Why doesn't Amtrak have more stations around NYC?

[EuroStar]

A Sunnyside station is useless for Amtrak. It could have some utility to LIRR and Metro-North, but Amtrak will not gain much from it. If our hypothetical passenger is getting to Sunnyside via LIRR or Metro-North before boarding the Amtrak train to Boston or DC, he could have very well taken the same LIRR or Metro-North train to Penn and boarded Amtrak there. The likely time savings are small enough that there is not much difference between the total number of passengers who would be willing to take the extra time and go to Penn vs the total number of passengers who could do the transfer at Sunnyside. The other alternative for the passenger is to drive to Sunnyside, to walk or to take the subway to there. There are not enough passengers to justify this for an Amtrak stop. Why would someone from Long Island fight the traffic to just part at Sunnyside? A few will, most won't. Why would someone be willing to take the subway to Sunnyside, but not to Penn? From most locations the difference in time is minor. So you really lose only the people who would walk to Sunnyside. Even with all the condos and other stuff going on in Long Island City that just is not enough passengers to justify it.

Secaucus is a different story. Not stopping a couple of regionals there is idiotic. Nobody in their right mind will take a NJ transit train on say the Bergen Line to Secaucus to take another NJ transit train to Newark to get onto an Amtrak train to DC. Do you know what people hate more than switching trains? Switching trains two times. Yes, the Bergen County person can drive to Newark and park there, and I am sure that some do, but getting to Newark and parking there just is not all that convenient that most people would do it. On top of that there are generations of adults who were taught to never go into Newark and would never go there regardless. Some actually drive down to Metropark for this exact reason, but going to Metropark is not really convenient if your destination is the other way, say Boston. Secaucus also has the space for parking garages to be build and is conveniently on the highway, so in this way it is very similar to Metropark. I am certainly not implying that Amtrak needs to stop every train at Secaucus, but stopping a couple the way it is done for Princeton Junction is likely to get them some more passengers that they are currently missing upon. Bergen County plus Orange and Rockland in NY is quite large in terms of population and there is ridership to be had there as I know nobody in these places that likes to go to NYP, LGA or JFK to catch a train or a plane if they can avoid it. Also anyone claiming that stopping more trains at Secaucus cannot be done because it would reduce the total number of trains between NYP and Newark Penn needs to be reminded that the current bottleneck is the tunnels, not Secaucus Station which has 4 tracks. Indeed currently it is very easy to observe delays at Secaucus because the trains that stop there need to wait for the ones that do not stop to pass. The current schedule interleaving Secaucus stopping trains with Amtrak and NJT expresses is terrible for avoiding delays as it assumes very careful interleaving of the trains which probably has never occurred as planned over the course of any consecutive 24 hours.

[SouthernRailway]

Thanks, everyone (including ThirdRail7). People have made very good points above.

It does make sense to have an Amtrak stop at Secaucus. I agree.

[Ridgefielder]

If I am missing your original point - then what is it ???
MACTRAXX

My point is that if Amtrak had a station that is more convenient to Long Island than NY Penn is, then Amtrak would gain Boston-NY-DC ridership from people who fly from LaGuardia because LaGuardia is so convenient to Long Island.

If that's a false statement, please explain why. Yes, people could take a LIRR train all the way to NYP and then transfer to the Acela, but someone in Oyster Bay won't do that unless the person has to start or end in Manhattan due to work. The person in Oyster Bay will just fly from LGA because it's closer than NYP.

But LGA would be closer to Oyster Bay no matter what you do. The Hell Gate Route is 1.5mi west of LaGuardia. You cross under it on the Grand Central Parkway on the way into Manhattan from the airport; the bridge is under your starboard wing if you approach LGA from the north. And any conceivable station location would be a driving nightmare to access. You're either taking the Long Island Expressway all the way to the Midtown Tunnel portal or hoping off the highway and driving through Sunnyside on Queens Blvd or Woodside on Northern Blvd.

The slog through Queens on either I-495 or the Parkways is the worst part of the whole drive into the city from Eastern LI. A station at Sunnyside or Woodside would do nothing to eliminate that. If it's better Amtrak access you're after you'd be better off running a high speed ferry from Oyster Bay to Stamford, Port Jeff to Bridgeport, or Orient to New London.

[mtuandrew]

Metro-North Penn Station Access has a planned station at Hunts Point that would be a good jumping-off point for an LGA bus. No Ditmars station though, where the N line crosses the Hell Gate Line. That does seem like an obvious triple LGA AirTrain - NYC Subway - Metro-North station with possibility of Amtrak stopping there, if Amtrak and MTA are willing to build platforms kind of hanging off the side of the viaduct.

[Roadgeek Adam]

Metro-North Penn Station Access has a planned station at Hunts Point that would be a good jumping-off point for an LGA bus. No Ditmars station though, where the N line crosses the Hell Gate Line. That does seem like an obvious triple LGA AirTrain - NYC Subway - Metro-North station with possibility of Amtrak stopping there, if Amtrak and MTA are willing to build platforms kind of hanging off the side of the viaduct.

I have actually looked at Morris Park as the better bus stop because you are only a few blocks from going over the Bronx Whitestone Bridge. (I have had a discussion offsite about this exact concept.)

[CTRailfan]

I am certainly not implying that Amtrak needs to stop every train at Secaucus, but stopping a couple the way it is done for Princeton Junction is likely to get them some more passengers that they are currently missing upon.

The problem with the Regionals that make smaller stops is that they stagger which ones make which smaller stops to keep scheduled times down, but the result is that it's really hard to get some smaller station to smaller station, and some, like Mystic, CT, end up with only a couple of trains a day, even though it's a great walkable station. They should have half the regionals just run the major stations, and the other half as "milk run" locals for people who want to go to smaller stations, have the full range of connectivity, and don't mind a somewhat longer ride. Bridgeport should get more service too, but they need a new train station with island platforms, and a Devon Transfer station for Metro North to keep some of the Waterbury trains out of Bridgeport as the current combination is a huge bottleneck during rush hour.

At Seacaucus, that whole thing is built on a swamp, but they could probably figure out how to drill to bedrock and build a garage on top of the Edison Parkfast, as that's a great location for access to the NJ Turnpike. It would be more challenging at Hunt's Point, but there are a few parking lots and truck lots that might be able to be turned into vertical real estate for a parking garage, leaving the ground level for the current parking or trucks.

It would be... challenging to say the least to make a station at Ditmars, as the Hell Gate Line is 100' up in the air. Even if technically possible, it would be rather ugly and absurdly expensive relative to what you get out of it.

The Bay Ridge Branch and Hell Gate Lines should be really re-imagined, as just using them for through Amtrak trains is a massive waste of the real estate available for a 4+ track electrified railroad. The first step is the Cross-Harbor freight rail tunnel, which would be great for New York and Southern New England, but relevant to Amtrak/MNRR/TriBoroRX, would allow industries in Queens and The Bronx to be switched out of Oak Island, de-clogging the logjam at Fresh Pond, as well as Oak Point. It would make sense for TriBoroRX to be FRA Heavy Rail with slightly smaller cars and on-train ticketing (exchange a MetroCard swipe for a ticket), allowing intermixing with freight trains, Amtrak, and MNRR, and allowing it to go from Newark to Co-Op City via the Bay Ridge. MNRR Penn trains would inter-mingle with Amtrak and TriBoroRX on a 4-track line over the Hell Gate up to a spur where TriBoroRX would break off to go to Co-Op City, and Amtrak and MNRR Penn would condense to two tracks to get across the Hutchinson River, with passing sidings north of there to sort out trains before they hit Metro North at New Rochelle. Oak Point to Co-Op City is a 6-track ROW, so there's plenty of space for 4 tracks plus station platforms, and any needed sidings for MOW or whatever between stations.

The challenge with MNRR Penn is that there is limited capacity on both the train and people sides of the equation until MSG is torn down, and Penn is rebuilt.

It's one of the smallest, if not the smallest, major airports in the world. There are only two 7,000' runways, both of which end in water (anyone who's ever flown into LGA knows the eerie feeling that your plane is going to ditch in Long Island Sound when you're on final approach.) The terminal buildings are so cramped that certain aircraft types can't access certain gates. The place has no margin for error in terms of operations-- one thing going wrong can result in cascading delays.

Some airport terminals in the US don't have enough capacity, but we don't have a runway capacity issue- just a runway utilization problem. JFK was never built to be a hub, it should not be operated as a hub. But the bigger issue is 50- and 75-seat barbie jets flying all over the place, clogging up runways. If all planes had at least 143 seats on them, and even larger planes were used for popular routes, we'd need fewer flights for the same number of passengers, and we'd have more runway slots than we know what to do with. Some small and redundant airports need to be cut off the map completely, and others need to go from 6 or 8 or 10 flights a day to 2 or 3 or 4. There are also some short flights that just make no sense, both to small rural airports, and up and down the NEC, and then there's the hilarious case of JFK-MVY, which would be faster to run with a boat than a plane. Or Amtrak could bring the Cape Codder back.

Cannot imagine a SSY passenger to WASH being told Standing room only to NYP?

Ticket it the same price as from NYP, let the people who just got on go SRO for 5 minutes. And if anyone complains, tell them they didn't pay for the ride from Sunnyside to NYP, only NYP to PHL, WAS or wherever they are going, Amtrak just stops at Sunnyside as a courtesy stop.

I would think Jamaica, of course. Woodside would be a possibility. Any of the island terminals, though, would be operationally difficult.

Beyond that, Ronk, Patchogue, Montauk?

That's a really interesting thought. I do think Amtrak should get more creative with where their trains go. Having trains go from WAS to LI would be interesting, if operationally a challenge. They'd have to have something like an ALP-45DP if not something that could run on PRR 3rd rail to run on to LI, but that would also open up a lot of possibilities like the Cape Codder, a train to Mohegan Sun from NYP, and more service via the inland route through Springfield in addition to what they offer on the NEC, which is limited by the bridges timetable north of NHV. A high-speed ferry to Bridgeport is interesting, but I don't know if there is anywhere a big boat could go that is near where the new station is going to be, as the current ferry dock goes to the old station, which will no longer be an Amtrak station, and will be used for MN only. New London has less potential for high-speed ferry connections, as the Long Island side is way out there.

[CTRailfan]

Everyone's in agreement with that. The whole NEC just needs to be four-tracked DC to NYP.

Ultimately, yes. The Gateway Project will bring it up to 3 tracks for some number of years while the current North River Tunnels are taken out of service one at a time for repairs, which is a HUGE improvement, and then eventually 4 tracks when the refurbishment is completed. However, to start off, isn't there still capacity mid-day?

Service to Long Island is very interesting. The LIRR has it's whole own host of problems, but once they get the third track completed in 2022, Amtrak to Jamaica, Hicksville, and Ronkonkoma would be quite interesting, if very operationally challenging since LIRR basically operates on it's own planet outside of CP Herald, the East River Tunnels, and NYP, and you'd need dual-mode locomotives of some sort. Operating to/from the WAS direction makes the most sense, as there is no direct way to go towards BOS.

The platform on the track 4 side also serves track 6, next to the wall. Operationally, it's not unusual for a westbound Amtrak NER stopping a NRO to make its stop on the track 4 side. That way, they are already to go directly to the Pelham Bay line, instead of tying up Shell by crossing all tracks.

Yeah, they re-arranged the control point and operations a while back so that Amtrak and MN traffic gets sorted out farther up the line and all Amtrak trains use the island platform as opposed to causing a big bottleneck at Shell, where it would be virtually impossible to put in a flyover, so they have to work with what they've got. I'm not sure if there's any value in re-configuring New Rochelle as two Island platforms since a lot of trains don't stop there now anyway.

The most logical rail route to LGA would be again an extension of the N Line from
Astoria which has been subject to extremely shortsighted (my opinion) NIMBY opposition.

Yes, it would by far make the most sense. The proposal to come from Citi Field is idiotic, as it would take longer for almost everyone, and is more indirect than just extending the subway. In the long run, it would be worthwhile to compensate property owners directly affected by the new line.

A NEC intercity route across Long Island would be subject to a variety of problems with LIRR train
traffic congestion in Queens and Nassau Counties and possible NIMBY opposition in other areas
(Example: The LIRR Main Line on the North Fork between Riverhead and Greenport - 21 miles- has
had a 40 mph speed limit - residents are reluctant to allow an increase to even 65 mph which is
MAS in diesel territory) along with a bridge/tunnel between Orient Point and the New London, CT
area that alone is going to cost literally billions of dollars and take a period of multi years to build.

I believe we need to invest trillions into rail infrastructure in the US, with widespread high-speed lines and electrification, and the LIS tunnel idea is a bit far fetched even to me. I'd make major improvements to LIRR, improve ferry service and call it a day. I'd run WAS-NYP (with intermediate stops), stop at Jamaica, Hicksville, and Ronkonkoma, and call it a day. That could be done without major changes to track infrastructure, like with ALP-45DP type locomotives that could also serve Empire Connection, Springfield, etc, etc.