7 ms·

Why not better connect NYC with Upstate, Central and Western New York, and shed some of the development pressure there? If there were a true high speed rail co

Why not better connect NYC with Upstate, Central and Western New York, and shed some of the development pressure there? If there were a true high speed rail connection to smaller, much lower cost metros it might make them more attractive as branch office/commuter cities. Amtrak as it is now frequently takes 8-9+ hours to get to across the state to Buffalo. Much slower than driving the Thruway. Intercity Amtrak service is poor due to: * Ancient rails * Large stretches of single track * Passenger rail deferring to freight * Reduced speeds due to degraded bridges and track beds, and outdated signaling A modern, dedicated track for passenger rail could be fit mostly in the existing right of way. This alone would greatly improve service. In the past few years New York State investigated several options for statewide rail improvements, and unfortunately ruled out any true high speed options. But even the most expensive improvements under consideration at $15 billion are cheaper than projects in NYC such as the Second Avenue subway (estimated completion at $17 billion for 8.5 miles!) https://www.dot.ny.gov/content/delivery/Main-Projects/S93751-Home/S93751--Repository/ECHSR_Public_Hearing_Brochure.pdf https://www.dot.ny.gov/content/delivery/Main-Projects/S93751... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_high-speed_rail#Projects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_high-speed_rail#Proje... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Avenue_Subway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Avenue_Subway

soulnothing 10y ago
I was in New York several months ago. I'm by no means familiar with the city, but came across a new development area Hudson Yards. There was an initiative to leave alot of room for new subway. To start with, this is more NJ to NY. But still. https://nec.amtrak.com/content/hudson-tunnel-project https://nec.amtrak.com/content/hudson-tunnel-project http://www.hudsontunnelproject.com/ http://www.hudsontunnelproject.com/ From what I was reading, alot of the area or new buildings is elevated. To allow for new subway and rail lines. http://fortune.com/2014/09/04/hudson-yards-city-on-stilts/ http://fortune.com/2014/09/04/hudson-yards-city-on-stilts/ There are also new units in this area. But what is the price, and how afforadble will they be. There are new apartments coming up. But how many are bare essential without amenties. Where they push forward cheap living. Rather than a lavish experience. http://www.hudsonyardsnewyork.com/live/ http://www.hudsonyardsnewyork.com/live/ Even with all this I look at Amtrak, and I don't see it. I mean it feels upscale compared to public transit. By that I mean there are bathrooms, cafe, business class, more comfortable chairs etc. This is priced as premium service to me. So when I look at Amtrak it's great, but it's priced out of line for a daily commute option. Daily commute, high transit is a sardine can. Pack people in tight, ship em as quickly as you can from A -> B. Some Quick Points One Way to Philadelphia * Public Transit 8$ @ 1 -> 1.5 hours * Amtrak Peak Hours 10 Minutes 50$(NE Regional) 75$(Acela) * Amtrak Non Peak 10 Minutes 100$(NE Regional) 125$(Acela) This is not New York, but I saw similar prices NYC to Phil. Look at their Monthly pass about 700$. For me DE -> Philadelphia I pay 250$ a month in transit fares. If we look at either of those numbers my base house rent is 1k in DE. I add in the cheap public transit option. I can get a no frills apartment, 15 to 20 minutes from work, compared to a 2.5 hour ride. Add in the premium frills travel package. I can get something fancier closer to center city. This is completely barring the constant budgetary issues with the public transit. That they're not making enough to support their employees. Risking constant strikes. It's cyclical. The cost of living goes up, the public transit employees need more money to live. Fares go up, and people are pushed further away. https://www.amtrak.com/take-the-trains-across-america-with-usa-rail-pass https://www.amtrak.com/take-the-trains-across-america-with-u... This is not dismissing public transit, or high speed rail. I would love to see it. But the infrastructure investment and end cost, is difficult to figure out. When I add in the cost for a monthly pass/frequent rider program. The time to travel, and everything else. Why not pay just a bit more and live near work.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  I'm a little puzzled at everyone talking about commuters in New York taking Amtrak; surely almost nobody does. The LIRR and Metro-North seem like more obvious models (although they're quite different from the subway you're describing -- somewhere between that and Amtrak).
  - soulnothing 10y ago
    I'm not a New Yorker, so can't say. But I agree. With transit I constantly see Amtrak thrown in the mix. But as I was trying to say it doesn't add up.
    - emodendroket 10y ago
      Well I don't know where you live, but long-distance commuter trains are common enough in US cities (at least in the Northeast corridor) and they don't have people packed in like sardines.
      - soulnothing 10y ago
        The sardines remark was more for public transit. The long distance trains (Amtrak) are the opposite. Overly roomy for a daily commute.
        emodendroket 10y ago
        What I'm saying is that commuter rail is yet a third category that you're ignoring. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_commuter_rail_systems_by_ridership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_commuter...
        soulnothing 10y ago
        Ah okay I usually hear to that referenced as public transit. Septa, on that list, is the public transit I was referring too. The trains on peak times are often packed.
Nav_Panel 10y ago
As a former upstate NY resident, I'm all in favor of improved rail throughout the state, but as a current NYC resident I'm skeptical. My major question is: will adding better rail service to Western NY actually result in reduced development pressure in NYC? The estimates in the first link you provided pegs travel time at 6 hours from NYC to Niagara Falls. Albany is already less than 3 hours on the Amtrak from NYC, but is still failing to "shed development pressure" from NYC. It's a chicken-and-egg problem: how do you convince jobs to move upstate without people, and how do you convince people to move upstate without jobs? Adding a train isn't enough unless it's quick enough to be a daily commute. There are other ways to entice residents but, at least in Albany's case, restrictive zoning and land use laws get in the way. In the 1950s, the US federal government decided to go all-in on highways for medium and long distance travel. It would be costly to attempt to switch back to long distance rail now and would have a deep impact on American life. The reasons rail is so desirable in an urban context doesn't often translate to a medium or long distance route. > even the most expensive improvements under consideration at $15 billion are cheaper than projects in NYC such as the Second Avenue subway (estimated completion at $17 billion for 8.5 miles!) Sure, but in terms of how many people would be served by the 2nd Ave subway vs a long distance cross-state route (200k/day on the 2nd Ave subway vs 4m/year on the train line), it seems less absurd to invest that magnitude of funding on the subway.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- subpixel 10y ago
  Forget Western NY - there's no passenger rail service whatsoever on the entire West side of the Hudson River from NYC to Albany. Newburgh, Kingston, and New Paltz are all ghosts of their former selves (there used to be a train, Newburgh was the first city in the US with electric lights, etc.) instead of thriving. And they really could thrive - not in a farmers-market-and-smorgasburg way, but in a Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill way. Except better, b/c they would have public transport between each other and a major metropolis.
  - krschultz 10y ago
bradleyjg 10y ago
Right now it takes between 100 and 120 minutes (scheduled) to go from Poughkeepsie to Grand Central Station or vice versa during peak times. For Riverhead to/from Penn that's 120 - 130. Add travel time on both ends to get door to door times, plus variability on the high side (very little chance of being early). Most people consider that uncommutable though people do it. Poughkeepsie is 73 track miles from GCS and Riverhead is 75.1 track miles to Penn Station. The average speeds that would be need to bring these areas into the reasonable commuting range are not Shinkansen-esque. Even within the official borders of NYC there are some areas with quite difficult commutes to Manhattan. Consider the Bay Terrace neighborhood of Queens. From there to the NYSE stock exchange via public transportation google maps recommends the Q13 bus to the Bayside LIRR station, a Port Washington branch train to Penn Station, and then the number 2 subway. Total trip length: 130 minutes, monthly cost: $330.14. Or consider co-op city in the bronx, from there to the stock exchange google maps recommends a .9 mile walk to the 5 train and then an hour long ride on that subway. If walking that distance was a problem you could take the Bx30 and then the 2 subway for a total trip length of 106 minutes. There are many many sensible transit projects. The big problem is that we have seemingly lost the ability to do transit projects in any sort of reasonable cost or time in the greater NYC area. I've posted some theories on why I think that is on here in the past, but the best thing you can do to get an overview of the issues involved is read this blog: https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/ https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/
- richardfontana 10y ago
  I lived in Bay Terrace during my last three years of attending a high school on the Upper East Side. The bus-subway commute was brutal, about the same amount of time as the described LIRR-subway commute to the NYSE. Around the middle of my last year of high school I drove with my father to the Bayside LIRR station and took a series of subway lines to get from Penn Station to the Upper East Side. This was closer to an hour. Prior to 10th grade I lived in the middle of Brooklyn, and my one-fare subway commute to the same school was no more than an hour. I remember reading that there were proposals to extend the present-day 7 line from Flushing to somewhere around Bayside in the late '60s or early '70s, but these were abandoned due to NIMBY-ism. I actually have known of a few people who regularly commuted from Poughkeepsie (and a few other similar-distance places in Connecticut and New Jersey) to the city.
CPLX 10y ago
Yes, dispense with the pretty pictures, and things like an inane plan to turn the BQE into an autonomous self powered three lane Uber funded artisanal pod racing track or whatever that part said and build some fucking trains. Not supertrains or hyperloop trains or complicated bullshit, straightforward European style trains that go from place to place fast and on time that we as a species figured out how to make work at least 20 years ago. Maybe 80 years ago. Not fucking hanging trams across the Verazzano bridge. A train, on the ground or in a tunnel, with rails, and a place to sit, that goes fast, like every other fucking advanced country. An express train from the central business district to the airport. Seriously how fucking hard is this. Here in NYC people actually like trains and will use them, they'll increase property values and bring more commerce and better quality of life. It's just an abject failure of our political system that we can't figure out how to build them in this region.
- komali2 10y ago
  Instead, you should be like us Houstonians and spend a billion billion dollars moving main street 15 feet to the right and plop a 5mph tram on top of it. A tram that has to stop at red lights. A tram that gets stuck in intersections for 15+ minutes blocking other tram and car traffic. A tram that in downtown shares a lane with car traffic, which never causes accidents.
  - wcummings 10y ago
    It boggles my mind that a city can spend billions of dollars building light rail, but not implement signal priority.
    - komali2 10y ago
      I feel similarly whenever I ride my bike in Mountain View. Awesome that we have bike lanes and all the lights here have sensors. Not so awesome that nobody realized bikes need to trip the sensors also.
  - pmoriarty 10y ago
    Interestingly, Amsterdam has lots of street-level trams that share the road (without protective dividers in some of the busiest parts of the city) not just with cars but with millions of bicycles and pedestrians. I'm kind of shocked that this would be allowed in Amsterdam, one of the most bike-friendly cities on the planet, considering how easy it is for bicycles to get their wheels stuck in the tram tracks while trying to cross them, and what a hazard trams are to bicycles and pedestrians. The risk of injury is further aggravated by many of the pedestrians being drunk, stoned, or high on a large variety of substances easily available in the city, and many of them being tourists who are unfamiliar with the city and not used to expecting random trams popping out of the middle of nowhere while they're walking down an otherwise pedestrian- and bicycle-populated street.
std_throwaway 10y ago
While Americans ponder about how rail is and can not be the solutions, the Chinese build train connections between megacities competing with aeroplanes in ground speed.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  We're funny as a species. In projects like infrastructure, political constraints end up being much more powerful than physical or engineering ones.

soulnothing 10y ago

I was in New York several months ago. I'm by no means familiar with the city, but came across a new development area Hudson Yards. There was an initiative to leave alot of room for new subway. To start with, this is more NJ to NY. But still. https://nec.amtrak.com/content/hudson-tunnel-project https://nec.amtrak.com/content/hudson-tunnel-project http://www.hudsontunnelproject.com/ http://www.hudsontunnelproject.com/ From what I was reading, alot of the area or new buildings is elevated. To allow for new subway and rail lines. http://fortune.com/2014/09/04/hudson-yards-city-on-stilts/ http://fortune.com/2014/09/04/hudson-yards-city-on-stilts/ There are also new units in this area. But what is the price, and how afforadble will they be. There are new apartments coming up. But how many are bare essential without amenties. Where they push forward cheap living. Rather than a lavish experience. http://www.hudsonyardsnewyork.com/live/ http://www.hudsonyardsnewyork.com/live/ Even with all this I look at Amtrak, and I don't see it. I mean it feels upscale compared to public transit. By that I mean there are bathrooms, cafe, business class, more comfortable chairs etc. This is priced as premium service to me. So when I look at Amtrak it's great, but it's priced out of line for a daily commute option. Daily commute, high transit is a sardine can. Pack people in tight, ship em as quickly as you can from A -> B. Some Quick Points One Way to Philadelphia * Public Transit 8$ @ 1 -> 1.5 hours * Amtrak Peak Hours 10 Minutes 50$(NE Regional) 75$(Acela) * Amtrak Non Peak 10 Minutes 100$(NE Regional) 125$(Acela) This is not New York, but I saw similar prices NYC to Phil. Look at their Monthly pass about 700$. For me DE -> Philadelphia I pay 250$ a month in transit fares. If we look at either of those numbers my base house rent is 1k in DE. I add in the cheap public transit option. I can get a no frills apartment, 15 to 20 minutes from work, compared to a 2.5 hour ride. Add in the premium frills travel package. I can get something fancier closer to center city. This is completely barring the constant budgetary issues with the public transit. That they're not making enough to support their employees. Risking constant strikes. It's cyclical. The cost of living goes up, the public transit employees need more money to live. Fares go up, and people are pushed further away. https://www.amtrak.com/take-the-trains-across-america-with-usa-rail-pass https://www.amtrak.com/take-the-trains-across-america-with-u... This is not dismissing public transit, or high speed rail. I would love to see it. But the infrastructure investment and end cost, is difficult to figure out. When I add in the cost for a monthly pass/frequent rider program. The time to travel, and everything else. Why not pay just a bit more and live near work.

emodendroket 10y ago
I'm a little puzzled at everyone talking about commuters in New York taking Amtrak; surely almost nobody does. The LIRR and Metro-North seem like more obvious models (although they're quite different from the subway you're describing -- somewhere between that and Amtrak).
- soulnothing 10y ago
  I'm not a New Yorker, so can't say. But I agree. With transit I constantly see Amtrak thrown in the mix. But as I was trying to say it doesn't add up.
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    Well I don't know where you live, but long-distance commuter trains are common enough in US cities (at least in the Northeast corridor) and they don't have people packed in like sardines.
    - soulnothing 10y ago
      The sardines remark was more for public transit. The long distance trains (Amtrak) are the opposite. Overly roomy for a daily commute.
      - emodendroket 10y ago
        What I'm saying is that commuter rail is yet a third category that you're ignoring. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_commuter_rail_systems_by_ridership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_commuter...
        soulnothing 10y ago
        Ah okay I usually hear to that referenced as public transit. Septa, on that list, is the public transit I was referring too. The trains on peak times are often packed.

Nav_Panel 10y ago

As a former upstate NY resident, I'm all in favor of improved rail throughout the state, but as a current NYC resident I'm skeptical. My major question is: will adding better rail service to Western NY actually result in reduced development pressure in NYC? The estimates in the first link you provided pegs travel time at 6 hours from NYC to Niagara Falls. Albany is already less than 3 hours on the Amtrak from NYC, but is still failing to "shed development pressure" from NYC. It's a chicken-and-egg problem: how do you convince jobs to move upstate without people, and how do you convince people to move upstate without jobs? Adding a train isn't enough unless it's quick enough to be a daily commute. There are other ways to entice residents but, at least in Albany's case, restrictive zoning and land use laws get in the way. In the 1950s, the US federal government decided to go all-in on highways for medium and long distance travel. It would be costly to attempt to switch back to long distance rail now and would have a deep impact on American life. The reasons rail is so desirable in an urban context doesn't often translate to a medium or long distance route. > even the most expensive improvements under consideration at $15 billion are cheaper than projects in NYC such as the Second Avenue subway (estimated completion at $17 billion for 8.5 miles!) Sure, but in terms of how many people would be served by the 2nd Ave subway vs a long distance cross-state route (200k/day on the 2nd Ave subway vs 4m/year on the train line), it seems less absurd to invest that magnitude of funding on the subway.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
subpixel 10y ago
Forget Western NY - there's no passenger rail service whatsoever on the entire West side of the Hudson River from NYC to Albany. Newburgh, Kingston, and New Paltz are all ghosts of their former selves (there used to be a train, Newburgh was the first city in the US with electric lights, etc.) instead of thriving. And they really could thrive - not in a farmers-market-and-smorgasburg way, but in a Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill way. Except better, b/c they would have public transport between each other and a major metropolis.
- krschultz 10y ago

bradleyjg 10y ago

Right now it takes between 100 and 120 minutes (scheduled) to go from Poughkeepsie to Grand Central Station or vice versa during peak times. For Riverhead to/from Penn that's 120 - 130. Add travel time on both ends to get door to door times, plus variability on the high side (very little chance of being early). Most people consider that uncommutable though people do it. Poughkeepsie is 73 track miles from GCS and Riverhead is 75.1 track miles to Penn Station. The average speeds that would be need to bring these areas into the reasonable commuting range are not Shinkansen-esque. Even within the official borders of NYC there are some areas with quite difficult commutes to Manhattan. Consider the Bay Terrace neighborhood of Queens. From there to the NYSE stock exchange via public transportation google maps recommends the Q13 bus to the Bayside LIRR station, a Port Washington branch train to Penn Station, and then the number 2 subway. Total trip length: 130 minutes, monthly cost: $330.14. Or consider co-op city in the bronx, from there to the stock exchange google maps recommends a .9 mile walk to the 5 train and then an hour long ride on that subway. If walking that distance was a problem you could take the Bx30 and then the 2 subway for a total trip length of 106 minutes. There are many many sensible transit projects. The big problem is that we have seemingly lost the ability to do transit projects in any sort of reasonable cost or time in the greater NYC area. I've posted some theories on why I think that is on here in the past, but the best thing you can do to get an overview of the issues involved is read this blog: https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/ https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/

richardfontana 10y ago
I lived in Bay Terrace during my last three years of attending a high school on the Upper East Side. The bus-subway commute was brutal, about the same amount of time as the described LIRR-subway commute to the NYSE. Around the middle of my last year of high school I drove with my father to the Bayside LIRR station and took a series of subway lines to get from Penn Station to the Upper East Side. This was closer to an hour. Prior to 10th grade I lived in the middle of Brooklyn, and my one-fare subway commute to the same school was no more than an hour. I remember reading that there were proposals to extend the present-day 7 line from Flushing to somewhere around Bayside in the late '60s or early '70s, but these were abandoned due to NIMBY-ism. I actually have known of a few people who regularly commuted from Poughkeepsie (and a few other similar-distance places in Connecticut and New Jersey) to the city.

CPLX 10y ago

Yes, dispense with the pretty pictures, and things like an inane plan to turn the BQE into an autonomous self powered three lane Uber funded artisanal pod racing track or whatever that part said and build some fucking trains. Not supertrains or hyperloop trains or complicated bullshit, straightforward European style trains that go from place to place fast and on time that we as a species figured out how to make work at least 20 years ago. Maybe 80 years ago. Not fucking hanging trams across the Verazzano bridge. A train, on the ground or in a tunnel, with rails, and a place to sit, that goes fast, like every other fucking advanced country. An express train from the central business district to the airport. Seriously how fucking hard is this. Here in NYC people actually like trains and will use them, they'll increase property values and bring more commerce and better quality of life. It's just an abject failure of our political system that we can't figure out how to build them in this region.

komali2 10y ago
Instead, you should be like us Houstonians and spend a billion billion dollars moving main street 15 feet to the right and plop a 5mph tram on top of it. A tram that has to stop at red lights. A tram that gets stuck in intersections for 15+ minutes blocking other tram and car traffic. A tram that in downtown shares a lane with car traffic, which never causes accidents.
- wcummings 10y ago
  It boggles my mind that a city can spend billions of dollars building light rail, but not implement signal priority.
  - komali2 10y ago
    I feel similarly whenever I ride my bike in Mountain View. Awesome that we have bike lanes and all the lights here have sensors. Not so awesome that nobody realized bikes need to trip the sensors also.
- pmoriarty 10y ago
  Interestingly, Amsterdam has lots of street-level trams that share the road (without protective dividers in some of the busiest parts of the city) not just with cars but with millions of bicycles and pedestrians. I'm kind of shocked that this would be allowed in Amsterdam, one of the most bike-friendly cities on the planet, considering how easy it is for bicycles to get their wheels stuck in the tram tracks while trying to cross them, and what a hazard trams are to bicycles and pedestrians. The risk of injury is further aggravated by many of the pedestrians being drunk, stoned, or high on a large variety of substances easily available in the city, and many of them being tourists who are unfamiliar with the city and not used to expecting random trams popping out of the middle of nowhere while they're walking down an otherwise pedestrian- and bicycle-populated street.

std_throwaway 10y ago

While Americans ponder about how rail is and can not be the solutions, the Chinese build train connections between megacities competing with aeroplanes in ground speed.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
We're funny as a species. In projects like infrastructure, political constraints end up being much more powerful than physical or engineering ones.