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| Re: Lack of funds for maintenance clogs busy NJ Transit rail system (1173866) | |||
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Re: Lack of funds for maintenance clogs busy NJ Transit rail system |
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Posted by WillD on Wed Aug 22 16:22:38 2012, in response to Re: Lack of funds for maintenance clogs busy NJ Transit rail system, posted by Chris R16/R2730 on Wed Aug 22 12:25:56 2012. You do realize Amtrak is the only way the NEC is getting the desperately needed PORTAL bridge replacement now, right? Turning the NEC over to NJT would only have resulted in Chrisco killing that absolutely vital project along with ARC. As it was because PORTAL was a federal project it was able to skate past the idiocy relatively unharmed.Re-allocate about half the current funding being wasted on HSR work to upgrading the NEC. Abandon HSR and concentrate on maximizing the existing system Go ODS! Never mind that those "HSR" improvements you'd eliminate would go a long way toward removing the conflicts with Amtrak trains you complain about immediately before this entry. Double-track and fully electrify the Waterfront Connection to allow more reverse peak Newark Division trains to originate from Hoboken You're not going to do that project for 5 trains per day. Fully utilizing the investment, especially for a grade separated junction, will require allocating some NEC trains to those tracks, and those passengers will *not* be happy with the prospect of eight car trains showing up at Newark. Longer term, adding an extra tube to the Hudson River and adding additional platforms south of track 1 and 2 to double peak direction capacity is the best answer, financially. All the proposed expansions are too expensive. One extra tube because we have of course perfected matter transporters to teleport deadhead trains back to NJ, right? Then there's the small, inconvenient fact that shallow trench construction of the sort required to expand the NYP trench to the south is absolutely the most expensive manner of adding station capacity. Just look at the price increase of Gateway over ARC, despite the marginal increase in utility. But then you're being penny wise and pound foolish, trading relatively cheap tunnel construction for inordinately expensive station construction. Better to build two new tubes in the short term, leave a number of provisions to serve additional platforms in the future. For now we'd utilize the tunnels's capacity by improving utilization of NYP platforms through a tightening up of operating procedures. Then, when NYP's capacity is truly maxed out, we can build the (again, very expensive) terminal improvements, but with some flexibility thanks to provisions made in the construction of the two new tubes. |
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