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  • Princeton Dinky - Worth More Dead Than Alive?

  • Discussion related to New Jersey Transit rail and light rail operations.
Discussion related to New Jersey Transit rail and light rail operations.

Moderators: lensovet, Kaback9, nick11a

 #1279359  by MACTRAXX
 
TL and Everyone:

This information concerning the move of Princeton Station is very interesting and it looks
like the University may be trying to make this service tougher to use especially for walk-on
riders noting the ridership loss and having the highest fares on NJT to NWK and NYP does
not help matters here...

I would like to see the Dinky either preserved as is or a expanded LRT line serving the
Borough of Princeton more directly instead of a busway...

MACTRAXX
 #1279418  by RussNelson
 
I don't understand why they don't take advantage of this work to *extend* the Dinky tracks further into campus.

Oh, and speaking of cutting back the tracks, let us not forget that there used to be *two* yards, I presume for Princeton football game attendees. The northernmost extent of the tracks in the USGS historic topo is about where Lockhart Hall is, with one yard opposite McCarter Theater, and the other where Baker Rink is.

There were also two trolley lines coming from Trenton, one north into the burg and the other south. No one has bothered to put them into OpenStreetMap, so you'll have to look on the USGS historic map site: http://www.rutlandtrail.org/mapview.cgi ... e=Historic" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
 #1279435  by 25Hz
 
There was a spur off the old public service speed line as well, I believe. Part of the tracks for the line are visible unless it's actually something else like a fright siding. The two lines (PRR main & trolley) ran pretty much right next to each other.
 #1279712  by amtrakowitz
 
Trainlawyer wrote:While comparing our alma mater to a third-world developing dictatorship may seem a bit much …
Maybe comparisons with a second-world oligarchy would be more apropos?

Very telling that the stereotype of left-wing university types being proponents of clean electrified rail travel is being broken here. Especially with the last winter with its extreme cold and copious snowfall showing the worth of the shuttle, which ran when the roads were closed. Nothing that is proposed to "replace" the Dinky will ever run as fast as it, and most likely not as reliably.
RussNelson wrote:I don't understand why they don't take advantage of this work to extend the Dinky tracks further into campus.
The precedent has been to move it further off the campus. Remember that the original Dinky terminus (when steam-operated) was by Milepost 3 near Blair Hall. What with NJT's penchant for capital spending, one may question why no consideration was given to turn the Dinky into a subway within the city limits, maybe as cut/cover underneath Alexander Street and University Place. (Then again, was not the Dinky the result of moving the main line of the New Jersey Rail Road further south from its original alignment alongside the Delaware and Raritan Canal?)
 #1280141  by Tadman
 
amtrakowitz wrote:Very telling that the stereotype of left-wing university types being proponents of clean electrified rail travel is being broken here.

Hahahahaha! Amen and amen. I have two college degrees, live next to a professor, and my mother is an adjunct professor. Talk about a "do as I say and not as I do" group. Theory is all fine and dandy until you gotta put something in practice and sweat it out with consequences. The only perfessers I know that support rail transit by actually riding is a bunch of railbuffs at U of Illinois - Champaign that ride the mini-corridor trains in and out of Chicago regularly (great group of guys by the way - into a lot of crazy stuff like vinyl recordings).
 #1280166  by Passaic River Rat
 
I know the Dinky is a sensitive subject, but I would like to offer my personal opinion:
If the Dinky was replaced with a dedicated busway:
- it could operate to places the railroad does not, including some of the places the Dinky used to go.
- it would require one [possibly part-time] bus driver per bus, as opposed to a conductor and engineer per train.
- it would ostensibly be easier to replace defective equipment. Broken busses do not require the cooperation of Amtrak and a three-person crew to swap out bad equipment.

Once again, this is my personal opinion and I represent no one but myself.
 #1280202  by amtrakowitz
 
Passaic River Rat wrote:I know the Dinky is a sensitive subject, but I would like to offer my personal opinion:
If the Dinky was replaced with a dedicated busway:
  • it could operate to places the railroad does not, including some of the places the Dinky used to go.
  • it would require one [possibly part-time] bus driver per bus, as opposed to a conductor and engineer per train.
  • it would ostensibly be easier to replace defective equipment. Broken buses do not require the cooperation of Amtrak and a three-person crew to swap out bad equipment.
Once again, this is my personal opinion and I represent no one but myself.
Rail has distinct advantages over any bus, most notably the faster top speeds and the ability to run in heavy snowfall as mentioned. A "dedicated busway" would be a burdensome piece of infrastructure that would require far more maintenance than a railroad (especially in winter; when was the last time you had to salt the tracks?), attract fewer passengers, have inherently less passenger capacity, be far dirtier (even if it used trolleybuses or battery-powered buses—still takes a half-barrel of crude oil to make a bus tire, and the smallest buses have at least six of those), have far bumpier suspensions, ad nauseam.

And no, you are not going to run a bus onto the part of the PU campus where Milepost 3 is located. That is 100 percent pedestrian, unless someone brings a bicycle or saddle animal into the area.
 #1280673  by Rodney Fisk
 
NJ Transit's own study gave a cost of $5 million to pull up the existing Dinky tracks and $40 million to pave the right-of-way for a bus; then three buses in operation to offer equivalent service to the current Dinky. Then townsfolk packed the public hearing, and NJ Transit retreated with tail between its legs.

Forget about buses; the Dinky will remain a rail link, period.
 #1280708  by Matt Johnson
 
R36 Combine Coach wrote:Regarding cost savings, would there be lower costs if the Dinky was converted to a non-FRA transit rail line?
And along those lines, could equipment such as this be operated by non-union college kids for a low hourly wage?
 #1280810  by philipmartin
 
amtrakowitz wrote: Rail has distinct advantages over any bus, most notably the faster top speeds and the ability to run in heavy snowfall as mentioned. A "dedicated busway" would be a burdensome piece of infrastructure that would require far more maintenance than a railroad (especially in winter; when was the last time you had to salt the tracks?), attract fewer passengers, have inherently less passenger capacity, be far dirtier (even if it used trolleybuses or battery-powered buses—still takes a half-barrel of crude oil to make a bus tire, and the smallest buses have at least six of those), have far bumpier suspensions, ad nauseam.

And no, you are not going to run a bus onto the part of the PU campus where Milepost 3 is located. That is 100 percent pedestrian, unless someone brings a bicycle or saddle animal into the area.
A lot of amtrakowitz' reasons strike me as dubious.
 #1280815  by loufah
 
Rodney Fisk wrote:NJ Transit's own study gave a cost of $5 million to pull up the existing Dinky tracks and $40 million to pave the right-of-way for a bus; then three buses in operation to offer equivalent service to the current Dinky.
I've seen estimates of $1-2 million per mile to build a railway, including typical excavation. Any idea why NJT thinks paving costs 6.5 to 13 times as much?

What's NJT's current cost of running a bus? The only data point I have is from 20 years ago, when at a public hearing about discontinuing a bus route, the NJT rep said $80,000/year/bus.
 #1280826  by nomis
 
Probably costs associated with an environmental cleanup ...
 #1280844  by amtrakowitz
 
philipmartin wrote:
amtrakowitz wrote: Rail has distinct advantages over any bus, most notably the faster top speeds and the ability to run in heavy snowfall as mentioned. A "dedicated busway" would be a burdensome piece of infrastructure that would require far more maintenance than a railroad (especially in winter; when was the last time you had to salt the tracks?), attract fewer passengers, have inherently less passenger capacity, be far dirtier (even if it used trolleybuses or battery-powered buses—still takes a half-barrel of crude oil to make a bus tire, and the smallest buses have at least six of those), have far bumpier suspensions, ad nauseam.

And no, you are not going to run a bus onto the part of the PU campus where Milepost 3 is located. That is 100 percent pedestrian, unless someone brings a bicycle or saddle animal into the area.
A lot of amtrakowitz' reasons strike me as dubious.
Care to say why? You could have researched my "dubious" points for yourself, after all.

There are few to no cases where "bustitution" has resulted in more passenger load than a train. Many government agencies have resorted to outright lying to excuse cancellation of rail service (e.g. SEPTA, with their "temporary" service cancellations).
Last edited by amtrakowitz on Tue Jul 08, 2014 1:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.