# Train VS. Plane, Buffalo, NY to NYC



## Mike S. (Dec 9, 2007)

So about 2 weeks ago I needed to get to New Jersey for a conference. I booked our tickets very close to the travel date, so flying to NJ from Buffalo was $$$$, but JetBlue is always cheap to NYC. So we drove the rest of the way. Flying from Buffalo to NYC got me thinking.

The Empire Corridor is a targeted High Speed Corridor, but not much progress yet. Now...it's basically 8.5 hours Buffalo to NYP. Thats long. It's REALLY long compared to a 1h5m plane ride. Or is it?

Here is how my flight went:

Arrive at Buffalo Niagara International: 3:40PM

Flight Departure Time: 5:10PM

Touch Down at JFK: ~6:15PM

Taxing/Gate Delays, Get off Plane: ~6:30PM

Shuttle Bus from temporary gate to permanent gate, walk to JFK Loop Train, Ride train to Rental Car, Pick Up Car: ~7:25PM

Wow. So basically 4 hours and I'm still at JFK. If I wanted to get to Manhattan, I'd skip the rental car and either take a cab (another 50 bucks and 30 minutes) or take the subway from Jamaica Station into Manhattan (a few bucks and more like 45mins-1hour).

If Amtrak/New York State could get the time down to 6 hours (is it really that hard), I'd ALWAYS ALWAYS take the train over flying. Being able to work/internet/phone/eat/relax for six hours vs. "travel" for 4 hours. No question about it. I'd find the extra 2 hours in my day and I'd bet a ton of others would too!


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## AlanB (Dec 9, 2007)

Mike S. said:


> If Amtrak/New York State could get the time down to 6 hours (is it really that hard), I'd ALWAYS ALWAYS take the train over flying. Being able to work/internet/phone/eat/relax for six hours vs. "travel" for 4 hours. No question about it. I'd find the extra 2 hours in my day and I'd bet a ton of others would too!


I'm sure that Amtrak would love to be able to cut their run times down to 6 hours or less. Only problem is that it isn't up to them. Perhaps if Amtrak had Billions of dollars available to it to lavish on various routes, they could have some influence on things, but they don't.

So instead it is up to CSX and New York State to fix things so that such a dream is possible. A little help from Metro North would also be helpful, but MN doesn't really have extra money to blow trying to help Amtrak either. So again NY State would have to help them out, such that they could improve running times for Amtrak and MN passengers too.


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## Mike S. (Dec 9, 2007)

Right rights...I guess I realize Amtrak would run faster if they can. I'm well aware of the CSX and limited track space the Empire Corridor runs most of the way.

On a side note, I always try to take the train to NYC as a show of support for the system. I figure I might as well support something I belive in.


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## tp49 (Dec 10, 2007)

Mike S. said:


> If I wanted to get to Manhattan, I'd skip the rental car and either take a cab (another 50 bucks and 30 minutes) or take the subway from Jamaica Station into Manhattan (a few bucks and more like 45mins-1hour).


The better option would be to take the airtrain to the LIRR Jamacia station then take the LIRR into Penn Station. A little more expensive but the trip takes approximately 15-20 minutes instead of the time spent on the subway.


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## transit54 (Dec 10, 2007)

Is it primarily an infrastructure issue or does it also have to do with the equipment being used?

I've only been on the corridor four times, and two were on the southbound Adirondack to CRT, so we were only on the corridor for an hour or two. Once was on an eastbound LSL which was rather delayed and we spent most of the day trying to work ourselves around CSX freights as I thanked myself for doing an onboard sleeper upgrade the night before, which made the delays seem all the less painful. The other was on the northbound Maple Leaf and from what I remember we kept up a very substantial speed all the way to Buffalo.

I always wondered if Amtrak acquired money to purchase some relatively high speed tilting trainsets (I know, I know, its a dream, but let me dream...) such as Bombardier's prototype JetTrain, if they couldn't substantially improve the speed on the corridor. Add that to the fact that new equipment and faster speeds would likely generate a lot of publicity for the line and spike ridership substantially.

(Of course, the flip side is that I work for JetBlue - but I'd rather see Amtrak dominate on the intra-New York State routes. Well, I'd like to see Amtrak dominate everywhere, but there will always be a market for airline travel, and I think we're one of the best out there to serve that market)

So if I'm understanding Alan's post correctly, substantial track work would also be needed to improve speeds by an hour or two?


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## meatpuff (Dec 10, 2007)

rnizlek said:


> Is it primarily an infrastructure issue or does it also have to do with the equipment being used?...
> 
> I always wondered if Amtrak acquired money to purchase some relatively high speed tilting trainsets (I know, I know, its a dream, but let me dream...) such as Bombardier's prototype JetTrain, if they couldn't substantially improve the speed on the corridor.
> 
> ...


If I may provide an armchair analysis without actually knowing the curviness and track ratings and slow zones and everything else about these particular tracks (some people on this forum almost certainly do), I think the high-speed trainsets wouldn't help.

Maps.google finds 444 miles from Buffalo to NYC if you go through Albany instead of Scranton. This route on I-90/87 is basically the same as the Empire Service travels, and it does the trip in 7h50m. Divide that out and you get an average speed of about 57 mph. First of all, this is real high for an Amtrak LD route. And second, I believe the main factor here is the 79 mph FRA nation-wide speed limit. When you take that 57 mph and account for 15 min in Albany, all the other short stops and associated acceleration/deceleration, slow zones here and there and padding for passing a few freights, they're probably running right around 79 mph much of the time.

You may be aware that the condition to get around the 79 mph speed limit is in-cab signaling. The FRA made the rule because they don't think crews can read the signals if they're whizzing by any faster than 79 mph. In-cab signaling mostly comes to an infrastructure problem; the part that goes in the locomotive should be simple. The expensive part is wiring up the track so that the system knows where all the trains are and integrating it with dispatching and everything.

Or such is my understanding. So that's the good news; you can forget about if you need new tracks. The bad news is that still almost no state government will find even the couple/few hundred million dollars it would take to get this done. Of course, once you make this upgrade, the tilting trainsets could probably do some good.


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## AlanB (Dec 10, 2007)

It is all infrastructure and none of it is equipment. While tilting trains might be nice, if someone had a few billion dollars to donate, it is hardly necessary to at least make a big dent in the current travel times. A P42 engine is capable of running at 110 MPH and the Amfleets are capable of 125 MPH. In fact Regional trains regularly run at 125 MPH on the NEC, as did the former Metroliner service.

Turning to the infrastructure, signaling is a big part of the picture, but it isn't all that needs to be done. One needs to bank curves, if not ease them some too. Crossings will need to be upgraded or closed as the regulations demmand higher protection levels as speeds increase. Depending on the weight of the current rail it may need to be replaced with a heavier rail. Ballast may need to be made deeper to better support the track. Higher speed switches need to be installed

And then of course we come to the afforementioned signaling, where we need Positive Train Control. Something that would have prevented last week's accident in Chicago if it had been in place. And all of the above costs lots of money that no one is willing to invest. Especially the freight RR's since other than PTC, they see no real benefit from the rest of the needed improvements.

And just for the record, there are places where Amtrak is permitted to run at 90 MPH on the Empire route. There aren't enough 90 MPH sections to make a major difference, but again there are places where the trains are already hitting 90 MPH. In fact south of ALB there are even a few short stretches where Amtrak can exceed 90 MPH. Now improving things along the entire run would help to cut down on run times, but there are other things that can be done right now, and for far less money, to help improve overall run time.

Things like getting the second main back between Albany and Schenectady, improving tracks speeds through Buffalo and a few other places where trains have to slow down to 15 MPH to 20 MPH, building a third main track across NY State to cut down on congestion.


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## transit54 (Dec 10, 2007)

Well what was the purpose of NY State testing the turboliners on that route before all that fell through? Was it just to bring some different equipment onto the line? I guess I was under the impression that there would be some speed improvements, but again, that was before I took a substantial interest in rail, so I wasn't really following the whole thing.


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## George Harris (Dec 10, 2007)

The issue is track speed and track capacity. Turboliners might look fancy but they do nothing about the basic problem and do increace the cost of the service significantly. If and when New York state ever gets serious about rail, they can do a lot about it. I believe that the ex NYC line already has the signal system that would permit faster than 79 mph. It just does not have the track capacity. Without someone else being willing to hand them the money there is no advantage to CSX maintaining the track to a higher standard than currently prevailing, which means 80 or 90 mph maximum. The current line west of Albany is fairly straight, but if they want to truly run fast, they need dedicated passenger tracks west of Albany. Between Albany and NYC, the line is fairly crooked so that the faster maximum speed available there really does very little for you.

for the distances involved, increasing the speed limit from 80 mph to 90 mph does very little for you.


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## AlanB (Dec 10, 2007)

rnizlek said:


> Well what was the purpose of NY State testing the turboliners on that route before all that fell through? Was it just to bring some different equipment onto the line? I guess I was under the impression that there would be some speed improvements, but again, that was before I took a substantial interest in rail, so I wasn't really following the whole thing.


NY State didn't just test the Turboliner's, they actually ran in revenue service for a while. One can probably find serveral varying opinions on why NY State refurbished them, but personally I suspect that there was one major reasons for doing so. That being to make the politicians look good and to make it look like they were actually doing something for their constituents.

By refurbing the Turboliners, they brought jobs to NY State and by promoting the program it made it look like they were actually doing something to help promote high-speed service in the state. Now the part of the plan that called for double tracking NYP-SDY, as well as other improvements to the tracks, and the new station in Albany all were good things. But we didn't need the Turboliners just to do those things. Again the current equipment has taken advantage of the improvements that were made and could have taken advantage of the improvements that were supposed to have happened, but never did when some smart person at Amtrak finally realized that they had gotten the short end of the straw in the deal with NY State.

NY State continues to get more service from Amtrak, that is strictly serving NY State, without paying for it than any other state. NY State helps to support one train only, the Adirondack. Other states with the level of service the NY gets contribute far more to help their service than does NY.


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## Rafi (Dec 10, 2007)

AlanB said:


> NY State continues to get more service from Amtrak, that is strictly serving NY State, without paying for it than any other state. NY State helps to support one train only, the Adirondack. Other states with the level of service the NY gets contribute far more to help their service than does NY.


This begs a question I've been meaning to ask for a while, Alan. How does NY get away with it, then? Because it's an established status quo? Amtrak's Empire Service is phenomenal for a non-state-subsidized service, and I'm continually surprised that they continue to run it with the same frequency without threatening NY with service reduction without financial support. What am I missing?

-Rafi


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## AlanB (Dec 10, 2007)

Rafi said:


> AlanB said:
> 
> 
> > NY State continues to get more service from Amtrak, that is strictly serving NY State, without paying for it than any other state. NY State helps to support one train only, the Adirondack. Other states with the level of service the NY gets contribute far more to help their service than does NY.
> ...


Rafi,

Honestly I'm not really sure myself just how they get away with it. I can offer a few thoughts, and perhaps it is actually some combination of these ideas, but again I truly don't know. First of course it could be what you suggested, the fact that it's a status quo thing. I strongly suspect that at least part of the equation is NY's strong Congressional representation, most of whom have always been very pro-Amtrak. I think, but I'm not positive since Amtrak doesn't release those numbers, that the Empire Service doesn't loose huge chunks of money for Amtrak. The lack of NY State funding is of course one reason that fares are higher by comparison to most other State sponsered runs of a similar length.

Probably the failed Turboliner deal helped for a while to keep Amtrak off of the state's back. And perhaps even the idea that the Governor controls the MTA, and therefore could make things tough for Amtrak when they run their trains over the MN tracks between New Haven and New Rochelle. Of course MN already doesn't always handle Amtrak properly anyhow, like today when they held my Acela 2167 at Bridgeport.


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## George Harris (Dec 10, 2007)

If I remember the history of the time correctly: Shortly before Amtrak start-up, Penn Central had proposed discontinuing all passenger service west of Harrisburg PA on the old Pennsy side and Buffalo New York on the NYC side. So, the New York City to Buffalo trains were some of the trains that were intended to be kept by PCRR, for a while, at least. In those early years there were quite a few trains that were pets of particular congressmen. Amtrak has always been a pet of congress. The western New York state service may have been one of these pet routes. At that time New York was still the country's most populous state so it had the largest single congressional delegation. Also, remember track capacity was not much of an issue in those days. Generally most railroads were busily pulling up second mains where ever they could, and the old New York Central Main still had considerable vestiges of the four track mains that at one time ran most if not all the entire distance between New York and Chicago. Equipment was not a problem at that time, either. So, at the beginning the Buffalo trains were realtively low cost to Amtrak and relatively low cost to the host railroad, which railroad was working off the cannibalization of a once great system.

There are those that considered Amtrak more of a Penn Central bailout than a national passenger service preservation program. Pre-amtrak about half the US passenger train miles remaining were operated by Penn Central. The other northeastern bankrupts or near bankrupts had very little in the way of remaining passenger service, and the only near bankrupt not in the Northeast, rock Island, decided to not join Amtrak because the cost of joining exceeded their cost of operating the two passenger trains they still had. As said by many, the whole concept seemed to be to provide a support structure for the northeastern commuter services under the guise of maintaining passenger trains on a national level.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Dec 10, 2007)

Has anyone done a study of what specific upgrades would be needed to make this whole route operate at, say, at least 79mph, with estimates of the cost of each upgrade and the time that that upgrade would shave off the trip? It seems like concrete data of the form ``for $X we can shorten the trip by Y minutes'' might be helpful for asking legislators to fund the most cost effective speed improvement projects.


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## George Harris (Dec 11, 2007)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> Has anyone done a study of what specific upgrades would be needed to make this whole route operate at, say, at least 79mph, with estimates of the cost of each upgrade and the time that that upgrade would shave off the trip? It seems like concrete data of the form "for $X we can shorten the trip by Y minutes'' might be helpful for asking legislators to fund the most cost effective speed improvement projects.


Haven't seen one, but reasonably sure that it has been done, probably more than once. We have done way more than enough rail studies in this country over the last 30 years. Probably every route with any conceivably passenger traffic has had at least one study done, and for many routes more than one. A study that gives you some form of "order of magnitude" costs can be done relatively quickly, and by grabbing information available from various sources in the railroad company, the state department of transportation, available mapping, and picking a few local sources of information, you can produce a fairly impressive looking document for the cost of a few man-months of time. Politicians love them. Makes it look like they are doing something whether they have any real intention of doing something or not.

Try web searches using various likely terms and see what you find. I have not for this area.


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## iron mountain (Dec 23, 2007)

Comparative times of getting between two points by rail, car, and airplane is an interesting subject. Several years ago one of the local news stations in St. Louis did analysis of travel time between St. Louis and Kansas City comparing the three modes of transportation. The results were that there wasn't much difference, all things being equal. If you flew you had to get to Lambert Field, wait, board, fly (which was the fastest part of the trip), land at KCI, get transportation to KC, which is a long long way from the airport. If you drove you had the "wonderful" experience of I-70, heavy truck traffic, confusing routes in KC, rough pavement, and generally nerve wracking heavy traffic. If you went by train it was a relatively pleasant trip gliding along the Missouri River and passing through picturesque towns and rural areas. You arrived at one of the most beautifully restored stations (Union Station Kansas City) in the U.S., right in the middle of the city, walking distance from two major hotels, and public transporation. This is assuming, of course, that UP hasn't tied up the Mule or Ann Rutledge for hours on a sidng somewhere. If the trains can run with out interference the time is comparable to the other two modes of transportation. Along with the UP cooperation business, and perhaps more important, is that there is only a single track between Jefferson City and Sedalia (which is east of KC). Point being, control of tracks is the critical issue. Instead of talk about high speed equipment the most important issue is control and upgrade of the tracks. In the late 20's the Hiawathas and Northwestern "400's" had no trouble running at speeds of over 100 mph using coal fired steam locomotives. Again, it is not the equipment, it is the tracks. We need someone who has the vision of an Eisenhower who got the inter-state highway system under way or a Kennedy who got us to the moon, who understands the issue of developing a truly national, high speed rail system. Developing such a system would create jobs for many years and, I believe, stimulate the economies of many communities throughout the country. Maybe at some point enough people in postions of influence will beging to understand the need and act on it.


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## wayman (Dec 23, 2007)

iron mountain said:


> ... the issue of developing a truly national, high speed rail system.


Calling it a "high speed rail system" makes people think of the Acela or TGV, and the associated costs (and, in the case of the Acela, politics). I'd settle for calling it a "smooth track rail system", which is a more accurate description of this goal and probably a cause that's far easier to get mass support.

Besides, "smooth track" is the perfect opposite to "bumpy track", which is now available for Thomas the Tank Engine. I saw it in stores Friday while shopping for my nephews, and the package says, where it lists product features, "Realistic Railway Feel!"


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## TransAtlantic (Dec 23, 2007)

Significant expansion of the electrified lines would go a long way toward improving train speeds - lighter trains make this possible, and without having to lug around one's own generator, trains are suddenly much lighter (though the FRA doesn't seem to understand that lighter doesn't equate to deadly...)


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## George Harris (Dec 23, 2007)

TransAtlantic said:


> Significant expansion of the electrified lines would go a long way toward improving train speeds - lighter trains make this possible, and without having to lug around one's own generator, trains are suddenly much lighter (though the FRA doesn't seem to understand that lighter doesn't equate to deadly...)


Not really true, except for multi-stop short haul commuter service. It has been said already in this thread, but seems to be needing saying again: The major problems are track congestion or in other words sufficient track capacity and allowable track speed, and the speed issue for the most part is due to curves and speed restricted areas for other reasons. Look in almost any employee timetable and there will be a page long list of restrictions for almost any subdivision.

The place to look to make improvements is top of rail and down.


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