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| Re: ARC to GCT - Why Not the Option of Choice? (880113) | |||
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Re: ARC to GCT - Why Not the Option of Choice? |
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Posted by WillD on Wed Dec 30 00:03:15 2009, in response to Re: ARC to GCT - Why Not the Option of Choice?, posted by JayMan on Tue Dec 29 23:12:44 2009. But the depth that is needed for the new tunnels seems to be a problem for NJ if their diesels can't make the climb out, no matter what alignment they use.The simplest alternative to that problem would simply be to scrap the dual fails, spend the $350 million we're blowing on them on around 100 route miles of electrification and 20 or so electric locomotives. That'd likely get us the WORM gap on the M&E to Mt Arlington, the southern NJCL, and the RVL to Raritan. The commuters on the Erie lines can continue to change at Secaucus and Hoboken and the loop really doesn't have to be built. At the very least they'd have nearly twice as many trains to choose from at Secaucus. I really like the prospect of a yard in the Meadowlands on the former Boonton line accessible to both the NEC and a Jersey City tunnel to downtown, but it's not absolutely necessary at this point. Maybe when the Erie lines are electrified to Suffern we can talk about constructing the loop. Now I really wish there were some form of regional coordination amongst the various infrastructure creation efforts in the NY Metro area. We probably could have preserved the NYP track 1-5 connection to the ARC tunnel if the MTA had just pushed the 7 train's tail tracks a bit to the west. Instead they sit in the top of the bedrock exactly where any reasonable connector to the ARC tunnels would pass. How about connecting the NJ tunnels to the LIRR level of GCT? That's a possibility, and one I argued for in the past. But the 63rd St tunnel is much too small to accommodate the AC wire NJT needs to power their trains. Indeed it is possible it is too small to accomodate even the physical profile of their Multilevel trains, or perhaps even the single level Comet cars. So we'd have to change NJT's rolling stock to work with the third rail and fit within the 63rd St tunnel's loading gauge. That is an expensive prospect given that their equipment is amongst the youngest in the Northeast. And of course running NJT's trains through the 63rd St tunnel would require the LIRR to do the same, passing through the ARC terminal and on a yard in the NJ Meadowlands. With 3 tracks at NYP, and 4 at GCT dedicated to each agency depending on peak flow, and agressive fumigation (which in theory could be done at Sunnyside or Secaucus) it is possible 8 trains per hour per track could be squeezed through the two stations. The ESA terminal may actually turn 24tph, so this really isn't an improvement, but for NJT, if my guess is correct and they end up at 18tph then they'd have a net gain. It's possible a through-running agreement could be developed out of this project. But as with NYP that would require an enormous number of technical, political, and bureaucratic hurdles to be jumped before it could come about. It's also possible we could dig NJT a second 8 track cavern next to the ESA terminal, but the M42 substation is down there somewhere to get in the way, as are the escalator passages for the LIRR terminal. Finally with us already spending a very large amount of money on the Hudson tunnel and the ARC cavern station we'd be hard pressed to fund another, larger cavern and connecting tunnel to GCT. Given these constraints I think it is best to simply keep the LIRR in the 63rd, keep NJT in the ARC tunnel, and give them their own ways out of the city. But of course we can't have them entirely separated, because the NY Metro area's inner urban subcenters are becoming bigger players in the region's job market and we cannot expect all commuters to travel solely to a job center within easy access of NYP or GCT. Thus it makes sense to distribute the Manhattan stations along a north-south axis, and include Brooklyn and Jersey City into the system. And because of the variety of destinations for the city's commuters it'd be helpful to allow for easy transfers between the eastern and western commuter rail systems without entering into all the garbage surrounding through running. Finally we may as well shoot for the sort of capacity a through running agreement seeks to provide without delving into the many issues surrounding it. If I do say so myself my commuter tunnel running the length of Manhattan is the best compromise between capacity, compatibility, convenience, and the political reality of getting something built. IMHO it's a hell of a lot easier to scrape together 20 billion dollars than to try to convince NJ they won't be taken advantage of by the MTA. 
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