Baltimore Light Rail Service Disruption .. and whether it was worse in

[MARC Rider]

The Baltimore Light Rail is running a bus bridge from North Ave. to Falls Rd until July 10 to allow for some work to fix some washouts along the track somewhere around Cold Spring. I found out about it last Friday when I used it as part of my 3-seat Baltimore Washington commute. I wondered why the train at Mt Royal was so empty when I boarded it at 5 PM. I didn't know about it because I only take use it every other Friday when I work Fridays and my wife doesn't want to come down the Penn Station at 5 PM to pick me up. The bus bridge was OK, the bus went on I83 to Falls Rd, then just went on Falls Road and made street stops in the general vicinity of Woodberry, Cold Spring, and Mt Washington Stations.

What I'm curious about, it that between WMATA, MARC, MTA and Amtrak, over the past 14 years that I've been doing this commute, service disruptions of one kind or another are reasonably common occurrences. The last time I was a frequent rail commuter was when I was in junior high and high school, circa 1965-1971 in the Philadelphia area, and I don't remember service disruptions of this frequency. Between riding to school (Broad Street Subway), and joyriding on all of the local rail lines, Pennsy/Penn Central commuter lines, Reading Commuter Lines, Septa, PTC, Red Arrow, Lindenwold Line, Pennsy/Penn Central NEC service. This was at a time when the private companies were actively trying (and succeeding) to offload the service to public entities, and you would think that just from deferred maintenance alone, there would be delays and disruptions, but my recollection is the service was remarkably reliable. I can think of three explanations: (1) My recollections are wrong, (2) Back in the day they tolerated operating conditions that would have modern operators suspending service, or (3) modern technology is less reliable. By the way, I don't ever remember the Penn Central slowing down NEC service in the summer for heat, even after they switched to welded rail for the Metroliners.

 

[the_traveler]

I'm not saying anything, but it could be #1! After all, it was 40 years ago.

I think it was also a result of #2. What better way to scare off riders than with bad tracks. Freight doesn't care how rough the tracks are but riders do care.

 

[Anderson]

There's a version of #3, which is that a lot of stuff is less reliable...but it isn't the modern technology, it's the aging infrastructure. Back in the 60s, a lot of your infrastructure had undergone maybe a decade or so of neglect (from the late 50s onwards) while today a lot of it is showing the effects of intermittent neglect over the last 50-60 years. Even with the relatively new DC Metro, you've got a lot of equipment (escalators and the like) that is dying from age and bad maintenance over the last 30-40 years.

That combines with the fact that there are definitely some cases where the operators in the 60s, in a less lawsuit-prone environment, would have run things regardless. There's also the fact that when the operators then were working to keep things up, I suspect they were a bit more aggressive about doing work in the "off hours". Finally, there was a lot of surplus capacity at the time in many places (particularly the main lines...there was a lot of third and fourth track in places that was no longer needed) that just does not exist now (both due to removing unneeded track and increased demand...for example, the LIRR and MNRR are running pretty close to their systems' postwar peaks in terms of ridership, but a number of branches on the LIRR are out of service, and many of the ex-NYC/New Haven branchlines that fed into Grand Central have been without service for many, many years).

There's actually a fun example of this: In the winter of 1956, the RF&P carried 16 round trip passenger trains per day. This primarily involved scads of Florida-bound trains, but it also included the Palmetto (terminating at Savannah) and the Silver Comet (terminating at Birmingham). What this did not include was any commuter-style service on the north end. Today, between Fredericksburg and Washington (over the same tracks more or less) Amtrak and VRE run 9 long-haul trains and 7 VRE trains...or 16 round trips. The schedule is different, yes, but you have the same number of trains operating over those tracks, likely hauling more passengers given that half of those trains are packed commuter trains.