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| Re: LIRR East Side Access (256783) | |||
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Re: LIRR East Side Access |
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Posted by J trainloco on Tue May 23 01:14:23 2006, in response to Re: LIRR East Side Access, posted by KLCS on Tue May 23 00:38:18 2006. You talk about expanding Penn Station tracks and platforms . If you expand it, you run into the problem of the TUNNELS running at capacity (East River tunnels is maxed out with LIRR, Amtrak, Amtrak deadhead, NJT deadhead runs), North River(Hudson tubes) with NJT and Amtrak.This continues to be brought up. I don't have a full train schedule sitting in front of me, and I can't see what's dead heading into Queens on the part of NJT and Amtrak. Looking at Amtrak, I can see the following trains that could impact AM service into NYP from queens: Acela Express 2151, arriving at NYP at 845am. Regional 141, arriving at NYP at 920am. The schedule I found lists only these 2 trains heading southbound into Penn at peak time. Even if there are 2 more I missed, that's 4 trains, and both of the trains that I found were at the tail end of the rush hour period. NJT trains should be going against the peak, so they shouldn't factor into what can go into NYP (unless the east river tunnels are operated like MNRR's Park ave tunnel. Are they?) from the East side. How much space does that leave? My look at LIRR tables indicates that there are 14 trains into NYP between 6-7, 20 between 7-8, 15 between 8 and 9 (16 if you count the Amtrak train I listed above) & between 9 and 10 (ditto for the 16 again). Assuming that you could run trains every 4 minutes on a stretch of track that means 15tph, and a total of 30 tph on 2 tracks. LIRR runs no more than 20 tph, at a time when there shouldn't be too many other trains competing for eastbound space. So, you could add an extra 5-6 trains during that time period, and I'm leaving allowance for any trains I may have not accounted for. There should be room in the East River tubes, unless my anaylsis is wrong somewhere (if so, please enlighten me.) The LIRR is the largest commuter line in the states and I'm not saying ESA will be cheap, it will cost a lot of money (quite a few billion), and I'm not saying that it should have been the highest priority (thought SAS should have), but you've got mostly 10-12 car 85 foot trains carrying hundreds of thouands of people daily on the LIRR into Penn. So since the island is growing, unless telecommuting becomes big, I think expansion is necessary through ESA, and other means. ESA will cost a lot of money at a time when there's need to expand subway routes. The best parts of ESA are this: 1. it will add crowds to the Lexington Av line when sending money to SAS instead would have had the opposite effect. 2. With talk of building a commuter rail tunnel from brooklyn to Lower manhattan, MTA should've sat tight, and tried to use the funds provided for such a link to send trains to Lower manhattan instead of rushing ahead with ESA. |
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