Yellowspoon wrote:Apparently few on this board agree that this is a waste of money. Even the feasibility study is a waste of two million dollars in my opinion.
Yes, my estimate of 2000 riders per day was just a guess. Even if the number is ten thousand per day, that amounts to $80 per trip. Are you willing to pay that?
If a substantial fraction of that is new ridership pulled in because previously these individuals would not take the train because of a 2 or 3 seat ride, then yes. How do you propose to add a similar level of highway capacity?
In addition, your estimate of saving 3 minutes ignores the evening problem of variability; it might be 3 minutes on average, but making that train home requires accounting for probably the 95th percentile. This is why large numbers of commuters won't choose the T if they must deal with 2 and 3 seat (or worse) commutes.
Yellowspoon wrote:
To get off commuter rail at Porter to get to South Station, one saves three minutes. Of the 1600 estimated people who get off at Porter, what's your guess as to how many want to get to South Station? To get to Park or any other GreenLine/OrangeLine destination, it's faster to change at North Station.
You've picked one of the better connected options, but even then simply delaying passengers from switching modes is a win system-wide, as it frees capacity on the Red Line. Orange Line BON-BBY, as has been pointed out, can be very hard during the rush hour -- I've been left on the platform at Wellington due to a full train.
But consider commutes like Lynn-Boston Landing, Lowell-Seaport or Kingston to Assembly -- all plausible future commutes, and all involving two transfers.
Yellowspoon wrote:
No one commented on my Long Island statement. Despite that Long Island is the most populated island in the entire country; Despite the fact that there are at least 15 pairs of track that leave Long Island, you can't take a train from Long Island to New Jersey or Connecticut or upstate New York, or Boston or Washington. All trains from Long Island only carry passengers to Manhattan despite the Hell Gate Bridge and a direct connection to New Jersey.
How about Chicago: Are there connections between Randolph Street Station, Union Station, LaSalle, and the Olgivie Metra station? Are there any through trains that go through Chicago, or do they all terminate in Chicago?
As pointed out by others, NYC is a particularly tough nut -- but given the expansion of financial services along the NJ Waterfront, it wouldn't surprise me if demand really did exist -- it's just without a viable option few if any would take a job imposing that commute. That is a critical point -- people make decisions based on the available transit connections. I rode both CT2 and EZRide at their starts, and both were empty -- it took years for commuting patterns to evolve to fit the routes, but now both are jammed.
A far better analogy is to London, which is simultaneously enlarging the current cross-town commuter rail tunnel system (ThamesLink) and building a new one (CrossRail). Or Paris, where the RER is also simply treated as an integral component of the transit system.
NSRL would also better tie together the system for the interesting expansions on the fringe, both from a business and political perspective. Regular Cape Code summer service is an easier sell and will draw more riders if it also serves the North.
Note on the station that (according to figures from Wikipedia) Philadelphia's Jefferson Station (ex Market East), a four track thru-running station, serves 70% as many riders as North Station, a 10-track stub-end station. I couldn't find useful passenger figures for CrossRail, but they must be astounding (15 long trains per hour!).