Albuquerque New Mexico Rail Runner Railrunner

byte wrote:I think we're at a point now where we can't "fail" when it comes to mass transit. The age of the automobile is clearly on the downfall, and people are becoming fed up with traffic and less hesitant to take a train. The real challenge comes with maximizing the effectiveness of the routings through careful planning. Cities like LA, Chicago, and NYC have had commuter service for years and already have massive rail infrastructures that the city has literally grown up around, and thus are in the "right place." Many of these inland, non-coastal cities have never had had commuter service (although they may have had interurban lines) and thus there's no "Union Station" to designate as a the downtown terminal and no previous routings to go by. This can be good because planners can start fresh, but they also have to be careful because passenger railroads are no longer built with corporate clout, and everything they do will be much harder to re-do should it prove to be necessary.

Washington's second largest city, Spokane (for the moment, Tacoma with Rail Transit sometimes looks like it is going to topple Spokane, and Vancouver could be number two if a few areas are annexed) is considering light rail, at least between Spokane and Liberty Lake. It might breathe new life into a stillborn transit interchange called the Plaza. It has eleven bus bays, most STA routes use it, and the plan is to run LRT in Downtown with street-running. The Plaza is about ten years old and is located a few blocks from the Spokane Intermodal Center (no longer a rail station, but more of a bus station that just happens to host Amtrak 7/8 and 27/28).

Gas in most of Washington's cities is between $2.80 and $3.30 per gallon; and the only rail transit we have is Sounder, with two round trips from Everett and four round trips from Tacoma. Next year will be five from Tacoma and the first reverse-commute trip. Not bad for seven years of improvements; and they have now carried five million riders since 2000. (The five-millionth passenger was not expected for three months. I guess $3 per gallon gasoline helps.)

I'm curious as to why they ordered new locomotives, rather than buy some of Amtrak's surplus diesel locomotives .

Today New Mexico, Tomorrow the World!

Brief passage:

Governor Bill Richardson, during the July 17 dedication ceremony of the New Mexico Rail Runner Express commuter service, said that train service from El Paso, Texas to Denver, Colorado is a vision that "will happen."

Richardson did not attach any timeline to the prospect nor talk about where funding would come from for such a lofty project. The current goal on the state's agenda is to expand service from Belen to Santa Fe by 2008.

New Mexico Business Weekly

David Benton, a new locomotive, among other things, is new. The F40PH, even when rebuilt, can still have age-related gremlins. The F40PH (I believe) is taller and heavier than the MP36PH-3C and it has 600 fewer horsepower. Also, why not give some business to the underdog?

• NMRX 105 at Denver CO 1/10/06
  105 and 102 at Albuquerque 3/5/06
  101 in Albuquerque Rail Yard 10/10/05

I don't think Mr. Benton is referring to the F40PHs, which are not "Amtrak surplus" (note that the former Amtrak F40PHs NJT leased from Railworld never turned a wheel in revenue service); he may be referring to the AMD-103 first-generation Genesis.

I wouldn't call Wabtec the "underdog" by any stretch...especially if they continue to use EMD prime-movers.

BTW, the MP36PH-3C, at 290,000 lbs, is taller and far heavier than any four-axle F40PH; in fact, it's at the axle load limits for a B-B diesel locomotive and unless weight comes down, later versions would need to be six-axle. Metra's MP36PH-3S cannot traverse the whole system due to weight restrictions at certain locations.

I really like the road runner painted on the trains, even if he'll be running backwards in push mode. I'm glad that more and more agencies are using clever paint schemes to attract passengers. It would be nice if some of the agencies in the Northeast would take a hint, but usually the large size of a fleet would prevent that kind of cost.

I saw a Railrunner commuter train utilized in a "Mythbusters" episode last night. The train had two MP36s with 4-5 cars. The cast of the show was trying to disprove a myth that standing too close to a moving train could cause a pedestrian to be sucked in towards the tracks. The test failed. It seems the force of the draft pushes things away from the train rather than towards it.

They had some cool shots of the train blowing through the station at speed.

I caught that same episode. Great show.

It's hard to see it now, but the main purpose of RailRunner is Albuquerque-Santa Fe traffic; the rest is just to make it as useful as possible within that framework. It's quite clear if you read the documents: there's a serious bottleneck in the roads between the two cities, and there's no plausible way to add roads because the Indian Pueblos will not allow it. (Good for them.) The current "Phase I" system is mostly because the mayor of Albuquerque wanted to get his end (the easy part) off the ground as fast as possible.

It's important to understand it in those terms. They expected low traffic until Phase II was built. They're already doing better than they predicted.

If phase II gets built, it will be an unqualified success: it will end up taking the majority of traffic between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, which is what it's really for.

As for Xponder: RailRunner has no federal funding,
so saying "The trains will run as long as federal funding exists" is pretty moronic. Plus which, expansion of the freeway system is obviously a complete waste of money, and is basically impossible because the Indian Pueblos will not allow it in their areas, so why do you even suggest it?

Noticed a very short report this A.M. on CNN Headline News that featured an aerial shot of what must have been a Roadrunner commuter train blasting through a large brush fire. Anyone have a full report on this? The report mentioned that following traffic was stopped until the fire was contained.

Rail Runner outruns wildfire

Rail passengers bused around fire

SLETA PUEBLO, N.M. -- Rail Runner officials want to know why they were not notified about a brush fire on Isleta pueblo Thursday evening.

That left passengers on a northbound commuter train to experience the drama of racing past approaching flames. Video from Skyranger 13 showed flames licking perilously close as the train sped past, and commuters told KRQE News 13 they could feel the heat.

But the man in charge of the Rail Runner, Mid-Region Council of Governments executive director Lawrence Rael, said the train was a safe distance from the fire..

Rael also it's the responsibility of local law enforcement and fire officials to call the BNSF Railway about any dangers near the tracks so dispatchers can stop approaching trains.

Rael says that didn't happen.

“The point being that emergency personnel responding to the fire did not use the protocol to get in touch with Burlington Northern to shut the train down,” Rael said.

Rael said he has talked with the governor of the Isleta Pueblo, and they agreed communication between fire personnel and the railroad needs to be improved.

KRQE News 13

I was in Albuquerque recently, and saw a midday departure from there north to Bernanillo. I was surprised to see about 30 people waiting for this train to come out of the yard and go north.

I headed north to Santa Fe, and was surprised to see very little in the way of towns between Bernanillo and Santa Fe.

Question: how's ridership figures, anyone know?

Well, they're adding extra cars to the runs, so I think I can safely say ridership is better than predicted.

http://www.nmrailrunner.com/news.asp

I've been following this one. It's an impressive example of how fast a system can get up and running if they don't ask for federal funding (==avoid paperwork) and push ahead aggressively.

They're building the extension to Santa Fe as we speak. No part of the project ever waits for any other part; for instance, the station plan for Zia Road and St. Francis Drive hasn't been agreed on, so they're going ahead and building the platforms now. They started digging the underpasses before the entire alignment had been finalized. Et cetera. They're expecting to be done by October (except for the station which is being put off), though they've given themselves until November.

They also just started building the Isleta Pueblo station, which was delayed due to negotiations with the tribe and the feds, I think; it's supposed to be done by November

Ridership stabilized at about 2500/day (peaks up to 6000/day) on the current line. The original (2005) estimate for ridership on the whole line to Santa Fe was 2900-3000/day, so it's clearly much more popular than expected. I read rumors that the current expectation is that ridership will double after the Santa Fe extension opens.

Santa Fe extension is scheduled to open "sometime in" December.

All the counties involved just passed a referendum to tax themselves, create a transit district with the tax, and use the tax to fund RailRunner operations (and excess to fund express commuter buses & possibly other stuff).

RailRunner has a bright future at this point.

Please, please, let Bill Richardson become Secretary of Transportation and work the same magic on the rest of the country....