any performance profile.
For example. . .
4-car set: (EMU|--|coach|--|coach|--|EMU)
4-car set (all-powered): (EMU|--|EMU)--(EMU|--|EMU)
5-car set: (EMU|--|coach|--|EMU)--|coach|--|EMU)
7-car set: (EMU|--|coach|--|coach|--|EMU)--(coach)--(coach)--|EMU)
7-car set (high performance): (EMU|--|coach|--|EMU)--(coach)--(EMU|--(coach)--|EMU)
. . .and so on, and so on. These things will be kinda porky by sleek Euro EMU standards, but very scalable and versatile so has compelling points for other agencies if NJT can net a winner from its final bidder (manufacturer should be chosen by this Fall). That's definitely the ongoing purchase to watch for future T purposes, because if NJT goes full-bore at the follow-on orders it'll drive the price point down on those EMU's to attractive levels right around the timeframe when the T would (fingers-crossed) be making a Go For It decision on Providence + Fairmount.
Yes, it'll be bi-level which is sub-optimal for Fairmount Line boarding...but I also don't see how you could practically do a Providence rush-hour sardine can without bi's unless the NEC platforms were all lengthened to a dozen-plus cars at heinous expense. Buying single-levels for the inside-128 "Indigo" routes may be something they have to wait until the second or third follow-on order of EMU's to differentiate because initial scalability will probably favor starting out with bi's. Temporary or not, it's not that big a real-world concession. Any EMU trawling the Fairmount Line, even a bi-level with stairs, is still going to kick the living snot out of a loco-hauled train of single-levels when it comes to making brisk schedule.
These things will be kinda
Well, they can't all be...
Actually, at this point, it doesn't appear that any of them can be that.
Also, I'd argue that bi-level is sub-optimal for boarding on any line, but a necessary trade-off for capacity.