Blog: Trains

A fascinating way to visualize transportation systems is the "travel time map", like this London Underground applet and others I wrote about previously.

In today's New York Times, they've created such a map for New York City's commuter railroads, centered on Manhattan; where express trains skip some stops making more distant stops quicker to reach, the lines fold back on themselves.

While New York State is working to turn Stewart Airport in Newburgh into the region's fourth major airport, New York magazine and SHoP Architects envisioned a creative, more radical idea: decentralizing airport functions except for the actual airplane operations throughout the city. Passengers would check in or claim luggage at sites around NYC and Jersey, then ride a high speed train directly to the plane.

There are plenty of probably unrealistic details to the plan - where would there be space around Grand Central for a major ticketing and baggage claim concourse? - not to mention the expense of building the rail loop, but this is cool thinking outside the box. If we were to designing a major city from scratch today, why be shackled with conventional expectations about what an airport is?

Google operates shuttles from San Francisco and elsewhere in the Bay Area for its California workers. This not only allows them to get to work without having to battle traffic, and reduces congestion and pollution, but also adds productive time by providing free Wi-Fi.

A Massachusetts candidate for Lieutenant Governor, Tim Murray, recently released a plan (PDF) to improve commuter rail service in the Commonwealth. In addition to conventional (and important) proposals like expanding service, he also advocates the addition of Wi-Fi internet access on the trains, so that commuters can utilize their time in transit. Trials are already underway on Washington State commuter ferries and the Altamont Capital Express trains from Sacramento to San Jose.

A large amount of freight traffic to Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island is currently driven by truck along Canal Street in Manhattan, an area that hardly needs more traffic. So area Congressman Jerry Nadler has been pushing for years a plan to construct a rail tunnel between southern Jersey City and Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, allowing more cargo to be transferred to trucks in Queens and Brooklyn or taken farther out on Long Island by rail. Nadler's district also includes a small part of Brooklyn, which just happens to include the very spot where the tunnel would go.

The recent transportation spending bill (with the silly name of TEA-LU) includes $100 million toward the project.

Here's the DEIS (various PDFs) including a very interesting map of frieght lines in and around the city.

I guess it wouldn't have made any sense to route the tunnel via Lower Manhattan, build a passenger station, and use it for combined passenger and freight service, with freight moving outside rush hours? That was my first reaction, but clearly it would be much more expensive than the freight-only tunnel and would limit the amount of freight capacity.

I take Amtrak from New York to Boston and generally like it a lot. I don't like to rag on Amtrak, an organization that has a nearly impossible mandate, not enough funding, and politicians ready to gut it at every turn except for keeping their own silly money-losing routes to their own home states.

However, the dining car is just ridiculous. They are always out of almost everything. They typically have one pretty standard entree, like a turkey sandwich. And if I try to get it, they're usually out of it. Which is okay, especially if it's a Regional train and I don't try to get it until New London going north or something.

But Saturday I took the Acela Express to Boston. A bit before New Haven, I went to get some food. Turkey sandwich? Out of it. How about cheese pizza? Out of it. Apple juice? Orange juice? Out of it, out of it, out of it. I settled for water and some pepperoni pizza, picking off the pepperoni by hand. It wasn't even that good.

Okay, so it was a fairly full train and I did wait an hour and a half after the restocking in New York. You'd think they would have more juice at least, but whatever. The final insult came today heading home. I had gotten some food not from Amtrak but forgot to grab a few Odwallas from the Boston office fridge. Ten minutes after the train left Boston - it's origin point, mind you - I went to get some juice. Out of it. No juice at all. Sold out already? No, it's just that they never loaded any in Boston.

What's the point of a cafe car if it's always out of everything? Amtrak. Nice trains, seat power outlets, but always out of food.