The Switch Commuter Rail NEEDS To Do

let's say you live here and you work here at the Chicago Executive Airport you get ready for work and head out the door to parking garage where you meet your old Nissan Quest you turn the key and oh no the car won't start great that's the third time this month this thing is broken down what a fantastic start to the day how are you gonna get to work now well remember there's a Metro that goes by the airport so you look it up maybe today isn't going to be so bad after all besides not driving for a day might be more relaxing and oh wait there's no station to the airport well it's only three miles from the interstation someone could pick you up we're at worst you'll have to walk okay this could work you head down to Union Station look at the board and damn you just missed the next train well that's fine you'll just wait for the next one you do have some time after all you look up at the board and see the next departure and it's blank this must be wrong you run up to an employee and ask for the next train but they only say there's just one outbound train in the morning you curl up in a ball and cry on the station floor what a great first impression right right unfortunately this experience is standard for most American commuter rail most trains only run frequently into the city in the morning and then outbound in the evening this scheduling pattern haunts almost every single Transit Agency in North America even some of the busiest services in the country aren't free from the scheduling in fact the busiest Commuter Rail Line the Long Island railroads Babylon Branch follows this exact pattern with trains only coming in every hour from each of its terminals during non-peak hours one train an hour is the best you'll get on most commuter lines and that's not even mentioning weekdays or holidays where Services get so bad that you might as well not even take the train this scheduling pattern only benefits workers who live in the suburbs and work in the city with everyone else seemingly being an afterthought so it's no surprise that when covet and working from home took off these Transit agencies suffered immensely and even now after covet has been dealt with commuter lines around the country can't seem to regain their pre-pandemic numbers agencies like the Long Island Railroad are still millions of passengers behind what they were achieving pre-covered there's a good reason why these trends agencies aren't recovering like they normally should one of the main reasons is the rise of popularity of remote work instead of commuting to the office every day many companies are now giving employees the option to work some of their work days at home this directly targets the main demographic that commuter rail is trying to capture schedules for commuter rail are built around bringing people to work in the city and traveling back home to the suburbs with fewer people working in offices however there isn't as big as demand for commuter style Transit and agencies haven't changed their schedule to reflect this change they still run the same morning and evening trains without the large commuter base has supported the system and unlike what a lot of people think I don't believe that city office space will ever fully recovered from coven the benefits of working from home are just too enticing for workers and they'll demand to work at least some days at home and while we don't see it now many companies are slowly given to these demands the obvious solution is for agencies who adjust their schedules to meet the demand of every passenger no matter the time of the day running trains not only every hour but every 20 to 30 minutes will help significantly in the next major problems these agencies face frequency frequency frequency I have and will continue to say this while talking about Transit the frequency of Transit is an enormous factor in obtaining and retaining passengers if a train comes every hour people will be less likely to ride write it if you missed a train no one's going to wait an hour till the next one if it was 20 minutes however people are likely to stay they catch the next train it's simply about convenience they need to learn to implement this type of thinking into their schedules to regain the ridership that they desperately need while frequency is a significant part of ridership modern infrastructure is also needed to support the frequent trains including improved stations and modern equipment buying modern equipment and fixing crumbling track infrastructure will prevent delays due to equipment failure and speed up services by allowing faster travel and preventing the infamous slow zones that haunt certain Transit networks many systems across the United States are using infrastructure and Rolling Stock that's decades past their Prime which leases Transit agencies use most of their available funding to upkeep equipment and fix broken infrastructure rather than investing those funds into modern equipment and expanding Services more funding to modernize commuter rail will in turn lower operating costs for these railroads let's take a look at an example of a commuter rail service that has a lot of potential to become a great Regional Rail with certain Improvement with the service's first role as a background character in the Emmy award-winning show Better Call Saul The Rail Runner expressives in servicing the Metro areas of Albuquerque and Santa Fe in the state of New Mexico this system runs along BNSF owned track which a rail runner has priority over after the state of New Mexico bought the right away from BNSF the system has a total of 15 stations with 10 being in the Albuquerque Metro area to a native reservations and the remaining three being in Santa fe's Metro the system started operation in 2006 servicing Albuquerque and its suburbs the system was then expanded in 2008 extending to Santa Fe speaking of Santa Fe let's look at the reason this line was set up in the first place the city relies on commuters with over 50 percent of the city's Workforce living outside of the city most of these commuters come from you guessed it Albuquerque with the only logical connection between these cities being I-25 the rapid expansion of these two cities left to Interstate congested as thousands of people commuted between them legislators wanted the ease congestion on I-25 due the vast amount of commuters traveling between the cities so plans were put in place to build a commuter rail service connecting to Albuquerque and Santa Fe you can see this line of thinking in the rail runner's schedule with many of the trains running from Albuquerque to Santa Fe in the morning and then vice versa in the evening while building a red line for commuters may have been a good option 2006 over time the rail runner's ridership has been slowly falling going from 1.2 million annual passengers in 2010 to only 750 000 and 29 19. this was even before covet struck which as you may have guessed devastated the commuter rail the system to this day hasn't fully recovered only having around 450 000 annual riders in 2022 the New Mexico Department of Transportation released in its annual ridership report the three main reason it believes current ridership is lower than in 2019's the reasons given are lower gas prices and frequent rail service and long travel times so let's go over these issues that they list their first problem is lower gas prices lower prices mean more people are willing to drive the route rather than take the train many people currently ride the rail runner express since it's cheaper than spending money on gas since their business model is centered around transporting workers between Albuquerque and Santa Fe lower gas prices mean quicker travel to get to work faster this means more workers are willing to spend more money driving their car than taking the train if gas isn't overly expensive the second reason given is infrequent service I'll say it again frequency is the key to to good service if you had to wait an hour for the train which for The Rail Runner you most likely have to there'll be fewer people willing to wait that long only for the cheaper price taking a car is already quicker than taking the train so adding up to an additional hour to an already lengthier trip will turn many potential customers to look elsewhere which ties into the agency's last problem long travel times most rare lines the United States are limited to 79 miles an hour because of this now 79 miles an hour isn't horrible what is bad however is how long the journey takes by car the journey is around an hour when it takes the Rail Runner more than an hour and a half so the single thing The Rail Runner is trying to compete against is over 30 percent faster no wonder Saul decided to drive so yeah the system faces some serious problems so let's see how we can fix them let's look at the most pressing issue first in frequent service to solve this The Rail Runner Express needs to run additional trains preferably one every 30 minutes in each Direction they need to run these trains every day from at least four in the morning to 11 at night including weekends and holidays in the future they can even cut travel times down further to running trains every 20 minutes or even less with trains on unpredictable and set schedule passengers need to worry about what day or what time it is as long as the system is open they will be guaranteed to train every half an hour more people would use the system if this plan is implemented the second issue presented in the report is long travel times and unfortunately I don't think there's any big solution within reason to solve this problem yes you could somewhat improve efficiency at stations but doing just that won't cut travel times down by very much the only way to increase speed significantly is faster track speed which is a lot more difficult and it may initially seem living in Illinois I understand the political financial and bureaucratic struggle to upgrade track speeds past 79 miles an hour our own plan to upgrade track speed to 110 on the Lincoln service took way too long and costed way too much I mean even after 13 years track speed is still only at 90. upgrading the rail runner's track speed would be very costly and have a lot of opposition from within the government unless they can either upgrade the track at a much lower cost or hope that some large government change cuts the bureaucracy involving an upgrading track speed I don't think it's reasonable to think that a smaller agency like The Rail Runner can afford to upgrade its track speeds however I don't think that travel time is that big of an issue at least compared to all the others it only takes half an hour longer than by car if the frequency of the service is improved I'm sure more people wouldn't mind taking a little longer to travel If It Means A more comfortable and relaxing experience their last problem mention is low gas prices again there isn't really anything the agency can do here there will always be some riders that will only take the train to save money on s when gas is cheaper they will almost always take their car what the agency can do is appeal to a larger base of people advertise the comfort of taking the train that you can get work done while traveling and that you don't have to stress while driving every single day advertising the benefits of taking the train whether through advertisement or through word of mouth will drive more people to use the system which will improve the problems of low ridership The Rail Runner isn't unique in facing these issues most Transit agencies in America face the same problems as the rail runner from Caltrain to Metra to SEPTA and Metro North all these agencies face infrequent service issues in comparatively low ridership numbers compared to before the pandemic struck luckily though the same problem is also the same Solutions if commuter rail around Americo to implement the changes that I said before we could easily compete with Regional Rail in the rest of the developed World giving people better Regional Rail service will improve the areas surrounding the routes and get cars off the roads and highways agencies and governments can improve our regional rail we just need to speak out demand more trains on the schedules campaign for modern Rolling Stock and improved infrastructure then maybe they will listen and give the funding and support to make these changes happen let's make Regional Rail work for everyone not just commuters who travel in and out of the city then we can have some truly great systems running throughout America and for the love of God fix whatever this thing is [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: UrbanDox

Views: 22,388

Keywords: UrbanDox, LIRR, Railrunner, Rail Runner, Commuter Rails Problem, SEPTA, Metro North, Metra, New Mexico train, corridor, commuter rail, Regional Rail, the problem with commuter rail, new mexico rail runner, Caltrain, Northstar, MARC, Urban, Train, Commuter, Switch commuter rail, commuter rails problem, trains, train

Id: -EjKSRmUQ7Q

Length: 11min 40sec (700 seconds)

Published: Fri May 05 2023