QUOTE: Originally posted by zardoz Exactly my point. How many commuters with ride this line? And the few that would ride it would be better served by a bus, which could bring them closer in to town. I am not anti-rail by any means, and I would love to see trains on those tracks again. It is just that the cost of rebuilding the line north of Kenosha will be absurdly high (it is now only good for 40mph in a few spots, is all jointed rail, and has no signal system). I would rather see those funds go to something more practical.
QUOTE: Originally posted by Jack_S QUOTE: Originally posted by CSSHEGEWISCH Traffic congestion will be difficult to solve without public transit unless you plan to raise the eminent domain issue to further widen 6-lane and 8-lane freeways (and some even wider ones). The cost of property acquistion in built-up urban areas plus doing battle with NIMBY's makes a freeway-only approach quite unpracticable. Where I-5 and I-405 merge in Orange County, CA, at one point the resulting freeway is 26 lanes wide, 13 each way. And, twice a day, it is the location of one of the worst rush hour traffic jams. Adding lanes won't work for long: the new capacity merely generates more traffic. And, in South Pasadena, Caltrans has given up on trying to complete the 710 freeway on the surface. Due to the soaring cost of real estate they have concluded that it would be cheaper to dig a 5 mle tunnel (freeway wide) to link with the 210. Meanwhile, increasing MetroLink, light rail, and subway usage has resulted in LA Union Station handling over 40,000 passengers per day. Jack
QUOTE: Originally posted by CSSHEGEWISCH Traffic congestion will be difficult to solve without public transit unless you plan to raise the eminent domain issue to further widen 6-lane and 8-lane freeways (and some even wider ones). The cost of property acquistion in built-up urban areas plus doing battle with NIMBY's makes a freeway-only approach quite unpracticable.
QUOTE: Originally posted by Markgro QUOTE: Originally posted by zardoz On the flip-side of commuting by rail, I think the extension of Metra from Kenosha to Milwaukee is a big waste of money. The $152 million needed to begin operations is an immense sum and is totally unjustified. It already takes 1.75 hours to get from Kenosha to Chicago; it will likely take at least another 45 minutes to go from Kenosha to Milwaukee (35 rail miles). Who is going to take a 2.5 hour+ train ride each day, when the Hiawatha can do it in under 1.5 hours? That's why the KRM Metra extension isn't really intended for people wanting to do a full Milwaukee-to-Chicago commute. Rather, it is intended for inter-subruban commutes or subruban-to-city commutes (Racine to Milwaukee, Oak Creek to Kenosha, etc.).
QUOTE: Originally posted by zardoz On the flip-side of commuting by rail, I think the extension of Metra from Kenosha to Milwaukee is a big waste of money. The $152 million needed to begin operations is an immense sum and is totally unjustified. It already takes 1.75 hours to get from Kenosha to Chicago; it will likely take at least another 45 minutes to go from Kenosha to Milwaukee (35 rail miles). Who is going to take a 2.5 hour+ train ride each day, when the Hiawatha can do it in under 1.5 hours?
QUOTE: Originally posted by Jack_S QUOTE: Originally posted by CSSHEGEWISCH Traffic congestion will be difficult to solve without public transit unless you plan to raise the eminent domain issue to further widen 6-lane and 8-lane freeways (and some even wider ones). The cost of property acquistion in built-up urban areas plus doing battle with NIMBY's makes a freeway-only approach quite unpracticable. Where I-5 and I-405 merge in Orange County, CA, at one point the resulting freeway is 26 lanes wide, 13 each way. And, twice a day, it is the location of one of the worst rush hour traffic jams. Adding lanes won't work for long: the new capacity merely generates more traffic.
QUOTE: Originally posted by Chaplainmonster Its odd that in places that already have estished commuter rail systems thats extension of commuter rail has been blamed for causing sprawl
It's been fun. But it isn't much fun anymore. Signing off for now.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any
QUOTE: Originally posted by n012944 QUOTE: Originally posted by EUCLID TRAVIS [ I don’t know when it became written in stone that we don’t have any room to expand the freeways. We have gobs of room around Minneapolis and Saint Paul. I have heard that for the billion dollars that we spent on our 12-mile light rail hobby, we could have added another lane to the entire ring freeway, bridges and all. And a lack of room certainly did not stop the light rail project. We rearranged half of downtown to shoehorn that in.
QUOTE: Originally posted by EUCLID TRAVIS [
An "expensive model collector"
QUOTE: Originally posted by rrandb QUOTE: Originally posted by EUCLID TRAVIS QUOTE: Originally posted by n012944 QUOTE: Originally posted by EUCLID TRAVIS Well they just completed the Hiawatha LRT here in Minneapolis. I think it is about 12 miles long and cost almost $1 billion. It will cost $25-30 million per year just to run it. The riders swear by it, but of course, with 12 miles of route, the users are a select group. We are told that it may not make economic sense right now, but once we build a whole network of rail lines, and rebuild the city around them, it will all make sense. You have to start somewhere Bert Yes, but you should start something that is not absurd. For the money, it would be far more efficient to improve the roads and bus transit. If the objective is to clean up the air, why not get the job done sooner rather than later? Thats the point of light rail and commuter initiatives. They want to start now instead of later. While the initial expenses are high they only get higher the longer you wait. There is virtually no room to widen existing hyways in many metropolitan areas. The expense of elevating hyways makes steel rails look attractive since they are a more efficent and effective way to move people. Both enviromentally and the effect on the landscape.
QUOTE: Originally posted by EUCLID TRAVIS QUOTE: Originally posted by n012944 QUOTE: Originally posted by EUCLID TRAVIS Well they just completed the Hiawatha LRT here in Minneapolis. I think it is about 12 miles long and cost almost $1 billion. It will cost $25-30 million per year just to run it. The riders swear by it, but of course, with 12 miles of route, the users are a select group. We are told that it may not make economic sense right now, but once we build a whole network of rail lines, and rebuild the city around them, it will all make sense. You have to start somewhere Bert Yes, but you should start something that is not absurd. For the money, it would be far more efficient to improve the roads and bus transit. If the objective is to clean up the air, why not get the job done sooner rather than later?
QUOTE: Originally posted by n012944 QUOTE: Originally posted by EUCLID TRAVIS Well they just completed the Hiawatha LRT here in Minneapolis. I think it is about 12 miles long and cost almost $1 billion. It will cost $25-30 million per year just to run it. The riders swear by it, but of course, with 12 miles of route, the users are a select group. We are told that it may not make economic sense right now, but once we build a whole network of rail lines, and rebuild the city around them, it will all make sense. You have to start somewhere Bert
QUOTE: Originally posted by EUCLID TRAVIS Well they just completed the Hiawatha LRT here in Minneapolis. I think it is about 12 miles long and cost almost $1 billion. It will cost $25-30 million per year just to run it. The riders swear by it, but of course, with 12 miles of route, the users are a select group. We are told that it may not make economic sense right now, but once we build a whole network of rail lines, and rebuild the city around them, it will all make sense.
QUOTE: Originally posted by Hugh Jampton I still don't see how this affects the ability of the railroad to carry passengers.. Maybe I'm thick or something.. Buying tickets is part of the passenger moving business,, but a different part from railroad operations. Most commuters buy season tickets anyway, so this part of their transport experience only happens occasionally.
QUOTE: Originally posted by TheAntiGates QUOTE: Originally posted by Hugh Jampton I'm not quite sure what all that ticket buying and change making etc. has to do with the number of passengers a railroad can carry. Please explain? It's ALL part of the passenger moving business, isn't it? in order to ride the train, they have to board it, in order to board it, they need to pay for it.....and if they are gonna pa for it, they are gonna fumble for "that nickle they know is down in that pocket, somewhere" etc etc You mean you don't get idiots like that in front of you in payment lines? i always seem to, along with people who spend 10 minutes figuring out they have not brought sufficient money to make the purchase, but wait to make that determination until they are at the cashier's station. If you wanna exclude all of those mandatory niceties of the riding experience, then you are optimizing for the sake of convenience, so why not allow the auto option to "set up" for ideal circumstances as well.?
QUOTE: Originally posted by Hugh Jampton I'm not quite sure what all that ticket buying and change making etc. has to do with the number of passengers a railroad can carry. Please explain?
QUOTE: Originally posted by TheAntiGates QUOTE: Originally posted by Hugh Jampton QUOTE: Originally posted by TheAntiGates You ain't gonna get 80,000 people to board a train in one hour. let alone continue on to drive it past a single fixed point. It seems to me that you are under the misaprehension that 80,000 people get on a train at point A and an hour later they are delivered to point Z. Sorry if it looked as though I believed that. my intention was more to exploit the concept as a comparative improbability. It's clear that any such train would HAVE to board at numerous locations, spanning well beyond the parameters of the one hour time frame. My (intended) point was along the lines of '~okay, if we are going to allow these trains 3 hours to ticket and board, then stage them to speed past a single point so that we can claim rail has a capacity of 80,000 passengers per hour, then clearly we are making some optimal assumptions, to give the rail option such a huge advantage.~' Okay, THAT was my point. And I was just saying that if we factor in ticketing, change making, and boarding (all a part of the rail riding experience) then that optimized number goes way way down. Alternately, lets figure in some unrealistic variables for the auto, and see how that modes listed capacity skyrockets. Instead of assuming each car has only one occupant, lets optimize for the sake of numbers derived, lets cram 4 passengers in each car (with the driver), throw 3 more in the trunk, then stage the cars bumper to bumper, then let them get a flying mile head start to race past a single point and see what kind of contrived, albeit impressive number we can compare with. Even with the optimized conditions for the trains, 80,000 passengers/hr is a staggering figure. Lets look at that,how many passengers per train/ how many trains? Just pulling numbers out of the air, if each train holds a 1000 passengers, then we have 80 trains supposedly passing a single point, over a 60 minute period What about a cushion in between each train for safety? how long must a train capable of holding 1000 passengers be? How long will all 80 trains combined be, and how fast will they have to travel to collectively pass by a single point within an hour? Better hope UP isn't involved, they'll let each train sit waiting in a siding for well more than an hour. he original claim just doesn't seem to hold any merit.
QUOTE: Originally posted by Hugh Jampton QUOTE: Originally posted by TheAntiGates You ain't gonna get 80,000 people to board a train in one hour. let alone continue on to drive it past a single fixed point. It seems to me that you are under the misaprehension that 80,000 people get on a train at point A and an hour later they are delivered to point Z.
QUOTE: Originally posted by TheAntiGates You ain't gonna get 80,000 people to board a train in one hour. let alone continue on to drive it past a single fixed point.
QUOTE: Consider this, a 12 car double deck train has 1680 seats (140 seats/car) and has room for the same number of standing passengers giving a total of 3360 passengers per train. So to carry 80,000 passengers you only need 24 trains. Commuter railroads can easily handle 24 trains/hr. (that's a headway of 2 and a half minutes).
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