Urban-Rail Failures?

PullmanCo wrote:New Jersey Transit commuter rail cut a number of routes, e.g. the Raritan Valley Line between High Bridge and Phillipsburg (in 1984), and also a number of South Jersey routes prior to that. Joint Metro-North/NJ Transit service via the original Erie Main Line between Harriman and Howells also died in the early 1980s.

NJ transit is planning to re-activate the lackawanna cut-off, the line to philipsburg, & the west trenton (former reading bypass of the PRR main line) line between west trenton & bound brook. They are also expanding RiverLine if funding comes through, as well as opening new light rail on current ROW, they just opened a line to the meadowlands complex complete with train-to-game service from new haven through to secuacus junction for change to the PVL tracks & on to the new spur line & station. Also they have added a few reverse peak trains on most rail lines, are ordering a massive new fleet of locomotives (one being totally new & custom built from the rail up), rebuilding several stations, and seeing the viability of other lines such as down to cape may, and down from the amboys to toms river etc etc etc, and they want to move jersey ave operations to adams lane (they may swap storage tracks with amtrak), have been rebuilding yards, plan to expand morrisville yard & possibly open a station near the yard in PA..... They are not really losing anything, and the service you mention could in fact be restored as soon as 2012, so they have not, by that time, really shrank at all, in fact the opposite.

I'd like to see full regional railservice come back into newtown, but that's a big maybe if the funds can even be found.


[rant]
What essentially happened, is conrail handed over full operations of its pax service as soon as laws were changed to allow a railroad to do this in 1981 (the previous laws are really what killed all of our beloved fallen flags). State & other agencies saw what they wanted to keep & what had to go in order to not be too financially burdened to operate at all, so at the hand over (by 1984 really) a lot of pax service was trimmed back in the northeast on over towards chicago. so you have a lot of former dual service companies (be them merged or not) now being only freight, amtrak & transit took over pax operations. what they couldn't afford, went, what they kept, sometimes didn't work out either or got better.

The real issue is that no one transit agency, or even amtrak, can reproduce what those fallen flag pax 'roads did. I mean if you combine PRR, NYC, CNJ, RDG, EL, PRSL, LV, NS&W, C&O, B&O, and several smaller carriers, you have a lot of track, sadly some of that track is not even there anymore, or it goes unused, a victim of short sighted government regulations & oversight that lead to our situation today. I'd much rather have private carriers than state run trains any day. More jobs, lower taxes, more flexibility & options & much more fun!
[/rant]

- A

Otto Vondrak wrote:

lpetrich wrote:I found again this interesting article on Syracuse OnTrack's failure... It had some major blunders, like operating only on weekends, having only one station in a high-density area, not having stations in residential areas, and not connecting to Syracuse's Amtrak station.

The schedule was reduced to Friday-Saturday-Sundays and special events because ridership did not warrant the original expanded schedule. They were supposed to connect to the Amtrak station, a bridge was being constructed, but was blocked by a competing railroad. The system was supposed to be much larger (stations were built around the city, but never used). Not connecting to the Amtrak station doomed the project.

Note that in Syracuse the Amtrak station, in addition to 4-each-way-every-day to NYC, is also the Greyhound/Trailways station and a major center for the local buses, and the track was actually *built* beyond the station to connect to major stadiums. Being disconnected from that is more significant than you might think if you just hear "Amtrak station".

The Ontrack track is in fact owned by Onondaga County, and every now and then someone says "Wait a sec, why is the freight company still operating on that line -- wasn't the payment that they had to run passenger service?" I'm not sure when the lease runs out. For all I know, it may already have run out and the freight company may just be operating because nobody in Onondaga County government noticed -- they don't seem very on top of things there. The funding for the missing bridge was in place (!) and is presumably sitting in some account quietly earning interest.

railohio wrote:Cleveland's last light rail expansion through the Flats to the waterfront is a flop. Very few people, mostly tourists, ride it and it's rather devoid of commercial development since the Flats neighborhood cleared out.

Call it a partial flop -- they're unlikely to ever shut it down completely.
I'm pretty sure if Cleveland ever sees daytime intercity rail service it will enjoy a revival.

I think it's important to distinguish between two types of service termination:
1. Termination of services provided by legacy carriers like CNJ, PRR... These services were around during the bust years for commuter and transit, and the railroads tried to kill the services to stop losing money. After public carriers took over, they too tried to curtail or kill service because in the 1980's commuter and transit rail was a necessary evil.
2. Failed modern programs like Ontrack and Buffalo light rail. These services were initiated by a public group after the failure of the legacy roads and usually failed because they were poorly planned or half-baked ideas. These services were set up with the idea in mind that no above-rail profit would ever occur; instead the goal was a "public good".

#2 is more germane to this thread in my mind because technically ever #1-style service was a failure - each Class I or private transit operator set up the service with a "below-rail" or economic profit in mind. By 1960 almost none could even achieve "above-rail" or accounting profit. Of the #2 services, because profit is not the main consideration, failure is considered poor ridership or lack of development rather than failure to recover operating or capital costs.