Thames River (CT): what if?

As described in this PDF, Amtrak is in the process of replacing a key bridge carrying Northeast Corridor trains over the Thames River in New London, Connecticut. The New London Day is reporting that Amtrak plans to simply suspend service between New Haven and Boston sometime in May for the four days necessary to remove the old bridge and put the new bridge in place. Understandably, this is causing some concern for passengers. The passengers from Kingston, RI to Boston will be able to take commuter trains, but passengers from the intermediate stations will be SOL, to say nothing of the passengers hoping to go from Boston to Connecticut and points south and west. They'll have to take a bus - and Amtrak won't arrange it for them.

Reporter Katie Warchut gives a number of possible solutions. First she asked the obvious question: why can't the trains from New York turn in New London? Amtrak spokespeople poured cold water on that one: they would have to have an engine on each end, which is impossible. Considering that they already do some push-pull operations, I'm skeptical. ConnDOT offers the possibility of increased Shore Line East service between New Haven and New London. NARP executive director Ross Capon suggested bustitution.

I was intrigued, though, by this sentence in Warchut's article: "Amtrak trains from New Haven will make their normal runs to Springfield, Mass." By "normal runs," I'm assuming that she means Amtrak will continue to run their six diesel shuttles between New Haven and Springfield. But it got me thinking: what if?

What if it were simply unacceptable to have one of the busiest train routes in the country shut down for four days straight? What if Amtrak were committed to keeping some minimal level of service?

The most obvious solution is that the line from New Haven merges right into the old Boston and Albany mainline, which is still used by Amtrak for the Lake Shore Limited. This Inland Route has been regularly used in the past for trains between New York and Boston, as recently as 2004. How many passenger trains a day could CSX squeeze into their schedule? How many freight trains would CSX have to suspend if Amtrak sent all their Northeast Corridor trains to Boston along this route?

The second solution is that the Northeast Corridor tracks connect at New London to the Connecticut Southern Railroad, which hooks up with the CSX line at Palmer. It's not that practical because the junction at Palmer is not set up to allow direct connections in that direction; the Vermonter trains have to make an awkward switch in the opposite direction, and any service from New London to Boston would have to make a similar switch. Also, Palmer is only twenty miles east of Springfield.

There used to be a cut-off line between what is now the Connecticut Southern at Willimantic, CT and the former Milford, Franklin and Providence Railroad into Boston. Sadly, that was abandoned in 1959 and is now partially converted into a rail-trail. Even I recognize that it would be pushing it to displace a rail-trail and re-lay sixty miles of track to avoid four days of interruption. Of course, it would have other benefits too, but it'd be incredibly expensive to do it between now and May.

There are ten trains a day in each direction between New York and Boston. The two alternate routes, via Hartford and via Willimantic, are both single-track for most of the way and shared with freight trains. They have also not received the kind of upkeep and reconstruction that the Northeast Corridor mainline has - no Acela speeds here. Still, they could do for four days. Here's my suggestion:

1. Run five of the ten round-trips along the "Inland Route" through Hartford.


2. Run five Shore Line East trains between New Haven (or Stamford) and New London, connecting with the "Inland Route" trains.


3. Run one additional Vermonter service through New London and Willimantic instead of Hartford and Springfield.


4. Run two round-trip New York-Boston trains through New London and Willimantic.

It would be a smaller number of trains, and it would be slower and more awkward, but it beats bustitution. And it sure beats nothing, doesn't it?

Tishman Speyer's Hudson Yards renderings

...seemed to be missing something.







Originals at Curbed.

So did Extell's:



Curbed post.

Safe Routes to Marathon Dominance

From the blog of Malcolm Gladwell comes this quote from an interview with marathon runner Alberto Salazar:

Salazar ticks off the ironic circumstances that seem to cast the U.S. as a Third World country in distance running: "As big as we are, we have fewer people to draw on. In Kenya there are probably a million schoolboys 10 to 17 years old who run 10 to 12 miles a day. That's how they get to and from school. The average Kenyan 18-year-old has run 15,000 to 18,000 more miles in his life than the average American -- and a lot of that's at altitude."

Kenya believe it? Salazar's claim is fascinating, which means it needs to be double-checked. I found confirmation in another Sports Illustrated article, this one by Tom Layden. After a week-long trip to Kenya, he writes:

After many years of hearing that Kenyan children develop early aerobic capacity by running to school, I found this myth to be ... pretty much true. To be fair, I saw more small children walking than running, but I also saw dozens and dozens of slender boys and girls, wearing school uniforms, running lightly along the endless rural red-clay highways of western Kenya. They moved beautifully through thin air, as if running was a natural act, which it can be.

Some people have questioned the relevance of this to marathon running. "Race realist" Steve Sailer writes, "Joe Sang, a Kenyan researcher, asked 20 international runners if they ran to school as kids and 14 said no." I'm not an expert in sports or evolutionary biology, so I'm going to steer clear of that debate.

There are plenty of other reasons why it's good to have forty percent of your school-age population running (and most of the rest walking) 5-6 miles a day. Even if they're not going to become the next Paul Tergat, they're still going to be in pretty good shape. Also, every kid or two running is one less car polluting the streets and running the kids over.

Sprawl, sustainability and foreclosure

Cars are bad in myriad ways. One of the worst is that a car-bound lifestyle is unsustainable. This is not just about the cost of gas. Taking a car everywhere requires people to have parking available for you everywhere you go. The larger the percentage of the population that has cars, the more parking required, the wider and less pedestrian-friendly the roads that are required, and the more money required to build and maintain those parking facilities and roads. It may be possible to sustain the large death toll from cars due to crashes, but it's not possible to sustain the death and disability due to pollution. If left to continue, they will most likely make the world uninhabitable in a few generations.

Everyone has noticed the suburban sprawl that's engulfed this country over the past ten years. (I know, it's more like sixty years, but the pace during the recent housing boom has been particularly stunning.) If, like me, you're concerned about sustainability, you've seen mile after mile of cookie-cutter houses being built on former farmland or desert and wondered, "what's going to happen to all this?"

What is going to happen to all these cheapo McMansions when we come to the end of our ability to sustain them? When it comes time to make a payment to maintain the roads and parking garages?

We're beginning to see a bit of that now. The workability of most of the new "exurbs" and "edge cities" was based on long drives in cars. Most of these "communities" are not built for walking, cycling or transit. Even if it was safe to walk, there is nowhere to walk to. If you're lucky, you can walk to a convenience store, but the supermarket is almost always out of walking distance, not to mention other shopping, schools, government offices and parks. Parks! I once lived in a house where it was inconvenient to walk to a park. And of course, jobs. Some of them with insane commutes, two hours and up.

With the recent rise in gas prices has come a wave of foreclosures. There's a relatively simple connection, as you can read in any number of stories. The Housing Bubble Blog has all the sprawl-bankruptcy horror stories you could ever want, but there's a nice summary in a study done by Sperling's Best Places.

The pattern boils down to this: someone plans a life in one of these sprawling subdivisions where they need a car for everything. They mortgage their property to the hilt, so that they have no wiggle room for an unforseen rise in expenses. One of these unforseen rises is in the price of gas. If they lived in a transit-oriented place, they could switch to transit, but no, they skipped that option. They're faced with an impossible choice: fuel their car, pay the mortgage, or buy groceries. They might not even be able to do two of these, let alone three. They're forced to foreclose.

If they recover, they may switch to something car-dependent but not quite as much. Perhaps they're able to refinance to a more reasonable mortgage, or they buy a car that gets better mileage. Maybe they buy or rent a house closer to work, or find a new job closer to home, or both. But they're not out of the woods yet.

Neither are the somewhat more sensible people who budgeted better, or already lived closer to work or drove a more efficient car. Gas prices aren't going down any time soon. I haven't studied the peak oil projections in detail, but they make sense to me. Even if the peak oilers are wrong in the short term, we're not going to have abundant sources of oil forever. And even if we manage to develop amazing batteries and find another fuel source, it's just incredibly inefficient to live miles from all your destinations and not be able to go anywhere without pushing tons of metal around with you. The Levittowns and Scottsdales of the '60s are more efficient than Fountain Hills, but they're still unsustainable. Eventually these people will have to move too.

We're talking about a huge migration. Over the past sixty years, people have migrated from the cities to the suburbs and "exurbs," and now they're all going to have to move back. Many of them have already started; it's no coincidence that high-density cities like New York and Chicago, and streetcar suburbs like Scarsdale and Winnetka, have been relatively immune to the foreclosure crisis: many of their residents can take transit to work and walk to the supermarket. In fact, the former "inner cities" have seen a "reverse white flight" of migrants from the suburbs.

The problem is that there's not going to be enough room for these migrants. We're talking millions of people, and the population has increased since their parents and grandparents moved out. Plus, much of the housing stock and transit infrastructure has been destroyed. Apartment buildings and stores knocked down for parking in a desperate attempt to save the "dying downtown"; trolley tracks ripped up, elevated railroads torn down, subway tunnels filled in, rail rights-of-way turned over to highways and recreation trails. Meanwhile, hundreds of McMansions accross the country sit empty, and their numbers will increase.

It's true that many of the houses built in the past fifteen (or fifty) years were built cheaply, but it's still a lot of sunk capital. We're going to need to find a way to rebuild towns quickly and cheaply, so we're going to need to figure out how to move these McMansions closer together - and closer to a train station - and convert them to apartment buildings. There's a lot of money in it for whoever figures out how.

Smith/9th Streets: What If?

Metro reports that the MTA's project to reconstruct the Culver Viaduct in Carroll Gardens will require them to close the Smith-9th Street station for up to a year, starting in 2010. The Daily News reports that people who use that station regularly aren't happy. The Brooklyn Eagle says that many Red Hook residents take the B77 bus to Smith/9th and transfer for the F to Manhattan. Curbed, the Gowanus Lounge, SubChat, Second Avenue Sagas, TransitBlogger and the Rider Diaries point out that this is a Bad Thing in the short term.

I don't know what the ridership figures are, but it's fair to say that this will inconvenience a lot of people. Nobody seems to have any ideas about how to mitigate this. Some of the reports say that the MTA will run a free shuttle bus to connect with the F and G at Carroll Street. Shuttle buses for a year One SubChat commenter suggests extending the B77 to 15th Street and adding service on the B75. Mostly, people seem pretty resigned to being inconvenienced. Craig Hammerman gives the usual Community Board whine about not being consulted sooner. Paul Fleuranges points out that there's no way to avoid closing the station - thanks, Paul! Sometimes I think transit advocates have been beaten down so much that they've sacrificed some of their imagination.

When I read something like this, I like to play a game of "what if?" As in, "What if I had an unlimited budget and supreme power?" Sometimes I get into wacky territory, but then I can pull back a bit and get something useful.

Okay, let's start with the wacky: if I really had unlimited budget, I'd dig a tunnel. The Culver Viaduct is said to have one of the best el views in the city, but it still slows down the trains a lot. And you can dig a tunnel first and then tear down the viaduct. I'm sure it would cost an arm and a leg, but they're talking about doing the same thing with the Gowanus Expressway viaduct. If it's worth a cost-benefit analysis for the cars, it's worth one for the trains, too.

Here's another possibility: what's the big problem with bustitution? Buses get stuck in traffic, a lot. This slows them down and makes them unreliable. There's no guarantee that the bus schedule will match up with the train schedule, meaning that people may have to wait for the bus and the train. This could add a lot to people's commute time.

This is not an impossible problem, just a very difficult one. The main thing that makes buses go slow is that they get stuck in traffic. So what if we got rid of the traffic? (Remember, we're still playing "what if?".) Let's take Smith Street and make it into a two-way dedicated busway, with only local car traffic allowed, like Fulton Street in Downtown Brooklyn. Ideally it would go all the way up to Borough Hall since many people transfer from the F or G to one of the other lines in Downtown Brooklyn, but just having it on the eight blocks from Ninth Street to Carroll Street would be a big help. Sure it would inconvenience a lot of drivers, but I'd like to see numbers: how many drivers would be inconvenienced by being barred from Smith Street versus how many subway riders would be inconvenienced by bustitution. If there was a problem with Smith Street, you could put it on Court, Columbia or Hicks.

My last idea would be the easiest to implement. Where are all these F train riders going? If they're staying on the F train, probably somewhere in Midtown. Plenty of them probably switch at Jay Street for the A train to downtown, though. Just six blocks west of the Smith/9th Station is the entrance to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, but even though the Red Hook and Carroll Gardens residents have to deal with the pollutants it brings to the air, if they have a car they can't use it without going to Staten Island or Canarsie.

Using the tunnel, a shuttle bus could probably get to the A train station at Broadway/Nassau in not much more time than it would take to get to the Carroll Street Station. And of course people would be able to transfer to all the subways that run through Lower Manhattan - or just walk to their jobs down there. If they really want to go to Midtown, the bus could be extended along Church Street or the FDR Drive to meet up with the F/V at West Fourth, or even all the way up to 57th Street. They should probably have something like that already, considering how badly served Red Hook is by transit.

I'm sure it would cost a lot of money to run the buses and pay the drivers, but come on: we're closing an entire station, and a busy one at that. I'd like to see a cost estimate. If it turns out that it's just too costly to run buses through the tunnel 24/7, how about just during rush hours? You wouldn't even need to set up an extra route: the x29 bus (PDF) from Coney Island goes right past the Smith/9th Street station and makes eleven runs every rush hour in peak directions. All it would have to do is pull off the expressway, pick up passengers and get in the tunnel.

So we've gone from the fabulously expensive to the pretty reasonable. I think some combination of these things with a shuttle to the Carroll Street Station would help. Considering some of these things is a lot better than just saying, "Gee, I guess we'll have to close the station. Sucks to be you!"


View Larger Map

Access Denied: ARC Nibbled to Death

In 1955 Paris had six major train stations, all with commuter rail components, and three commuter rail lines that terminated in small stub stations. All of these lines stopped short of the heart of the capital, requiring passengers to transfer to the metro if they were going to central locations or to the other side of the city. The metro system had only two-track local lines, which meant a frustrating trip for anyone who wanted to go any distance within the city.

The 1965 infrastructure master plan laid forth a grand vision for access to the city, which has gradually been put into practice. Four new tunnels were bored deep below the surface, connecting the stub stations with the commuter rail networks of four of the major stations. Two gigantic new stations (Châtelet-Les Halles and Saint-Michel-Notre-Dame) were created in the center of the city to allow transfers between the lines, and a series of stations were created along the lines allowing transfers to the metro. A zone payment system was implemented, allowing people to use the new Regional Express Network (RER) for intra-city trips at the same price as the metro, and with the same tickets. The result is that people from the suburbs can now be almost anywhere in the city in a short period of time, and people can cross the city quickly.

In New York in 1955, there was a similar situation. There were two major stations in Midtown Manhattan, four major terminals just across the river (Weehawken, Hoboken, Exchange Place, Communipaw Terminal and Long Island City) and two stub terminals (Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn and Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx). Four other stub terminals (Bay Ridge and Bushwick Terminals in Brooklyn, 180th Street in the Bronx and Saint George in Staten Island) had lost passenger service earlier in the century, but still had the tracks in place. Two subway lines, the Flushing and Canarsie Lines, also stub-ended under 41st and 14th Streets.

Instead of a visionary plan like in Paris, New York's leaders chose to retrofit the city for the automobile. Between 1955 and 1965 they opened the Tappan Zee Bridge, the Newark Bay Bridge, a third tube for the Lincoln Tunnel, a lower level for the George Washington Bridge, the Throgs Neck Bridge and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the Long Island Expressway, the Garden State Parkway, the New England Thruway and Interstate routes 78, 80 and 84 and a section of the FDR Drive were built during this time.

In the meantime, rail infrastructure in the New York area languished. The Independent Subway Second System plans collected dust on the shelves. The New York, Westchester and Boston Railroad had already been cut back to the city line and turned into a branch of the IRT. The Putnam Line, which terminated at Sedgwick Avenue, was torn up and is now a recreational trail. Bushwick Terminal was closed and the tracks removed. The Central Railroad of New Jersey bridge across Newark Bay was torn down, and the Communipaw Terminal at Jersey City turned into a museum. The Pennsylvania Railroad's Exchange Place terminal and the West Shore Line's Weehawken Terminal were abandoned along with their tunnels through the Palisades. Staten Island's North Shore Line and the Arthur Kill Lift Bridge were also taken out of use. Traffic to Hoboken and Long Island City was gradually reduced. In a symbolic attack on the rail system, Penn Station's celebrated above-ground structure was demolished and replaced with a new Madison Square Garden arena.

While Paris built several expressways as well, during the economic crisis of the 1970s they chose to abandon their expressway plans and focus on the RER, while New York abandoned its subway plans and focused on roads. The single major rail project that was completed during that time was the 63rd Street tunnel, but its lower-level tubes, intended for commuter rail use, have still not been connected to anything, and have been called "the tunnel to nowhere." A few minor connections made slight improvements in the system, but there were still obvious deficiencies. Most of the trains terminated at Penn Station, but a large number of jobs are in East Midtown or Downtown, requiring a subway transfer. Travelling between Queens and New Jersey, or Brooklyn and Westchester County, requires a series of complicated transfers.

In the 1990s transportation planners, perhaps motivated by the success of Paris's RER, proposed a series of upgrades to connect portions of the transit system. A few of these have been put in place, mostly by New Jersey Transit. The Kearny Connection allowed Morris and Essex Line trains to enter Penn Station, the Montclair Connection allowed Boonton Line trains to use the Kearny tracks and the Secaucus Transfer allowed passengers from the ex-Erie and Pascack Valley lines to transfer to Penn Station-bound trains. The Weehawken tunnel was converted to light rail use, allowing residents of that area to reach jobs, trains and ferries along the waterfront. In addition, there are plans to extend the Long Island Rail Road Flatbush branch to Lower Manhattan, and to revive service on Staten Island's North Shore and West Shore lines, probably with light rail.

More exciting was a grand vision for connecting job sites in Midtown Manhattan. The #7 subway tunnel would be extended west to the planned Hudson Yards development and the Javits Center. The Long Island Rail Road would use the 63rd Street Tunnel to connect to Grand Central, freeing up space for Metro-North trains to terminate in Penn Station via the Empire Connection and Hell Gate Bridge. In the "Acces to the Region's Core" plan, a new tunnel under the Hudson would allow more New Jersey trains to reach Midtown; a 2002 bulletin from the Regional Plan Association shows them making a loop through Penn Station, Grand Central, Rockefeller Center and the planned Hudson Yards development. Finally, to the symbolic wound from the destruction of Penn Station, the old Farley Post Office one block to the west would be converted to a new Moynihan Station.

This grand plan had its faults, but it would have been a big improvement. Now, ten years later, it's in tatters. The MTA has forsaken any attempt to connect Long Island Railroad trains with the actual Grand Central structure, preferring to dig a tiny terminal deep underground, with a single exit to 42nd Street and difficult subway transfers. New Jersey Transit's loop has shrunk to a single six-track station under 34th Street, which is also deep below the ground and unconnected to any other tracks. Worse, both of these plans leave no opportunity for expansion: the NJ Transit station terminates in front of Water Tunnel #1. The #7 train extension will only be a single stop, possibly even without the shell of an intermediate station. The Moynihan Station will not allow rail passengers to connect to any new subways, and it is unclear what use it will be, except as a waiting area and a symbol.

Even these plans, though, did not allow for through-running of trains between the three major commuter rail systems. They did nothing to unify the three incompatible electrification systems currently in use, create connections between the various lines, or revive dormant lines like the Bergen Arches, the Bushwick Branch and the Putnam Line. The light rail line proposed for Staten Island's North Shore Branch would not connect take advantage of the recently rebuilt Arthur Kill bridge to connect the island with the mainland.

The New Jersey Association of Rail Passengers has been a persistent critic of the awfully-named "THE Tunnel" project. The Regional Rail Working Group has been a critic of the LIRR East Side Access project and a big supporter of through-running.

Every year the components of this plan become less useful and more symbolic. I think it's time to pause and reconsider. With the money we have, do we really want to wind up with three "tunnels to nowhere" and a glorious station structure that adds no functionality whatsoever? If we're spending the money to dig deep, why not dig tunnels that could eventually connect to each other, or to existing tunnels? Let's see what we have and what we can afford. Let's try to overcome the archaic territorial divisions between the various counties of New York and New Jersey, and the Byzantine boundaries between New Jersey Transit, the Port Authority and the various MTA fiefdoms. Let's stop worrying about offending Senator Moynihan's friends and family, who probably don't take the train anyway. Let's do something real.

The Geography of Saratoga

Streetsblog linked today to an interesting blog post by James Howard Kunstler. I have to confess from the beginning that I haven't read any of Kunstler's books, only a few articles.

In general, however, I agree with his positions that suburban sprawl is unsustainable (and generally feh), subsidizing car infrastructure is a waste of money, and we should be improving our trains and pedestrian facilities. I also agree, in general, with his critique of the transportation politics of his own hometown of Saratoga Springs. It's a critique that applies around the country, including in my own neck of the woods.

Given all that, I was surprised to discover that I know more than Kunstler about rail service to Saratoga. He claims that there is one train a day in each direction, that they're "invariably late, and not just a little late, but hours late," and that there is "no awareness among the public here, or our leaders, that we would benefit from improving the passenger railroad service, and around the state of New York generally there is no conversation about fixing the railroads."

I visited Saratoga four years ago by train, and in some ways the picture is worse than Kunstler paints it. Back when most people arrived at Saratoga by train, the train station was a block from Main Street. They tore up those tracks years ago, and now the trains stop a mile and a half out of town. It's not a particularly nice walk, and neither is the walk to the spa or to Yaddo. Bus service is infrequent, indirect and not tourist-oriented. The Convention and Tourism Bureau and Chamber of Commerce websites give extensive driving directions, but don't mention bus or train service.

In many ways, though, Kunstler's view of train service is inaccurate. There are two trains a day passing through Saratoga in either direction: one from New York City to Montreal and one to Rutland, Vermont, with relatively convenient schedules for tourists. Lateness is a problem on Amtrak, but the trains through Saratoga aren't as late as often as he suggests. Once you get downtown, it's very walkable. When we were there, the city was just building a new station, which subsequently opened with fanfare. There is a conversation about fixing the railroads in New York State; just read the back issues of the ESPA newsletter to find out about it. Based on this, it seems clear that Kunstler rarely, if ever, takes the train.

Okay, so big whoop. Two trains a day! And they're not as late as you think they are! People are talking about railroads, just not enough! I know, I know. There's no question that more could be done to improve transit service and pedestrian infrastructure in Saratoga. The number one thing would be for the city to run a free shuttle bus - with room for luggage - from the train station to downtown every day. There are only four trains; how hard can it be to meet each of them?

The second would be for the state to finally double-track the rail line between Albany and Schenectady. The third would be to extend the double-tracking to Saratoga, and replace the jointed track with continuous welded rail as is used south of Albany.

The City of Saratoga Springs should make a list of the top tourist destinations (ours were the spa, the racetrack/museum and Yaddo; SPAC is right near the spa) and try walking to them (and the train station) from downtown. Most of the walks were fine, but in each case there were a few blocks that were extremely unpleasant. It wouldn't take much to add a few blocks of sidewalks and/or trails.

Finally, I have to add: why no love for the springs themselves? We tasted all the waters, and it was fun! As far as I know, we were the only ones doing that. And the spa was about as elegant and relaxing as taking a hot bath in your high school locker room. Compare that to Karlovy Vary, or even Truth or Consequences, New Mexico!

With all that said, I'd still go back to Saratoga, and I think you should too. If you're not big on horses, go when the races are over for cheaper rates. Stay in one of the awesome Victorian hotels. Drink the waters. Admire the architecture. Shop at the Price Chopper supermarket where the train station used to be. And go by train - it's not that difficult!

Here's a list of bus routes in Saratoga with links to schedules; Routes 471 and 472 connect the train station with Downtown. They leave on the hour and at five minutes after the hour - never mind that the trains don't get there anywhere near that time.

Here are Amtrak timetables in PDF format for the Adirondack and the Ethan Allen Express.