Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I mean, both the red and orange line do have new cars running on them. The rollout has def been slower than most would want and iirc one of the new cars derailed near Wellington like last week. Sounds like the track was more to blame than the car, though.
No, they don't. The Orange line ones derailed again (6 times actually) and the weight specs were off, too heavy coming out of Wellington and all new Orange Lines trains have been removed indefinitely (for the second time)... These were initially supposed to arrive in 2018, lol.
There are maybe be 2 new Red line trains running? Those won't all be on the tracks till 2024 (so they say, they arrived a year late)
I think for now Boston has the better system than Philly, but that may change if plans to turn septa regional rail into a metro move forward. The regional rail system has many ROWs that are currently not utilized by rapid transit and the current location and spacing of many of the stations warrant that usage in my opinion. Several of the lines are completely within the city limits. That and trolley modernization will greatly improve the system in Philly to the point that I think it would be a better system than Boston's. They are also planning on extending patco to 40th street. That said, Chicago probably has the better system than both cities, but I haven't used it enough to know for sure. DC's system is very nice/more modern but I think it's kind of overrated based on my experience and how people seem to gush over it, but again I haven't used it as heavily as septa or mbta.
Does anyone know if New York counts its express lines separately from the local lines with which they share tracks?
Washington has some short-turning on the Red Line, but no one considers that to be separate service. So to me, the Market-Frankford Line is one single line, with different operational patterns. I count the Broad Street Line as a single line as well, though if New York counts its locals and expresses separately, I supposed Philadelphia could too. Yes, I do count the Broad-Ridge Spur as a separate line. PATCO as well.
The Subway-Surface Lines operate as streetcars when running on the surface, so those portions of the lines don't even deserve to be discussed in a thread about subway systems. When these lines are actually in the subway tunnel, they operate as one single line from 13th Street to the 40th Street portal (excepting the No. 10, which branches off after 33rd Street). I think that the fairest way to regard it is as a single Light Rail subway line.
The difference is that in NY the express/local trains of the main trunk lines in Manhattan eventually split up and go different routes.
For example on the 1/2/3 the 1 is local and the 2+3 are express on 7th Ave. Going Uptown, all of these trains branch off and go separate ways, then the 1 and 2 have their own separate lines in The Bronx. Going downtown, the 1 branches off from the 2/3 to go to Staten Island Ferry and the 2/3 go to Brooklyn together before eventually splitting up and going to completely different neighborhoods.
They’re counted differently because they all end up going to completely different places. Also some trains that are express in Manhattan are local in Brooklyn or Queens, and vice-versa.
Tell us more... where are those crossings? (I'm not very familiar with the El)
They're on the outer end of the Brown (Ravenswood) Line.
The 14th Street-Canarsie (L) line in New York used to have them at the Canarsie end too, but those were eliminated in the 1970s.
I also need to correct something I wrote upthread. When I described the routes in the midtown Manhattan subway tunnels, I described the two A Division tunnels thus:
Quote:
IRT East Side/Lexington Ave tunnel: 1, 2, 3; IRT West Side/Broadway-7th Ave tunnel: 4, 5, 6;
I got those backwards. The 1, 2, and 3 run in the Broadway-7th Ave tunnel, and the 4, 5, and 6 run in the Lexington Ave subway.
Tell us more... where are those crossings? (I'm not very familiar with the El)
This short video from 2016 show the one at grade crossing. Brown line and Ravenswood Branch the
Rockwell station it says in the video and other end of the station says Spaulding and ramp of station
runs to that street then. First shows road crossing and one side of sidewalk railroad-crossing guards
coming down on the street, train passes, then halfway though shows the sidewalk-crossings on the
other sidewalk... where multiple-middle crossings are with people caught coming out of the Station
and another train passes. Note ...... Chicago uses L from its beginnings instead of El.
Note, there is exposed HOT Rail at these crossings. This station was the site of a fatal 1977 accident
involving an intoxicated Korean immigrant who was electrocuted by the third rail while attempting to
urinate on the track. The CTA was found 50% responsible and the $1.5 million judgment against them
was eventually affirmed by the Illinois Supreme Court in 1992. The majority opinion, signed by Justice
Charles E. Freeman, noted that there was evidence before the trial court that this particular stretch of
railroad-line is one of the only railroad lines in the United States that uses an unprotected, unguarded,
and unfenced third rail.
Train does after this video head upward to its usual perch as a elevated line then.... just not shown here.
I found this 10 minute video below interesting, as it is a bit hap-hazard in it shows the Brown-line
Ravenswood Branch L from the neighborhood. Starts on a beautiful Fall day seeing it cross the
Chicago River, shows it from in the neighborhood and the alley street it runs, goes to summer
and continues just with scenes from the ground and never on the train. Shows even a Chicago
Wood-Pecker pecking a tree ... of all things, to a plane overhead and Red-sunset along the line.
The video does not seem to show all in order scenes? Also shows between stations ground-level too.
Interesting part on the GROUND LEVEL RAILROAD CROSSING STREETS AT GRADE comes
AFTER THE (3-minute mark), after the (4:30-min mark), and (4:45 min mark) another shows
some with the RAILROAD CROSSINGS COMING DOWN ALSO.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Broadstreetexpresstrain View Post
I am originally from Philly and have been a lifelong subway enthusiast and rider, since the 1970’s to school 7th grade thru 12th grade and to work for a few years. I have also ridden subways in New York, Boston and Washington, DC.
My questions are this:
In Philly at a major hub station-(Suburban Station) the tunnel is from 8 to ten tracks wide, other than New York’s Penn station and Grand central Terminal, do other cities have this arrangement?
Not understanding this are you talking about SEPTA (only) being 10 tracks wide? Or all tracks at a major hub station? I'm certain DC, Chicago, and probably Boston fit this. This thread is about individual systems.
In Philly you have double and triple level stations, I know that New York, Boston and DC have double level stations where two tunnels intersect, do other cities have triple level stations?
Double story stations are enough for me, triple story is cool. Kudos to Philly. Are the triple story ones busier?
In Philly you have certain locations where you have several lines in separate tunnels merging together at one location (i.e. City Hall and 8TH STREET- Commuter Lines Train station 4 tracks- Market Street Line-2 tracks- Ridge Ave train 1 track –Patco train -2 tracks) do other cities have this arrangement?
Again this sounds like you're combining commuter rail lines with the local SEPTA rail lines, so in that case yes a number of cities accomplish the same thing.
In Philly you have abandoned subway stations and tunnels, other than New York do other cities have this arrangement?
Not sure what's cool or positive about an abandoned tunnel. But in DC it's turned into arts/events spaces.
In Philly you have a train that runs over a major bridge over the river right next to automobile traffic (Patco line on the Ben Franklin Bridge) and tunnels that run under the river, other than New York do other cities have this arrangement?
DC Yellow line runs adjacent to 14th st bridge, and the Blue line tunnel from Rosslyn to Georgetown.
In Philly you have elevated train structures where one elevated train bridge crosses directly over another train bridge structure, do other cities have this arrangement?
As mentioned the MARC does this, and Silver Spring MD Purple Line has already constructed an elevated train bridge that will go over the already elevated Red Line in downtown Silver Spring. Which both run adjacent to MARC. There are also Metro routes that run above another CSX route etc.
In Philly the number of cars on each train varies-on the Broad street and Market street lines there are usually between 5 and 6 car trains, on the Subway surface lines (5 separate lines in total) there are usually one car trains, on the Ridge Avenue line there are 2 to 5 car trains, on the Patco trains there are usually 2 to 5 car trains and on the commuter lines there are 2 to 8 car trains. How many cars are there on other city trains, I have seen up to ten car trains in New York.
DC has more 8 car trains than any city in the US outside of NYC.
In Philly I have seen special trains for money collection-“The Money Train”, police trains and buses for getting a lot of police officers to a location quickly and special event trains for sporting events- The Phillies/Eagles Express train. Do other cities have specialty trains?
I don't know what this means, but Metro in DC definitely shuttles Nats fans from the Navy Yard to L'Enfant Plaza as quickly as I've seen a mass exodus from a stadium move via transit. On occasion there were specialty trains shuttled from the suburban stations to downtown for political events or protests. This is frowned upon however and should be, public transport is public transport.
Thanks in advance for your responses. I have often wondered about the Subway System infrastructure in other cities. It’s sad that in these days and times, infrastructure like this would be considered too expensive to build, especially considering that most of the infrastructure in question was built from 1900 to the 1930’s, through the Great Depression.
All of this and Septa still has low ridership for a city of it's size...
You may have decent knowledge of trains across the nation, but at least regarding DC you seem to be misinformed a bit, I've provided responses in bold.
To The tesident09...
I actually live in the DC area now and am very familiar with the metro in DC as I took it to work for years....
I think that what differentiates the DC metro from other cities is that is in the Nations capital and recieved the funding and attention of a train system that resides in the nations capitol only. During my time in DC (since the early 2000s) the green line was e tended, they blue line was extended and now the Silver line is in construction and the purple line is in construction......all within the span of a few years.......nowhere else could this extent of work be done on a system in America other than DC ....that has 800, 000 federal workers pile into dc every day and leave the city at 5:00 to go back home. where the metro not in DC, servicing federal workers, the system would have stopped atone or two lines and languished just like the systems in all other cities.
You mentioned the number of tracks at union station.......union station is probably the most elegant train station in the nation ....but it is not built underground like a subway three way throat suburban station is in Philly and Penn station in NY.
Regarding having underground subway stations where commuter and transit lines merge .....you state that many cities do this ......which cities where at what stations. Only New York and Philly to my knowledge have subway - underground stations where the two merge
I have not in my 10 plus years living in DC seen specialty trains
(please be more careful with your cutting and pasting of quoted material; it was hard to separate your prior post from theresident09's responses in this. You can always add "quote" and "/quote" tags by entering them manually, or by selecting the text you want to blockquote and clicking on the quote balloon in the post editor)
I actually live in the DC area now and am very familiar with the metro in DC as I took it to work for years....
I think that what differentiates the DC metro from other cities is that is in the Nations capital and recieved the funding and attention of a train system that resides in the nations capitol only. During my time in DC (since the early 2000s) the green line was e tended, they blue line was extended and now the Silver line is in construction and the purple line is in construction......all within the span of a few years.......nowhere else could this extent of work be done on a system in America other than DC ....that has 800, 000 federal workers pile into dc every day and leave the city at 5:00 to go back home. where the metro not in DC, servicing federal workers, the system would have stopped atone or two lines and languished just like the systems in all other cities.
You mentioned the number of tracks at union station.......union station is probably the most elegant train station in the nation ....but it is not built underground like a subway three way throat suburban station is in Philly and Penn station in NY.
Regarding having underground subway stations where commuter and transit lines merge .....you state that many cities do this ......which cities where at what stations. Only New York and Philly to my knowledge have subway - underground stations where the two merge
I have not in my 10 plus years living in DC seen specialty trains
Grammar nit: "merge" is not the word to describe what happens at an interchange station serving not only multiple lines but multiple modes. "Merge" means that several distinct streams combine to form one single stream, as with the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers forming the Ohio River at Pittsburgh or with a stream of cars entering a freeway via an on-ramp. Commuter/regional and rapid transit lines intersect at stations like the ones you're thinking about.
That wreck brought to the fore the termites that had been eating away the woodwork of the Washington Metro: train detection circuits that didn't work, sloppy maintenance, an operating culture that prized covering one's assets over ensuring passenger safety — which, up until this past decade, had not been a top priority at WMATA, as evidenced by its rather lengthy record of both fatal and non-fatal accidents.
Part of the problem was that the Washington Metropolitan Area Transporation Authority had been set up for and geared towards building a rapid transit system rather than operating one. The slacker safety and maintenance culture only exacerbated that problem.
One might think that a rapid transit system Members of Congress and their staffs might themselves use would get special attention from said Congress. But to the best of my knowledge, it really didn't. I don't know how much the Feds chipped in towards Metro's operations, or even whether it provided the same level of operating assistance to WMATA that it provides to the nation's other mass transit agencies (which is to say, zero), but I do know that WMATA obtained operating assistance via a pass-the-hat system that no one — not the District, not Maryland, not Virginia — really liked all that much.
I think it illustrative to compare SEPTA's maintenance practices with WMATA's during this period. SEPTA had the same funding problems WMATA did, which is to say, it had no steady, reliable, dedicated source of operating assistance beyond fares and ad revenue. Yet you didn't hear, see or read about incident after incident where trains derailed, or crashed, or caused injuries or deaths. (Here's a stat that might throw things into relief: Number of fatalities caused by accidents or system malfunctions on the Washington Metro in the 45 years since its first segment opened in July 1976: 13; number of fatalities caused by accidents or system malfunctions on SEPTA's rapid-transit and light metro lines since the Market Street elevated opened in 1907: six. I think that even if you express these numbers in terms of fatalities per 100,000 passenger-miles, Washington still comes out looking worse.) SEPTA's rather hidebound culture of keeping what's in place from falling to pieces rather than expanding the system actually served it well during this period: I used to tell people that it won the "Best Large Public Transit Agency" award from the American Public Transportation Association in 2013 because it kept its rail network in okay shape using nothing more than duct tape and baling wire.
Notable SEPTA train accidents | The Philadelphia Inquirer (there's no Wikipedia article on this subject; this list doesn't stretch as far back as 1961, when the first fatality accident occurred on the Market-Frankford Line when the first car of a six-car consist jumped the tracks as it took the 45-degree turn into York-Dauphin station southbound too fast; a passenger riding in the open front door of the first car was thrown from the train and killed)
Something else that probably didn't help things any in Washington: There was little to no oversight of safety on the WMATA system for much of its history. PennDOT actually requires biennial inspections of SEPTA railcars on the trolley and rapid-transit lines; you can find the inspection stickers on the front windshields of the operators' cabs on both Market-Frankford and Broad Street cars and on the front windshields of the trolleys. And (IIRC) PennDOT also had a safety oversight role in general.
Also, regarding Washington Union Station, Philadelphia Suburban Station and New York Penn Station:
What do you mean, "three-way throat"? New York Penn is a through station with two tracks feeding its throat from the west and four feeding a throat from the east.
Suburban was a terminal until the Commuter Tunnel entered it from the east. It has no throat in that direction, as the four tracks in the tunnel directly connect to four of the tracks in Suburban Station. It only has a throat to its west, fed by the four tracks leading from the upper-level suburban train platforms at 30th Street Station.
Washington Union Station is both terminal and through: the four northernmost tracks are on a level below the terminal tracks and feed a two-track tunnel under First Street NW and the National Mall, connecting at its other end to the tracks leading to the Long Bridge. But again, the tracks from the tunnel form no throat.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
