Third, the existing routes have significant same directional traffic conflicts that are currently resolved by 45 mph turnouts and crossovers. The use of Line 3 by Amtrak is almost impossible due to requiring a crossing movement at A tower against all outbound trains for NJ. When Amtrak does use these tunnels, it is usually only Line 4 and when it does it causes conflicts at C tower. The only tracks with common access are 14 to 16. ![]() Tracks 17 to 21 are only accesisble from the LIRR concourse. Amtrak uses the southern tunnels into the station because those lead to the tracks which access the Amtrak concourse – tracks 5 to 16. Second, Amtrak rarely uses the northern tunnels into Penn Station because they are full of LIRR trains. You very clearly do not understand anything about the operations of this segment of railroad or the East Side Access project.įirst, the two bypass tracks are a necessary part of the staging of construction for East Side Access and provide a future conflict free route for both Amtrak and Port Washington trains from Lines 1 and 2. It would be good for operational flexibility if the tunnels were at capacity, but they aren’t: total LIRR plus Amtrak traffic into Penn Station peaks at 37 trains between 8 and 9 am, where the capacity of the tunnels is about 50 – and as with Hunterspoint traffic, Penn Station LIRR traffic will go down once East Side Access opens. Since Amtrak can already use the northern tunnels without any conflict apart from the one mentioned above, it is a pure nice-to-have. The only use is to let Amtrak use the southern tunnel pair to Penn Station without conflicts. ![]() So the $300 million the state applied to has no relevance to either Amtrak or LIRR traffic. What’s more, Hunterspoint’s main use is that it has an easy subway connection to Manhattan’s East Side, so once East Side Access opens and LIRR trains can go to Grand Central, traffic there will go down even more, making the flat junction even less relevant than it is today. ![]() To put things in perspective, the 3 and 5 train on the subway have more than 10 trains per hour each and have a similar conflict in Brooklyn. There aren’t a lot of trains going to Hunterspoint or Long Island City: at the peak, only 5 per hour, and of those one uses the Montauk Line, so we’re really talking about 4 trains per hour Amtrak never runs more than 2 trains per hour to New York from the east. In the eastbound direction, trains using the northern tunnels do have an at-grade junction with LIRR trains ( purple) – but only trains going to a track farther north than the tunnels to Penn Station, and those all stub-end at Hunterspoint Avenue or Long Island City. This is not a grade crossing, but a simple switch. ![]() Amtrak trains ( blue) using the northern tunnel pair to Penn Station have no conflicts with any other trains, except for other trains using the same tunnels. The track map of the LIRR ( link scrubbed for copyright reasons) shows clearly that, in the westbound direction, the junction has no conflicts. New York State applied for $300 million to grade-separate a junction between Amtrak and the LIRR, which it spins as an important capacity upgrade and which some online commenters have misinterpreted as a speed upgrade. The money has just been redistributed – see breakdown here. After Rick Scott rejected the Florida high-speed rail funds, a bunch of states as well as Amtrak applied for the redirected funds.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |