Reading, Newtown, Quakertown restoration

[glennk419]

I was just looking at the crossing area on google earth. There isn't enough space to put a bridge with an acceptable grade. It would be a massive project to lower the ROW enough far enough back etc etc. You could put the bridge piers on the existing right of way through the wetlands, but to the south there's just no room without the huge project. Diamond is way cheaper.

I believe I already said that about 4 posts ago.

[John Scott, PA-TEC]

Glenn and 25Hz - have you factored in both routes when calculating grade? In other words, raising one and lowering the other. You may have, but if you haven't, that cuts the distance in half. What is the remaining life on the Huntingdon Pike overpass? Finally, are you using modern grade guidelines, or old ones? (wait - can the SL-Vs even go up hills?)

Nerodon is right about study sandbagging. The last real "Rail" study showed 2200 riders in 1995 and reasonable costs for Newtown. I think it was 65 million.

In 2012, 3000 new riders and a price tag between 150 and 300 million seems to be agreeable to most. Several weeks ago, an Inquirer article about the City Branch called $115 million "pocket change as transit projects go."

It's simply not true that the Newtown-Southampton corridor is well served by West Trenton and Warminster, at least not in the last 10 years. Both of these routes are maxed out. Expansion of parking facilities, on either line, is likely more costly per rider than bringing Newtown back online. At this point, we've exhausted the low hanging fruit for Lower Bucks rail. Not to mention that the roughly 8 mile stretch on Street Road between Warminster and Trevose is virtually unnavigable at rush hour. So while we often hear about how close these other lines are, the reality is that they are NOT viable options for many people.

Once again, while I agree times are not ripe for big projects, reigning in some of the nonsense projects is long overdue. Enough with the bus loops, electronic signs, traffic signal preemptions, etc. None of these add ridership, and it's becoming quite clear that simply asking Harrisburg for more funding isn't working. On the other hand, more ridership=more votes=more funding.

[glennk419]

Glenn and 25Hz - have you factored in both routes when calculating grade? In other words, raising one and lowering the other. You may have, but if you haven't, that cuts the distance in half. What is the remaining life on the Huntingdon Pike overpass? Finally, are you using modern grade guidelines, or old ones? (wait - can the SL-Vs even go up hills?)

Nerodon is right about study sandbagging. The last real "Rail" study showed 2200 riders in 1995 and reasonable costs for Newtown. I think it was 65 million.

In 2012, 3000 new riders and a price tag between 150 and 300 million seems to be agreeable to most. Several weeks ago, an Inquirer article about the City Branch called $115 million "pocket change as transit projects go."

It's simply not true that the Newtown-Southampton corridor is well served by West Trenton and Warminster, at least not in the last 10 years. Both of these routes are maxed out. Expansion of parking facilities, on either line, is likely more costly per rider than bringing Newtown back online. At this point, we've exhausted the low hanging fruit for Lower Bucks rail. Not to mention that the roughly 8 mile stretch on Street Road between Warminster and Trevose is virtually unnavigable at rush hour. So while we often hear about how close these other lines are, the reality is that they are NOT viable options for many people.

Once again, while I agree times are not ripe for big projects, reigning in some of the nonsense projects is long overdue. Enough with the bus loops, electronic signs, traffic signal preemptions, etc. None of these add ridership, and it's becoming quite clear that simply asking Harrisburg for more funding isn't working. On the other hand, more ridership=more votes=more funding.

Yes, I did consider the possibility of lowering one of the ROW's but given the fact that the Pennypack Creek flows through the immediate area and already floods on a regular basis, plus the issue of the attached wetlands, makes any lowering of either ROW an extremely impractical venture.

[Clearfield]

A unified front among transit advocacy organizations will help secure the funding needed to actively argue these points with more meaning.

[25Hz]

For argument's sake lets say i want to take the train to somewhere from newtown.... Langhorne and woodbourne are maxed out as far as parking. Levittown is much too far away, and traffic to all 3 is atrocious during peak hours.

I'm beginning to think a simple diamond crossing won't cut it after mulling it over for a bit. I think we need to tie in the newtown & west trenton lines. If i want to go to doylestown, i don't want to have to go all the way to wayne jct. Same with warminster. Plus it'd have the added benefit of shuffling different train moves without going all the way deep into philly.

A lot of people work in NJ who live around here. An extra hour going to west philly when they wanna go to NJ makes no sense. The NJT bus layout could be changed to facilitate this new setup, that way you could see a real reduction in cars on the road. It's time we moved away from the overly centralized system that we have going on now and actually address the real patterns in the 21st century, not the 19th century.

Quakertown might as well be the moon where transit is concerned without the rail service put back.

What SEPTA needs is to separate RRD from everything else, get a dedicated funding source, and that would fix most of the problems. It worked for NJT and MTA, it would work here for us.

[nomis]

Not to mention that the roughly 8 mile stretch on Street Road between Warminster and Trevose is virtually unnavigable at rush hour.

Ugh tell me about it ...
Just from casual observation from driving river to quarry for over a year now, not many cars go from the bensalem/trevose area all the way through warminster/warrington.

[BuddCar711]

Um, yeah. About the ONLY things potentially compatible are the EMU's and loco's themselves (can't the SL-V's switch on the fly?). EVERYTHING else except the catenary would need to be replaced or upgraded.

But the bright side is that we'd get a new substation in Doylestown.

Didn't the Reading SL-IVs use to have that 11KV-25KV switch-on-the-fly feature as well? And if they did, why did the Reading SL-IVs have them (since the feature would not be needed) and the Penn Central SL-IVs didn't (since that would be needed in case of Amtrak did go through with the planned switchover), and why the feature was not refitted on the P.C. IVs but removed from the RDG IVs?

[John Scott, PA-TEC]

Clearfield, if you're suggesting that all transit advocates should advocate for the same thing, I'd have to disagree. If we wanted to advocate for all of the same things DVARP does (without passing any judgement here), we'd just renew our memberships.

Consider that a non-conforming viewpoint could be useful every now and then. We've been hearing that transit "needs more funding" for decades now. Unified or not, the message in that bottle hasn't landed on the shores of Harrisburg. It's just floating around, getting no traction whatsoever.

Meanwhile, the money that could have been spent repairing the Norristown bridge has instead gone to "Traffic Signal Priority" projects, glass-block pre-fab "bus loops", not to mention NPT. None of these projects adds riders or repairs infrastructure.

While it may not be popular or mainstream enough for you, we'll continue to beat the drum we've been beating: that only by building ridership will you EVER sway Harrisburg for more funding, and only by very careful spending will you obtain new ridership. All the "unified" transit advocacy in the world won't change those facts.

[John Scott, PA-TEC]

25Hz, you're right on - separate RRD from City Transit. Though it's not clear whether city, suburb, or both should pay for RRD. Who is the real benefactor? I asked a councilman (the next mayor?) this question and for once got an honest answer - "I just don't know."

But nevertheless, an agency with built-in internal conflict between transit and rail is not going to serve either constituency well.

[dreese_us]

Septa should invest in the dual mode locomotives that NJ Transit just purchased. Rebuild the Newtown Line without electrification, it will still give you the one seat ride to center city using the push pull coaches. The AEM 7's are getting to the point where Septa will need to spend money anyway. By allowing riders to stay closer to home along the Newtown Line, it will free up parking along the West Trenton Line. Maybe some sort of enclosed shelter with a moving walkway at ayres to shuttle people to Bethayres Station.

If this line can prove itself, then invest in electrification!

[scotty269]

Then you run into a few issues. The Bethayres area is flood prone. If you want to make a connection at Bethayres between the R3/R8, you'd have to do a few things.

Parking - where are you going to add parking? This expansion would most definately bring increased traffic to the area. Have you seen Huntingdon Pike during rush hour? Where are you going to put the extra traffic, let alone the extra parking spaces for that traffic. Are you going to build over the swamp area for the new station and lot? Good luck with that!

If you build a new station, is it just for the R8? Will it be a combined station for the R3/R8? What are you going to do with the existing station?

[glennk419]

Septa should invest in the dual mode locomotives that NJ Transit just purchased. Rebuild the Newtown Line without electrification, it will still give you the one seat ride to center city using the push pull coaches. The AEM 7's are getting to the point where Septa will need to spend money anyway. By allowing riders to stay closer to home along the Newtown Line, it will free up parking along the West Trenton Line. Maybe some sort of enclosed shelter with a moving walkway at ayres to shuttle people to Bethayres Station.

If this line can prove itself, then invest in electrification!

Considering the fact that the ALP45-DP's run around $8M a clip plus spare parts, etc, just the cost for 2or 3 of them pretty much equals the cost of electrification. Track rehab will be needed regardless of what mode uses the line so that's additional.

[Patrick Boylan]

This expansion would most definately bring increased traffic to the area. Have you seen Huntingdon Pike during rush hour? Where are you going to put the extra traffic, let alone the extra parking spaces for that traffic. Are you going to build over the swamp area for the new station and lot? Good luck with that!

If you build a new station, is it just for the R8? Will it be a combined station for the R3/R8? What are you going to do with the existing station?

Hopefully at least some of the existing Huntingdon Pike traffic will use stations farther north, as opposed to driving all the way as they might do now. I know at least one Huntingdon Valley resident who drives to Fox Chase, so if he, and thousands like him needed only to drive, or God willing, walk to Bethayres or Huntingdon Valley station that would represent fewer automobile miles, even if more of them might concentrate in places they don't now.

However as you imply, and as many have mentioned in this theme's many rr.net incarnations, there isn't a lot of reasonable real estate for a new station at Bethayres that could serve the rail lines formerly known as the R3 R8.

[bikentransit]

From aerial photos I've seen, there's a ton of open space near Huntingdon Valley. I've read that alot of it is wetlands or is floodprone, but these days underground aquafers could solve that problem. If those issues could be overcome, building a little spur off Bethayres and opening the one stop might make sense.

But back to reality, s.e.p.t.a. isn't going to do any of this, why don't they sell off the land?

[glennk419]

From aerial photos I've seen, there's a ton of open space near Huntingdon Valley. I've read that alot of it is wetlands or is floodprone, but these days underground aquafers could solve that problem. If those issues could be overcome, building a little spur off Bethayres and opening the one stop might make sense.

But back to reality, s.e.p.t.a. isn't going to do any of this, why don't they sell off the land?

I'm not sure that SEPTA actually owns much of that land beyond the ROW's. Much of that marshland is probably protected by the Pennypack watershed and/or open space requirements. There are also fiber optic lines that run along the Newtown Branch ROW from Bethayres to Newtown under a multi-year (perpetual?) lease so the ROW is at least being kept intact for that purpose.