Photo: Amtrak Ink; Bill Tarvin Flooding on the Mohawk Subdivision of CSX track in Upstate New York in July resulted in the temporary suspension of service between Albany and Niagara Falls. The flooding was the worst in memory and also resulted in temporarily closing the New York Thruway.

Despite some major operational challenges in July, Amtrak closed the month beating its ridership and ticket revenue budget targets with 2.2 million passengers and $127 million.While East Coast flooding and poor long-distance train ontime performance affected service, strong ridership on a number of short-distance services helped sustain positive results.

Northeast Corridor ridership was in line with the budget, but ticket revenue fell slightly below (1 percent) in July. Despite increased ridership on Acela Express (better than forecast by 3 percent), ticket revenues didn’t do as well (off by 9 percent). This may have been in part a reaction to higher fares and the timing of this year’s Fourth of July holiday, which resulted in many business travelers taking four-day weekends with the holiday falling on a Tuesday.

Regional service ridership was 1 percent below the budget, but ticket revenue surpassed the target by 6 percent.

Like previous months, sustained high gas prices helped drive passengers to rail travel in July. Short-distance train ridership and ticket revenue were both favorable to forecast by 6 percent, reflecting gains across the system. In the Pacific Northwest,Amtrak Cascades service gained 7 percent more riders and 11 percent more revenue than expected. In the Midwest, the Wolverine and Illini services earned double-digit gains against the budget.

However, flooding in upstate New York, freight railroad track work and congestion across the system resulted in some losses. For example, that flooding and the ongoing Union Pacific track work on the Kansas City/St. Louis corridor cost the railroad an estimated $500,000 in lost ticket revenue.

Poor on-time performance over many freight railroads affected a number of long-distance trains in the height of the summer travel season. The Silver Star, Sunset Limited, Lake Shore Limited, Coast Starlight and California Zephyr, each of which suffered extremely low OTP, contributed to long-distance train results’ falling short of the budget for both ridership and ticket revenues. Overall, long-distance ridership and revenue were unfavorable by 4 percent and 1 percent, respectively. On the whole, longdistance on-time performance was 23 percent in July; 4 percentage points worse than last July.

Year to date, with the help of the July results, Amtrak ridership was 3 percent ahead of the budget with more than 20 million trips recorded.With $1.1 billion collected, Amtrak was 1.5 percent ahead of its ticket revenue budget.

[ NCI plans a series of stories focusing on transit-oriented development, livable pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly cities in states throughout America. – Ed. ]

At a transportation conference last week convened by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and held at Columbia University, pedestrian and bicycle-friendly environments for the city got a big boost from New York City’s Transportation Commissioner Iris Weinshall. The commissioner proposed an array of measures that would soften impacts of heavy traffic on city streets and begin to reclaim the sheer urban acreage given over to automobiles.

Here are some of Weinshall’s reform steps:

• Soon announce 5 bus rapid transit corridors, with accelerated construction (starting in fall 2007) on two of them. She also said NYC’s BRT system could become the world’s “most extensive.”
  
• Implement its recently announced initiative to build 240 new miles of bicycle ways (MTR #540).
  
• Begin capital work stemming from Safe Routes to Schools studies — Weinshall anticipated the installation of 750 neckdowns and 70 medians, among other streetscape features, in a first round of work among other features.
  
• Expand a program to “boldly reimagine” city streetscapes and pursue “aggressive pedestrianization” building from the Willoughby Street reclamation in Brooklyn (MTR #525) and similar projects planned for Astor Place, 1st Avenue along Stuyvesant Town and other locations, to proliferate “neighborhood plazas” around the five boroughs.
  
• In major pedestrian areas like Herald and Times Squares, build out permanent sidewalk infrastructure to curb lines now marked by paint and temporary bollards, and change the Times Square traffic pattern to reclaim even more walking space.
  
• Set up a new office of strategic planning to develop long range ideas in these regards, to be run by Steve Weber, who has handled DOT’s post-9/11 lower Manhattan planning and worked at the Regional Plan Association on transit issues.

Stringer invoked the experience of London with congestion pricing and of Copenhagen in turning space for cars into space for bicycling, and said that these experiences had to be part of the discussion here. He said the debate had to be citywide, mentioning the impact of mega-development at already-clogged Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues in Brooklyn, the dangers of Queens Boulevard and creeping buses in the Bronx.

Keynote speaker of the conference was Enrique Penalosa, former mayor of Bogota. He artfully connected Bogota’s experiences with bus rapid transit and cycling and pedestrian infrastructure with the potentials in New York, while acknowledging the cities’ differences. “Today, we aren’t just talking about transportation. What we are really talking about is: What kind of city do we want? There has to be a collective decision about how do we want to organize our lives. NYC, a long time ago, explicity or implicitly decided that much of the city’s space would be dedicated to cars. This was a decision. It’s not some sort of natural law. Tomorrow we can change this. This is something that we have to decide. Transportation is not a technical matter. It is a political matter,” said Peñalosa

First new train station in 100
years now taking shape

ORANGEVILLE, ONTARIO --A new Canadian Pacific train station in Orangeville to replace one destroyed by fire will have the unique architectural features of its predecessor of 100 years ago - a turret and pointed roof.

When passenger service was abandoned in the 1970’s, the old station was sold and moved to downtown Orangeville, where it is now the Train Station restaurant. The new station will provide a home for the Credit Valley Explorer tour train and its operator, Cando Contracting Ltd. As such, it will replace the sole remaining structure on the once-busy Orangeville railway yards, which was destroyed by fire last March.

Two Photos: Orangeville Citizen Above: The original station. At right, the new turret under construction

Gary Kocialek, then general manager of the Orangeville Railway Development Corporation, said the work would be part of plans to “revitalize” the rail yard area, which once included freight sheds, a roundhouse and other rail-related structures.

The new station will include a waiting room, rest rooms and a ticketing office, the latter being located in the turret.

The original station was built in the heyday of railroads when both passenger and freight shared the lines allowing CPR to run passenger service on its own rails from Toronto to Western Canada. A spur line allowed it later to divert its steamship service to Thunder Bay from Owen Sound to Port McNichol. That ended an era when “steamboat express” trains ran regularly.

CPR ended freight service north of Orangeville in 1998 and announced plans to tear up the remaining tracks between Orangeville and Streetsville, but the Town of Orangeville opted to purchase the remaining line in 2000.

Initially used only for the occasional freight train, the line now also hosts a spectacularly successful tour train in the three-coach Credit Valley Explorer. Just how successful the venture has been can be shown by the fact this year’s planned fall colour excursions were all sold out.

NCI covers InnoTrans 2006

All Photos: David Beale At the beginning of the forum on Europe – Asia rail corridors. The main speakers were Hartmut Mehdorn, chairman and CEO of Deutsche Bahn, the German transport minister, the Polish minister of transportation, and the president of Russian State Railways (RZD).

This year’s exhibitors covered the entire range of railroad and transit equipment on the vibrant European scene, including locomotive manufacturers Vossloh, EMD, Bombardier, Siemens, Alstom, and Voith; rolling stock builders Bombardier (international), Siemens (Germany/Austria), Alstom (France, Germany, U.K.), Stadler (Switzerland/Germany/Poland), Dessau (Germany), Skoda (Czech Republic), Talgo (Spain), Kawasaki (Japan), PESA (Poland); Greenbriar (international), Rotem (Korea) and several others; signaling and communication makers GE, Siemens, General Signal, Motorola, Alcatel, Smith Industries, Nortel, EADS, and more; and operating railroads Dutche Bahn – Germany; PKP – Poland’ RZD – Russia; ÖBB – Austria; SBB – Switzerland; Arriva – Denmark, U.K; CD- Czech Republic; SNCF – France; DSB – Denmark; and many others.

A view of an EMU train set built by Polish train builder PESA. This OEM has followed Siemens, Alstom, Bombardier and Stadler in use of articulated train sets with wheel trucks shared between cars which permits low floor height for easier boarding by handicapped persons at stations without high-level platforms. This is a EMU train set from Swiss manufacturer Stadler. Stadler offers this model of multiple unit train set in various sizes: 2 car up to 6 car lengths. It is also available with diesel engine power.

Also represented were rail service companies RSM Group, NedTrain, Arriva, Angel Trains, many others; diesel engine manufacturers MTU, Cummins, MAN, Caterpillar, EMD, GE, ABC; infrastructure suppliers of track components, rail ties, fasteners, structures, train station structures and facilities, ticket machines, video surveillance, and so on; component suppliers of cables, controls, door systems, seating systems, HVAC systems, lighting, fuel, exhaust, interiors, wheels, brakes, traction motors, transmissions, suspensions, cooling, blowers, pantographs, information displays; and electrical distribution system makers of insulators, circuit breakers, transformers, power converters, controls, switches.

Finally, included also were maintenance vehicles, equipment and tools makers of train repair/overhaul, right-of-way, rail replacement, grinding, measurement, and refurbishment equipment; Personnel training companies (simulators, software, consultants); and publishers of reference books, manuals, and industry news magazines.

In short, InnoTrans 2006 was a huge display of the robustness and breadth of the European rail industry, a sharp contrast to the United States where rail and transit investment, until recently, has been an afterthought to highway congestion.

A view of one of the prototype S103 high- speed EMU trains for Spain. This is a Siemens product and is very closely based on the ICE-3 EMU train set already in operation in Germany. It is planned to go into operation in Spain in 2008 at regular in-service speeds of 330 km/h (205 mph). Unlike the “classic” rail network in Spain, nearly all the newly built high-speed trains and corridors in Spain are standard track gage (1435 mm). The “classic” rail lines in Spain are broad gage.

An Alstom “Prima” diesel locomotive. The electric versions of the “Prima” look nearly identical to this diesel-electric model. It has the same MTU 16V-4000 diesel engine as the diesel version of the Bombardier TRAXX locomotive and the Siemens Euro Runner locomotive. An Alstom “CITADIS” electric / diesel dual mode light rail vehicle. It is already operation in west central Germany. It can operate either from roof mounted diesel engines or from 700 VDC overhead power common to most urban and suburban light rail lines.

An interior view of a “CITADIS” coach

Euro Trends European passenger rail companies are aggressively obtaining new Diesel Multiple Units (DMUs) for local and regional passenger rail services. In some cases DMUs have been introduced to premium intercity services. In most cases around Europe new DMU vehicles are replacing locomotive hauled coaches or older generation DMUs (1960s and 70s vintage), but in some instances they are being introduced on entirely new routes or on routes where passenger trains were withdrawn from service two or more decades ago. Rail companies in Great Britain are perhaps the most active users of DMUs and have gathered a huge amount of operational experience and data in the past decade. There are two reasons for this: A relatively low amount of the British rail network is electrified compared to other western European countries – 35% verses 50 – 100% in continental E.U. countries; and; A major and somewhat sudden replacement of entire fleets of passenger train stock – both DMU and locomotive hauled – after the initial failures of privatization in the mid-1990s; replacement of the mostly anti-public transit conservative (Tory) government by the transit friendly Labour Party government in 1998; and forced retirement of so-called “slam door” DMUs and EMUs (built in the 1950s and 60s) due to public safety concerns. These unique “slam door” trains actually are designed like very early rail cars of the mid 19th century – i.e. no central aisle – instead each group of six seats has a hinge mounted door on each side of the wagon for entry and exit, so about eight such doors on each side of the car. The last “slam door” trains in the U.K. were removed from service last year. After this major turnover in British passenger rail vehicles within about a six-year period of time, the U.K. now enjoys one of the youngest passenger train fleets in Europe, and much of it consists of intercity and regional DMUs from Alstom, Siemens and Bombardier.   DMU Features DMUs share a number of common features: They are usually (not always) built as a two, three or four-car permanently coupled train set; Use of aerodynamic cab ends – i.e. there is no way for people to walk between train sets coupled together when underway; At least one toilet/lavatory (handicapped accessible); 50% or more of the vehicle is low-floor, i.e. easy entry/exit for wheel chair users and other handicapped person without need of a high-level boarding platform at each station; The use of fully automatic centrally controlled sliding doors with sensitive edges (no requirement for conductors to open and close train doors), similar to modern light rail vehicles; A fully air-conditioned interior, and sound proofing; also, the DMUs are usually equipped with miniature surveillance cameras; Widespread use of digital passenger information displays and automated public address system: each station stop is announced via an LED or LCD screen as well as a computerized audio announcement, a feature standard in all new passenger rolling stock, regardless whether DMUs, EMUs, subway/metro, loco hauled coaches, or city trams / street cars and even most new city buses;

• A maximum service speed of 120 km/h (75 mph), but some models / versions are available with higher speed ratings, Britain and Germany have a few intercity DMUs which are rated for 200 km/h, but they are the exception, not the rule. Acceleration is better than most locomotive hauled trains, but not as dramatic as many EMUs. Most can go from standstill to 120 km/h in approximately 60 seconds;

• High capacity with 110 – 130 passengers seated, and up to 90 standing (two-car configuration). These units can be operated in tandem with other DMU train sets of the same model or a similar model series, up to four train sets. Operation in multiple with train sets from different OEMs is apparently not yet possible in most cases.

• DMU cost in Europe is about €  3 million (US $3.8 million) range, i.e. about $31,000 per passenger seat.

An electric multi-system TRAXX locomotive from Bombardier. TRAXX is the trade name Bombardier has given to a common series of electric and diesel locomotives which it is marketing. They share a common body, chassis, wheel trucks, cab layout and controls and other components. The other big locomotive OEMs – Siemens and Alstom – have developed similar common platforms for their electric and diesel locomotives. This particular locomotive can operate from 1500 VDC, 3000 VDC and 15 kV AC (16.7 Hz) electric power and has cab signaling and train control equipment for Germany, Holland, Belgium and Austria. The TRAXX electric locomotive, similar to electric locomotives from Siemens and Alstom as well as EMU train sets from many suppliers, comes standard with regenerative braking. Regenerative braking means that the locomotive generates electric power during deceleration or braking, for example when descending down a grade in a hilly area, and returns the electric power back into the power grid via the overhead catenary. Thanks to significant advances in electric power switching electronics and the use of AC asynchronous traction motors, this feature works both in countries with AC railroad electrification such as Germany, Denmark and Switzerland and countries with DC railroad electrification such as Italy, Poland or Belgium. The energy savings from this feature are quite significant.

The main differences between the various DMU models shown at InnoTrans is interior configuration, number of cars per train set, and arrangement of the propulsion systems. The majority of the newer DMUs on the market have under-floor diesel engines from Cummins, MAN or MTU. There are typically two engines per train set. Exceptions are several models from Stadler which have just one engine. The engines are typically coupled to the driving wheels via a six speed automatic transmission, drive shafts and differential gears similar to larger highway trucks and busses. The exception again is Stadler, which in several of its DMU models the engine drives a traction generator, which in turn drives axle-mounted traction motors.

Here is the cab of the TRAXX – this is the cab of the electric version. This is the so-called European Drivers Desk – which is becoming a standardized layout for the Bombardier (and other OEMs) locomotives and trains. The idea here is to keep things as simple and standard as possible for the train driver.

The only “dual mode” rail vehicle which was on display at InnoTrans was an Alstom Regío CITADIS light rail vehicle for urban/suburban use in Germany, similar to many urban light rail lines in the United States such as Denver, Boston Green Line, and Dallas DART. This particular model is in service in west central Germany near Kassel. It normally operates from 700 VDC overhead electric power as do most urban light rail vehicles and trams in Germany. But on a couple of sections of rail right-of-way where there in no overheard catenary, it gets power from a roof-mounted diesel powered generator, which provides electric power to the traction motors and to the lighting and HVAC systems inside the vehicle during operation on non-electrified track.

The dual electric / diesel CITADIS rail vehicle has a maximum service speed of 100 km/h (63 mph) regardless of whether operating on electrified rail lines or from diesel power on non-electrified rail lines. The Alstom representative started the engine for me so that I could hear how loud it was. Although from inside the vehicle with the doors closed there was no mistaking that the engine was running, it was not intrusive. The engine noise was far less than what I can hear in several DMUs currently in operation around Hannover. Outside the engine had a similar noise level as a modern city bus. As the engine is an 8-cylinder MAN diesel engine also used in large city buses and some marine applications, that is to be expected.

A close-up of the traction motor on one axle of the multi-system TRAXX locomotive.

In the United States there are two rail systems using the new generation of DMUs:

• NJ Transit is using Stadler DMUs in southern New Jersey around the Camden area as so called “diesel light rail vehicles”.
  
• NCTD is using Siemens Desiro “Classic” DMUs in the Oceanside CA area.
  

In both cases the DMUs are more or less off the shelf designs already in use in Europe. NJ Transit operates the Stadler DMUs on rail lines where no freight trains operate at all. The rail line in Oceanside, CA is used by the Siemens DMUs for a fixed time over normal working and business hours and the rest of the night and early morning hours the line is exclusively used by freight trains, the DMUs are not permitted on the right of way.

(Next week: Leasing/Financing/Maintenance of rolling stock, and technical trends, at InnoTrans 2006 – and more sample images of the trains on display.)

Stamford Advocate on Amtrak’s new president

In an editorial entitled, “There’s a new hand on Amtrak throttle — and we’re hopeful” the Stamford Advocate expresses guarded optimism about what Amtrak’s new president might be able to accomplish for better rail service in America. Distressed by the firing of David Gunn who had made great strides in improving Amtrak despite administration opposition, the editors are encouraged by Alexander Kumment’s professional experience in railroading and his commitment to run the long-distance trains more efficiently and to strengthening the infrastructure of the Northeast Corridor.

“A good omen for rail transportation — Alexander Kummant comes to the job with a railroading background. Lately he has been executive vice president and marketing of Komatsu America Corp., a leading manufacturer of heavy construction equipment. Before that, however, he was regional vice president of the Union Pacific Railroad.”

The newspaper’s concern mainly is the administration’s negativism toward the importance of a world-class national rail service for this country. “[The problems of the Northeast Corridor] are the result of an administration that refuses to see the value in mass transit, especially as exemplified by long distance rail travel. While a Senate bill has increased the road’s federal subsidy, in the past President Bush has given it short shrift, even proposing at one point giving it no funds at all.”

They understand how crucial it is to bring our transportation system into balance. While they acknowledge the great accomplishment of the national interstate system started under Eisenhower, they clearly get the picture of how devastating over-investment in one mode was to the rail system.

“There is no more efficient means for moving large masses of people — or tons of cargo — than by rail. While we applaud the national highway program begun under President Eisenhower, it was done at the expense of an aging rail system.

We’ve got to repair that.”

[ In reference to “How misleading statements propagate across the news media spectrum” – DF October 2, 2006 ]

I too am frustrated by the “money-losing-Amtrak” phraseology that turns up in even ostensibly positive passenger rail stories.

It takes a bit of hunting, but if one combs through the US DOT website, a table of annual domestic passenger figures can be found that, when compared to Amtrak’s figures, reveals that Amtrak is the seventh-largest intercity passenger carrier in the country. Not bad for a money-losing subsidy-sucking failure.

Peter Hine
NYC

The 43 powercar is a 16V not a 20V!

Ben Webber
U.K.