Comments on: Pennsylvania Releases State Rail Plan, Promotes Increased Investment in Intercity Systems

By: עורך דין

עורך דין — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 04:28:22 +0000

A regulation business generally business enterprise enterprise entity formed by a person or a lot lawyers to engage inside of make the most of of regulation

By: eldondre

eldondre — Tue, 04 May 2010 14:28:07 +0000

one more thing, while I don’t think that the service would displace Southwest and US Air (I think they each have several flights a day) it’s worth noting the current line at once a day and not competitive is well patronized so it’s not a stretch that an improved line would have a fair amount of through traffic (NY and Philly to Pitt) in addition to intermediate traffic. Remember, these are large markets. I’d guess you’d be drawing a combination of some airline customers but mostly drivers and new trips.

By: eldondre

eldondre — Tue, 04 May 2010 14:03:46 +0000

the Keystone Corridor uses about ten sets total (HAR-PHL) with about four per car (not including power) so total cost would be closer to $125 million, assuming it’s half picked up by Amtrak, $62.5 million. now, assuming some speed improvements, you might be able to eliminate a couple sets. OTOH, if they work with Amtrak to pool equipment, that means Amtrak can use cars from its own fleet to protect the service rather than hold sets on hand. I’d also point out that we’re not talking about running as many trains as running on the corridor so it’s not infeasible that a quad tracked main line with superelevation on the outside tracks could run relatively fast. the ARRA funds really shorted Penn. If Acela’s or any other high speed train were to run on the Harrisburg line, you’d need to upgrade the substation in Paoli (didn’t get funded) and add an express track over the entire length of SEPTA territory. the reason for crawling over SEPTA territory is the line is dark from zoo to the station, signaling from zoo to lancaster needs upgrading, and interlockings at overbrook (extremely complicated) and bryn mawr need replacing (they weren’t replaced because SEPTA wants them moved). Given how long it takes to get out of Philly, I’d think you could get five minutes to Paoli. It’s currently a 22 min trip to Paoli which means the train isn’t even averaging 60 mph (I believe it’s only 19 miles). bumping the speed even to 60 mph would net a savings of 3 minutes. Improving average speed to 75 mph would get you to 15.5 minutes, rounding up for a savings of 7 minutes to Paoli alone (assuming no stop at Ardmore). West of Paoli the line goes to three tracks, then two. Ardmore adds 4 minutes. I’d guess you can buy some improvement to Lancaster by adding the express track (to avoid overtake problems with SEPTA trains). Especially if you’re running express from Paoli to Lancaster. I’d also think you could bump up average speeds from Elizabethtown and Harrisburg ( I think the reason they never got to their target trip time of 90 min is that someone added Elizabethtown to express runs). While there are some curves, the train feels slow. I don’t believe this stretch of was rehabbed during the Keystone upgrade a few years back. Of course, it appears it’s already running at an average of 60 mph, so it might well take tilting equipment to bump average times up to 75 mph which might get you 3 minutes. I assume they worked this into their application where they estimated a 15 minute improvement over current run times. One would think they could improve over that using 125 mph sections and tilting equipment (let’s say 5-10 minutes, but I suppose it could be more, at what point it’s worth straightening the curve at Gap I don’t know)…and what would 150 mph sections gain? Let’s assume a current trip time of 90 min, 15 gets you to 75 minutes, another 15 gets you to 60 min from Harrisburg (certainly something you could sell, they estimated nearly 1.8 million riders on a 75 min ride, I’d guess 60 would put you well north of 2 million). I’m less familiar with west of Harrisburg but the chart begs the question, can anything be done to improve speeds between Greensburg and pitt? At an average of a measly 26 mph, you could get over 30 minutes just by doubling the average speed there. Can it be done?
Between the two ends you have an hour already. Any improvements in between would be gravy, let’s peg improvements in between at 30 minutes. A 90 minute trip time improvement puts you under (WB is currently 7h23m). Now, if you throw in electrification (which has been cited to increase capacity for freight as well) you might get a little more. Currently there’s a premium of ~10 min for diesel service to Harrisburg. That gets you down to 5h43m. Assuming electrification to Pittsburgh, one would think you’d get at least ten minutes (likely more, since there is faster acceleration AFAIK). You also, then, have to consider eliminating a couple of stops like tyrone and one more. All told, you need an average trip time of 69 mph to get to 5 hours. Even if you get there by running fast east of, and just faster west of. The trip time is what matters. I think it’s feasible, then, to get a trip time competitive with driving (~5 hours without any significant traffic from city center to city center). Also worth remembering, the train runs through to NYP. They currently schedule a 30-35 minutes layover in Philly to change locomotives. If electrified with push pull equipment that would shave another 15-20 minutes off the 9.5 hour trip to NY and open the possibility of some trips using the Pittsburgh subway again (which I imagine would be another 20 minutes faster for a total of ~40 min to NY). I think this makes more sense than the Lehigh Valley corridor, personally, and if you can get NS interested in electrified freight movements and perhaps connect the catenary to a natural gas plant, all’s the better. A new tunnel alignment would complement this nicely running non-stop from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh.

By: Don

Don — Mon, 03 May 2010 12:03:43 +0000

You could conceivably squeeze some time out of the schedule east of Huntingdon, though most of that would be east of Lewistown where the curves are mostly fairly broad. But west of Spruce Creek tunnel, there really isn’t much to be had without spending some serious change. Take a look at the track charts. http://www.multimodalways.org/archives/rrs/CR/CR%20Track%20Charts/CR%20Track%20Charts.html
This is a route that is heavy with freight traffic. It would cost quite a bit to have NS boost the superelevation from 4″ max to 6″. Even with that and the use of tilt equipment, you’re still not going to get highway competitive speeds west of Huntigdon.

By: Nathanael

Nathanael — Mon, 03 May 2010 10:29:02 +0000

Wisconsin *had* the full support of the state. It’s only recently that the deranged right-wing anti-train fanatics have come out of the woodwork and gotten into positions of power.

By: Nathanael

Nathanael — Mon, 03 May 2010 10:27:20 +0000

Realigning the route along the road from Harrisburg to State College and the river valley/road/railroad from there would be about the same length, less curvy, and add a major population center.

By: Nathanael

Nathanael — Mon, 03 May 2010 10:23:46 +0000

Washington’s Cascades already got practically everything they asked for — they may be too busy implementing that to take any more money for about a year or so. The Keystone Corridor is a no-brainer for reallocating the Ohio funds should Ohio screw up, with fully engineered but unfunded plans. DC-Richmond is also a logical place to put money fast, with lots of fully engineered but unfunded plans.

The Empire Corridor *should* be a no-brainer, but NY’s rail planning has actually been worse than Pennsylvania’s. :-( The FEC line won’t get money until the liability issues are worked out.

By: jim

jim — Sun, 02 May 2010 01:07:53 +0000

Thank you for the pointer to the Keystone West study. It’s very informative. It’s been overtaken by events. I doubt anyone would be satisfied by an additional two Harrisburg-Pittsburgh frequencies and it doesn’t recognize that Ohio Hub is planning Columbus-Pittsburgh and Cleveland-Pittsburgh service (which makes its discussion of Pittsburgh station inadequate). But there’s a lot of good stuff there. In particular, I didn’t realize that part of the Harrisburg-Pittsburgh line is still triple-tracked and congested at that. If one quad tracks there, the best one can hope for is that passenger and fast freight share one pair of tracks and slow freight gets relegated to the other. And I didn’t know that the train level of the Pittsburgh station was such a mess.

It’s even worse than it appears.

By: jim

jim — Sun, 02 May 2010 00:58:16 +0000

Since everyone talks about 125 mph once the remaining at-grade crossings are eliminated, I assume that Amtrak intends to use standard NEC Regional trainsets on Keystone East: Harrisburg-New York, Harrisburg-Philadelphia and possibly Harrisburg-Washington; Keystone East becomes indistinguishable from the NEC. If they were planning to use 150 mph capable trainsets, then they’d talk of 150 mph MAS.

Agree with Alon that the right thing to do with superseded Acela equipment is junk it.

By: Alon Levy

Alon Levy — Sat, 01 May 2010 22:26:04 +0000

You could make a decent argument for scrapping the existing Acelas entirely. Modern countries should just not allow anything with an axle load of 23 tons on their tracks unless it’s for freight, much less a 20,000-miles-MDBF lemon.

The cost of new high-speed trains, for the record, is about $2.5 million per car. Just buy a couple of Pendolino sets for Philly-Harrisburg; the cost of enough trains for Philly-Harrisburg is in the tens of millions.