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| Re: PHOTOS: MBTA MPXpress Locomotive #010 In Delivery (1024568) | |||
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Re: PHOTOS: MBTA MPXpress Locomotive #010 In Delivery |
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Posted by WillD on Wed Jan 12 00:31:19 2011, in response to Re: PHOTOS: MBTA MPXpress Locomotive #010 In Delivery, posted by aem7ac on Wed Jan 12 00:01:06 2011. What makes you think electrified services have better headways or have more power for that matter? Electrified services are more economical when applied to high density corridors, yes. If you electrify a service that isn't high density, then you basically just end up paying more for infrastructure and have it rust away. The decision to electrify on a passenger railroad have very little to do with required power and/or tractive effort.It is difficult to find a commuter line in Europe or Japan whose operation is comparable to the MBTA. There are plenty of cities of the same size, and they aren't all that much greater in density than Boston or its environs. In fact the Boston Metropolitan area and the Frankfurt Rhine-Main metro area are remarkably similar in terms of population, area, and density, as well as distribution into urban sub-centers. But those systems in Europe and Japan all operate electrified commuter rail systems. In particular the Frankfurt system has been wildly successful, despite being quite similar to Boston's demographics. Thus I would argue the 'low density' argument simply holds no water. Either our standards are too high to implement improvements and thus we never take advantage of the induced demand which electrification can bring with it, or Americans are just 'differnt' and won't use mass transit. IMHO it seems extremely unlikely that Americans have some unspoken taboo against mass transit, and its more a case of our offering a thoroughly unattractive modal choice between traffic or a poorly thought through transit system. Since you are so convinced that the U.S. commuter rail is locked into a 1950s mindset, why don't you point out a specific feature on a typical commuter rail system (any system) that has not changed since the 1950s? I can't think of any and I have some experience in this area. Do you know what they were using in the 1950s? Budd cars and FL-3's, right? Position lights with basic CTC (traffic levers, etc.) right? Power frequency cab signals driven by Vane relays right? Which commuter rail system do you know of that's buying this stuff today? I do not mean the equipment is in any way rooted in the 1950s, I mean that the operational concept, the theoretical framework within which the commuter rail's role within our cities, is outdated and fundamentally flawed. Jobs have migrated out of the urban cores, into the suburbs, and our commuter railroads have remained firmly fixed in their focus on serving those city centers. There are some dense sub-centers which could be effectively served by commuter rail. Similarly, Boston's wanton expansion of their subway lines into the inner suburbs illustrates that there is or was demand in the suburb to city commute market which the commuter railroads were not meeting. Unfortunately the problem was rectified in a manner that strangles future commuter rail growth. |
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