20 years later

[243129]

Never happened. Why?

[243129]

50 'peeks' and no opinions? Nobody wonders or cares why?

$2.45 billion Federal loan was appropriated in 2016.

 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s2sVnRw_KYqOe9st5g1-opQd_aYMXZreZTlng9arbLs/edit

 

 

[Paul of Covington]

   I can't see a thing.

[243129]

Paul of Covington

   I can't see a thing.

 

Nothing is displayed on the screen?

[Convicted One]

243129

Nothing is displayed on the screen?

 

Here is how your post appears to me:

[CMStPnP]

243129

Never happened. Why?

We kind of had this discussion several times over but in limited ways.   Amtrak is not charging other carriers the true cost of using the Corridor or it's charges that it is charging are way below sustainability of the Corridor Infrastructure.   Hence we get these press releases from Amtrak each year as to how many 100's of millions of dollars more Amtrak has fallen behind in maintence of the corridor due to lack of the Feds paying for it via grants.

Well the bottom line is Amtrak has enough trains transiting the Corridor they do not need Federal Grants apart from major improvement projects.    They should be able to keep the cooridor in a good state of repair year to year without outside funding just via user fees.    How many privately run toll roads do you see falling apart in this country and issuing press releases each year that they could not fully afford the maintenence on the toll road that year and have fallen further behind on their multi-Billion dollar maintenece backlog?

I can see the NEC asking for help on unpredicatable weather disasters, I can see them even asking for help on major speed improvements or line relocations.

However, I do not understand why they need to do so with just basic maintenence which should be fully covered via transit fees.   We should all see the NEC maintained in a good state of repair plus enough left over for incremental improvements in speed so that over time the overall NEC speed and maintence level increases.    That has not happened since Amtraks inception.

The only conclusion I can draw is mismanagement of the NEC and Amtrak either not collecting the bill for usage in full each year OR not charging what it costs to keep the NEC in good repair each year.    Given that it cannot maintain the NEC in good repair it is sheer buffoonery to state the NEC makes a profit.

We see in a recent news item that NJ Transit withheld payments for using the NEC but was allowed to continue to run trains on the NEC and continue to wear out infrastructure.   At the point that NJ Transit refused to pay it's bill, Amtrak should have halted all NJ Transit trains transiting the NEC.    It didn't though and I am willing to bet that the recent NJ Transit settlement with Amtrak shortchanges Amtrak on the time value of money due to the delayed payments and only reimburses Amtrak just for the missed payments and does not include any time value of money or interest calculations.    If that is happening which I suspect it is abuse of Amtrak pure and simple and the rest of us in the country are paying the bill for that nonsense.

So in my view the NEC Infrastructure should be a seperate and independently managed division of Amtrak not influenced by the Amtrak executives to curry local political favor.    As for the Amtrak NYC-Albany trains, they should be under the same cost sharing formula as any other state sponsored Amtrak train and should not have any exemptions.   I suspect they have exemptions still from Amtraks founding but never looked into the issue.    When Amtrak was founded, NY said it would only support the formation of Amtrak if the NYC to Albany trains were preserved on Amtrak's dime alone or with Amtrak picking up most of the costs.    If that agreement is still in place, it is really unfair to the rest of us paying into Amtrak.

[243129]

Convicted One

 

 

243129

Nothing is displayed on the screen?

 

 

 

Here is how your post appears to me:

 

How about now? The picture comes up on my screen.   ????

[243129]

CMStPnP

 

 

243129

Never happened. Why?

 

 

We kind of had this discussion several times over but in limited ways.   Amtrak is not charging other carriers the true cost of using the Corridor or it's charges that it is charging are way below sustainability of the Corridor Infrastructure.   Hence we get these press releases from Amtrak each year as to how many 100's of millions of dollars more Amtrak has fallen behind in maintence of the corridor due to lack of the Feds paying for it via grants.

Well the bottom line is Amtrak has enough trains transiting the Corridor they do not need Federal Grants apart from major improvement projects.    They should be able to keep the cooridor in a good state of repair year to year without outside funding just via user fees.    How many privately run toll roads do you see falling apart in this country and issuing press releases each year that they could not fully afford the maintenence on the toll road that year and have fallen further behind on their multi-Billion dollar maintenece backlog?

I can see the NEC asking for help on unpredicatable weather disasters, I can see them even asking for help on major speed improvements or line relocations.

However, I do not understand why they need to do so with just basic maintenence which should be fully covered via transit fees.   We should all see the NEC maintained in a good state of repair plus enough left over for incremental improvements in speed so that over time the overall NEC speed and maintence level increases.    That has not happened since Amtraks inception.

The only conclusion I can draw is mismanagement of the NEC and Amtrak either not collecting the bill for usage in full each year OR not charging what it costs to keep the NEC in good repair each year.    Given that it cannot maintain the NEC in good repair it is sheer buffoonery to state the NEC makes a profit.

We see in a recent news item that NJ Transit withheld payments for using the NEC but was allowed to continue to run trains on the NEC and continue to wear out infrastructure.   At the point that NJ Transit refused to pay it's bill, Amtrak should have halted all NJ Transit trains transiting the NEC.    It didn't though and I am willing to bet that the recent NJ Transit settlement with Amtrak shortchanges Amtrak on the time value of money due to the delayed payments and only reimburses Amtrak just for the missed payments and does not include any time value of money or interest calculations.    If that is happening which I suspect it is abuse of Amtrak pure and simple and the rest of us in the country are paying the bill for that nonsense.

So in my view the NEC Infrastructure should be a seperate and independently managed division of Amtrak not influenced by the Amtrak executives to curry local political favor.    As for the Amtrak NYC-Albany trains, they should be under the same cost sharing formula as any other state sponsored Amtrak train and should not have any exemptions.   I suspect they have exemptions still from Amtraks founding but never looked into the issue.    When Amtrak was founded, NY said it would only support the formation of Amtrak if the NYC to Albany trains were preserved on Amtrak's dime alone or with Amtrak picking up most of the costs.    If that agreement is still in place, it is really unfair to the rest of us paying into Amtrak.

 

Well put, I totally agree with your observations. However high speed rail, as in sustained 150 mph speeds, is not feasible or practical on the existing ROW and should not be pursued. Amtrak management is inept and should be subjected to strict oversight.

[Convicted One]

243129

How about now? The picture comes up on my screen.   ????

Photobucket does not allow hot linking unless you are paying them like  $349 to host your pictures  for you.

So your pictures do not show up as pictures we can view.....unless we open the link back to photobucket, for each individual picture...very time consuming.

Just A SUGGESTION,  but there are image hosting services that allow hot linking on free accounts. IMGUR is one such service...note I have no commercial interest in imgur.

Note: I'm getting "404 file not found" error messages on all the boxes under the top image

[243129]

Convicted One

 

 

243129

How about now? The picture comes up on my screen.   ????

 

 

Photobucket does not allow hot linking unless you are paying them like  $349 to host your pictures  for you.

So your pictures do not show up as pictures we can view.....unless we open the link back to photobucket, for each individual picture...very time consuming.

Just A SUGGESTION,  but there are image hosting services that allow hot linking on free accounts. IMGUR is one such service...note I have no commercial interest in imgur.

 

Thank you for the info, I shall try it. I did however C&P, does it display now?

[Convicted One]

I'm seeing the top image now, with the Boston-NYC and NYC-Washignton blurbs on it. however everthing after that is still  empty boxes.

[243129]

Convicted One

I'm seeing the top image now, with the Boston-NYC and NYC-Washignton blurbs on it. however everthing after that is still  empty boxes.

 

OK thanks. I only posted one image.

[Convicted One]

In answer to your core question, I would offer that "hype" is frequently never realized. I believe PT Barnum had a thing or two to say about the mechanism of hype.

Frequently I see these "public-private partnerships" hyped with these really grand artist sketches of how great the finished product will be, only to find that after the taxpayers have been baited into some commitment, suddenly the "private" end of the partnership loses enthusiasm for the grander parts of the original hype.

And the Taxpayers end up doing most of the heavy lifting that is gonna get done.

 

Naive people enjoy being lied to....that is my conclusion

[Overmod]

 

I've been out of town and didn't see this thread until Sunday afternoon.  The picture appears correctly (in Firefox 66.0.3 on Mac OS 10.11.6) as a rendered image.

There's more involved, I think, than meets the eye regarding "why this never happened".  A very pointed objective of Carter's original Northeast Corridor improvement plan was to implement track speed of nominal 150mph in a variety of places; it was very obviously not going to result in very much continuous 150mph running (the crossovers in the middle of Princeton Junction famously remaining 85mph as I recall) and it was probably doomed from the start with the preferred-subcontractor setasides, but the 2h45' timing could probably have been achieved with the same kind of train used for the "2 hours and 59 civilized minutes" in the 1970s ads.  A great deal of expense and sacrifice went into some somewhat unfortunate concrete-tie trackwork  that Did Not Ride As Advertised (or have particularly long unmolested service life, either).  However, there was starting to be some fruit from these efforts by 1986, when I first noticed that train speeds were beginning to seem dramatically higher.  How much of that was ended by Ricky Gates, I can't say.

I suspect most of the reason Acela never reached its "speed potential" was circumstantial, and perhaps hushed-up if not actually hidden.  I remember the early discussions for the Boston electrification and line modifications (remember the granite center-of-ROW markers that were such a disaster?) there was extensive discussion of sustained 140mph capability, and why that ultimately was limited to just a few almost meaningless miles is its own interesting topic.

Things like spoke breakage and tilt issues surely indicate all was not well with ROW high-speed improvements as well as Bombardier's engineering of the Acela trains.  I have yet to see the raw data from the vertical accelerometers  in Amtrak's testing on the Metro-North portion of the Corridor that showed shocks in the 190g range, but transients or no, where that level can be recorded you should not expect 140mph within at least a few miles either way.  I do not know if these anomalies are even wholly correctable, let alone whether MN's other "commitments" on that section would politically allow what would be needed for safe higher-speed operation through it.

I don't need to mention bridges on the Shore Line as a sore point, and again I don't know if through speeds even on something like the revised Walk Bridge would allow full high speed.

I don't see anything particularly 'difficult' about meeting the speed improvements called for in the brochure.  As 'charlie hebdo' commented in connection with the German railroads, a program of consistent small timing improvements can produce enough incremental time savings to matter in trip time; conversely nominal improvements in permitted track speed may not amount to much in actual reduction.  I remember discussions about implementing a TVM-like 'true train-control' system that would optimize and largely 'automate' best-speed transitions through the complicated mess of slow points and slow orders that the modern Northeast Corridor route imposed .. and largely still imposes.  (And would have made the accident to Amtrak 188 impossible, but I digress...) 

I see little hype in a 2h45' timing between NYP and WAS, but you will notice the implication is that the time is for 'express' catering to people going end-to-end between the two points.  Doing it while continuing to include the ex-VP's Wilmington between Philadelphia and Baltimore is a little more onerous.

[243129]

Convicted One

In answer to your core question, I would offer that "hype" is frequently never realized. I believe PT Barnum had a thing or two to say about the mechanism of hype.

Frequently I see these "public-private partnerships" hyped with these really grand artist sketches of how great the finished product will be, only to find that after the taxpayers have been baited into some commitment, suddenly the "private" end of the partnership loses enthusiasm for the grander parts of the original hype.

And the Taxpayers end up doing most of the heavy lifting that is gonna get done.

 

Naive people enjoy being lied to....that is my conclusion

 

Here! Here!

 

[243129]

Overmod

 

I've been out of town and didn't see this thread until Sunday afternoon.  The picture appears correctly (in Firefox 66.0.3 on Mac OS 10.11.6) as a rendered image.

There's more involved, I think, than meets the eye regarding "why this never happened".  A very pointed objective of Carter's original Northeast Corridor improvement plan was to implement track speed of nominal 150mph in a variety of places; it was very obviously not going to result in very much continuous 150mph running (the crossovers in the middle of Princeton Junction famously remaining 85mph as I recall) and it was probably doomed from the start with the preferred-subcontractor setasides, but the 2h45' timing could probably have been achieved with the same kind of train used for the "2 hours and 59 civilized minutes" in the 1970s ads.  A great deal of expense and sacrifice went into some somewhat unfortunate concrete-tie trackwork  that Did Not Ride As Advertised (or have particularly long unmolested service life, either).  However, there was starting to be some fruit from these efforts by 1986, when I first noticed that train speeds were beginning to seem dramatically higher.  How much of that was ended by Ricky Gates, I can't say.

I suspect most of the reason Acela never reached its "speed potential" was circumstantial, and perhaps hushed-up if not actually hidden.  I remember the early discussions for the Boston electrification and line modifications (remember the granite center-of-ROW markers that were such a disaster?) there was extensive discussion of sustained 140mph capability, and why that ultimately was limited to just a few almost meaningless miles is its own interesting topic.

Things like spoke breakage and tilt issues surely indicate all was not well with ROW high-speed improvements as well as Bombardier's engineering of the Acela trains.  I have yet to see the raw data from the vertical accelerometers  in Amtrak's testing on the Metro-North portion of the Corridor that showed shocks in the 190g range, but transients or no, where that level can be recorded you should not expect 140mph within at least a few miles either way.  I do not know if these anomalies are even wholly correctable, let alone whether MN's other "commitments" on that section would politically allow what would be needed for safe higher-speed operation through it.

I don't need to mention bridges on the Shore Line as a sore point, and again I don't know if through speeds even on something like the revised Walk Bridge would allow full high speed.

I don't see anything particularly 'difficult' about meeting the speed improvements called for in the brochure.  As 'charlie hebdo' commented in connection with the German railroads, a program of consistent small lime improvements can produce enough incremental time savings to matter in trip time; conversely nominal improvements in permitted track speed may not amount to much in actual reduction.  I remember discussions about implementing a TVM-like 'true train-control' system that would optimize and largely 'automate' best-speed transitions through the complicated mess of slow points and slow orders that the modern Northeast Corridor route imposed .. and largely still imposes.  (And would have made the accident to Amtrak 188 impossible, but I digress...) 

I see little hype in a 2h45' timing between NYP and WAS, but you will notice the implication is that the time is for 'express' catering to people going end-to-end between the two points.  Doing it while continuing to include the ex-VP's Wilmington between Philadelphia and Baltimore is a little more onerous.

 

Your observations are spot on. I stand by my the points in the link in my second post and maintain that folks are not in that much of a hurry as indicated in my analogy regarding the cessation of Supersonic Travel (SST).

[243129]

OVERMOD: " A great deal of expense and sacrifice went into some somewhat unfortunate concrete-tie trackwork  that Did Not Ride As Advertised (or have particularly long unmolested service life, either). "

[Overmod]

243129

I stand by my the points in the link in my second post and maintain that folks are not in that much of a hurry as indicated in my analogy regarding the cessation of Supersonic Travel (SST).

You can and should stand by the points you made in the previous article (for which you received so much flak) concerning Northeast Corridor improvement, as well. 

I do think there were different reasons for abandoning the SST in the Seventies, perhaps first among them being that relatively few people would actually want to pay the required 'pro-rata development costs per trip' to get the nominal benefits for those destination pairs over land -- even had there been no convenient 'excuse' over sonic boom issues. 

Interestingly, we are now seeing that the chosen alternative strategy, flying larger numbers of people per aircraft at relatively high subsonic speeds, also has limits; the Airbus A380 is apparently an accelerating commercial failure even though it promised to offer (and, in fact, could deliver) a good mix of Sybaritic luxury and lots of cheap seats in steerage on any given flight.

It remains to be seen whether passengers would pay for the necessary very, very fast accelerations and peak speeds needed to retain current stops and still gain significant-to-customers time reductions between New York and Washington.  Or where the money could possibly come from to build a real 'second spine' with 220mph peak between Boston and New York, let alone how you could repay its cost out of increased revenues.

There are lots and lots of people who would benefit from, and would gleefully ride, true high-speed Corridor service.  Problem is, all the ones traveling within a particular schedule slot outside of logical 'peak' times could probably be accommodated on a couple of railbuses' worth of seats ... think People Express rather than Midwest Express ... and that's not a good fit with anything Amtrak owns or is contemplating for super-high-speed service.

Your original point in the article -- that Amtrak should be optimizing Corridor trains for sustained 125mph service rather than investing in the capability to reach higher nominal speeds that very little of the track would support within the service life of the prospective equipment -- remains quite valid.  It's practical time reduction using such equipment that I think the forces-that-be in the NECIP should be concentrating on now and over the next decade or so.  It would certainly remain wholly relevant for regional well into the future.

[RDG467]

243129

Never happened. Why?

 

Well, it WAS a vision, and it's STILL the 21st century, so methinks they have another 81 years to make this come true......

[SD70Dude]

Very fitting that the 'pointless arrow' is used in the ad....

I never knew Amtrak kept using it for so long!

[243129]

This from a 2013 missive.

 

"Here is an example of where Amtrak is today. The New Haven had a freight train 1st Advanced BO-1, the "Jet", which guaranteed delivery from Boston to Chicago in 24 hours. Forty five years later Amtrak's Lake Shore Limited takes almost 22 hours from Boston to Chicago. The Merchants Limited circa 1963, with a fifteen minute switch from electric to diesel locomotive power at New Haven would cover the distance from New York to Boston in 3 hours and 55 minutes. The Acela Express, in the same time slot and far from it's proposed goal of 3 hours, covers the distance in 3 hours and 40 minutes.49 years have passed and countless millions (perhaps billions) spent in track improvements and wire installation and the resulting time cut from the schedule is zero minutes! Is this considered progress? I have seen the high speed trains come and go. The New Haven's two forays into HST's proved to be futile on the existing roadbed just as Amtrak's is today. Europe and Japan were bombed in to rubble in WW II and the Marshall Plan and SCAP rebuilt their infrastructures with an eye on the future. The railroads were built as straight as the geography allowed. The NEC infrastructure dates from the 1800's taking a circuitous route between industries.

Outdated Interstate system is responsible for passenger increase not Amtrak's business acumen.

Folks want good dependable transportation.

Amtrak can wrest the 500 mile and under market from airlines.

FY 2012 Regional up 6.6%   Acela up 0.5% 2nd best year ever

1969 Metroliner 2'30” NYP – WAS

2013 Acela  2'45” 5 stops

2013Regional 3' 0” 10 stops

1963 Merchants Limited w/15 minute engine change @ NH 3'55” NY – BOS

2013 Acela w/ no stop or engine change @ NH 3'40” NYP - BOS"

[BaltACD]

Your solution?

[243129]

BaltACD

Your solution?

 

The 'solution'/conclusion is contained within.

[BaltACD]

243129

 

BaltACD

Your solution? 

The 'solution'/conclusion is contained within.

And the means to finance???  Even bakers dough required flour and yeast among other things.  Your 'solution' doesn't even get in the oven to be half baked.

[243129]

BaltACD

And the means to finance??? Even bakers dough required flour and yeast among other things. Your 'solution' doesn't even get in the oven to be half baked.

Just to be clear tell me what you read as my 'solution'.

[charlie hebdo]

243129

 

 

BaltACD

And the means to finance??? Even bakers dough required flour and yeast among other things. Your 'solution' doesn't even get in the oven to be half baked.

 

 

Just to be clear tell me what you read as my 'solution'.

 

You imply developing a new RoW with fewer curves,  modern track, signals and catenary.  I believe that was already proposed by the pertinent agency,  even the precise route.   However, funding and securing the land in such a congested region will be tough. 

[243129]

charlie hebdo

You imply developing a new RoW with fewer curves, modern track, signals and catenary. I believe that was already proposed by the pertinent agency, even the precise route. However, funding and securing the land in such a congested region will be tough.

"funding and securing the land in such a congested region will be tough."

No it will be cost prohibitive.

Folks want good dependable transportation.

Amtrak can wrest the 500 mile and under market from airlines.

Monies ticketed for high speed rail can be used to upgrade present service and equipment for the heavily populated NEC.

[charlie hebdo]

Good luck with that.  Fixing the antique North River tunnels is taking forever. The NEC is very  congested.  The Acela IIs have higher capacity than the older equipment.  That will help. But you probably prefer GG1s, P70s and Clockers of days gone by. 

[Overmod]

charlie hebdo

You imply developing a new RoW with fewer curves,  modern track, signals and catenary.  I believe that was already proposed by the pertinent agency,  even the precise route.

Actually still a range of routes ... he doesn't seem to want to say, but google "NECIP" for all the information a discussion like this probably needs.

(The discussion of BO-2 is a little poignant, because it almost certainly involved first going from Cedar Hill over the Poughkeepsie Bridge -- speed-competitive even with the 10mph restriction across that substantial-length structure -- and then down the 'alphabet route', many track miles of which no longer exist.  I have to wonder what the current alternatives to that service, either via the Lehigh Line or some other 'functional alternative' like a great way 'round involving Selkirk, might be -- the sad truth being that we'll never again see through freight either via the Corridor or the Pennsylvania state service to Harrisburg, or the well-engineered low-grade cutoffs that used parts of them).

It seems to me, though, that the important gist of his argument regarding the Acela II has always been that designing equipment to run on such improved facilities is premature, and we should look instead at improving what we have, incrementally if necessary following the true German development model, to get to where a reasonable percentage of the NEC route mileage allows sustained 125mph speed ... and design the replacement equipment for that peak speed, which not incidentally is tremendously less, much of it already costed-down via PRIIA and other development efforts, and reasonably buff-and-draft compliant, than true modern HSR designs that have to depend on CEM and clever engineering like the intercar connections on Talgo trains to 'make' their higher peak speed in any practical way.  While I can't point to any version of a study in NECIP that prioritizes this specifically as a near-term priority, much of the current work (such as Gateway, Portal Bridge, and the continuing rollout of constant-tension catenary) has this as a reasonable effect if not a major primary purpose.

I think that a case very similar to that 'against' LD trains can be made for the 220mph second spine: its actual benefits over even the consistent-125-mph alternative are relatively small and related to a restricted cohort of likely-rich people who find use in the high peak speeds.  While of course I'd like to see a good 220mph service established, I don't see any administration, even one helmed by the likes of AOC, actually allocating the capital to get the thing completed and then properly run and maintained.  And I'm in accord with Joe that the 'opportunity cost' represented by that part of the Acela IIs that implements higher-than-125mph speed capability will be wasted over what's likely the design lifetime of the new equipment -- that money being better spent in consistent improvement to 125mph standards on what might be a substantial part of the Corridor much earlier than even the rosiest NECIP budgets.

Even old-fashioned position lights and NORAC work with 125mph traffic ... they did for years.  CBTC would make mixing high-speed with lower-speed or stopping traffic almost a cinch while maintaining any practical margin of safety rationally desirable.  I don't remember the issues involved with actually opening up a large part of the New-Haven-to-Boston center-to-center distance to permit actual use of the active-tilt, but the requirement for negative cant deficiency might be 'enough' less for 125mph peak to permit less expensive track shifting and regrading using modern equipment like R-cranes and TLMs.

[charlie hebdo]

People like the Acela I and pay for it instead of more traditional NEC Regional,  even though the speed and time benefits are marginally small.  So it makes sense to replace them with similar but better equipment that has greater capacity, even without going to double-decker cars.