In Germany, at least, dwell time of through trains is usually 2-3 minutes. If there is a sole connection, it’s usually cross platform with a few minutes headway, depending on the number of tracks. If the connection is to some lesser branchline, the equipment might be diesel, battery or hydrogen cell power. The elderly seem to have no problems.
It takes a special kind of person that desires to be inconvienced in transit for money. Most people do not fit that mold. If it works for you - Good.
Transfers between commuter trains go very well. Take the changes between 3 trains at the LIRR that takes places several times an hour.
Are there through train alternatives?
You get a lot more miles using an airline’s credit card than you do actually flying.
Having retired - I want to get where I am going with a minimum of muss and fuss. The last time I was in the air was for my son’s wedding in 2008. Direct flights both way’s on Southwest. In fact, before I retired I wanted to get where I was going.
Yes - Just take another earlier or later train. LIRR at Jamaica station there are 3 adjaecent tracks will call A, B, C. Forgot actual numbers. For simplicity take inbound trains. Track B station platform has platforms on both sides of track. Three trains arrive at same time A train opens doors to platform facing B. Also C opens doors to platform facing B. B opens doors both side. Passengers are free to walk thru B if necessary to get on A or C.
Then all three trains close doors and go to Atlantic avenue, Long island city, and NYP. The opposite true for outbounds but there are many (7?) different eastbound destinations. Passengers may have to wait for next 1 or 2 complexs to get to final destination.
Now when the East side access to GCT opens things will be much more complicated. MTA has kept any possible patterns a closely held secret. BTW it has been decades since I connected at Jamaica so any changes or corrections more than wlcome.
It’s as I remember “Change trains at Jamaica!!”
In New York it was always just “Change at Jamaica”. And it was (reputedly) a zoo that no one liked…
The problem is that the existing trains NY to New Haven are commuter trains making lots of stops using different equipment. Unless you are going to divert ATK Boston trains to Springfield, the new plan puts more trains on the crowded NY-NH segment (which is actually MetroNorth rather than “NEC”).
Do not expect any more Amtrak trains New Rochelle - New Haven for a long time in the future. MNRR is not going have its whole 4 main tracks available for years. Each drawbridge replacement will cause mostly 3 tracks across present bridges when replacement construction is proceeding and for several time during construction only 2 main tracks. At present the Walk bridge replacement has 3 main tracks in service and at future tiimes ( several times for months ) only 2 tracks.
So bridges needing replacement in no particular order of priority are Stratford, Westport, Cos Cob, . 5 - 8 years each for engineering, EIS, Construction, and most importantly money we can expect it may 2050 before MNRR can handle more trains both NYG and Amtrak trains… The lift bridges are going to be 2 track eack to allow for continued service in case one bridge malfunctions. That requires the 2 north tracks to be off set to the north for the middle lift tower(s). The far north track will occupy new ROW and the inside north track will occupy the space that the present outside track is now in place over the bridge.
What I dont see in any of this is who in the private sector is going to invest all of this money? One of these proposals mandates the private operator invest in corridor infrastructure a minimum of $1.2B, that’s billion, in private money every year for 50 years. On top of their operating costs and these folks expect that this private group will make their money back on just trackage charges. Oh, and dont forget they will reduce trackage charges to commuter agencies to the marginal costs. I think these folks must be from Colorado and are smoking.
OPM other peoples money
It is easy to spend other peoples money
And easier still to say you’re going to do it by spending other people’s money.
Frankly, the article may be little more than a promo for a dubious scheme, given the author. Just sayin’.
A thought occurred to me today: what with the seemingly ever increasing use of tunnel boring machines, just maybe the logical replacement for NEC drawbridges would actually be tunnels?
Boring the entire NEC route? I have no ideas how deep each of the rivers are that have drawbridges used in crossing them and I don’t know how deep a tunnel has to be under an active river to be safe from the potential of water incursion - considering grades that would be necessary to go from ground level to tunnel level the expedient would be to bore a tunnel the entire length of the NEC.
You would never keep those tunnels dry.
In order to work you would have in excess of 30-35’drop and then rise at each river crossing. All the approach on both sides would be in trench well below local sea level. The issue is not so much the potential for leakage through the tunnel structure but runoff into it, with all the fun of storm surge added when the hurricanes intensify. Then there is the question of either diverting traffic while the tunnels are built, or redirecting the line to one side ‘as completed’ – a true high-speed service really favoring a ‘flyover’ height solution instead of a buried one, especially when the consequences of even an unexpected foot or two of water in a high-speed tunnel are considered.
At least some of the ground to be traversed – I am thinking in particular of Portal at the Hackensack estuary – is ghastly to contemplate tunnelling through. You’d need to freeze the ground, grout intensively, or have very good slipforming of well-defined wall structure to make the trick work. I believe Gateway under the Hudson was designed to run deep enough that the tidal differences that so alarmingly affected the PRR tunnels will not be a factor; while the rivers north/east are less dramatic I believe the Connecticut in part has periodic flooding that would greatly increase the ‘works’ needed to keep water out.
Meanwhile there is the issue of launching and recovering the TBM at what is essentially submarine depth. On many of the current projects it appears that there is little value in recovering the (very expensive even if the Boring Company experiments succeed!) machine for re-use; this might be different for progressive re-use at other sites on the NEC… but I’d have to see it costed-out.
I think they call it hyperloop.
There were studies around the time of the practical design of the first LGV that indicated peak grades of 8 to 10% could easily be tolerated by very-high-speed trains … the difficulty being that the vertical curves into and out of those grades needed to be on the order of 12 miles long and very carefully surfaced. So the ‘actual’ consequence of a combination of tunnel and defined cut for grade separation is not quite as bad as full ‘burial’ (or the asininity of a Beach-style capacity solution for high-speed tube transport!) and in fact there’s a case to be made for having either of the Long Island ‘second spine’ routes (either via an Orient Point Bridge or via Hartford and the new outer bypass completion across the Sound) extensively in trench where exposure to hoity-toity North Shore folks might be politically problematic. You wouldn’t completely bury it, though: it would be as unpleasant to ride then as that Japanese maglev that is always blowing in and out of long tunnels … or ordinary-amenity passenger trains through things like some of these European base tunnels, or the Kyushu or Finland-Estonia length projects.