CTDOT: Hartford Line

[Traingeek3629]

I'm going to try and find a break to get out to hopefully New Haven or Wallingford tomorrow and see how things are going. It seems like people are really using SLE/HL for travel; I just drove by Madison station and there were 8 or so cars with their lights on in the lot waiting to pick people up as 1668 rolled in.

[Jeff Smith]

ADMIN NOTE: For discussion of the AMTRAK NEC Inland service between New Haven, Springfield, the Valley Flyer, and any potential inland routing: AMTRAK NEC: Springfield Shuttle/Regional/Valley Flyer

[JcPinCT]

https://www.masslive.com/news/2019/12/h ... iving.html

"The Hartford Line commuter rail service attracted record ridership during Thanksgiving weekend, the Connecticut Department of Transportation announced Tuesday."

"In 2018, more than 3,500 passengers chose CTrail and Amtrak the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, setting a one-day ridership record for the Hartford Line, which started operating the previous June. This year the Hartford Line carried more than 4,000 riders the Wednesday before Thanksgiving — a new ridership record, CTDOT said."

[lordsigma12345]

ADMIN NOTE: For discussion of the AMTRAK NEC Inland service between New Haven, Springfield, the Valley Flyer, and any potential inland routing: AMTRAK NEC: Springfield Shuttle/Regional/Valley Flyer

Any discussion of the MRS line can easily overlap between the Amtrak and ctrail trains as they really operate as one. In fact Amtrak now calls the Springfield Shuttles “Hartford Line.” Might it make more sense to do one thread for all MRS/Hartford Line and one for Valley Flyer/Vermonter/east-west inland discussion?

[Jeff Smith]

In response ^, and I appreciate the input:

This thread concerns the Hartford Line numbered trains operated by a third party. That would include infill stations, related equipment, schedules, so on.

The Amtrak thread concerns the physical infrastructure that Amtrak owns (the line itself), and Amtrak numbered trains. I know they've renamed the shuttle trains, but that's how we kind of all think of them.

There will be some natural overlap, of course. For now, though, until it's a truly integrated service, I'd rather keep them separate.

[lordsigma12345]

Understood, it's just given the integrated nature of the service, fares, and schedule there's probably always going to be discussion on either thread that may venture into both.

[gokeefe]

That article mentions a very impressive level of service ... Extras running 5 minutes behind Amtrak ... Might as well be second sections. And they did it all day long no less. Nice to see what Amtrak can do when they can control the tracks.

[daybeers]

What's the deal with real-time data on the CTrail trains? Do we have to wait for new equipment or is it something that can be installed in the GP40 engines? Or can it just be done with signal or PTC data? I rarely take the Amtrak trains, because I'm usually with my bike and only the CTrail trains allow bikes until Amtrak gets the Amfleet replacements, and I miss the real-time data of the app. Besides, it can just be integrated into that long-promised ticketing app that's...where?

On the upside, the trains that I take are nearly always on time, and if not, only a minute or two behind.

[nomis]

If you look at your display signs at the stations, they have the real time info being fed right into them

[jxzz]

Not quite. I took one time in the weekend the Amtrak Hartford Line to Springfield. The real-time did not show anything delay until the last five minutes, suddenly delay for 10 minutes. Did three times total ending up total delay of 30 minutes.

Obviously the delay of 30 minutes should have been obvious at New Haven while I was standing waiting in Berlin. But Amtrak dragged on until last minutes to make the real-time at station useless.

[gregorygrice]

CTrail trains have GPS that feed live information to the boards at each station on the line, except for New Haven & State St.

[jxzz]

I hope some app can track this GPS and give riders real time info on cell phones. I know Metro North trains have that, not aware of that for CTrail.

[daybeers]

They have said in the past that real-time info won't be integrated into the ticketing app. No idea why if it's true that the CTrail engines feed GPS data to the station boards.

[Traingeek3629]

Heritage 145 along with a Amfleet and a Metroliner came down the NEC a few nights ago on Night Owl 65. Did that consist go somewhere else or come back to the Hartford Line that day?

EDIT: Looking through other videos, it seems to have done this before.

[Traingeek3629]

I'm going to breathe some life back into the thread with an open discussion topic: New Stations.

Which, When, Where, etc. Go.