Maybrook Madness

Anyone who follows this column knows I’m a “train guy”.  I’ve always been a supporter of mass transit and continue to be.  But sometimes I wonder just where the state’s priorities are when they chose to waste a million dollars on yet another crazy study.

This time it’s a study of the Maybrook line, a 14-mile, single-track of rusting rail running west from Danbury to Brewster NY and beyond.

Metro-North used to run their equipment (not passenger trains) over to their Croton shops via the line, but little else.  Now there’s going to be a study (yes, for one million dollars) of converting the line for passenger trains.

The idea was pushed heavily by former Danbury mayor Mark Boughton who promised it could “shave an hour” off commuting time to Grand Central. Oh, really?

Rather than crawling down the existing Danbury branch to Norwalk and then on the mainline to New York, Maybrook trains would go west from Danbury and connect with the Harlem branch of Metro-North, then head south through White Plains and into the city.

But Boughton’s dream has about as much of a grip on reality as Governor Lamont’s wishful 30-30-30 plan (30 minutes from Stamford to GCT, etc).  It just isn’t physically possible.  And I won’t need a million bucks to tell you why.

The average train from Danbury to NYC on the existing branch takes about two hours and 17 minutes (including a change of trains at South Norwalk).  The trains from Brewster NY to Grand Central take about an hour and 39 minutes.  But add in the running time from Danbury to Brewster (and another train connection there)  and you’re probably talking an additional 30 minutes, meaning a total time savings of less than ten minutes of commuting time via Maybrook.

Just how does that “shave an hour” off that commute?

But there are other problems to consider too.

In Connecticut the Maybrook line is owned by the Housatonic Railroad, a tiny freight railroad, not by Metro-North.  And parts of this single-track railroad now have a pedestrian and bicycle “rail trail” running alongside making it unsuitable for double-tracking.  There are dozens of grade crossings and no signal system. And it’s not electrified.

Further, parking in downtown Danbury near the Metro-North station is limited and to get there you have to fight local traffic.  So why go to that trouble if you can just hop on I-84 and make the drive in 11 minutes instead of 30 minutes by train?

Plus, we’re already spending $715 million to widen I-84 west of Danbury to make the drive even quicker.

Putnam County NY officials are enthusiastic about this Maybrook idea (and are paying $200,000 of the study’s cost)  because so many Connecticut residents already make that drive, catching the train in Brewster or Southeast, but clogging up “their” parking lots with Connecticut-plated cars.

That’s why there’s already a frequent bus shuttle run by HART that connects Danbury and Brewster in 28 minutes. It’s hardly luxurious.  But what do you expect for $1.75 one way?

With so much of our existing railroad system in need of repair and replacement, why are we wasting a million dollars on yet another study of a politician’s pipedream that will prove unnecessary, impractical and too expensive?

Forget about this Maybrook Madness and let’s fix what we already have.

Posted with permission of Hearst CT Media

Construction Costs for Transportation

Why is transportation construction so expensive in our area?  What kind of honor was it when New York City recently surpassed Zurich (one of the most expensive cities in the world) as #1 on the most-expensive-place-to-do-underground-construction dishonor roll?

The highly respected Regional Plan Association (RPA.org) has studied that question and offers some explanations and frightening examples.  Focusing on three recent MTA mega-projects in New York City… the Second Avenue Subway, the #7 subway extension to Manhattan’s west side and the LIRR’s East Side Access project (ESA), their findings make for depressing reading.

Let’s focus on the ESA plan… an ambitious project to construct new rail tunnels under Park Avenue and a new rail station ten storeys beneath Grand Central to serve LIRR trains. This is an important project for Connecticut as it will eventually allow some Metro-North trains to run across the Hells Gate Bridge to Penn Station.

Once estimated to cost $4.3 B and to be finished by 2009, ESA may not be finished until 2022 at a total cost of $12.2 B.  So, what happened?

The RPA report says the project was initially pushed by politicians who grossly underestimated the initial budget just to get it approved. Because Metro-North and the LIRR (both part of the MTA) operate as silos, they had trouble coordinating their efforts.  Worst of all, the procurement process and contract writing was a mess, adding four years of delays.

Though the ESA project was huge in cost, it was small in distance:  only 3.5 miles of new tunnels and track.  But it involved boring huge tunnels through bedrock and ended up building the most expensive mile of railroad track in the world… over $3B.

One big culprit was labor.

In 2010 auditors found that 900 workers were each being paid about $1000 a day though only 700 workers were needed for the job.  Nobody could explain what the other 200 workers were doing every day, aside from getting rich.

An investigation by the New York Times blamed the cozy relationship between labor unions and politicians, consultants who hired MTA bosses to gain more work and contractors and vendors regularly inflating their bids by 15 – 25% for what’s known as “the MTA factor”, i.e. the hassles of working with that agency.

Jobs like running the tunnel boring machines were staffed with 25 workers on the ESA project, about triple the number employed on the same equipment overseas.  Elevators at the construction site each had an human operator even though they ran automatically.  Crane operators also had an “oiler”, an unneeded throwback to older times.  All told, staffing for underground construction in New York City was quadruple that of similar jobs abroad.

The labor unions push back saying the work is dirty and dangerous and their members live in one of the most expensive cities in the world so they deserve more.

The RPA report also cites other problems including lengthy environmental reviews (up to seven years vs. two years in Europe), insurance and liability roadblocks, flawed project designs causing frequent (and expensive) change orders and a lack of post-project reviews to learn from mistakes.

If we are ever going to see New York City grow and prosper again, expanding (and repairing) its transportation system will be essential… if we don’t price ourselves out of business.

 

Posted with permission of Hearst CT Media

 

 

Northeast Maglev Is Coming

Imagine going from New York City to Washington DC in one hour… not by plane, but by maglev. 

By comparison, today the same trip from the LaGuardia to DC’s Reagan airport takes about 90 minutes by air (not counting getting to and from the airports) and costs $276 one way.  On Amtrak’s Acela the fastest run, downtown to downtown, is three hours and costs $157.  Or you could take the bus for $30, assuming you have 4 ½ hours to waste.

A maglev is a train, of sorts, that floats on a cushion of air, suspended and propelled along a special track quite different from conventional railroads.  The technology has been around for over a hundred years but there are few maglevs in operation so far.

One of the best known is in Shanghai. I’ve ridden it and was not impressed.  The ride was short, about 8 minutes over 17 miles, and only about 220 mph… no faster than China’s high speed conventional trains.

But the country that’s closest to opening a long distance commercial maglev is Japan where the private (and pre-COVID, very profitable) JR Central Railroad is building a maglev line for 177 miles from Tokyo to Nagoya, the Chuo Shinkansen.  That maglev will fly along the track up to 314 mph.

And it’s that Japanese technology that will be used by Northeast Maglev, the private American company developing the US system.  Like the Japanese system it will include a superconducting suspension and propulsion system, SCMaglev.  At those speeds it is certainly possible for the ‘trains’ to make the 230 mile journey in an hour, even with intermediate stops.

Planning by Northeast Maglev is already underway for the first part of the project, connecting Washington DC to Baltimore with 70% of the route underground, avoiding disruption above ground in the dense corridor.  The Washington DC terminal would be near the downtown Convention Center and the Baltimore station either near Camden Yards (downtown) or in the outskirts where interstates 95 and 695 connect.

Trains would offer service every 15 minutes including an underground stop at BWI Airport, just south of the city.  The fares, they say, would be competitive to Amtrak. That’s got to hurt Acela ridership.

Assuming the operation is successful, the line could continue north to Philadelphia, New York and maybe even Boston by way of Connecticut, though the routing through our state is anyone’s guess at this point.

With up to 50% of the $10 billion initial cost being covered by the government of Japan, Northeast Maglev’s biggest hurdle now is getting necessary approval of the 30 different state and Federal agencies with jurisdiction.  The environmental impact studies alone are into their fifth year.

Not to be outdone, Elon Musk’s Hyperloop is seeking permission to construct its first tunnel, a 10 mile section, eventually connecting DC to Baltimore.  But unlike the Japanese maglev, Hyperloop’s “maglev in a vacuum tube” is far from a proven technology.

The implications of a maglev (or Hyperloop) running at these kinds of speeds are astounding.  Shortening the travel time is like bringing the cities that are served closer together. 

You could live in New York and commute daily to a job in Washington DC faster than you can get from Fairfield to Grand Central Terminal.

If post-pandemic demand for travel returns, Northeast Maglev could be a game changer when it comes to inter-city travel.

Posted with permission of Hearst CT Media

Commuters Are Not Coming Back After COVID

I have one prediction for the new year and you’re not going to like it.

After we all get vaccinated and things ‘return to normal’, regular weekday commuters on Metro-North will not be coming back as hoped.

Why should they?  Who wants to spend $400+ a month and waste 2+ hours each day, five days a week riding a train into New York City if you don’t have to?  This pandemic has shown us going to an office isn’t necessary to doing our jobs.

Sure, there are some people who have to show up in person to do their work (healthcare staffers, auto mechanics etc), but that’s never been the bulk of Metro-North’s ridership.  Most of those commuters work with their brains and can do so just as easily from home (or a satellite office in the ‘burbs) as in an office cubicle in midtown.

And their employers, having discovered this, are also finding they don’t need to waste millions on fancy real estate.  They are downsizing too.  So there may not be an office to go back to, even if you want to.

Oh, you may still need to show up “at work” one or two days a week for meetings in downsized, shared offices.  And while you may be longing to get back on the train and return to your job, that’s probably as much your cabin fever from being quarantined for months as any real desire to get back to the old grind.

Even pre-pandemic the railroad found that monthly pass holders weren’t commuting five days a week, maybe more like four days.  They had already found they could work without being at work.

One group that never stopped working was Metro-North employees. In the darkest days last spring, parent MTA saw more COVID-19 deaths among bus and train drivers than the city had among its cops and firefighters.  They all deserve our thanks.

Yes, train ridership has slowly climbed back from a low of 5% to 20% on weekdays (closer to 50% on weekends), but even with federal aid, current service levels are not sustainable.

Pre-COVID when the trains were standing-room-only and with Metro-North riders paying the highest ticket prices in the US, the railroad was still losing money:  about 20% of every ride was subsidized by taxpayers.

So if my predictions are correct and ridership doesn’t come soaring back, how is the railroad (or the state) going to handle deficits that quadruple or quintuple?  Something’s gotta give.

Sadly, I think we will see further service reductions, especially in off-peak hours.  That will mean layoffs of hundreds of dedicated (and yes, well paid) railroad conductors, engineers and maintenance staffers.  And yes, we may also see fare increases.  It will all add up to less (service) for more (cost).

It used to be that Connecticut’s tax base was tied to the availability of dependable train service:  people lived here because they could commute.  But if they don’t need to commute, how important is the train?  And what will happen to TOD (transit oriented development) when ‘getting there’ isn’t necessary to ‘getting it done’?

I don’t think the train is going away completely, nor is New York City.  We will still want to “go into town” for entertainment and to see the few friends we still have who’ll be living there.

But when COVID is gone, things will never just get back to the way they were.  Those days are gone.

 

Posted with permission of Hearst CT Media

There Is No Free Pony

Early in our parenting my wife and I taught our daughter about the difference between wanting something and needing something.  She might want a pony but did she need one?  And most importantly, what was she willing to do to get that pony.  “Ponies aren’t free,” we would remind her.

The same things are true for transportation, our climate and our health.

A recent poll was released, commissioned by the Transportation Climate Initiative.  The name explains their mission: saving our climate by encouraging increased use of mass transit, electric vehicles and less use of fossil fuels.

We all know that air pollution affects our health, right?  According to TCI, auto emissions now surpass pollution from power plants.  That exhaust is especially dangerous to minority populations in dense urban areas, the same folks being hit the hardest by COVID.  So air pollution’s health effects and longer-term damage to our climate now have a social justice component.

The TCI poll of 3800 voters in eight northeast states and the District of Columbia asked the usual questions and obtained the usual results.  It was as if they’d asked “wouldn’t you like a pony?”

Yes, said respondents, we want cleaner air, more money spent on fixing our transportation system and we want more trains and buses running faster and at greater frequencies.  We all want a pony.  Lots of ponies!

But who’s going to feed them and clean their stalls?

The TCI proposal is to make driving more expensive by raising the gasoline tax 5 to 17 cents a gallon at the pump as well as taxing the oil companies for the pollution their products create.  It’s simply known in the climate biz as “cap and trade”.

For almost a year TCI has floated their detailed plan to various New England governors, including Connecticut’s Ned Lamont, a year ago.  But Lamont initially rejected it, as did several others.  But now the governor seems to have changed his mind, signing on to the plan with other states.  But again, who will pay for all this?

After shirking their legislative duties for the past ten months, lawmakers will skulk back into the Capitol in January, hopefully well masked.  Among the initiatives they will have to address is finding new revenue for the Special Transportation Fund, which is teetering on the brink of a deficit by mid-2021. 

Given that tolls are off the table and nobody wants to raise sales taxes, it looks like a modest bump in the gasoline tax is the least unattractive alternative.  After all, the gasoline tax hasn’t changed a penny since 1997 and with fuel prices so low, who’d notice?

Patrick Sasser has noticed.  As leader of the successful No Tolls CT movement he’s already pushing back.  Sasser says no to any kind of tax increase, claiming the state is fiscally irresponsible in the way it spends our tax money.  He actually suggests lowering the gasoline tax.

But the TCI poll showed that 67% of Connecticut responders supported the idea of cap and trade… at least as it was explained to them in the phone survey.  But I doubt those polled truly understood the question, nor were they told what it might really cost them.

We all want those mythical ponies of better transportation, cleaner air and improved health.  But are we ready to pay for them?

 

Posted with permission of Hearst CT Media

When Just In Time Isn't

Notice anything missing on your store shelves?  Maybe paper products or your favorite canned soup?  Given that the pandemic has been raging for over nine months, why aren’t the shelves full again?  Why isn’t the stuff we want “getting there”?

Well one of the reasons is because a Japanese engineer visited an American supermarket in the 1950’s and noticed something he thought was wrong… and we’re still paying for his astute observations.

It was Taiichi Ohno, industrial engineer at Toyota, who noticed the American stores had weeks of inventory in a back room, waiting for customers purchases to allow quick restocking.  That was great for supply as long as demand remained steady… but very costly to the store.

Unsold inventory is expensive, so Ohno suggested that needed parts (or in our case, store products) could better be delivered JIT, Just In Time.  That way the production could flow smoothly with the added cost of inventory being carried by the manufacturer, not the store or, in Toyota’s case, production plant.

Sounds great as long as production, demand and the transportation network continue running smoothly. Change one of those and things go bad, quickly.

Of course, that’s what happened in March when there was a sudden run on stores as worried shoppers loaded up on canned foods and, yes, toilet paper.  The producers of those goods couldn’t gear up production fast enough to fill the supply chain and many of the trucking companies that delivered them had their drivers go AWOL.

Pre-pandemic, Wal-Mart would tell suppliers they had a two-day window for their trucks to deliver to their distribution warehouses or they’d face financial penalties. But when the panic buying began, the trucks would off-load their goods and opt for return-jobs on the “spot market” instead of going back to the factories empty, on “dead heads”, to get the next load.  That meant the supply chain was broken.

When the trucks did deliver, traffic could switch from a trickle to tsunami.  At one typical Costco mega-warehouse in Utah where they’d usually handle 350 trucks, the volume doubled. They didn’t have enough loading docks or personnel to handle them all.

Now all the big-box stores and companies that supply them with goods are rethinking their lean-and-mean JIT philosophy.  Warehouses may be expanded to accommodate more inventory as automated robots load and off-load trucks faster (and cheaper) than humans.

But even adding a 5% buffer of “safety stock” to warehouses will mean building 750 million square feet of industrial space.  Guess who’ll be paying for that.

And that doesn’t even include Amazon which is so hungry to expand they’re buying up old shopping malls to turn them into warehouses… repurposing the old retail space they already killed off with their home-delivery model.

Manufacturing of essentials (think pharmaceutical base-chemicals, PPE, etc) may be “re-shored” to US soil if companies like China can’t be depended upon to deliver in time.  Or the production plants just move to Vietnam where labor is 20 – 30% cheaper than in the People’s Republic.

So if you’re looking for a career with a future, consider logistics: the science of managing supply to demand and delivering on time at a profitable price.  It’s estimated there will be 600,000 new jobs in logistics created by 2026.

According to Stamford-based job placement company Indeed.com, there are hundreds of logistics-related jobs available in Connecticut right now, some paying up to $80,000.

Posted with permission of Hearst CT Media

Conductor Writes Tell-All Book

Are you nostalgic for the “good old days” on Metro-North… the crowded trains, the inevitable delays, your often-times crazy fellow passengers?   If so, you’ll want to check out former conductor Michael Shaw’s great new book, “My Rail Life”.

Shaw has just retired from a 36 year career as a conductor on the New Haven line.  His father also worked for the railroad as do 5 of his siblings.  And he clearly loved his job.

He once told passengers on a standing-room only train: “OK, folks.  We are half way to Grand Central.  It’s time for everyone who’s been seated to get up and give their seats to folks who’ve been standing.”

Asked by a passenger boarding at Grand Central, “what times does this train arrive in Stamford?” he answered, “Usually about 20 minutes after the schedule says”.

On another train he announced: “Folks, I have good news and bad news.  The good news is that Metro-North fixed the air conditioning you complained about not having all summer long.  The bad news it’s now winter.”

Honest to a fault, he turned in everything left by passengers on his train to the Metro-North Lost and Found… even an envelope containing $400 in cash. (The lost money wasn’t claimed so he got it back.)  On many occasions he’d find a lost briefcase or cell-phone and personally return it to the owner’s home the same day.

He also loved razzing his fellow railroad workers, once announcing, “If you have any railroad questions or would like to take your picture with a real railroad engineer, come to the front of the train and say “Hi”.  My name is Jerry and I love people.”  Shaw’s name is not Jerry and the real Jerry hates people.

Approaching Bridgeport Shaw announced the connection for the Waterbury train, adding “Be sure to ask your Waterbury conductor for one of the free 100 Years Commemorative pins.”  There were no pins.

On late Friday night trains Shaw would hold a contest with his fellow conductors watching drunk passengers boarding at Grand Central, guessing who would be first to throw up.  Shaw immediately chose a 95 pound blonde he saw staggering to the nearest car with her equally inebriated boyfriend.  Even before leaving the station his co-worker came and gave him his winnings.

Shaw always went out of his way to keep passengers informed about delays.  In the horrendous winter of 2014 when the railroad almost ground to a halt, he printed a one-page apology for the previous day’s delays and did his own seat-drop of 500 copies before the train left New Haven.  Passengers were so grateful for his candor they gave him a standing ovation as he entered each car to collect tickets.  The railroad bosses were not amused.

Approaching an obviously senior citizen to collect his fare, the old timer asked if Shaw needed his ID to prove his age.  Saying that wouldn’t be necessary, the old timer asked “Are you saying I look too old?”  “No,” said Shaw. “You look honest.”

On another occasion he approached an elderly, grey-haired woman who wanted to buy a senior-discount ticket.  “Are you over 65?,” he asked, knowing the answer. “Actually, I’m 82” she said.  “Well, you look marvelous!,” said Shaw, asking  “What’s your secret?”.  Without a smile or batting an eyelash she said “Rough sex.”

If you need a good chuckle, you’ll love this book.

Posted with permission of Hearst CT Media