5 ms·

Penn Station Can Handle the Load: New York Is Ready for Through-Running

79 points by Ericson2314 2y ago

Ericson2314 2y ago
Since it's midway through the article, note that https://github.com/effective-transit-alliance/platform-crowd-model https://github.com/effective-transit-alliance/platform-crowd... is the underlying model we used for passenger circulation.
Ericson2314 2y ago
Also for reference, https://www.etany.org/modernizing-new-york-commuter-rail https://www.etany.org/modernizing-new-york-commuter-rail is our previous report that describes what through-running actually is, why it would be good, etc. This report is more narrowly tailored on refuting Amtrak's grossly mistaken reasoning in their recent study.
- pcl 2y ago
  “Through-running involves operating trains across Manhattan and through to the other side of the city, instead of immediately turning them back to the suburb they came from, as is done today.”
  - Ericson2314 2y ago
    Imagine how nice it would be to take a single train from Flushing to Newark!
bobthepanda 2y ago
Having recently ridden Amtrak, easily the worst thing about it is the fact that they've decided to go with an airline style boarding process where the platforms are treated as a secure area and everybody has to single-file get their ticket checked to get onto a platform. The whole advantage of a train vs a plane is that a train has many doors, allowing a lot of simultaneous boarding to happen; and they also already have conductors who check your ticket to make sure you are getting into the correct car, and another ticket check once the train is in motion. It would be significantly better at major stations to just have conductors at every train car on the platform in parallel doing ticket checks, rather than just have one funnel.
- jjice 2y ago
  I haven't been on an Amtrak in about six months, so it may have changed, but where were you boarding? Was it New York? Boarding in NY is slow and structured, but when I've boarded in Back Bay (Boston), Portland (Maine), and Providence, it's the better way that you've mentioned. They make everyone rescan tickets for the North East regional in NY also, if you're just passing through. It's a bit annoying, but I wonder if the traffic getting on and off is too great in NY to be able to do that. I have no clue, though.
  - Ericson2314 2y ago
    Yes their practice elsewhere is better. Amtrak seems to think that lazzaiz-faire platform ingress/egress doesn't scale to NY Penn, but that's exactly backwards — it's not letting people circulate freely which doesn't scale. Also, fun fact, if you don't go in the main hall Amtrak waiting area at NY Penn, you can board the platform whenever you want. But it's hard to figure out what platform/track to go to in advance — hiding that information is how they discourage this.
    - craftkiller 2y ago
      laissez-faire
      - Ericson2314 2y ago
        :) Evidently I previously convinced Android to add my misspelling to the dictionary. Yikes!
    - TimK65 2y ago
      Many times I've stood in front of the displays in the Exit Concourse at Penn. As soon as they post the track for your train, you can just go downstairs to the platform.
      - bobthepanda 2y ago
        But that just makes the whole single file procedure even more dumb because it doesn’t catch everybody and it’s easy to avoid.
CSMastermind 2y ago
This seems to be part of a debate I'm unfamiliar with. I am however familiar with this style of argument. The page reads like a lot of motivated reasoning, where they have a conclusion set and they're selecting data, massaging statistics, etc. to fit into their narrative. They might be right in the points they're making, I have no idea, but the style of the article definitely makes me skeptical.
- Ericson2314 2y ago
  I mean... it's a rebuttal. See my comment below: we already put out a report saying we thought through running was the right approach, and now we're responding to Amtrak's report on the topic. Even if there were passenger circulation issues problems (and our passenger model was half-written when we did the first report), there are other solutions like decking over tracks to join adjacent platforms into a wider platform. We're happy that do not appear necessary, but if it did it doesn't fatally imperil through running as being the best option. Finally, the number of outright errors and dubious claims in the Amtrak study makes us think they are doing their own reasoning. If you really don't believe my previous two paragraphs, just think ask yourself motivated reasoning seems less suspect! :) Through-running, unlike 10s billions for a station expansion, is a cheap experiment. We can just try it! If there are more passengers than expected (yay! Though) and safe circulation does become and issue, that's great new info and very little money wasted.
- crote 2y ago
  Why not do the same with Amtrak's reports? From a European perspective a 15-22 minute dwell time sounds ludicrous. My local train station is pretty large and designed around through trains, and a 7-minute followup between departures (so between train 1 departing on track X to train 2 departing on track X) is routine here. If it can be done over here, what makes Penn Station so special that they need 3x as much time? Why can't Amtrak do what other railway companies have been doing for years? Amtrak is already lying about other countries using headway-based scheduling, so can they really be trusted about the rest? I have no idea if this ETA article is 100% trustworthy, but Amtrak definitely isn't.
  - 2y ago
TuringNYC 2y ago
I ride into NYC 3x/wk via Penn Station. I realize ETANY is not affiliated with NJTransit, but I dont see how a system with the level of incompetence that NJTransit has could possibly handle more complexity. NJ Transit can barely seem to handle service w/o Through-Running, so any discussion of expanding service seems premature. Here are some highlights: - Inability to tell consumers ahead of time that trains will be stopped (even though they know well in advance.) Now, entire private WhatsApp groups have been set up where commuters warn each other of stopped trains and clogged stations. This leads to people coming to Penn Station only to find out trains are not running/cancelled/delayed. This is with a hub/spoke -- imagine if they expand beyond Penn Station into CT/LI. - Inability/Unwillingness to communicate sources of blockages. There are ways to bypass NYPenn/Secaucus and go directly to Newark (PATH train). But NJTransit wont tell you where the blockage is, so its impossible to work around delays - Inability/Unwillingness to communicate which trains will depart first, when multiple trains are backed up and queued up. People guess and hope they choose the "next" train. - Regularly cancelled trains, esp after 7pm. They randomly cancel scheduled trains. No point in a schedule if you wont follow the schedule. I'd want to contain the chaos of NJTransit to NYPenn Station and not beyond. At most, a 2nd stop at GC (like with LIRR did). The system isnt currently mature enough to be granted more responsibility. Mind you -- this would be valuable. Folks who move to NJ necessarily cut themselves off CT jobs (esp hedge funds, etc.) So of course, having thru traffic from NJ all the way to CT would open up huge pools of job applicants and job opportunities.
- Projectiboga 2y ago
  These arguements are also good to suggest they should not get the planned expansion of terminus tracks.
- Ericson2314 2y ago
  > I realize ETANY is not affiliated with NJTransit We are equally unaffiliated with all the railroads and transit agencies :) We do have membership in NJ are very much as in the transit going-ons through the tri-state area. A big unifying idea is that the economic geography doesn't care about political boundaries, and so the transportation planning shouldn't either. ------ > NJ Transit can barely seem to handle service w/o Through-Running, so any discussion of expanding service seems premature. Here are some highlights: You do raise a good point that through-running does require some amount of competence --- simply have a more interconnected rail network (revenue service on both sides) inherently means there is more potential for failures to propagate throughout the network. But, we'd like to believe this is surmountable. ------ 1. First of all, NJT and the MTA have done it before! See "train to the game". See: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Haven_Line#Meadowlands_game_day_servic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Haven_Line#Meadowlands_gam... - https://www.njtransit.com/press-releases/take-train-game-metlife-stadium https://www.njtransit.com/press-releases/take-train-game-met... Of course, running some special event service is not the same as doing through running day-in and day-out, but it is something to build on. ------ 2. What's the alternative? - If there is no new expansion and no through-running, than the billions spent on Gateway way be rather wasted. That would be a huge embarrassment to the agencies, and politicians that stuck their neck out for the funding, alike. - If Penn Expansion is not pursued for bullshit reasons, but the kayfabe is dropped and its done for the honest reason that no one believes agency competency can be improved, that is also embarrassing. Would the station actually be funded at that point? We therefore think even just changing the conversation to acknowledge that ops competency, and not station geometry, is the binding constraint, would be a major improvement. ------ 3. We have time In line with the above counter-factuals, the rubber only hits the road (excuse me, steel hits the tracks :)) once Gateway is done. For better or worse, that is a long way off. This gives the agencies time to get ready. - The money that would be been spent on station improvements can be spent on NJT "tech debt" instead --- all the behind the scenes infra that enables higher reliability. - Congestion pricing should be raised, and hopefully the next crop of NJ politicians will be more open-minded and accept some money for NJT. - Penn Station Access sending Metro North trains to Penn station makes for a good opportunity to "train" the agencies through-running, prior to Gateway being finished. And don't forget "train to the game". ------ > Mind you -- this would be valuable. Folks who move to NJ necessarily cut themselves off CT jobs (esp hedge funds, etc.) So of course, having thru traffic from NJ all the way to CT would open up huge pools of job applicants and job opportunities. Yes, it is a huge opportunity! Our main report (https://www.etany.org/modernizing-new-york-commuter-rail https://www.etany.org/modernizing-new-york-commuter-rail) talked quite a lot about that. I wish our politicians were less provincial about state boundaries, and better able to visualize just how impactful expanding commute sheds is. ------ A final disclaimer: I am far less knowledgable on train things than the other ETA members, so take this all with a bit more grain of salt.
Projectiboga 2y ago
Through running is to avoid an upcoming real estate grab / bodogale where Stephen Ross's Vonado wants to let the state of NY use emmenent domain, skip city land use review and demolish an entire block 8th ave to 7th fromst 31st to 30th street. This is for him to build mega office towers and build more terminus rail platforms. The idea of through-running is to not have trains parked like that in an over crouded midtown. That way they can reduce the number of tracks and widen the platforms. It has beem done with great success in many big cities already. The idea would be to have NJ Transit trains run to platforms at their rail yard in Queens. This is a large ripe for development area between Long Island City and Sunnyside Queens. It could also go farther to Port Morris in the Bronx and link with Metro North and the further North East rail corridor. Long Island Rail could go to a new terminus rail yard in NJ which could have a bus terminal to reduce the amount of busses into NYC. The main issue I can see is some of those commuter runs are too long for crew rotations and may require crew shifts who just do last stop in NJ through to the outer boro NYC rail yards. Here is the group advocating this idea. Rethink Penn Station NYC https://www.rethinkpennstationnyc.org/ https://www.rethinkpennstationnyc.org/
- mncharity 2y ago
  > Through running is to avoid an upcoming real estate grab [...] and build more terminus rail platforms Could one craft a gold-plated through-running transit hub proposal which supports the grab? Then transit improves, grab or no grab. Given the dominant power of real estate in NYC, the TFA had for me the feel of a proposal from engineering to a c-suite with big divergent incentives. Could one tease apart the "don't build badly" from the "don't need to build" arguments? "There are better alternatives to that, but if that gets done anyway for whatever reasons, at least get it right by ...".
  - kkysen 2y ago
    There are other real estate grabs through-running could support. Through-running plans often include a Sunnyside Yards station where Metro-North Penn Station Access (PSA) trains from Hell Gate meet LIRR trains to Penn and Grand Central Madison (GCM), which would also distribute some of the passenger loads out of Penn, which is more constrained. A station here would mean you could also deck over the 180-acre railyard and build skyscrapers (the MTA is exempt from zoning) for some 50k people (about the same population density of Yorkville in the UES) with direct commutes to Penn and Grand Central.
renewiltord 2y ago
This is clearly written for an audience that already knows what's going on. I don't, so I'm curious. Is the difference between: outer terminus------>ny penn|alight|board new train|----->later station vs. outer terminus------>ny penn|stay on train|---->later station Why does the latter need more tracks? This seems intuitively obvious that it shouldn't, but maybe I don't understand this. EDIT: Thank you to the commenters (who I can't answer because I'm rate-limited).
- jccooper 2y ago
  The former (terminating lines) needs more tracks/platforms at the station, because turning the train around takes more time than stopping and continuing (through running) and turning around at the end of the line.
- crote 2y ago
  It's about how trains are running. Consider a rail network connected like A-B-C . With terminating trains you'd have one train run A-B-A, and another train run C-B-C. With through trains you'd have one train run A-B-C and another train run C-B-A. Terminating trains have to stop and reverse, which takes quite a lot of time because the driver has to go to the other end of the train. Through trains can just continue in the same direction, so it is a lot faster. Because a through train occupies the track for less time you don't need as many tracks to serve the same number of trains per hour.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    more importantly, if A and C are suburban locations, they probably don't need as much expansion as dogpiling everything in B, which is even more expensive because B is a block of some of the most expensive global real estate in the world.
- Projectiboga 2y ago
  Issue is cost, through running could happen for much less cost. It would actually just be through running a little further at first and maybe integrated later. The current plan is to demolish an entire city block, the true motivation is for private gain.
librasteve 2y ago
through running is a highly effective mass transit approach as exemplified in Munich & Berlin (S-Bahn), Paris (RER), and now London (Lizzy Line)
GauntletWizard 2y ago
The reason trains are deprioritized in the American travel schedule is that the rails are rightly used for freight instead. Even if you're trying to optimize for CO2 production, rails are barely better than air travel [1], and adding more passenger service would require a ton less freight service. That freight service would be pushed to trucks - already too high of a percentage of freight. [2] trucks are half the efficiency of trains per mile[3], and truck freight is already most of fuel usage[4]. If Europe converted their rails used for passenger service into freight only and everyone flew instead, we'd have solved the climate crisis. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/04/climate/trains-planes-carbon-footprint-pollution.html?smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/04/climate/trains-planes-car... [2] https://www.bts.gov/content/us-ton-miles-freight https://www.bts.gov/content/us-ton-miles-freight [3] https://railroads.dot.gov/sites/fra.dot.gov/files/fra_net/16332/1991_RAIL%20VS%20TRUCK%20FUEL%20EFFICIENCY%20-%20THE%20RELATIVE%20F%282%29.PDF https://railroads.dot.gov/sites/fra.dot.gov/files/fra_net/16... is the last authoritative study, but truck efficiency has greatly improved since then. [4] https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/freight-transportation https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/freight-transportation
Merrill 2y ago
New Jersey trains use overhead catenaries. LIRR use third rail. How are through running trains powered?
- LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago
  Probably like these? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M8_(railcar) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M8_(railcar)

79 points by Ericson2314 2y ago

Since it's midway through the article, note that https://github.com/effective-transit-alliance/platform-crowd-model https://github.com/effective-transit-alliance/platform-crowd... is the underlying model we used for passenger circulation.

Ericson2314 2y ago

Also for reference, https://www.etany.org/modernizing-new-york-commuter-rail https://www.etany.org/modernizing-new-york-commuter-rail is our previous report that describes what through-running actually is, why it would be good, etc. This report is more narrowly tailored on refuting Amtrak's grossly mistaken reasoning in their recent study.

pcl 2y ago
“Through-running involves operating trains across Manhattan and through to the other side of the city, instead of immediately turning them back to the suburb they came from, as is done today.”
- Ericson2314 2y ago
  Imagine how nice it would be to take a single train from Flushing to Newark!

bobthepanda 2y ago

Having recently ridden Amtrak, easily the worst thing about it is the fact that they've decided to go with an airline style boarding process where the platforms are treated as a secure area and everybody has to single-file get their ticket checked to get onto a platform. The whole advantage of a train vs a plane is that a train has many doors, allowing a lot of simultaneous boarding to happen; and they also already have conductors who check your ticket to make sure you are getting into the correct car, and another ticket check once the train is in motion. It would be significantly better at major stations to just have conductors at every train car on the platform in parallel doing ticket checks, rather than just have one funnel.

jjice 2y ago
I haven't been on an Amtrak in about six months, so it may have changed, but where were you boarding? Was it New York? Boarding in NY is slow and structured, but when I've boarded in Back Bay (Boston), Portland (Maine), and Providence, it's the better way that you've mentioned. They make everyone rescan tickets for the North East regional in NY also, if you're just passing through. It's a bit annoying, but I wonder if the traffic getting on and off is too great in NY to be able to do that. I have no clue, though.
- Ericson2314 2y ago
  Yes their practice elsewhere is better. Amtrak seems to think that lazzaiz-faire platform ingress/egress doesn't scale to NY Penn, but that's exactly backwards — it's not letting people circulate freely which doesn't scale. Also, fun fact, if you don't go in the main hall Amtrak waiting area at NY Penn, you can board the platform whenever you want. But it's hard to figure out what platform/track to go to in advance — hiding that information is how they discourage this.
  - craftkiller 2y ago
    laissez-faire
    - Ericson2314 2y ago
      :) Evidently I previously convinced Android to add my misspelling to the dictionary. Yikes!
  - TimK65 2y ago
    Many times I've stood in front of the displays in the Exit Concourse at Penn. As soon as they post the track for your train, you can just go downstairs to the platform.
    - bobthepanda 2y ago
      But that just makes the whole single file procedure even more dumb because it doesn’t catch everybody and it’s easy to avoid.

CSMastermind 2y ago

This seems to be part of a debate I'm unfamiliar with. I am however familiar with this style of argument. The page reads like a lot of motivated reasoning, where they have a conclusion set and they're selecting data, massaging statistics, etc. to fit into their narrative. They might be right in the points they're making, I have no idea, but the style of the article definitely makes me skeptical.

Ericson2314 2y ago
I mean... it's a rebuttal. See my comment below: we already put out a report saying we thought through running was the right approach, and now we're responding to Amtrak's report on the topic. Even if there were passenger circulation issues problems (and our passenger model was half-written when we did the first report), there are other solutions like decking over tracks to join adjacent platforms into a wider platform. We're happy that do not appear necessary, but if it did it doesn't fatally imperil through running as being the best option. Finally, the number of outright errors and dubious claims in the Amtrak study makes us think they are doing their own reasoning. If you really don't believe my previous two paragraphs, just think ask yourself motivated reasoning seems less suspect! :) Through-running, unlike 10s billions for a station expansion, is a cheap experiment. We can just try it! If there are more passengers than expected (yay! Though) and safe circulation does become and issue, that's great new info and very little money wasted.
crote 2y ago
Why not do the same with Amtrak's reports? From a European perspective a 15-22 minute dwell time sounds ludicrous. My local train station is pretty large and designed around through trains, and a 7-minute followup between departures (so between train 1 departing on track X to train 2 departing on track X) is routine here. If it can be done over here, what makes Penn Station so special that they need 3x as much time? Why can't Amtrak do what other railway companies have been doing for years? Amtrak is already lying about other countries using headway-based scheduling, so can they really be trusted about the rest? I have no idea if this ETA article is 100% trustworthy, but Amtrak definitely isn't.
- 2y ago

TuringNYC 2y ago

I ride into NYC 3x/wk via Penn Station. I realize ETANY is not affiliated with NJTransit, but I dont see how a system with the level of incompetence that NJTransit has could possibly handle more complexity. NJ Transit can barely seem to handle service w/o Through-Running, so any discussion of expanding service seems premature. Here are some highlights: - Inability to tell consumers ahead of time that trains will be stopped (even though they know well in advance.) Now, entire private WhatsApp groups have been set up where commuters warn each other of stopped trains and clogged stations. This leads to people coming to Penn Station only to find out trains are not running/cancelled/delayed. This is with a hub/spoke -- imagine if they expand beyond Penn Station into CT/LI. - Inability/Unwillingness to communicate sources of blockages. There are ways to bypass NYPenn/Secaucus and go directly to Newark (PATH train). But NJTransit wont tell you where the blockage is, so its impossible to work around delays - Inability/Unwillingness to communicate which trains will depart first, when multiple trains are backed up and queued up. People guess and hope they choose the "next" train. - Regularly cancelled trains, esp after 7pm. They randomly cancel scheduled trains. No point in a schedule if you wont follow the schedule. I'd want to contain the chaos of NJTransit to NYPenn Station and not beyond. At most, a 2nd stop at GC (like with LIRR did). The system isnt currently mature enough to be granted more responsibility. Mind you -- this would be valuable. Folks who move to NJ necessarily cut themselves off CT jobs (esp hedge funds, etc.) So of course, having thru traffic from NJ all the way to CT would open up huge pools of job applicants and job opportunities.

Projectiboga 2y ago
These arguements are also good to suggest they should not get the planned expansion of terminus tracks.
Ericson2314 2y ago
> I realize ETANY is not affiliated with NJTransit We are equally unaffiliated with all the railroads and transit agencies :) We do have membership in NJ are very much as in the transit going-ons through the tri-state area. A big unifying idea is that the economic geography doesn't care about political boundaries, and so the transportation planning shouldn't either. ------ > NJ Transit can barely seem to handle service w/o Through-Running, so any discussion of expanding service seems premature. Here are some highlights: You do raise a good point that through-running does require some amount of competence --- simply have a more interconnected rail network (revenue service on both sides) inherently means there is more potential for failures to propagate throughout the network. But, we'd like to believe this is surmountable. ------ 1. First of all, NJT and the MTA have done it before! See "train to the game". See: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Haven_Line#Meadowlands_game_day_servic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Haven_Line#Meadowlands_gam... - https://www.njtransit.com/press-releases/take-train-game-metlife-stadium https://www.njtransit.com/press-releases/take-train-game-met... Of course, running some special event service is not the same as doing through running day-in and day-out, but it is something to build on. ------ 2. What's the alternative? - If there is no new expansion and no through-running, than the billions spent on Gateway way be rather wasted. That would be a huge embarrassment to the agencies, and politicians that stuck their neck out for the funding, alike. - If Penn Expansion is not pursued for bullshit reasons, but the kayfabe is dropped and its done for the honest reason that no one believes agency competency can be improved, that is also embarrassing. Would the station actually be funded at that point? We therefore think even just changing the conversation to acknowledge that ops competency, and not station geometry, is the binding constraint, would be a major improvement. ------ 3. We have time In line with the above counter-factuals, the rubber only hits the road (excuse me, steel hits the tracks :)) once Gateway is done. For better or worse, that is a long way off. This gives the agencies time to get ready. - The money that would be been spent on station improvements can be spent on NJT "tech debt" instead --- all the behind the scenes infra that enables higher reliability. - Congestion pricing should be raised, and hopefully the next crop of NJ politicians will be more open-minded and accept some money for NJT. - Penn Station Access sending Metro North trains to Penn station makes for a good opportunity to "train" the agencies through-running, prior to Gateway being finished. And don't forget "train to the game". ------ > Mind you -- this would be valuable. Folks who move to NJ necessarily cut themselves off CT jobs (esp hedge funds, etc.) So of course, having thru traffic from NJ all the way to CT would open up huge pools of job applicants and job opportunities. Yes, it is a huge opportunity! Our main report (https://www.etany.org/modernizing-new-york-commuter-rail https://www.etany.org/modernizing-new-york-commuter-rail) talked quite a lot about that. I wish our politicians were less provincial about state boundaries, and better able to visualize just how impactful expanding commute sheds is. ------ A final disclaimer: I am far less knowledgable on train things than the other ETA members, so take this all with a bit more grain of salt.

Projectiboga 2y ago

Through running is to avoid an upcoming real estate grab / bodogale where Stephen Ross's Vonado wants to let the state of NY use emmenent domain, skip city land use review and demolish an entire block 8th ave to 7th fromst 31st to 30th street. This is for him to build mega office towers and build more terminus rail platforms. The idea of through-running is to not have trains parked like that in an over crouded midtown. That way they can reduce the number of tracks and widen the platforms. It has beem done with great success in many big cities already. The idea would be to have NJ Transit trains run to platforms at their rail yard in Queens. This is a large ripe for development area between Long Island City and Sunnyside Queens. It could also go farther to Port Morris in the Bronx and link with Metro North and the further North East rail corridor. Long Island Rail could go to a new terminus rail yard in NJ which could have a bus terminal to reduce the amount of busses into NYC. The main issue I can see is some of those commuter runs are too long for crew rotations and may require crew shifts who just do last stop in NJ through to the outer boro NYC rail yards. Here is the group advocating this idea. Rethink Penn Station NYC https://www.rethinkpennstationnyc.org/ https://www.rethinkpennstationnyc.org/

mncharity 2y ago
> Through running is to avoid an upcoming real estate grab [...] and build more terminus rail platforms Could one craft a gold-plated through-running transit hub proposal which supports the grab? Then transit improves, grab or no grab. Given the dominant power of real estate in NYC, the TFA had for me the feel of a proposal from engineering to a c-suite with big divergent incentives. Could one tease apart the "don't build badly" from the "don't need to build" arguments? "There are better alternatives to that, but if that gets done anyway for whatever reasons, at least get it right by ...".
- kkysen 2y ago
  There are other real estate grabs through-running could support. Through-running plans often include a Sunnyside Yards station where Metro-North Penn Station Access (PSA) trains from Hell Gate meet LIRR trains to Penn and Grand Central Madison (GCM), which would also distribute some of the passenger loads out of Penn, which is more constrained. A station here would mean you could also deck over the 180-acre railyard and build skyscrapers (the MTA is exempt from zoning) for some 50k people (about the same population density of Yorkville in the UES) with direct commutes to Penn and Grand Central.

renewiltord 2y ago

This is clearly written for an audience that already knows what's going on. I don't, so I'm curious. Is the difference between: outer terminus------>ny penn|alight|board new train|----->later station vs. outer terminus------>ny penn|stay on train|---->later station Why does the latter need more tracks? This seems intuitively obvious that it shouldn't, but maybe I don't understand this. EDIT: Thank you to the commenters (who I can't answer because I'm rate-limited).

jccooper 2y ago
The former (terminating lines) needs more tracks/platforms at the station, because turning the train around takes more time than stopping and continuing (through running) and turning around at the end of the line.
crote 2y ago
It's about how trains are running. Consider a rail network connected like A-B-C . With terminating trains you'd have one train run A-B-A, and another train run C-B-C. With through trains you'd have one train run A-B-C and another train run C-B-A. Terminating trains have to stop and reverse, which takes quite a lot of time because the driver has to go to the other end of the train. Through trains can just continue in the same direction, so it is a lot faster. Because a through train occupies the track for less time you don't need as many tracks to serve the same number of trains per hour.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  more importantly, if A and C are suburban locations, they probably don't need as much expansion as dogpiling everything in B, which is even more expensive because B is a block of some of the most expensive global real estate in the world.
Projectiboga 2y ago
Issue is cost, through running could happen for much less cost. It would actually just be through running a little further at first and maybe integrated later. The current plan is to demolish an entire city block, the true motivation is for private gain.

librasteve 2y ago

through running is a highly effective mass transit approach as exemplified in Munich & Berlin (S-Bahn), Paris (RER), and now London (Lizzy Line)

GauntletWizard 2y ago

The reason trains are deprioritized in the American travel schedule is that the rails are rightly used for freight instead. Even if you're trying to optimize for CO2 production, rails are barely better than air travel [1], and adding more passenger service would require a ton less freight service. That freight service would be pushed to trucks - already too high of a percentage of freight. [2] trucks are half the efficiency of trains per mile[3], and truck freight is already most of fuel usage[4]. If Europe converted their rails used for passenger service into freight only and everyone flew instead, we'd have solved the climate crisis. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/04/climate/trains-planes-carbon-footprint-pollution.html?smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/04/climate/trains-planes-car... [2] https://www.bts.gov/content/us-ton-miles-freight https://www.bts.gov/content/us-ton-miles-freight [3] https://railroads.dot.gov/sites/fra.dot.gov/files/fra_net/16332/1991_RAIL%20VS%20TRUCK%20FUEL%20EFFICIENCY%20-%20THE%20RELATIVE%20F%282%29.PDF https://railroads.dot.gov/sites/fra.dot.gov/files/fra_net/16... is the last authoritative study, but truck efficiency has greatly improved since then. [4] https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/freight-transportation https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/freight-transportation

Merrill 2y ago

New Jersey trains use overhead catenaries. LIRR use third rail. How are through running trains powered?

LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago
Probably like these? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M8_(railcar) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M8_(railcar)