Amtrak Empire Service (New York State)

mtuandrew wrote:

Adirondacker wrote:

Woody wrote:Infrastructure construction must be cheap in Downstate Illinois but
very costly in Upstate New York.

It's very very flat in Illinois. It makes it easy to build very very straight railroad lines which is what they did back in the 19th Century. If there's a very very straight ROW that's very very flat it's very very cheap to upgrade it.

There's also something to be said for lower labor and land costs in rural Illinois as opposed to semi-urban New York, especially along the Hudson.

I don't know the Illinois situation, but how much of that is completely new trackage vs upgrades? The ALB-BUF is basically all new trackage (in the most expensive option) because CSX has so much traffic there's really not much alternative.

As for 2:05 and the like. My own experiences show it's possible in the right conditions. Twice now I've taken the late train Friday and arrived at Poughkeepsie 10 minutes early and had to sit there 10 minutes. And then since the stations north of that are discharge only for that particular train, we flew to Albany and arrived in 2:10. So, had we not needed to wait 10 minutes we'd have made it in 2 hours.

As for commuting into ALB from the south, I don't think this is something Amtrak should do. I think a train should layover at Poughkeepsie (or worst case only at Hudson) and take folks north.
(I'd also add an infill commuter station near the SUNYA/Nanotech campus.)

Still reading the executive summary, but this does not look promising. To get federal high speed passenger rail funding, the FRA requires a cost/benefit ratio greater than 1.0 and a projected operating ratio greater than 1.0. For the alternatives carried forward, the projected operating ratios are between 76% and 86%. The no-build option has a projected operating ratio of 75%.

Here are the estimated subsidies required:
No Build, $16.75 million per year
Alternative 90A, $37 million per year
Alternative 90B, $32 million per year
Alternative 110, $24 million per year
Alternative 125, $59 million per year

mtuandrew wrote:

Adirondacker wrote:

Woody wrote:Infrastructure construction must be cheap
in Downstate Illinois but very costly
in Upstate New York.

It's very very flat in Illinois. It makes it easy to build
very very straight railroad lines which is what they did
back in the 19th Century. If there's a very very straight ROW
that's very very flat it's very very cheap to upgrade it.

There's also something to be said for lower labor and
land costs in rural Illinois as opposed to semi-urban
New York, especially along the Hudson.

Along the Hudson is not what is being talked about.
The article referred to upgrades west of Schenectady.

Now I'm not personally familiar with the flatness or
elevation of the route west of Albany. But I know
it was flat enuf to be the route of the Erie Canal,
locks and all. I'm just sure that the Mohawk Valley
is not to be confused with crossing the Catskills, or
crossing the Adirondacks. The billions they want to
spend here are surely not for mountain climbing. Not
straight, or curvy 19th century RoW, that could be.

wasn't it called "the water level route"?

Ive said it before and Ill say it again how do you intend to get a trip under two hours when Metro North has no intention of raising MAS on there portion of the railroad. As for west of Schenectady Ill take 90mph with cab signals to start. But as for truly high speed rail your going to have to build 2 new main tracks for CSX then upgrade the old stuff. All but one station sit on the south side of the right of way, unless of course you want bridges to each station similar to Utica.

Woody wrote:
Along the Hudson is not what is being talked about.
The article referred to upgrades west of Schenectady.

Everything east of Rochester, roughly, is curvy and hilly compared to the things between the Appalachians and the Rockies.

David Benton wrote:wasn't it called "the water level route"?

Yes, that was the New York Central's name for it, extending west to Chicago since it went by some of the Great Lakes, as well.

Greg Moore wrote: As for 2:05 and the like. My own experiences show it's possible in the right conditions. Twice now I've taken the late train Friday and arrived at Poughkeepsie 10 minutes early and had to sit there 10 minutes. And then since the stations north of that are discharge only for that particular train, we flew to Albany and arrived in 2:10. So, had we not needed to wait 10 minutes we'd have made it in 2 hours.

For the record, Metro-North will not allow to leave stations earlier than your published departure times. If POU was an Amtrak stop and your manifested station work is complete, you can ask to leave early. They will quite often give it to you.

This is one of the benefits of the e-ticketing system: Instant on/off counts.

it is also one of the disadvantages of the new pricing policies: You rarely get last minute "walk up" traffic.

ThirdRail7 wrote:

Greg Moore wrote: As for 2:05 and the like. My own experiences show it's possible in the right conditions. Twice now I've taken the late train Friday and arrived at Poughkeepsie 10 minutes early and had to sit there 10 minutes. And then since the stations north of that are discharge only for that particular train, we flew to Albany and arrived in 2:10. So, had we not needed to wait 10 minutes we'd have made it in 2 hours.

For the record, Metro-North will not allow to leave stations earlier than your published departure times. If POU was an Amtrak stop and your manifested station work is complete, you can ask to leave early. They will quite often give it to you.

This is one of the benefits of the e-ticketing system: Instant on/off counts.

it is also one of the disadvantages of the new pricing policies: You rarely get last minute "walk up" traffic.

Good point about the e-ticketing system. Though keep in mind this was train 261, so I doubt there's much walk-up traffic at 12:59A

But good to know about the ability to leave early.

Mr Stolberg was doing the grown-up thing -- he was
reading the Executive Summary of the linked study --
while I was venting.

So maybe 'pathetic' was overheated. Maybe not. But I'll
say that I'm extremely disappointed.

No doubt on flimsy evidence I had convinced myself that
big investments in the Water Level Route would pay off
with big returns. Not so much, really.

The study focused on five alternatives. Each of the five
included a package of investments NYC-Albany. Even
the No-Build alternative is to include the south-of-Albany
improvements. However, any trip time savings south of
Albany were apparently too small to mention here.

The other four alternatives had varied routes, equipment, etc,
and mostly various cost estimates. Highest cost is a 125-mph
train running on largely new electrified track. For $15 billion
this would cut a 9 hour trip to 6 hours.

btw I'm still wanting to say that the study itself is
borderline pathetic. Almost all the "Empire Corridor"
timings and other data are end to end, that is, NYC
to Niagara Falls. Do love me some Niagara Falls; yes,
I should get married and go there on my honeymoon.
But a report on business travelers on the Empire
Corridor should report projections for NYC-Buffalo,
with Buffalo being the second largest city in NY state.

Meanwhile, the report is replete with figures from
2009-2010, maybe a few from earlier dates, others
up to 2011, nothing up thru 2013 tho many of those
figures were released more than 2 months ago.
These dates and data give it the whiff of staleness.

Excuse me I was reading the executive summary
past my bedtime, but I saw no mention of Wi-Fi,
much less of the recent pronounced trend among
young people to lead lives that are not auto-centric.
The absence of an mention of these favorable
factors also made the report seem a bit stale.

The report was certainly NY State-centric: It did
calculations on ridership based on so many trains
NYC-Albany and NYC-Niagara Falls. It dutifully
mentioned the one Ethan Allen train, the Adirondack,
the Maple Leaf, and the Lake Shore Limited. But
despite looking at a timeframe thru 2035, it never
suggested a second train to Montreal or Toronto.
If I were king we'd order more Viewliner IIs and run
overnights to both of those cities. I guess even as
a delusional king, I wouldn't be in a hurry to add
a second Ethan Allen. But by 2035, hey, by 2020,
I'd want to see a second and a third frequency of
the Lake Shore Limited.

I'd like to think that adding four more medium- and
long-distance trains would improve the analysis for
upgrading the Empire Corridor. As it stands now,
it's not a strong case for spending nearly $7 billion.
(The capital costs are "2015" dollars.)

I say $7 billion because the report leans very very
strongly toward the alternative with 110-mph
running for most of its length. The 110 alternative
would double frequencies Albany-Buffalo from 4 to 8
(likewise NYC-Albany would add 4 frequencies to 17),
increase ridership 75%, run the smallest deficit at
$24 million (compared to $26 million for the no-build
alternative), cut travel times NYC-Niagara Falls from
9:06 hours to 7:22 hours and so saving 1:44 hours as
a result of average speeds being raised from 51 mph
to 63 mph, yielding an operating ratio of 86%, and
a per passenger loss/subsidy of $9 (compared to
losing $16 per passenger as now).

Actually, I'm confident that the project would out-perform
these estimates, even without adding more medium-and
long-distance trains as desired by a delusional king.

Ridership on this route has repeatedly surprised
the budget figures with faster growth, despite
truly horrendous OTP. As I said above, there was
no mention that ridership could grow faster
due to the popular use of Wi-Fi or the possibility
that new cars would attract more riders.

And transit-oriented development? What's that?
The possibility that a train station with 16 trains
(or more) a day stopping (8 each way) would
prompt an entrepreneur or two to open bars
or restaurants near the station, followed by
a 24-hour drug store, followed by a handful
of 8 or 12-story apartment buildings in what
had been a derelict section of town, no, can't
take that conjecture into account.

We do have a pretty good record from public
agencies since the days of President Jimmy
Carter, when some projects turned out to
be duds, since then Amtrak and other agencies
always low-ball their estimates. (So the new
Expo light rail line in L.A. is today carrying
the number of passengers forecast for 2020.)

But taking these figures to a Governor who
loves cars, or to federal officials with desks
stacked with better proposals from other
states . . . It's gonna be tough to get things
moving on the Empire Corridor.

I was too a bit hasty in my assessment of the study. The ridership and revenue estimates are on the conservative side. Consider the recent ridership growth of the corridor.



The study is indeed New York State-centric. There is scant mention of the fact that trains on the Empire Corridor run to Montreal (population 1.6 million) or Toronto (population 2.5 million). Travel time improvement is evaluated NYC to Niagara Falls not NYC to Buffalo. Personally, I think the city that will benefit most from improvements to the corridor will be Syracuse because the NYC-Syracuse travel time will be under 6 hours. I think Syracuse would also benefit from a train that leaves NYP after 4:30 pm and overnights there, an option not evaluated in the study.

I was also hasty in writing off the ability of the corridor to get funding. Both PRIIA and MAP-21 are up for renewal and we don't know what the future holds for how intercity passenger rail will get funded. Meanwhile, passenger rail projects are getting funded through TIGER grants which are much more discretionary. New York politicians are well established in Washington and one should never underestimate their ability to get funding.

As someone who lives in Toronto it would be great to have fast trains to NYC, but there are expensive caveats on this side of the border, plus you know, the border. Don't see why those caveats, not of Amtrak or NYSDOT's making, should be theirs to bear.

Better to concentrate on MTL for Adirondack, Vermonter and ultimately Ethan Allen and work out a different paradigm for Maple Leaf. The one I like is to terminate *all* Niagara Falls services into a sealed station at Niagara Falls ON where all US and Canadian formalities would be done to ensure on time departures for those services, but responsibility for service beyond and getting people to the US screenings in reasonable time would be firmly left with Canada and Ontario, including dealing with OTP issues like the Welland Canal bridge.

Greg Moore wrote:The whole thing is simply pathetic. Honestly, ALB-NYP should be at least under 2-hours and then ALB-BUF 5.

To do that, you'd need to build at least 1 and maybe two new tracks between Spuyten Duivel and Poughkeepsie. Metro-North has trains on its tracks, and their trains' average speed isn't going to go up, no matter how high you make the speed limits. With careful scheduling, Amtrak can avoid getting stuck behind M-N trains at least some of the time, but I can't see them averaging 90 mph or so, which is what you'd need to do it in 2 hours with stops.

And of course, "careful scheduling" only works if the Amtrak trains keep close to the scheduled times, something Amtrak is not good at.

amm in ny wrote:

Greg Moore wrote:The whole thing is simply pathetic. Honestly, ALB-NYP should be at least under 2-hours and then ALB-BUF 5.

To do that, you'd need to build at least 1 and maybe two new tracks between Spuyten Duivel and Poughkeepsie. Metro-North has trains on its tracks, and their trains' average speed isn't going to go up, no matter how high you make the speed limits. With careful scheduling, Amtrak can avoid getting stuck behind M-N trains at least some of the time, but I can't see them averaging 90 mph or so, which is what you'd need to do it in 2 hours with stops.

And of course, "careful scheduling" only works if the Amtrak trains keep close to the scheduled times, something Amtrak is not good at.

Actually, you only need to average about 70 miles an hour. (it's approximately 142 miles, not 180).

Greg Moore wrote: Actually, you only need to average about 70 miles an hour. (it's approximately 142 miles, not 180).

Passengers at intermediate stops find it perturbing to get on or off the train while it's in motion so the train slows down and stops now and then. Pesky passengers. Wanting the train to stop so they can get on and off. Average speed include the time the are stopped at the station. And the time they are slowing down for the station and accelerating away from the station.