V.PayneI have to wonder if Amtrak's gate dragon boarding process and mysterious seat assignments mentally blocks many from imagining ordinary coach travel as relaxing.
I don't think we have to wonder. I'd be surprised if it wasnt' true. It's ridiculous.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
Amtrak's boarding (and alighting) process is slow and inefficient.
One concept you seem to favor is multiple stops around metro hubs. In Germany, ICE or IC trains generally make only one or two stops in an urban area besides the central terminus. Hamburg (3 other stations) and Berlin (possibly 2-4) being exceptions. The most likely connections are arranged to be cross platform on a tight headway, which I suppose reduces dis-utility time.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
The co-author to Dr. Martland, Mr. Lu, worked for Railtrack back in the day, and was associated with Reebie Associates research when they existed independently as well as UIC, so he has a pretty good US creds in my eye. I believe Dr. Martland is semi-retired, but Mr. Lu still does a lot of interesting consulting, see http://www.mit.edu/~uic/lexcie/index.html
Perhaps the UK is not true HSR by some definition, but it is a pretty fast average speed system where fine tuning of these time perceptions has to be figured out to make intercity rail work in a small, albeit dense country such as Britian, against automobile competition.
There is still a total time variable and a difference in time relative to fastest option variable in the dis-utility (quality) of time model, it is just not the only time associated variable as in vehicle time perceptions are also measured and weighted.
This model explains why people do things like select SUV's that cost say 40% more than a sedan to run and get them there perhaps slightly slower, but give them a better space perception and seating posture comfort. It also explains why dome cars were such a revenue draw back in the days and why people pay more for an Acela seat over a regional running just a bit slower as they value the time spent productively in the entire journey, not just the absolute time difference times a massive per hour value of time.
I have to wonder if Amtrak's gate dragon boarding process and mysterious seat assignments mentally blocks many from imagining ordinary coach travel as relaxing.
When I was a passenger in Germany I was keenly aware that some ICE trains took different paths along the same general direction so as to connect more cities without a transfer.
Remember there was opposition to the Atlanta belt line abandonment as it was though it would serve as a distribution loop as described.
Thanks. I read.
1. I am very much in favor of passenger rail services, including lower speed connections to actual HSR.
2 I have a good deal of first hand experience with real passenger services, especially DB (and others) in Germany.
3. Much of what is said on page 6 (I will assume his time theory - disutility - concerns the notion that total time is less important than the quality, i.e., HSR with waiting and transfering is worse than a many-stop, slower train, aka, accessible rail) betrays the authors' lack of familiarity with European trains as a system.
Dr. Meyer 's book linked to above has his time theories, but it leads him to his conclusions just referenced. Say for example by supposing that there would be no economic difference between the ride quality and relative personal space between a commuter bus and rail in a rider's analysis. Many of the conclusions did not verify in the real world when these differences were neglected. He was a proponent of what would be called domestic intermodal.
Dr. Martland's time theories are briefly summarized on page 6 of the TRB handout (he wrote this as well, see the first page credits). There is a longer paper available.
The remainder of the TRB handout speaks in particular about how to serve a large metro area such as Atlanta in such a way that intercity rail plays to all its low access cost advantages, again it is worth a read at:
Thanks. He was a real pioneer. However, in variuos summaries about his life work, I found no mention of a time theory to which you refer. He did study urban transportation and concluded urban flyer buses to be a better choice than rail transit (heavy commuter).
What about Martland?
Just keeping it short as last time the complaint was the reference was too long and hence unreadable! Any comment on the content of the reference as it relates to the discussion or better yet a opposing reference?
Dr. Meyer wrote a 1960 textbook that was used until the late-70's titled The Economics of Competition in the Transportation Industries. http://www.worldcat.org/title/economics-of-competition-in-the-transportation-industries/oclc/123208442 It was part of the 1960's pileon following the 1956 Interstate Act, where intercity busses where pushed as policy on the public up until the 1000 mile trip mark where air was determined to be superior. I agree that air travel is superior over 1000 mile individual trip distances, but between the average intercity bus trip in the 300 mile range and 1000 miles is a large gap that covers a lot of intercity travel.
To properly understand and plan in this 300-1000 mile trip gap requires an understanding of the utility (value) of time to a traveler to determine market use and a full analysis of the financial costs borne incrementally by users. Interestingly, Dr. Meyer would later conceed that road travel was vastly undepriced on a marginal basis (each extra mile) but only slightly alter the conclsions against passenger trains based on total time economics.
We discussed this one of the many times before looking at the difference in Acela fares vs. regional fares when only a small marginal difference in total time exists and example calculations were provided using those real world numbers.
However, these were economic works and not financial works, hence they ignored where all the capital was coming from to build the interstates, namely taxing use of existing roads not tied to intercity travel and not funded by the fuel taxes but instead by property taxes.
I asked you for a citatation for the time theories of either Meyer or Martland. Alternatively, you might have simply summarized the core of those theories. Instead, you sent a handout from a conference presentation by Mr. Alex Liu, who appears to be a grad student of Martland, along with a sarcasm of your own.
"citations..."
http://www.mit.edu/~uic/TRB-handouts.ring.8.1.pdf
As a class bonus perhaps one might be able to tell me when Dr. Meyer's Model was developed.
I agree that Atlantic Station would have been nice as it serves the same General Peachtree area and gets past the current station's operational questions.
schlimm I suppose one question is whether this location would serve Atlanta's Amtrak ridership base for the future? Another would be whether the Doraville location would be suitable for any new services to Chattanooga and beyond northward. My recollection is it would not.
I suppose one question is whether this location would serve Atlanta's Amtrak ridership base for the future? Another would be whether the Doraville location would be suitable for any new services to Chattanooga and beyond northward. My recollection is it would not.
What's being studied for Altanta to Chattanooga is a stand-along high speed line - either conventional HSR or mag-lev. It would run from the airport to Chatt on a new alignment.
It is a political pipe-dream designed to the keep favored consultants fed and watered.
V.Payne Sorry by downtown I meant Peachtree's mid-city area, not I suppose the original core CBD. It still seems that Peachtree and the surrounding area is where so much is happening I have a hard time seeing the utility for prospective passengers in rolling right through the area should a station be moved to the suburbs. An area being widespread sprawl does not necessarily mean little demand for intercity rail from that area, as trains have the ability to stop quickly at multiple stops in a metro area when operated by entities other than Amtrak should commuter stations exist. Of course the sprawl traffic also makes it hard to get out/into town to begin the trip at the airport. Multiple stops decrease the access cost of passengers, which is a large driver of mode choice decisions, along with the quality on in vehicle time (expressed as a cost it is the dis-utility of time). Overnight trains with private sleeping accommodations lower the perceived amount of in vehicle time as well as increase the quality of that time. In many ways the true market seems to behave closer to Dr. Martland's theories of perception of time than those promoted by Dr. Meyer of total time alone combined with transfer costs.
Sorry by downtown I meant Peachtree's mid-city area, not I suppose the original core CBD. It still seems that Peachtree and the surrounding area is where so much is happening I have a hard time seeing the utility for prospective passengers in rolling right through the area should a station be moved to the suburbs.
An area being widespread sprawl does not necessarily mean little demand for intercity rail from that area, as trains have the ability to stop quickly at multiple stops in a metro area when operated by entities other than Amtrak should commuter stations exist. Of course the sprawl traffic also makes it hard to get out/into town to begin the trip at the airport.
Multiple stops decrease the access cost of passengers, which is a large driver of mode choice decisions, along with the quality on in vehicle time (expressed as a cost it is the dis-utility of time). Overnight trains with private sleeping accommodations lower the perceived amount of in vehicle time as well as increase the quality of that time.
In many ways the true market seems to behave closer to Dr. Martland's theories of perception of time than those promoted by Dr. Meyer of total time alone combined with transfer costs.
Atlanta's Brookwood station is awful.
It's a pretty looking structure, and it's pretty nicely kept. But, it's awful.
It's in the wrong place. It's inconvienient to everything. It's a confusing mile of walking to get to the nearest MARTA rail station. You can see the Atlantic Station mixed use complex area from the station, but you can't get there from here without walking a couple miles or navigating a pedestrian unfriendly maze of side streets. You COULD take a bus. If you could figure out the schedule and route....and if you happened to have a BREEZE card - which you can't purchase on the bus.
The station has narrow platforms and NS blocks all traffic into and out of the Atlanta terminal on the Piedmont while the train is in the station. This is a contributing factor in the congestion that the train has to negotiate from Howell to Austell. The train's dwell in the station is roughly 40 minutes.
The station is three floors above the track level. There is a tiny elevator if you don't want to schlep your luggage down three flights of stairs. It take as LOOONG time to get all the inbound passengers into the station before they can start the LOOONG process of boarding the outbound folk.
You can't get there - from anywhere. It's right at the conflucence of some of the most congested highways in the region. There is almost zero short term parking and no long term parking available. Secure parking garages are more than a mile away.
Going to Buckhead? Good luck. You could walk that mile to the MARTA station, or if you had a Breeze card, you might be able to figure out the 110 bus.
The center of discretionary income in Atlanta is on the north side just outside the perimeter, although that's slowly changing. Trains should stop where the potential riders are.
Ideally, Atlanta would have a downtown station. The Atlantic Station proposal the recently withered wasn't awful. You could at least use a convenient free shuttle to get to MARTA and it was supposed integrate intercity bus service.
The "Gulch" station proposal was a good location for people, but lousy on the RR. It would be a stub off the Crescent's route. It withered and died, too.
Doraville fixes nearly all these problems and gives good access to the rest of the region via MARTA rail. Could the train still stop at Brookwood? Sure, as long as the crew change, et. al. were moved to Doraville. I'd bet the ridership would be minimal, though.
The benefit to NS from moving the station to Doraville and getting the train off the mainline during the station stop would be sizeable. So much so, I'd bet a smart negotiator could get NS to pay for everthing but the station building.
V.PayneIn many ways the true market seems to behave closer to Dr. Martland's theories of perception of time than those promoted by Dr. Meyer of total time alone combined with transfer costs.
Citations?? Sources??
Good summary. Non-commuters will drive or fly; hardly anyone will ride a train to NYC or Charlotte. Commuters will drive or use Marta.
Gotta remember that Atlanta is a sprawl, not a concentrated business area, and has the world's busiest airport. Not much demand for passenger trains.
"Upon arriving in Doraville, a passenger could board a MARTA train bound for the airport at — perhaps the 8:04 a.m. if they’re fleet-footed. If not, then they could catch the 8:14 or 8:25 a.m. train. Even if they caught the latest of those three, the MARTA train would reach the airport by 9:06 a.m. All totaled, the commute from Gainesville would be a maximum of 2 hours and 8 minutes long, or perhaps as short as an hour and 45 minutes if the two train arrivals and departures were closely synchronized.
By comparison, it takes about an hour and a half to drive from Gainesville to the airport, even longer in morning rush-hour traffic. But the train would not only bypass traffic, it would alleviate long-term parking concerns.
The round-trip fare on Amtrak is $32. (MARTA, of course, would be $2.50 each way)."
As I said, an option for the airport, not for commuting at $37.00 daily.
schlimm blue streak 1 Atlanta newspaper came out with article for using Gainesville as a station for commuters going to Doraville on the Crescent. IMO narrow thinking a commuter train to Doraville is what is needed that has predicable dparture times. http://commuting.blog.ajc.com/2015/08/17/gainesville-to-atlanta-train-all-aboard/ The article was actually about taking the Crescent from Gainesville to Doraville so as to connect with Marta to go to Hartsfield Airport, thus saving time and congestion driving on I 85/285 and avoiding long term parking problems at the airport. It was not about daily commuting.
blue streak 1 Atlanta newspaper came out with article for using Gainesville as a station for commuters going to Doraville on the Crescent. IMO narrow thinking a commuter train to Doraville is what is needed that has predicable dparture times. http://commuting.blog.ajc.com/2015/08/17/gainesville-to-atlanta-train-all-aboard/
Atlanta newspaper came out with article for using Gainesville as a station for commuters going to Doraville on the Crescent. IMO narrow thinking a commuter train to Doraville is what is needed that has predicable dparture times.
http://commuting.blog.ajc.com/2015/08/17/gainesville-to-atlanta-train-all-aboard/
The article was actually about taking the Crescent from Gainesville to Doraville so as to connect with Marta to go to Hartsfield Airport, thus saving time and congestion driving on I 85/285 and avoiding long term parking problems at the airport. It was not about daily commuting.
It was about the potential for short haul, regional North Georgia traffic on the Crescent. Timekeeping would really kill it. Now, if they extended the Charlotte train....
V.PayneHopefully Peachtree could be kept temporarily along with the new station as when I, or I suspect most other tourists are traveling to Atlanta, it is fairly close to most attractions! hence has lower access costs to consumers. Then feeder buses and rental cars could be routed to the new "beltway" station. The population center was moving when Southern operated the service but they did not get too far away from downtown, even when it was in much rougher shape. The pattern would then be a more spread out version of what once existed with two terminals. I have considered the Crescent before in a park and ride application to avoid hotel parking fees when staying downtown, but always relent when I think of Amfleet. The service could be so much more.
MARTA fare from Peachtree to downtown 15 minutes (on a bus) with 30 minute headways $2.25. MARTA fare from Doraville to downtown (on a train), 20 minutes 10 minute headways, $2.25. Which would you rather do?
Way back when SOU RR actually had a station for local traffic between the current Peachtree and Doraville. It was about 2 miles south of Doraville at Oglethorpe college.
Hopefully Peachtree could be kept temporarily along with the new station as when I, or I suspect most other tourists are traveling to Atlanta, it is fairly close to most attractions! hence has lower access costs to consumers. Then feeder buses and rental cars could be routed to the new "beltway" station. The population center was moving when Southern operated the service but they did not get too far away from downtown, even when it was in much rougher shape. The pattern would then be a more spread out version of what once existed with two terminals.
I have considered the Crescent before in a park and ride application to avoid hotel parking fees when staying downtown, but always relent when I think of Amfleet. The service could be so much more.
schlimm Austell is 19 miles west of downtown Atlanta, even farther from the east, northeast and northern suburbs. Suburban stations' problem is while they serve nearby population well, they are harder to access for all the other potential patrons. A central location inside the perimeter is preferable.
Austell is 19 miles west of downtown Atlanta, even farther from the east, northeast and northern suburbs. Suburban stations' problem is while they serve nearby population well, they are harder to access for all the other potential patrons. A central location inside the perimeter is preferable.
The west side of Atlanta really doesn't have the population the north side does. Cobb county is tough to serve, although Doraville vs. Peachtree is really a wash for them.
The more I think about Doraville, the better is seems. There is plent of space to expand parking, put in a station, store & service and even turn trains. It could serve as the origin/destination point for train thru Atlanta to the south (Macon/Jax and Columbus) which have been talked about. It has good access to I-285, I-85, Buford Highway and Peachtree Industrial. It's a very quick trip on MARTA to Buckhead and Midtown which is where all the mixed us development is taking place in the region.
Just doing such a project might great a groundswell of support for more rail passenger service in the region.
Exactly where in Austell would this station go? The stretch of track east of the 'junction' is already something of a bottleneck, the ground is relatively uneven, and the local road closely parallels the route all the way to the bridge, so the station would almost certainly have to be to the north of the tracks and reached predominantly from the cross streets; Amtrak would have to cross over "both" mains to get to the station and then, presumably, cross back to continue.
How you would serve 'north Atlanta' from a station in this location is extremely unclear -- you'd have to drive a considerable distance on the most congested of area roads to accomplish that.
That said, there might be something to be said for Austell as the location for an Auto-Train "embarkation point" for a proposed Midwest-to-Florida service, since you'd be doubling the consist into the facility anyway to prep for loading/unloading. To the extent there is traffic remaining that would have used the 'Sunset route' to reach the Florida peninsula, the routing from NOLA to Austell and then south might make sense, too.
If we are discussing turning *some* of the train at Atlanta, there is no particular reason why an extra coach (or parlor) could not be incorporated in the portion of the train that is held over.
I still think Doraville makes far better sense if you want a facility now. I'm not holding my breath for that midwest-to-Florida service soon...
Awhile back some one posted that a station in Austell, Ga would be a place for Cobb county residents to use. That would be at the junction of NS' Chatanooga and Birmingham routes. With this station all of north Atlanta metro could be served and any future midwest - Florida pass trains could also be served. That might allow closing the present Amtrak Peachtree station. The only problem is that Austell might have so many NEC passengers that Amtrak would need to run an empty car(s) Austell - New Orleans.
Austell would also not serve proposed daytime ATL - NEC train.
DON: Have not seen a location diagram of this proposed Doraville station. It may be a better option to build a baloon track just north of the Doraville station. It could be designed much like the Old Richmond, Va. Broad Street station baloon track for ACL RR. That might take no more real estate than a wye. If midwest - south of Atlanta ( Florida, Savannah, etc ) service ever started then trains could run up to Doraville and turn to be ready to go back to Howell. As well no backing around the Baloon such as New Orleans if the baloon was south of Doraville..
Anyone have a diagram of Richmond Broad street ?
Wizlish Don, will they cut off at least one unit and use it to wye and then proceed to layover? How would the 'turned' cut be incorporated into the northbound train? (Presumably the new station will have HVAC 'shore power', the power coming northbound will cut off entirely, the 'layover' cut complete with its power will be added to the front, and the rest of the power will back on and MU up...)
Don, will they cut off at least one unit and use it to wye and then proceed to layover? How would the 'turned' cut be incorporated into the northbound train? (Presumably the new station will have HVAC 'shore power', the power coming northbound will cut off entirely, the 'layover' cut complete with its power will be added to the front, and the rest of the power will back on and MU up...)
I was referring to the times of year when the Crescent doesn't run south of Atlanta four days a week because of trackwork on the Alabama division.
The plan to short turn some equipment at Altanta has made much progress because of congestion issues in the Atlanta terminal, I think. Maybe moving the station to Doraville could "unstick" it. Who knows?
blue streak 1 There is a small problem with this proposed location. When the GM plant was in operation NS had a WYE for turning auto carriers if necessary. Have no idea if wye is still there orif one located nearby. Being able to turn Crescent layover equipment will be needed.
There is a small problem with this proposed location. When the GM plant was in operation NS had a WYE for turning auto carriers if necessary. Have no idea if wye is still there orif one located nearby. Being able to turn Crescent layover equipment will be needed.
I think they can do it the same way... Inbound crew can run down to Howell to wye, then back up to Chamblee or Doraville to store.
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