JCGUY wrote:Those of you interested in this project might want to get on the PA's website. The construction committee's video record of the public meeting held on March 28 describes the project partly in detail and partly in broad strokes (i.e., they have a specific idea of what they want built and where but they have not commenced final design work). The project is fairly complex, essentially involving the building of four separate headhouse structures. The presenter took the view that additional modern head houses on the east side of Rodgers Blvd. would come on line two years after construction commences. Commencement of construction is going to hinge on completion of property acquisition, demolition, remediation and probably nuisance permitting and other matters left undiscussed, as well as final design I suppose.
There was a reference in the meeting to the "realignment" of NEC and PATH tracks. There was no explanation of that statement. Given the lack of explanation, I suppose the alignment alteration is a simple matter of moving tracks slightly to align to new platform configurations. I was wondering, however, whether anyone knew if the new station contemplates an alignment change that would allow for additional through tracks in the area for NEC movements?
First of all, thank you for posting the link.
My interpretation is that the plan discussed at said meeting involves simply realigning the curve east of Harrison station. It seemed as if there would be sufficient new ROW acquired to shift the eastward PATH main "inside" of where it is in the curve to allow Amtrak to add more tracks.
Not that a peon like me would have any sway, but I still view the separate platforms--with a total of four headhouses to boot--as a cumbersome design. I'd much rather have the PA take five or six years to build a consolidated, island-platform station than move forward with the current plan in three years and lock themselves and Amtrak into the current track/station layout.
As far as I could understand, the expenditure of funds is well on its way to being approved in advance of the capital program for the next ten years being approved. That being said, a couple of people had concerns about doing that. If the PA decides to wait for the capital program, I'd think there would be a window to redo the plans for more extensive mods to the track configuration.