"Commuter rail gaining steam" Propose Pittsburgh Commuter Rail

[happyslug]

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10309/1100867-147.stm

From December 2009:
http://blogs.sites.post-gazette.com/index.php/opinion/a-fine-point/7712-train-delay-a-property-dispute-threatens-the-allegheny-railroad

from March 2009
http://blogs.sites.post-gazette.com/index.php/opinion/open-letters/12882-19th-century-gift

Hazelwoood and Lawrenceville (Different Route)
http://blogs.sites.post-gazette.com/index.php/news/city-walkabout/8469-all-aboard

[txlibdem]

1. PRT is a far better option than light rail

The first link says it's a 6.5 mile rail line with a projected cost of $220 to $230 Million. That's over $33 million per mile!

The second link says it's a 23 mile rail line but does not mention costs.

The third link doesn't mention any specifics at all as does the fourth link.

Why spend $33 million dollars a mile when you can spend $3 to $5 million and have a superior product when you're done?

Personal Rapid Transit, which uses small cars suitable for 1 to 4 people and picks you up at your starting point and drops you off at your destination. The vehicles are smaller and lighter so the track is much much cheaper per mile. There can be as many stations as you like and they do not slow down others because the stations are off line, so a car destined to stop at a particular station takes an exit track and then slows down to stop at that station, while other cars whose destinations are farther down the line do not even have to slow down, they just stay on the main track and travel at highest speeds.

Stations can be built cheaply as well because the size and weight are a fraction of light rail. Stations can be built directly attached to the mall, hospitals, schools, businesses, etc., so passengers enjoy the convenience of being able to enter and exit the car inside a heated or air conditioned space, not exposed to the weather extremes outside.

PRT is the best way forward because of its low cost, convenience, and passenger safety and comfort. Cost estimates for PRT are as low as $800,000 per mile and go higher depending on the irresponsibility of the construction companies hired. Any project can be blown out of the water if the contractors have no penalties for delays and cost overruns. But not even the most outrageously high estimates has it even close to light rail. Most have $10 million per mile but Taxi2000 says it will be more like $3 to $5 million per mile because they will be using their own staff and equipment, not contracting out a bunch of middlemen that do nothing but add costs and increase delays.

PRT gets people out of their cars and onto public transportation. According to a 2008 study, only 4.6% of Americans take public transportation, here in Texas the number is 1.7%. I submit that both of these figures are statistically insignificant. PRT, on the other hand, can bring that figure starting at 30% all the way up to 100% if a door-to-door dual speed system is used (there are several different PRT designs that can be used). PRT uses a fraction of the energy per mile than cars, light rail, subways, and buses. The noise levels are far less than any of those alternatives as well.

Each year, 40,000 people die in auto accidents. The bean counters say these traffic fatalities cost us $124 Billion each year. How many of those 40,000 Americans do you believe deserve to die? Please choose 1000 of them, picture them in your mind alive with families and hopes and dreams. Then imagine that you had the power to either kill them or keep them alive. Refer to Table 3, on page 26 of the report ( http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/big/CEETIreport.pdf ). PRT will take those deaths off the table. That should be the prime reason to transition off of public transportation that has shown to be 1) ineffective in getting people out of their cars and 2)is never profitable, relies on subsidies to stay operating. Compare that to PRT which will be profitable in as few as 5 years.

Door-to-Door PRT systems can also free the business community from having delivery fleets as well: the same cars that can carry people can be modified for cargo or freight. Even the postal service can use the automated vehicles to deliver the mail and packages. Add up the cost savings for businesses and you have a profitable system by that alone. A truly vehicle-free city is possible with door-to-door PRT systems.

[happyslug]

2. That report says the technology for LRT does NOT even exist

It then list 14 options, but points out NONE of them are even close to development. As I read the study, you quickly see that it is an attempt to keep present auto travel while solving the problem of congestion. The report clearly shows that to reduce congestion you need to make more autos in the same road space. Modern roads are at their limit for human control cars, to reduce congestion we need to move more cars in the same lines. Railroads face the same problem in the 1940s and 1950s and solved the problem by a computer control system. i.e. each train is controlled by a central computer that controls all the trains on the line. This permitted more trains on the same number of rail lines.

Railroads had the advantage of control built in with a rail system. The rail keeps the train on a very strict place. This can be best seen when Buses replaced Streetcars. Cars parked on the side of the road had to be tighter to the curb with buses for buses can be anywhere on the right of way NOT restricted to rails.

Now, this problem is addressed in the PRT report by the use of electric guide rails (i.e. controls by the PRT by computer to a set place on the highway) while the PRT is is powered by the guide system. The problem is this is a computer driven system ON EXISTING PUBLIC ROADS. One problem NOT addressed is how to interact with pedestrians and bicyclist and auto NOT on the system More a theoretical solution then a real one for once you embrace the idea of an exclusive right of way, all of the proposed PRTs do NOT do better then a LRV on the same exclusive right of way. The only time the PRT beats the LRV is when the PRT is using pubic roads and then compared to LRVs on exclusive right of ways (and then only as to costs, as to people move the PRT still loses).

The PRT is an attempt to put more autos on today's roads. Railroads technology has the advantage of exclusive right of ways and then operator control on low speed lines.

As to this proposal, the plan is to connect the one track railroad on existing right of way to downtown Pittsburgh using the Bus-way built on another nearby Railroad right of way in the 1970s. The prices quoted include purchased of the needed right of way between the two rail-lines (something ignored in all of the PRT plans). Such right of way is the main cost of such programs in urban areas, especially in that highly built up urban area that is a booming section of the City of Pittsburgh. PRT cost would be more for PRT would need two tracks, which can NOT be fitted into that corridor without major rebuilding (including moving at least one four lane highway, and the question is where? You have the Allegheny River, then the booming strip district (which the one lane right of way goes through) then Liberty Avenue (The four lane highway I mentioned), then the Main line of the Old Pennsylvania Railroad (now Norfolk and Southern), the bus-way then a shear vertical cliff that separates the bus-way from the hill district of Pittsburgh. There is NOT PLACE TO PUT AN ANOTHER SET TO RIGHT OF WAYS without killing the Strip District, and no one will agree to that. For comparison on the opposite side of the Allegheny River Penndot is moving a four lane highway up a hillside with some slope, thus permitting a two two lanes of traffic at different heights on the hillside. Even with that plane, the Railroad that goes along that side of the River had to be moved to be on the Bike Trail, and the bike trail squeezed into the remaining area between it and the River.

My point is they is NO PLACE FOR ANY NEW RIGHT OF WAY through this area of Pittsburgh. Even a subway is out, the water level do to the nearest of the rivers is to hight. The proposal of a one lane, with trains using that lane in BOTH DIRECTIONS, controlled by a computerized system is the best solution. Railroads have been using such systems since the 1950s, mechanical versions of such systems since the 1880s. Such systems, given the nature of railroads, are easy but once you no longer control who can be on the transportation lane such controls are much more difficult and no one has been successful in that area when is comes to public roads. Thus the PRT proposal, while interesting, is at best theoretical and has been since first proposed in the 1950s (at the same time the Railroads were developing and implementing the Railroad base control system). Railroads do NOT have to worry about any one but themselves using the rail road lane and thus it is easy for railroads to do such controls, but once you try to do it on public roads, how do you force people to use it? or even connect to it? That is the chief problem ignored in that report and has been ignored by PRT advocates since the 1950s for they have no solution to it (and can not for the US Supreme Court has been consistent, if a road has been open to the Public, the State can not close that road UNLESS a similar transportation lane is available and it is reasonable to use it. Furthermore Reasonableness is determined by PEDESTRIAN Traffic NOT auto traffic. To avoid that problem State Highway departments does as this report does, ignore it and hope it goes away. It is the fatal flaw and no one is addressing it, thus LRV and Heavy Rail Vehicles (commuter trains) have the advantage of either being on their own Exclusive Right of way OR human operated.

One last comment about these two hillsides. Prior to the 1950s, one of Pittsburgh's many inclines went from the strip District to the Hill District, going up a OVER liberty Avenue and what is now the Mainline of Norfolk and Southern and the bus-way. Here is a website about it, and the cliff that is the main barrier in that part of the City (you must scroll down to Penn Incline):
http://www.google.com/maps/ms?ved=0CIUBEJsF&ei=6KIMTK-HKpfmoATBisDVDg&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=117970145623045321625.0004601256705bce94734

Looking down the old Penn Avenue Incline showing the area I am talking about:


Picture of the Old Penn Incline over the Main line of the Old Pennsylvania Railroad (Now Norfolk and Southern) the 2 to 3 lanes of railroad rack on the left is the Bus-way built in the 1970s.



Other pictures:
http://images.library.pitt.edu/cgi-bin/i/image/image-idx?q1=Penn+Incline&rgn1=ic_all&type=boolean&xc=1&g=imls&view=thumbnail&sort=dc_da

[txlibdem]

3. LRT? We're not talking about the same thing at all

LRT is light rail transportation. The article lumps light rail in with all other public transportation in use to this day and notes that it has failed to increase ridership: commuters using public transport is 4.6% nationally and 1.7% here in Texas (the state the study focused on). If getting commuters off the highways or reducing the number of highway deaths each year are a goal then LRT has already failed.

BTW, I referred to the chart only in the PDF article I linked. The article was published April 2008, using data doing back to September 2006 so what the article said (and the data it was based on) were not wrong at the time. Pardon my correcting your statement, the PDF does not state that LRT is undoable, quite the contrary, it states that there are no working PRT examples. And in 2008 that was absolutely true. In 2010, however, there are two different working systems, but the authors could not have known that. The PDF also focuses on a form of PRT called "dual mode" where your personal vehicle similar to what you drive today gets a redesign so it can also run on the rail of the dual mode PRT system as well as on regular city streets.

I failed to mention that I do not agree with such a system at all because of the following reasons: 1)drivers cause 43,000 deaths on the roads each year so why keep them "in the drivers seat" as this dual mode system does, 2)the vehicles would need to have very sturdy undercarriages to be able to ride on the single rail "track" and its performance on the roads would necessarily suffer due to the extra weight, 3)the vehicles would need batteries or an engine to be able to drive on the roads so the reverse is true as well, when your vehicle is riding the PRT rail it will take more energy to push it down the line due to the extra weight, 4)and finally, it is not a true door-to-door system, it only gives you a lift across town and makes you do all the driving on the starting and destination ends. So, how is that better than just automating the highways and allowing your car to drive itself while on the freeway but you have to get to and from the freeway ramp. While that would help things a lot it will not end all the traffic deaths and will not bring the fuel savings that a door-to-door system consisting of automated light vehicles will.

The system I described was detailed in a post here on DU. It uses lightweight vehicles that are fully powered by the track they ride on. Light weight is the only way to achieve the greatest energy savings. The vehicle you drive today probably weighs 3000 pounds or more and you probably drive to work alone. If you're like most Americans you weigh less than 250 pounds but your vehicle has the ability to haul anywhere from 1,200 additional pounds all the way to 10,000 pounds. Why does that make sense to Americans?

I'm having trouble locating the article. I'll repost it when I find it... But in a nutshell, the door-to-door system uses the same track in your neighborhood as in the high speed lines that criss-cross your city. The tracks are embedded in the pavement in your neighborhood but are probably elevated for the high speed grid. The cars are light because they are propelled by Linear Induction Motors in the track, not by heavy batteries or motors, they can carry a maximum of 800 pounds. They carry passengers (up to 4) if you do not want to ride alone but only you if you prefer. The cars also deliver packages, purchases from your shopping trips, the US mail, etc. and even your new fridge -- all right to your door. And it does so for a profit while keeping your actual costs lower than owning and driving a vehicle!