|
|
| Re: PHOTOS: MBTA MPXpress Locomotive #010 In Delivery (1024582) | |||
 |
|||
| Home > SubChat | |||
|
[ Read Responses | Post a New Response | Return to the Index ] |
|
||
|
Re: PHOTOS: MBTA MPXpress Locomotive #010 In Delivery |
|
|
Posted by aem7ac on Wed Jan 12 00:50:20 2011, in response to Re: PHOTOS: MBTA MPXpress Locomotive #010 In Delivery, posted by WillD on Wed Jan 12 00:31:19 2011. It is difficult to find a commuter line in Europe or Japan whose operation is comparable to the MBTA.What do you mean by comparable? If you mean locomotive-hauled diesel operation with cab cars, I used to work on one. Edinburgh-Glasgow was loco-hauled with cab cars until the mid-1990s. If you mean today, in 2011, I will tell you that in Taiwan, the Southern Link commuter line serving Kaohsiung-Pingtung in Southern Taiwan is still locomotive hauled:  Granted, Kaohsiung doesn't have the density or the population of many Asian cities, but it is the size of Boston (metro pop = 2.8 mil). The line from the South is the weakest of the commuter rail lines. But it's still diesel hauled, because diesel is the appropriate technology for a line with such low demand density. There are plenty of cities of the same size, and they aren't all that much greater in density than Boston or its environs. Population density is a very misleading statistic. It's particularly bad for making large metro-area type comparisons because it fails to capture how the population is distributed within the metro. I call you bluff -- I don't believe you've actually looked at how Frankfurt population is distributed within the metro, and how Boston population is distributed within the metro. They may have similar pop density as a metro, but the degree of clustering around "Squares" (if you're a Bostonite) and "Circles" are likely different. If you've done the work, then post some population density maps like these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Population_density_map_of_Kaohsiung_(Dec_2009).svg 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that the operational concept, the theoretical framework within which the commuter rail's role within our cities, is outdated and fundamentally flawed.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. I think your thinking and/or information is outdated. Beginning in the 1960s, Boston & Maine railroad promoted a little-known station called "Mishawum" that eventually was replaced by the Anderson RTC. Even today, several trains call at the old Mishawum station to serve reverse-commute and exurb-to-suburb commuters due to passenger markets that were developed back then. At around the same time, the Route 128 station was added on the south side, and transit-oriented development sprung up in the vicinity of that station. Whether reverse-commuting was happening is a matter of debate; if it happened it wasn't in huge numbers, but not because the service isn't geared for it: B&M continues to host at one reverse commuter train on the Haverhill Line, and in fact the Lowell Line has fairly good off-peak and reverse-direction service. Looking further south, Metro-North saw for the first time that their non-GCT traffic grew to more than 50% of total traffic last year, thanks to both reverse commute trips and growth of suburban centers like Stamford, Yonkers, and 125 Street. If you think commuter rail doesn't serve suburban or reverse-commute markets, you've not been keeping up with what the commuter railroads have been doing in the past 30 years. |
|
|
|
.svg){kind=link}