Quote:
Originally Posted by Wasatch Wasteland
http://www.rideuta.com/-/media/Files...umm.ashx?la=en
Future of Frontrunner Final Report
Most interesting takeaways from the two most attractive options:
(High Investment) Full electrification and 34 additional miles of double track would allow 15 minute headways and equate to 62,000 daily riders at a cost of $2.8 billion.
(Medium Investment) Continued diesel operation with 46 miles of additional double track would allow for 15 minute headways and equate to 58,000 daily riders at a cost of $1.4 billion, but adds 9-10 minutes from Ogden to Provo.
I know there has been a big push for electrification, but if the other option produces nearly the same results at HALF the price, a significantly quicker build, and establishes much more double track, I think that option (medium investment in the report) is the best path forward, at least initially. It establishes a better base to jump off of for future full double tracking/electrification.
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This is awesome, thanks for posting this!
I have been waiting a long time.
I am amazed that they make no effort to estimate the costs of double-tracking the whole line between Provo and Ogden. I'm less concerned about the electrification, since politics seems to be trending in that direction anyway. (Poor air quality concerns can be addressed with a large electrification project, and with Stadler producing electric trains here in the valley the purchase of electric trains will be seen as a local-job creation opportunity. It's practically a done-deal.)
My concern is that electrification makes double-tracking the line more expensive, thus slowing the process down. It would be far cheaper to add electric cantenary above two existing tracks rather than add a new track and a new electric catenary beside an existing electrified track. Part of this is just the pole and foundations, since one pole can support catenaries over two tracks, but another part is that - unless the second track is already anticipated in the placement of the first track - adding a second track often leads to relocation of the first track, which makes things many times more expensive if the poles and foundations of a catenary system also need to be relocated.
At the very least, I would expect this process to be followed:
1) Draw up detailed plans of where the second track will go, and what change (especially shifting around the existing track) will need to be made to fit that track in.
2) Make these changes so that the current single-track will not need to be moved around at all when the second track is added.
3) Add in the 'strategic' double track under the 'medium' investment scenario (this one has the most double track since the cost of electrification is rolled into more double-track)
4) Then, once all this is done, electrify and upgrade to faster trains.
Somehow this report ignores steps 1) and 2), which will increase costs later on.
Some other things that make me scratch my head, not in any particular order:
- I don't understand why infill stations are being seriously considered. These were studied when the lines first opened, and they already decided then that stopping more often meant that travel times would be slower, thus fewer people would ride. The report shows as much now. I hope this is just for political appeasement for the smaller cities because actually stopping the train more often would be significantly counter-productive to buying faster electric trains; you would be spending millions of dollars to speed the trains up while at the same time spending millions of dollars to slow them back down.
- I may not be reading the charts on page 11 and onward because I can't find a color key. But it looks like in no scenario - not even the medium investment scenario that features the most double-track - is a second track added between Centerville and Farmington. This means that during one of the fastest, straightest sections of the line with no grade crossings and where there is the potential to raise the speed limits up to their theoretical maximum (110 mph or higher), they are going to throw in a 40-mph switch to reduce the two-track system down to a single track line. This is stupid. I don't care how efficient the scheduling of the trains is, if you're going to add any double track north of Woods Cross, take it all the way north to Farmington. They have the ROW for it, why not build it?
This seems to be a common trend at all the station sidings, where they will show the sidings extending for a mile or two beyond the station but then reducing to single track for the rest of the way.
This is a really bad design. Unless they mean to install super expensive and maintenance-intensive high-speed switches, the trains will have to slow down to 40 miles per hour to go from single to double track and visa-versa. By extending the siding length you may believe you are increasing the system fluidity by giving trains more opportunity to pass each other, but what you've really done is slow down the whole system by cutting train's top speed between stations from 80 mph down to 40 mph, especially when PTC is taken into consideration.
- In reality the only way to beneficially add a second track to FrontRunner is to add it between station pairs. For all the grief I give about the S-Line adding double track for only a few hundred feet at least they are linking two stations with double track!
- I refuse to believe that with electric trains and a full double-track that the end-to-end trip time will still be an hour and 45 minutes. What will it be without those infill stations? I'm guessing it will be under an hour and a half, which would be much more useful.
- In no scenario do they advocate getting rid of the obvious slow curves between Lehi and Draper. That hillside is being quarried away, and once it is gone there will be no need to make slow 45-mph turns. Go straight through at 90 mph, you will save a lot of time!
Honestly I'm more than a little disappointed by this study. It feels like either it was done by people who don't know the system they're working with very well, or that there was too much consideration given to politics. Probably both. I hope that this is only the starting point for better thought-out plans later on.