Glassboro-Camden Line (Light Rail)

Perhaps residents residing in South Jersey will get progress and soon ride on the new light rail line
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nj.com ... utType=amp

pateljones wrote: ↑Mon Jan 18, 2021 2:29 pm Perhaps residents residing in South Jersey will get progress and soon ride on the new light rail line
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nj.com ... utType=amp

Interesting article, thanks for that! I don't know much about this light rail line but that is a lot of property acquisition.

More news about South Jersey light rail and much town support. Maybe this will be built before Bergen County light rail?
https://www.burlingtoncountytimes.com/s ... 131514001/

Interesting.

The Bergen County light rail would’ve started construction in 2020 from what I heard but the Trump administration got in the way. Can’t imagine that the coronavirus helped much either. Hopefully it starts to speed up with a new administration and COVID vaccines rolling out.

Kind of funny that this dumb post I made years ago has generated quite a lot of decent discussion.

From the article in the Ledger, it's pretty rich to say that the rail line is bad for environmental reasons…and then propose dirty hydrogen fuel buses as the alternative? unreal.

lensovet wrote: ↑Wed Jan 20, 2021 3:16 am From the article in the Ledger, it's pretty rich to say that the rail line is bad for environmental reasons…and then propose dirty hydrogen fuel buses as the alternative? unreal.

How is it dirty? Hydrogen used as fuel emits only water vapor.

Ken W2KB wrote: ↑Wed Jan 20, 2021 1:28 pm

lensovet wrote: ↑Wed Jan 20, 2021 3:16 am From the article in the Ledger, it's pretty rich to say that the rail line is bad for environmental reasons…and then propose dirty hydrogen fuel buses as the alternative? unreal.

How is it dirty? Hydrogen used as fuel emits only water vapor.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/hydrogens- ... 1602155800

For now. Producing hydrogen is an excellent direct use for intermittent sources of power such as solar and wind as there are no costly electric system stability issues as are present if such sources are fed into the electric grid. Natural gas electric generation can be replaced by the new design generation of modular nuclear reactors which are dispatchable and intrinsically safe, with no significant adverse environmental impacts.

literally anywhere you're using hydrogen, it's more efficient to use electricity directly. natural gas? use it in a power plant and stick it in a battery. wind/solar? same thing. why add the overhead of a fuel cell, energy losses to compress the hydrogen to insane pressures, build up a brand new infrastructure to transport this stuff, when we already have a power grid that works?

solution in search of a problem. plus the electric grid gets cleaner the moment you put cleaner energy sources into it. hydrogen/combustion vehicles? literally have lower efficiency from the moment they are put into service and only get worse over time.

Not to get into a big technical discussion, but the one thing hydrogen has going for it is that it can be used to store energy. Direct use of solar etc such as feeding into the grid is great when you can do it. But where there is a lot of solar already, such as Calfornia, or a lot of wind and sea-based generators (e.g the North Sea and northern Europe), there are times when there is actually more renewable energy being produced than can be used. Battery storage is still too expensive I believe to make much of a dent in this.

About that Camden - Glassboro Light Rail. At $100M/mile I hope it fails to get built. Figure 15000 pax/day (each way) and a dollar a seat going to defray construction costs (forget maintenance and ongoing running costs) that works out to about 10 mil a year. Won't even pay the interest on that kind of debt. The rest of the fare would be needed for operating costs. And the taxpayer takes it in the neck - again. 1.8 bil for the portal bridge has at least some sense.

CharlieL wrote: ↑Mon Jan 25, 2021 9:26 pm About that Camden - Glassboro Light Rail. At $100M/mile I hope it fails to get built. Figure 15000 pax/day (each way) and a dollar a seat going to defray construction costs (forget maintenance and ongoing running costs) that works out to about 10 mil a year. Won't even pay the interest on that kind of debt. The rest of the fare would be needed for operating costs. And the taxpayer takes it in the neck - again. 1.8 bil for the portal bridge has at least some sense.

$100M/mi is nothing. HBLR West Side extension was projected to cost $213M a decade ago to go just 3700 feet. Sure, that's got viaducts, but that still comes out to over $300M/mi. And that's getting built!

$100m/mile may be nothing, but $2,000 debt for every man woman and child in the state (before interest), for a convenience that will be used by less than 1/2 of 1 percent of said population is definitely not nothing. The only one who could love that kind of tradeoff is your typical grifting Pol.

The only thing needing construction is two switches near Pavonia Yard where the River Line is parallel to Conrail. Then use time isolation like they already do on most of the River Line. Of course stations would be needed and lite railcars. I doubt if this comes to $100m, but this NJT we're talking about. You know Gub'mint.

Problem is when the project is for North Jersey money's no object. When it's for South Jersey it's always too expensive.