Why is NEC NYP to New Haven so slow?

CPSK wrote:This country could have had a much more modern passenger rail system, if someone had foreseen the need back in the '50s and '60s when the Interstate highway system was being designed. If, for example enough land could have been acquired for the I-95 corridor to add a high-speed rail line alongside, rail travel would have been a whole lot better today. Not only could the curves and bridges been built for higher speeds, being so close to the roadway, access to stations would have been so much better, so park & ride systems could have worked much better.

The Connecticut Turnpike (which pre-dates the Interstate Highway System, by the way) doesn't take a notably straighter route than the New Haven Line through lower Fairfield and New Haven counties. They both wind around quite a bit, which is a function of the geography of this part of Connecticut: a long series of steep, rocky ridges running N-S, with rivers in between that turn into harbors at salt water. There are in fact several places where 95 and the railroad run parallel within a hundred yards of each other-- in Greenwich, for instance, or between the Saugatuck River bridge and Southport. In fact, you could argue that the railroad takes a more direct route through Milford than the highway-- probably because even in the 1950's, demolishing half of downtown for a highway was a non-starter.

deathtopumpkins wrote:The new Tappan Zee Bridge is designed to support a future rail line. The main reason it is not being built with one already is lack of anticipated demand for rail service across the Hudson up there.

You also have to consider geography. The Nyack approach to the bridge is very steep, and the right-of-way is already very constrained. Where would a rail line go? And then on the Tarrytown side, sure, the Hudson line is right on the river, but the bridge is a lot higher up - you'd have to split the rail from the road bridge then build a long trestle to grade the rail line down to the Hudson.

I believe the plan envisioned using a spiral tunnel through the hills on the Tarrytown end, not a trestle, to bring the line down from the bridge to the level of the Hudson Division.

The reality is that there is no feasible way to create an HSR corridor from NYC - New Haven on the Shoreline given the topography and population density of the surrounding area. An 'Air Line' route cutting through the interior of Connecticut and Rhode Island into Massachusetts (assuming a BOS terminus) is the only alignment which would enable true HSR running. Given the improvement in running times from say NYC-PVD/BOS, this supposed line could be for the 'Premium' HSR service while the current alignment services the 'Regional' trains.

The Shoreline more or less 'is what it is,' a commuter railroad in a densely populated area. Getting the line to a good state of repair, eliminating slow orders and crippling delays caused by stuck bridges and the like, should be the objective. Marginal improvements to add capacity and or improve speeds can be undertaken, but we'd be talking in the low single digit minute improvement versus the tens or beyond.

CPSK wrote:This country could have had a much more modern passenger rail system, if someone had foreseen the need back in the '50s and '60s when the Interstate highway system was being designed. If, for example enough land could have been acquired for the I-95 corridor to add a high-speed rail line alongside, rail travel would have been a whole lot better today. Not only could the curves and bridges been built for higher speeds, being so close to the roadway, access to stations would have been so much better, so park & ride systems could have worked much better.

Ridgefielder wrote:The Connecticut Turnpike (which pre-dates the Interstate Highway System, by the way)

Messrs. CPSK and Ridgefield, I have to take exception with one each of your points as captioned above.

"To have acquired enough land" was simply not an option even during the postwar years during which "The Thruway" as it was referred to back then. As a six yo living in Cos Cob, I can remember my Mother and Father having "emotional" discussions to the effect of "Fred, they are going to build it right over our house (sobs)". Now Alice, we will just move it that happens" (that house is 11 Mead Ave; Mr. Google will show you how close the highway came).

We did move to Riverside during '51. There were "holdouts" over there as well; one house had construction proceeding on either side until finally the owner went "Kubler-Ross Phase V ".

I can further recall hearing my Grandmother talking about when "The Parkway", as in Merritt, was laid out during the Depression. Even with people desperately needing work, those up in "Back Greenwich", like my Grandmother, who once said there were friends who were no longer that over the Parkway.

With land @ well over "an M an acre" throughout Fairfield County, good luck having such an initiative move forth.

Regarding Mr. Ridgefield's captioned point, the Connecticut Turnpike was designated I-95 straight from its 1957 ribbon cutting. It was toll ($.25 each gate), but there plenty of segments you could use it for free. Under the IHAct, highways that needed tolls to be built, had to remove them as soon as the financing (bonds) was retired.

Connecticut kept their word on that point.

^^ I don't think the tollbooths were removed as a result of paying off bonds; rather it was that 1983 trucker who failed to stop and killed several.

Indeed Mr. Rohr; 1983 was not the best of years for the Connecticut Turnpike;

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Also, lest we not forget this little incident - also during 1983. I was "out" for a family visit when that occurred. Oh what fun getting to LGA for a flight home:

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However the removal of tolls during 1985 had nothing to do with these incidents and everything to do with paying off the bonds.

I guess Connecticut enjoys their status of being toll free throughout the State. Let's see how.long that remains fact.

Toll highways ARE getting greedy of late:

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Sorry Mr Norman, but you are incorrect on this one. The CT Turnpike tolls were most definitely removed because of "safety concerns" after that horrific crash.

Nothing in any piece of federal legislation required tolls to be removed after bonds were paid off. The CT Turnpike construction bonds were paid off before 1983 anyway.

The relevant laws concerning tolls on interstate highways prevent tolls from being imposed on existing interstates that were constructed and/or maintained with federal funding (most of them), except new capacity (e.g. HO/T lanes), and except for a couple states participating in a pilot program, which are subject to restrictions on what the money can be used for.

I fear drifting too far off topic here, but if anyone is ever curious about the legalities of tolling, feel free to shoot me a message - I'm a consultant with a firm that does a lot of tolling work (and has a significant presence in Connecticut).

The former Toll Plaza site at the Conn/NY state line(Greenwich) was turned into a Scale House and truck inspection site.
A good chunk of the CT Pike was built as elevated roadway from Greenwich thru Bridgeport,and was a bit "tight" on today's Tractor-Trailers
that have 53 ft trailers. After the the bridge collapse at Riverside,ConnDot started the "Whole Hog" rebuild of the elevated roadway that
still lingers on to this day.

Don't think that the New Haven Line will ever be straightened out. The Curves and Commuter Traffic will keep speeds in the 50-70 mph
range as the "Moveable Bridges" get replaced over time.

I showed calculations years ago, even if there is no other trains and max track speed were 110 mph, due to the amount of unavoidable restrictions, it would only be a 4 1/2 minute gain.

There's an interesting "takeaway" from our discussion about the lack of speed through this Southwestern (NY,NH,&H) Connecticut corridor.

There doesn't have to be.

Even if somehow it were upgraded to 110 MAS, Mr. Railnut, who likely has as much knowledge of such as anyone around here in its publicly owned era, notes that some four minutes would be saved - hardly enough to make Acela speed competitive with air travel in the LGA-BOS market.

The time saving for a Greenwich-GCT commuter would be "non-existent", maybe a couple of minutes on the Norwalk-NY "Nonstop" noted earlier.

Anyone who drives the 95 through the region knows they won't win a race. Better have an origin or destination well away from train service; we'll unless you have your "helo LZ" at your Back Greenwich "digs" and you chopper off to Wall Street (if local ordinances even permit such).

So if a public(NYC/MTA)/private investment put up beaucoup $ to build a 10-15 mile bridge/tunnel carrying road and rail from Old Saybrook area to Greenport and erect catenary and extra track where needed on the LIRR's relatively straight Main Line west to Jamaica/NYP, a bunch of slow curves / drawbridges would be avoided (and a lot of New England to LI auto traffic would be removed from I-95 and the Throg's Neck Bridge). Plus Long Island's 7.75M people would have single seat access to New England and Philadelphia/DC. But I'm dreaming...

Mr. Norman's comments certainly struck a cord with me: my parents owned a property on the Mianus River in Cos Cob to the north of the NHRR and another property in Riverside to the south of the NHRR. For some time there was a whip lash of changing proposed routes for the New England Thruway some of which would take one property and then the other property and once, both properties! In the end, it took neither. I remember on the Marriott Parkway what we called the "Rockefeller Curve" given that the road took a large curve to avoid property of some member of that powerful family. Sadly, when I was, in 1964, going to Columbia B School, my favorite book, "Megalopolis, ...." by Jean Gottman was ignored by transportation planners as it laid out the demographics of what we now call the NEC, Boston to WDC. If you read the history of the NYNH&H RR, you will see that it was formed by the linking of numerous short lines which had been developed to tie small cities/towns along the shores crossing numerous rivers and inlets which are the geography of New England. Probably why water borne commerce was so competitive as a straight line over water was far less trouble! If you are ever in Back Bay Station in Boston, look for the historic graphics on the walls, one is a reproduction of a NYNH&H ad for service to Providence, RI: " 45 miles in 45 minutes" by steam which the Acela now does in something like the same time the last time I rode Acela given numerous slow downs. I agree, clean up the existing route, keep scheduled time and don't try to make a silk purse out of a pigs ear.

TomNelligan wrote: The maximums were never higher than they are now. In the 1950s and 1960s, the New Haven's basic passenger speed limit between Woodlawn and New Haven was 70 mph with much the same collection of curve and bridge restrictions that are in place today.

Well, not really ........... actually NH had far fewer speed-restricted spots than MN as today --- and I daresay the track was not even as well engineered then. Here's what a NH timetable for 1959 shows for the electric zone (Once clear of Woodlawn interlocking):
curve at New Rochelle Jct: 35
Reverse curve going through Rye: 65
East Portchester curve: 40
Curve west of Stamford: 65
Curve at SS 44 South Norwalk: 45
Jenkins Curve Bridgeport: 30

..... and that was all!! No drawbridge restrictions at all

However, Tom is right that the highest speed was only 70 then --- not 80 as it is in many locations today

And, oh yes: the Merchants made GCT-New Haven in 81 minutes

Speeds--both New Haven Line and I-95 on the Shoreline--are a function of where the people need to go. There's no break in the megalopolis between NYP and NHV...not even a few stretches of swamp like there is in New Jersey. It's an unbroken density wall with too many trips going into the density wall and intra- density wall to make a bypass on any mode feasible. NEC FUTURE's Westchester-Hartford bypass is a nonstarter simply because you can't skip Stamford, Bridgeport, and New Haven for Danbury and Waterbury in any service scenario and have it be useful. Too high a share of the NYP-BOS travel market has some stopover business on the Shoreline for the margins to work. And that would've been the same problem had I-95 taken a straighter route a couple miles inland from the downtowns. The local density is a feature, not a bug.

The best thing you can do for the New Haven Line is simply get the physical plant to a full state-of-repair and the ops as clean and precise as possible. That's already paying dividends with the constant-tension project, and there's another 11 figures worth of SGR improvements to go from there. Chop out the schedule uncertainty so everything is flowing nice and smoothly with as much 99%+ reliability as an up-to-spec railroad can be dispatched, and the schedules--both commuter and intercity--will trim a little bit of time on excess padding. We're still so far in the hole on SGR it's still a wholly abstract concept what a more reliable, less-overpadded New Haven Line would look like on the clock. It won't be revolutionarily better, but as many people in this thread have attested the NYNH&H didn't exactly take good care of its premier asset in the decades after electrification so there's no one alive who can tell us what a true full-SGR best-case actually looks like. That state of repair, and those optimized schedule margins achievable with full state-of-repair, are still future-tense.

And you can say the same for I-95. No need for dramatic straightening, but the Interstate's SGR needs include upgrades to the spots where the legacy road is most obsolete compared to modern Interstate standards. Particularly the places where past widenings and rebuilds still leave unsatisfactory traces of the original Turnpike's geometry. Ramps and merges, not raw capacity or mainline geometry, tend to be the biggest sticking points there. Redoing interchange ramps for modern acceleration/deceleration room, fixing excessively tight spacing of exits, and widening for full right- and left-shoulder (NOT travel lane) width tend to be the biggest operational improvements one can make today. Especially since add-a-lane projects have such a short shelf life for their excessive cost before induced demand swallows the gained capacity.

Flow matters. Schedule margins matter. In that sense the needs of BOTH of Fairfield & New Haven Counties' multimodal corridors--the New Haven Line and I-95--are very much similar going forward. Because their primary need is to reach the density they each plow through, not skip more of it faster. Better reliability through modernization is the be-all/end-all value proposition, and the treatment is much the same whether on a rail or asphalt trunk.

I think this inquiry is on-topic here, but I must wonder when COB (I think that is correct PC-ese; the New Haven was simply numbers), or the Mianus River bridge, is on the wish list to be replaced?

Talk about "sport", that will be it. Lest we forget, the half-hour frequency Stamford Local is unaffected by Norwalk.

I wonder what kind of bridge someone has in mind. If a lift bridge as in Norwalk, I can hear the Riverside NIMBYS, either along Club Road or at the Club itself, wailing about how unsightly such would be. Maybe the existing Bascule with underside counterweights will be replaced.

Finally, and I can think of pro and con, how about a fixed bridge with 70' MHW clearance like the Morano (95) has?

Yes, I know I'm addressing CDOT owned facilities, but then, how about the 40 some Amtrak Daily movements?

Penn Central put most of the drawbridge restrictions in place but most of them should have been put in by the NHRR way back when. The New Haven did have a 40 MPH on track 4 at Westport for a long time, I don't remember whether it was by B/O or in the timetable but it was there. The drawbridge restrictions were not a big deal with electric power but with the FL-9's they added minutes to the schedule which with FL-9's was often not possible to maintain anyway.
Noel Weaver