Quote:
Originally Posted by VivaLFuego
The basic history is covered well in the wiki article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_...ter_Connection
In what days do you consider it failed? While the Reading viaduct is still there, of course the Penn viaduct ("Chinese Wall") which formerly fed Broad Street Station are gone, so ultimately there is minimal required land to serve railway terminals in the business core, which is the primary benefit of regional rail through-routing... |
Thanks, those articles are markedly better/longer than the last time I looked. I guess I'm more interested in the process of implementing regional rail, from an organizational perspective... running trains on short headways, switching to ticket machines and turnstiles, making tough decisions about which stations and branches don't have the ridership to merit regional-rail levels of service, etc.
It seems like SEPTA's biggest issue was not a lack of ideas, but severe difficulty getting the existing commuter-rail personnel to accept new ways of thinking (made worse by funding crises that seemed to hit at the worst possible times). If Metra's ever gonna change, the people driving the change will encounter the same stiff resistance that SEPTA did, from "rail" workers who seem themselves as diametrically opposed to "transit" workers and who seek to maintain the same operating practices that railroading used in 1900.
Even the Illinois Central, which had some unusual operating practices as they essentially ran rapid transit for the south side, slowly began to lose its best features as Metra took over with its traditional-railroading mindset. Many urban stations were axed, while the rest were left to deteriorate into a shameful set of flag stops. It's absolutely essential for the continued growth of Chicagoland that Metra adapts and embraces a more flexible, broader view of railroading - this is my biggest beef with the Gray Line, which basically admits defeat and claims that the
only way for Metra Electric to get reasonable service is to hand the line over to CTA.