Yet Another NJ Transit Trespasser Fatality

Well, it's been a crappy morning all the way around. NJ Transit had yet another trespasser incident with a pedestrian killed by an oncoming train just outside the Radburn Train Station. That left the morning commute for folks on my usual train line screwed. Today's incident was about a 1/4 mile from the nearest proper crossing.

This one appears to have been a suicide.

That's after another such incident last night on a nearby line. We've had an incident like this about once a month on the Main/Bergen line alone. That's despite all kinds of warnings, additional signage, and efforts to get people to understand that they shouldn't cross tracks when the gates are down and flashing.

Not much you can do when someone wants to commit suicide, but the engineer and train crews have to live with this the rest of their lives. In fact, most of the train crews have someone on their crew who has had to deal with one of these incidents - often more than once. It's part of the nature of the suburban train line with at-grade crossings, but not one you can ever get used to.

Drivers continue to ignore signage, pedestrians ignore common sense, and there are people who are absolutely determined to take their own lives.

NJ Transit has previously issued a report on how to reduce train fatalities, but without additional enforcement and better fencing to restrict access to the right of way, these are going to continue.

Heck, despite there being NJ Transit officials and the crossing gates flashing while down at the Radburn train station, people still sought to cross in front of an oncoming train. These people take their lives into their own hands - one slip and fall could mean serious injury or a fatality. It's just not worth it.

And try explaining your actions to the engineers and train crews that have to deal with those actions.

The Turbo Trains To Nowhere

Back when I was going to college in Albany, I had occasion to take Amtrak and from New York City. More than a few times, I was on a Turbo Train, which was faster than the standard service by about 10-15 minutes.

When Governor George Pataki was in office, he touted a proposal to upgrade the New York to Albany line for high speed rail and even had a deal in place with Amtrak to upgrade service, including refurbishing several of the Turbo trains for high speed service.

Well, needless to say, the project went off the rails. New York still lacks the high speed rail corridor, but the state is still on the hook for the costs of storing the four Turbo trains that it had obtained from Amtrak.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is now dealing with the residual mess - and is going to be selling off the trains for scrap because they've been allowed to rust in place.

But the necessary track improvements never happened. Trains that the state paid $70 million to refurbish did not work. Then the state accused Amtrak of stealing several of them by towing them to Delaware and never bringing them back.

Four trains remain as monuments to the disastrous project. For years, the state paid more than $150,000 annually to rent a space to house the trains in Glenville, as well as a warehouse for spare parts in a Rotterdam industrial park.

“This is New York State’s $70 million train to nowhere,” said Howard B. Glaser, the director of state operations, who called the abandoned trains a glaring example of “waste and incompetence.”

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, has made a priority of consolidating government offices and trying to sell surplus state property, from automobiles to state prisons. His administration says it has already netted more than $1 million via an eBay store.

On Thursday, his aides said they would now try to sell the unused trains and their spare parts, probably for scrap.

Even by Albany standards, the high-speed line offers a reminder of how a much-heralded government project can fall apart — literally, in the case of the boarded-up, weed-infested trains. The state is still paying off bonds that financed a portion of the train project, even though it never succeeded, said Robert L. Megna, the state’s budget director.

The track improvements never happened and that meant that the locomotives couldn't ever get up to speed. New York was forced to cover storage costs at more than $150,000 a year.

The fact is that had the tracks been upgraded, it would have represented a clear opportunity for high speed rail. The line was uniquely suited for the purpose - it's a high traffic route that feeds into the NEC at New York Penn Station, and could have served as a demonstrator route for upgrades elsewhere in the country. But the project was starved of funding and Amtrak botched its end of the project almost as badly as the state botched its side.

But at least I can say that I took one of those Turbo trains before they went off the rails.

NJ Transit Customer Survey Results Show Modest Improvement

NJ Transit released its latest customer survey results for 3Q 2012, and it shows significant improvement, with the bulk coming from rail commuters. Rail commuters have been among the most likely to score the agency poorly, particularly during disruptions.

Part of the reason that NJ Transit scores in the latest quarter are improved is that there were fewer major rail disruptions around the time that the survey was done.

The survey results will get touted around media outlets in the coming days, and it's important to note that a whopping 69% of rail commuters would be willing to recommend rail travel to others. That's a huge increase over the prior three quarters (60%, 57%, and 55%). Of particular note, the service on the Main/Bergen line has been much improved over the previous quarter - fewer disruptions and fewer delays.

It's amazing what a little more reliability will do for a rail commuters' sanity, health, and view of the oft-maligned agency.

Of course, now that the new survey is out, anyone want to guess if commuters will downgrade the agency over its handling of the air conditioning meltdown at NY Penn Station (due to Amtrak equipment failures) or other heat-related problems that have led to unbearable commutes over the past 24 hours.

Phase One of NY Penn Station Upgrade Begins This Summer

It's been a long time coming, but the Moynihan train station construction project's first phase will be getting underway this summer.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced Tuesday the $270 million first phase of the project that includes expanded concourses and extra entryways on the western end of the station. The adjacent James Farley post office will also become a new passenger facility.

The new terminal will be named after late U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who championed the project beginning in the 1990s.

Port Authority executive director Patrick Foye says NJ TRANSIT riders who now have to walk nearly two crosstown blocks underground will be able to get into the station or above ground quicker.

“It’s going to involve doubling the length and width of the concourse,” Foye told WCBS 880′s Peter Haskell.

The second phase will turn the basement of the post office into Amtrak’s new terminal.

The project attempts to recreate the original Penn Station's grand rail entrance to New York City, which was demolished to make way for the current incarnation of Madison Square Garden. The work involves creating new concourses, two new entry points on the west side of Penn Station, and should be completed by 2016.

Phase 2 would involve rehabilitating the post office building and build new retail and commercial spaces within the post office building. No funding has been identified for the second phase.

Latest NJ Transit Customer Satisfaction Survey Leaves Riders Wanting

After receiving poor grades across the board on the first customer satisfaction survey earlier this year, NJ Transit got bad news when it released the results from the follow-up survey.

The results were even worse.

Of course, the results were skewed by several serious rail disruptions occurring just as the current survey was being distributed (derailments and major disruptions causing significant delays).

On a scale of 0 to 10, rail customers gave NJ Transit an overall grade of 4.2 in the agency's latest "Scorecard" customer satisfaction survey, down from 4.5 in April during the initial survey.

The score from bus customers went up slightly, from 5.5 in April to 5.6 in the latest survey.

For all modes of transportation, the systemwide NJ Transit score was 5.3, up from 5.2 percent in April.

The latest survey was taken by about 15,000 customers between Aug. 2 and Aug. 22. Smack in the middle of that time period was a train derailment outside New York Penn Station on Aug. 9 that led to two mornings of hellish commutes.

NJ Transit Executive Director Jim Weinstein, a rail commuter from Hamilton to Newark, said the Scorecard is the cornerstone to make the agency better and more responsive to customers.

The only way that the overall score could rise from 5.2 to 5.3 is if more bus riders were submitting surveys than rail users because the rail service was significantly worse during the latest period covered.

Service on the Main/Bergen line has been particularly bad, especially in the wake of Hurricane Irene and the disruptions on the Port Jervis line ended up affecting service due to poor planning and logistical issues in having equipment in place to handle the additional customers. Indeed, the agency all but admitted that they screwed up with a lack of information and they've eventually improved service.

Problems continually dog service along the Northeast Corridor, including power problems, Portal Bridge issues, and other delays that end up costing customers time and money.

There are no quick and easy fixes, but all customers want is to get prompt notifications when there are service disruptions so that they can have time to make alternative plans.

MTA Hopes To Get Service Restored On Port Jervis Line By December

Hurricane Irene severely damaged the MTA's Port Jervis line, which runs from Port Jervis, New York to Hoboken, New Jersey. The MTA figured it might take a year to get the service restored. However, reports today indicate that the agency hopes to have at least partial service restored by December. (HT: Mrs. Lawhawk)

The line that serves about 2,800 riders a day in Rockland and Orange counties was damaged when flooding from the storm washed away thousands of tons of ballast and earth that supported the tracks along one 14-mile stretch in particular, where the rails are badly twisted and suspended in mid-air.

Buses are replacing trains in areas where tracks have yet to be repaired.

Track reconstruction is expected to be completed in December, but construction work to prevent future flooding will continue.

The railroad estimates costs at $50 million. It is hoping for federal funds and insurance proceeds.

The agency had managed to restore rail service from Port Jervis to Harriman, where riders could then transfer to buses to Ramsey, earlier this month. NJ Transit and MTA needed a couple of weeks to get their act in gear in order to coordinate the bus and rail connections so that they didn't completely screw riders who should have been unaffected by the disruptions.

Now, there's an end in sight to the disruptions. That's a good thing.

Even better is that the MTA will make necessary improvements to reduce the chances for future disruptions due to flooding of the Ramapo River. The damage was so severe that two miles of track were washed out; all that track needs to be replaced and rebuilt.

Phase I will include all work necessary to restore full train service on one track between Harriman and Suffern. Work will include:

Building access roads between the material staging areas and the right-of-way (work on this has already started);
Rebuilding the track bed sub grade;
Replacing ballast in the washout areas, compacting the track bed and surfacing the right-of-way;
Performing critical repair work on the undergrade bridges and the track slopes adjacent to the river.

The first phase of this work will be performed by both third party contractors and Metro-North Maintenance of Way forces. The work of these two groups will be fully coordinated.

Third-party contractors will work 24 hours a day/7 days a week. Their contract will be structured with financial incentives for completing work ahead of schedule, and with penalties for delays in completion.

The first phase of work is scheduled to be finished by the end of the year. But it is important to note that this type of construction work is weather sensitive, particularly since the right-of-way is already significantly compromised.

At the end of this first phase, full train service will be restored with the following constraints:

Because we will be operating on only one track, there will be some variations in schedule times for off-peak and weekend trains compared to the pre-storm schedule.
To allow for the second phase of repairs, periodic off-peak and weekend train outages with bus substitutions will be required.

MTA Proposing Fare Hikes For 2013 and 2015 In Light Of Reduced Support From Albany

The MTA is proposing fare hikes for both 2013 and 2015 in light of the fact that the nation's largest transit agency is facing a shortfall in its budget and the state is not providing as much support as it did just a few years ago.

The agency has spent the past couple of years trying to cut out dead-wood and reduce its workforce, but it's still working against ongoing maintenance needs and projects that continue to go over budget.

The fare hikes would be 7.5% in 2013 and likely a similar percentage in 2015.

The MTA budgeted the hikes as part of its five-year financial plan, which the brass will bring to the agency board today for review.

Even with the hikes, the agency's fiscal situation remained grim.

There's a $54 million shortfall for the 2014 budget, while 2015 -- the year the newly announced fare hikes will take effect -- is still $178 million in the red, according to the preliminary budget.

The MTA will also try to draw out deep concessions from its unionized workforce, demanding that employees forgo raises for three years -- saving $347 million by 2015.

But the Transport Workers Union -- which represents the majority of MTA workers -- has repeatedly said they will not forgo cost-of-living raises.

The MTA also yesterday announced a complicated funding formula to replenish the funds in its capital budget, which includes asking the feds to loan it $3 billion.

Most of that dough will go toward a massive project to bring the LIRR into Grand Central Terminal.

Fare hikes continue to hit the working class hardest and they're in the position least capable of absorbing the incessant fare hikes. It may well drive some off mass transit altogether as they consider the costs of driving directly to work locations preferable to dealing with a scheduled timetable (particularly for those on Metro North or LIRR).

Part of the problem stems from the highly distasteful payroll tax that never brought in the kind of revenues envisioned. The budget shortfalls also were due to reduced real estate transfer tax revenues during the recession, but those payments are starting to come back to pre-recession levels.

What the MTA needs is to better address capital construction budgets to keep costs down and more support from Albany to make sure that the transit system remains the premier system in the world - and one whose subway system operates 24/7.

NJ Transit Goes Off Rails In Latest Customer Survey

NJ Transit has done an incredibly poor job in the past year following rate hikes and service cuts. That double whammy, combined with a series of ongoing problems along the Northeast Corridor (NEC) snarling traffic and ruining the commutes for hundreds of thousands of people daily has meant that the agency rightfully suffered in its latest customer survey.

The problems on the Northeast Corridor aren't always within the agency's control since the tracks and power systems are shared with Amtrak. However, NJ Transit has done a poor job in communicating about delays on those NEC trains.

The rail schedules also aren't conducive to getting people out of cars and onto mass transit; the schedules simply don't provide service into the evening, even though people would be willing to take mass transit into Manhattan to avoid the hassle of finding parking and dealing with the traffic in the city. The same people who commute regularly are likely to consider using mass transit at other times, but the rail schedule is lacking in many areas and service has been cut because the agency simply lacks the operating funds because they've blown so much money on projects that have not stayed within budget (see Secaucus junction aka the boondoggle, or the Ramsey Route 17 transit station that is sorely underutilized and two nearby stations remain open despite their close proximity).

The agency needs to orient itself better to customer needs and the top priority must be to reduce problems along the NEC and better communicate when problems do occur.

I've been relatively thankful that the conductors on my trains along the Bergen Line have been good at issuing updates on problems with the NEC, but that's an exception - and the statistics bear this out.

Clearly, riders see that fares and mechanical reliability are major problems - and they have been for years. The issues with mechanical reliability should have been resolved with the purchase of hundreds of new double-decker cars and refurbished Comet IV and V cars, along with dozens of new electric and diesel locomotives, but apparently the problems are much deeper than that. The problems are institutional. That goes to top management and all down the line.

UPDATE:
The agency is set to vote on a new budget, and it will be slightly higher than last year to account for higher fuel costs. No fare hikes are proposed in the budget, and while lip service is being paid to the survey, it remains to be seen whether NJ Transit can turn things around and improve on-time performance and performance during service disruptions.

NEC Commute Screwed Again Due To Power Problems

For the second time today - both occurring during the height of rush hour - all traffic in and out of Penn Station in New York is cancelled due to power problems.

Northeast Corridor, North Jersey Coast Line and Midtown Direct service is temporarily suspended due to an Amtrak power supply problem. NJ TRANSIT passes and tickets will be accepted on NJ TRANSIT Bus and Private Carrier Buses. PATH is cross honoring rail tickets/passes at Newark, Hoboken and NYPS.

These delays are separate from weather related issues today affecting other parts of the NYC metro area.

This is an intolerable situation, and for those who think that NJ Transit and Amtrak should spend billions on building a new tunnel across the Hudson River, they ought to get their priorities straight. First and foremost is a dire need to replace and upgrade the electrical systems along the NEC, which cause regular problems and delays that affect the busiest rail corridor in the nation.

More Details Emerge On Raid That Got Bin Laden; And One That Missed

Now that al Qaeda has itself admitted that yes, Osama bin Laden is dead, the deathers (aka those who don't believe President Obama when he says that bin Laden is dead) will relent and admit that bin Laden is indeed dead as President Obama says? Any takers on that? I'll even give odds.

No? Good. Because some people will never admit that bin Laden was killed in that raid.

In any event, bin Laden was quite busy while lounging in that Abbottabad compound all these years (his wife says she never left in all that time) plotting and planning further attacks. That he was focusing on railways around the world, and particularly in the US is quite troublesome because rail security particularly in the US has always lagged that of the airlines.

The US has also carried out the first UAV airstrike since bin Laden's death, targeting terrorists in the frontier province of Waziristan:

A suspected CIA drone strike targeted a hotel Thursday in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan’s borderlands, killing eight people, according to Pakistani news reports.

A series of missiles pounded the town of Datta Khel, near what U.S. officials believe is the headquarters of the Haqqani network, an Afghan insurgent force that has staged deadly bombings in Afghan cities and regularly attacks NATO troops in eastern Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, as details continue to leak about the raid that killed bin Laden, we're learning about the efforts that came up short to get bin Laden in the past.

The NYT reports that intel had indicated that bin Laden may have contemplated a meeting in Tora Bora in 2007, and that a mission was planned and aircraft routed to intercept, but were called back when the intel turned out to be less than reliable and concerns raised about collateral damage. That instead led to a commando mission - killing a bunch of terrorists, but revealing that bin Laden wasn't among them.

“We thought we had ‘No. 1’ on this side of the border,” said a senior American military officer involved in planning the operation. “It was the best intelligence we’d had on him in a long time.”

The military set into motion one of the largest strike missions of its kind, with long-range bombers, attack helicopters, artillery and commandos all ready to pummel the rugged mountain valley along Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan, according to military officers and former government officials.

But just as the half dozen B-2 Stealth bombers were halfway on the 3,000-mile flight to their target, commanders ordered them to return to their secret base in the Indian Ocean, because of doubts about the intelligence on Bin Laden and concerns about civilian casualties from the bombs.

A smaller, more precise raid was carried out by commandos and attack helicopters, killing several dozen militants in the episode, which has not been previously disclosed.

But the founder and formative figure of Al Qaeda was not there.

Inside the White House, the disappointment was palpable, according to senior aides to former President George W. Bush. What might have been Mr. Bush’s last chance at redeeming his administration’s failure to capture or kill Bin Laden after the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, when he was cornered in the same Tora Bora region but escaped into Pakistan, did not materialize.

Amid the national relief over the killing of Bin Laden by a Navy Seal team in Abbottabad, Pakistan, this secret chapter in the hunt for the world’s most famous fugitive is a reminder of the years of frustration and false hopes government officials endured in trying to pick up his trail.

Note too that this was after the shutdown of the bin Laden section in the CIA by the Bush Administration.

It also shows that the CIA was still not on the ball when it came to bin Laden and al Qaeda's operational hierarchy. After all, the CIA was stating at that time that:

The decision is a milestone for the agency, which formed the unit before Osama bin Laden became a household name and bolstered its ranks after the Sept. 11 attacks, when President Bush pledged to bring Mr. bin Laden to justice "dead or alive."

The realignment reflects a view that Al Qaeda is no longer as hierarchical as it once was, intelligence officials said, and a growing concern about Qaeda-inspired groups that have begun carrying out attacks independent of Mr. bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Agency officials said that tracking Mr. bin Laden and his deputies remained a high priority, and that the decision to disband the unit was not a sign that the effort had slackened. Instead, the officials said, it reflects a belief that the agency can better deal with high-level threats by focusing on regional trends rather than on specific organizations or individuals.

The US focus had shifted towards going after al Qaeda's mid level terror network, perhaps hoping to lead to the high value targets in the process. That too may have led them to carry out the 2007 attack in the hopes of capturing or killing bin Laden.

UPDATE:
The Pakistanis can cooperate only so much without setting off the Islamists in a serious way. One report today indicated that the Pakistanis knew to some extent about the raid and have to claim otherwise to keep the Islamists from jumping ugly in a serious way to overthrow the government.

Another report indicates that the US informed the Pakistanis that they were carrying out this mission - while the mission was already underway. Details may or may not be accurate that the Pakistanis had scrambled jets to deal with the inbound flight of US helicopters and were sent away once notification reached the Pakistani military. The lede on that report was that the US could have been close to having a disastrous run-in with the Pakistani military during the mission inside Pakistan's borders with disastrous consequences for both sides.

If the Pakistanis are now scrambling to make more arrests, that intel could come one of four different paths: (1) directly from the people who the US left behind at Abbottabad, (2) the US could have sent them the necessary intel; (3) gathered from independent sources completely; (4) combination of sources. No way to know for sure.

It's the same deal about today's UAV airstrike - there's no way to know if it is connected with the OBL mission raid intel cache, or whether it was planned separately.

UPDATE:
It appears that the CIA was tracking the Abbottabad compound from a house nearby. They used a variety of electronic eavesdropping methods, but the agency refuses to comment on those reports. Some means and methods should not be revealed, lest they reveal too much about tactics and capabilities that the US uses to track down al Qaeda and other high value targets around the world.

UPDATE:
Further evidence of Pakistani duplicity - based on statements being released from the Pakistanis themselves. It raises still more troubling details in the bin Laden search over the years - particularly in how the Pakistanis were involved, especially as it relates to bin Laden's wife who is now in Pakistani custody.

A few key points from the story: She’s now in Pakistani custody, recovering from the gunshot wound; U.S. intelligence officials are unlikely to get the chance to speak with her. After 9/11 when the Afghan campaign began, Pakistan’s government reportedly gave her haven and helped her return to Yemen. She later reentered Pakistan to join her husband, which, as McGirk writes, points out a potentially major intelligence lapse in hindsight: Why take years deciphering courier aliases when bin Laden’s wife could have led them right to him?

On top of that, there’s this detail of further alleged Pakistani duplicity, which will only further inflame tensions at a delicate moment:

Says [an] Arab woman formerly connected to al-Qaeda: “There was an understanding with the Pakistani army. We would get a tip-off that the army planned to raid one of our houses in the tribal area. We would flee but leave some ‘evidence’ behind so that the army could show to the Americans that we’d been there.”

I have no doubt that the latter may help explain the former. If the CIA believed that the Pakistanis were laying down a false trail or were coopted by al Qaeda, then trying to track down bin Laden based on his wife's whereabouts could have been seen as a false trail. This reinforces the notion that the Pakistanis were apparently left in the dark about the operation because the US didn't trust elements within the Pakistani government to not tip off al Qaeda and bin Laden. It also explains, in part, why the Pakistanis aren't going to let the CIA and US officials anywhere near her. On top of cultural and religious misgivings over such interrogations, bin Laden's wife would likely reveal much about bin Laden and al Qaeda's relationship with those within the security services and military.

UPDATE:
Apparently the Pakistanis understand the visuals of the situation, and they may have decided that the best course of action is to sack the head of the Pakistani intel services (ISI):

To allay both domestic and international anger and dismay over the presence of Osama bin Laden in a military cantonment town close to the capital, senior Pakistani officials have told The Daily Beast they recognize that an important head has to roll and soon. They say the most likely candidate to be the fall guy is Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the director general of the country’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate. In a last ditch effort to control the damage and to assure the US that the ISI was not harboring him and was unaware of his presence in Pakistan, Pasha reportedly flew to Washington today. But these high-level sources who refused to be quoted or named say his resignation is only a matter of time.

Initial Review of Data From Raid Links Bin Laden To Ongoing Plots and Plans

Considering that Osama bin Laden was living in relative comfort and luxury in the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, it is not surprising that he was up to his eyeballs in ongoing plans to carry out terror attacks around the world.

With Bin Laden’s whereabouts and activities a mystery in recent years, many intelligence analysts and terror experts had concluded that he had been relegated to an inspirational figure with little role in current and future Qaeda operations.

A rushed examination of the trove of materials from the compound in Pakistan prompted Obama administration officials on Thursday to issue a warning that Al Qaeda last year had considered attacks on American railroads.

The documents include a handwritten notebook from February 2010 that discusses tampering with tracks to derail a train on a bridge, possibly on Christmas, New Year’s Day, the day of the State of the Union address or the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, officials said. But they said there was no evidence of a specific plot. An Obama administration official said that documents about attacking railroads were among the first to be translated from Arabic and analyzed. The materials, along with others reviewed in the intelligence cache, have given intelligence officials a much richer picture of the Qaeda founder’s leadership of the network as he tried to elude a global dragnet.

“He wasn’t just a figurehead,” said one American official, speaking only on condition of anonymity, who had been briefed on the documents. “He continued to plot and plan, to come up with ideas about targets, and to communicate those ideas to other senior Qaeda leaders.”

The crash program across the intelligence community to translate and analyze the documents has as its top priority discovering any clues about terror attacks that might be in the works. Intelligence analysts also were scrubbing the files for any information that might lead to identifying the location of Al Qaeda’s surviving leadership.

Since Sunday night, when President Obama announced the killing of Bin Laden in a daring raid, counterterrorism officials have been alert to the possibility of new attacks from Al Qaeda to avenge its leader’s death and prove its continuing relevance.

Department of Homeland Security officials have reviewed potential terrorist targets and deployed extra security at airports. And in response to the new evidence seized at the Bin Laden compound, the Transportation Security Administration issued a bulletin to rail companies.

But officials emphasized that the information was both dated and vague. “It looks very, very aspirational, and we have no evidence that it developed beyond the initial discussion,” said Matt Chandler, a spokesman for Homeland Security.

The initial data may not end up being accurate and the review may yet turn out to be an incomplete or completely different interpretation..

Still, it does raise questions on how bin Laden was able to maintain operational security for all these years and goes to show just how capable he was in being able to maintain contacts with other al Qaeda through his trusted couriers.

That bin Laden lived in Abbottabad means that far from being cut off from the rest of al Qaeda, he was much more likely to be in control and providing guidance and plotting further attacks.

The intel from the raid also appears to have uncovered plots to blow up trains or tampering with rails. It's all about causing mass casualty attacks and doing the most damage - perhaps in connection with the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Railroads have long been targeted by al Qaeda and several plots have been disrupted in the past in the US, including plots to blow up the PATH tunnels to New York, subway bomb plots, and unfortunately al Qaeda successfully carried out deadly attacks against railroads in Madrid.

About The Administration's High Speed Rail Bet

This is far from the first time that a president has offered up promises of a high speed rail network. It's not the first time that President Barack Obama or Vice President Joe Biden have promoted a high speed rail infrastructure package since they took office.

Their latest proposal to spend $53 billion over six years is another symptom of the dysfunctional nature of passenger rail in the US.

The problem is that the money isn't being focused on where it would do the most good or where high speed rail is viable. It's going to where it would garner sufficient support to secure passage.

The Northeast Corridor (NEC) is the starting and end point for high speed rail in the US. It's the only rail in the country that approaches anything resembling high speed rail, and even then, it's sorely limited by decrepit infrastructure and bottlenecks at key locations. Moreover, it wouldn't even pass for high speed rail in other parts of the world, including Japan, Europe, or China.

To bring the NEC up to European or Japanese standards, it would take a massive infusion of funding well beyond the $53 billion proposed for the entire national rail infrastructure.

Why?

Because Amtrak shares rail with commuter trains and freight lines that require much slower service. To build a true high speed rail network, it would require acquiring and building new dedicated high speed rail lines, which are prohibitively expensive in the densely populated NEC.

That's why proposals for high speed rail connecting Las Vegas with coastal California or a central California high speed rail project or Carolina or Florida projects are getting funding - they're cheaper to acquire the necessary rights of way, but they lack the population density to make those projects truly viable.

Yet, the critical infrastructure bottlenecks along the NEC wont get sufficient funding for their replacement. The proposals essentially ignore the NEC needs, even though it's the only Amtrak route that consistently has passenger support and shows signs of being self-supporting.

The Portal Bridge project is as shovel-ready as it gets, and yet it's limping along on the funding trail, and its fate has been linked to the ARC/Gateway tunnel project, even though building a replacement span would allow a 50% increase in speed through the Meadowlands, from 60mph to 90mph, all while improving reliability and eliminating a bottleneck that causes incessant rail congestion, delays, and reliability concerns. That project, by itself is expected to cost nearly $2 billion.

The ARC/Gateway tunnel project would run another $13.5 billion (if not more).

There are similar problems with congestion on the NEC around Baltimore, and additional line issues in Connecticut and outside Boston. Eliminating those bottlenecks and improving infrastructure could significantly cut travel time and make passenger rail an attractive alternative to commuter flights that already clog congested airports that are struggling at or above their rated capacities.

The work on the NEC would solve several problems at once. It would reduce road congestion along the I95 corridor and it would reduce airport congestion that leads to nationwide delays because NYC area airports are struggling at the maximum capacity, often with commuter flights along the NEC.

So, why has the Administration forsaken the NEC? Moreover, it isn't the first time that the Administration has talked about high speed rail and then refused to find the money to make it happen. The Administration refused to come forward with guarantees that the federal government would cover cost overruns on the ARC tunnel, which would allow for increased Amtrak capacity on the NEC. Those cost overruns led to Gov. Christie to kill the $8.7 billion ARC tunnel and then New Jersey Senators Lautenberg and Menendez came out this week with a proposal to spend $13.5 billion to build an Amtrak-led rail tunnel project to Penn Station (that apparently includes the Portal Bridge funding). The federal government continues to send mixed signals, and the Congressional delegations from the NEC need to step forward to demand that the funds go to these critical projects. Their failure to secure funding means that the NEC will limp along - and with it - the nation's best hopes for a truly viable high speed rail network.

Lautenberg Demands Investigation Into Christie Killing ARC Tunnel Project

New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg thinks that his recourse against Gov. Chris Christie killing the ARC tunnel project is to launch investigations. That's all Lautenberg can think of?

Lautenberg should indict himself in this farce. After all, where was he to come up with the federal money or promise to fund cost overruns? That's Lautenberg's job - as senior member of the New Jersey Congressional delegation, it was his job to get the funding secured. It was his job to get New York on board with financing a portion of the interstate project, and failing that, to get the feds to cover cost overruns instead of forcing New Jersey to bear the burden alone when the state cannot afford those cost overruns without incurring significant debt. All the estimates showed that cost overruns would tally at least $1 billion, if not $3 to $5 billion. Those are costs New Jersey could not afford.

Yet Lautenberg did nothing of the sort, and the federal government refused to cough up additional money. That the feds chose not to fund this project's potential cost overruns is quite telling as to the viability of the project as a whole. It was an indictment about the true value of the project, which turned out to be little more than a vanity project for NJ Transit that the agency could not afford to operate (seeing that it can barely afford its current infrastructure after raising fares and cutting service).

If President Obama, who has repeatedly called for increased spending on infrastructure of precisely this sort - mass transit expansion and upgrades - refused to provide the additional insurance against cost overruns, what does that say about this project, or Obama's committment to mass transit?

It shows that this project was not a good one, even if the intentions of the original design were. As originally intended, the ARC tunnel would double capacity on the Northeast corridor into New York Penn Station. The mess that we were stuck with before Gov. Christie canned the project built a separate two-track line into Manhattan that didn't connect with the Northeast Corridor and lacked the storage capacity for additional trains into Manhattan. It was a mess that deserved to be killed. NJ Transit claimed that they couldn't build the tunnel to Penn Station because of technological problems with doing so, yet Amtrak is proposing to do just that.

Everyone should focus on getting the Amtrak proposed 2-track tunnel addition built. This is a true doubling of track capacity on the Northeast Corridor that benefits riders of both NJ Transit and Amtrak - and provide the services and amenities that do not overly burden New Jersey taxpayers while asking nothing from New York taxpayers, even though this was the largest interstate project proposed.

Delays Mount on Northeast Corridor After Derailment at NY Penn Station

A derailed train leaving NY Penn Station has blocked eight of 12 tracks in the station, meaning that commuters and travelers are facing delays of an hour or more on the Northeast Corridor. This affects Amtrak and NJ Transit, and the problem isn't expected to be resolved until well into the evening commute.

This problem highlights one of the problems with the current layout of tracks and facilities for NJ Transit and Amtrak at NY Penn Station, and would be mitigated by additional tunnels leading from New Jersey to NY Penn Station - but not the ARC Tunnel as it is currently envisioned. If the ARC Tunnel connected with NY Penn Station, additional tracks would be accessible and the derailed train would not block 75% of the tracks available to passenger boarding for trips to points South of New York City.

NJ Transit is cross honoring tickets, as is PATH. Midtown Direct is terminating in Hoboken, instead of NY Penn Station.

A Not Quite Rightous Rant on the ARC Tunnel Nonsense

Brian Donohue at the Star Ledger has a story on their site about the craziness surrounding the ARC Tunnel and the bickering among the politicians and Gov. Christie's demand that the state not be held accountable for cost overruns. He even has a video with a not quite righteous rant about the project.

The ARC tunnel saga: a sad state of affairs

In that video, he mentions that the wars in Iraq cost $1.1 trillion dollars and that we could have built quite a bit with that money (except that no one knows what money would have been spent considering that in the years prior to 2001 the government never spent more than a few billion dollars on infrastructure in New Jersey as a part of the federal transportation bills such as TEA-21).

Donohue mentions that if New Jersey repeals the law requiring self-service gas, prices at the pumps could drop a few cents and the state could raise the tax a few pennies to keep prices at the current levels. That's just trimming away at the margins, because the state's fiscal problems are much deeper than just trying to salvage the Transportation Trust Fund that spends a significant percentage on debt payment - far more than it can bear.

No, what gets glossed over is the fact that the Swiss recently reached a major milestone in completing the Gotthard base tunnel - a 2 tunnel system with miles of additional connecting passageways and emergency stations carved out of solid rock, which stretches 35 miles and cost $10 billion. The ARC tunnel is just over 1 mile in length including approaches and we're talking about $10 billion. What justifies that kind of cost?

No one wants to discuss that particular aspect, nor does anyone want to pay serious attention to the fact that the French have been able to lay high speed rail by the mile at a fraction of the cost of projects here in the US. That includes the proposed Las Vegas to California route through vast expanses of open desert.

Major infrastructure in the Northeast in particular was built more than a century ago, and it's showing its age and wear and tear. That means that the operating costs for those projects are higher because of higher maintenance. The Brooklyn Bridge is undergoing just the latest in a series of rehabilitation that will make it capable of carrying traffic for the next two decades, but costs hundreds of millions of dollars.

The existing pair of Hudson River tunnels was built a century ago, and besides the PATH tubes, are the only rail links into Manhattan from New Jersey. That has to change, but the ARC tunnel isn't the way to get it done.

As I noted yesterday, misplaced priorities plays a big role in NJ Transit being in a fiscal bind it faces. It has cut service and has shown itself incapable of maintaining the system at its current level, yet it is clamoring for a new rail station and tunnel system that it wants the state to cover on cost overruns but which it can't afford. Instead of linking the tunnels back into Penn Station, NJ Transit wants a separate terminus in Manhattan that does nothing to alleviate congestion or problems if a disabled train blocks one of the tracks to Penn Station.

Then, there's the issue with the Portal Bridge (a movable span on the Hackensack River), which is yet another bottleneck that Donohue doesn't mention. That bit of infrastructure is also 100 years old and is the site of repeated delays. Replacing that bridge is just as important, and even that project is expected to run $1 billion or more. Building that fixed span replacement would eliminate many of the delays that customers regularly face on the Northeast Corridor, and yet the state and federal government couldn't find the money in the stimulus package to get work underway last year. That is on the New Jersey congressional delegation that includes Sen. Frank Lautenberg who is on the transportation committee and whose name graces the Secaucus Transfer.

A replacement for a critical piece of infrastructure doesn't get nearly the press of a new tunnel system, but the outcomes are the same if they don't get built - delays and reliance on obsolete infrastructure that increases travel times along one of the most heavily traveled stretches of rail in the nation.

Major Milestone Accomplished In World's Largest Rail Tunnel Project

The Gotthard Base Tunnel reached a major milestone today, with the breakthrough completing the tunneling operation on the world's longest tunnel project through the Swiss Alps.

This project has been going on for 14 years, and wont be completed under 2016, but it marks a major milestone in tunnel technology and a dedication by the Swiss government to shifting heavy freight traffic from roads to rail. The new tunnel would cut travel time across the north-south axis of Switzerland by an hour and enable higher speed train traffic since the route is level throughout.

Some people had said that this project couldn't be done because of treacherous geological conditions. Indeed, eight people were killed in the course of construction and the work encountered poor rock conditions that heightened the danger of boring through the rock.

Thus far, this project has cost about $10 billion, or about the cost of the proposed ARC Tunnel between New York and New Jersey, which would be a fraction of the size and complexity of the Swiss project.

Yet Another Reminder To Stay Off Tracks

How many times do I have to post stories like this? Earlier today, a woman was killed by an oncoming train in Ramsay, New Jersey because she ignored the crossing gates and was struck by a train passing through the station on the other track.

The incident remains under investigation, but it appears the woman walked behind Train 1145, a northbound train, which had just arrived at the station, and was then hit by a southbound train on the express tracks, Stessel said.

Several witnesses said they saw the woman crossing the tracks with her head down and possibly texting on her cell phone.

“She never even looked up,” said Dave Macrie, who saw the accident as he waited for the Hoboken-bound express train. “The collision was as head on as it could be.”

Macrie said several people screamed as the train approached.

“They were yelling, ‘Oh my God’ ... the train was 8 feet away from her,” he said.

Stessel said the conductor sounded his horn to indicate his arrival, and “then, as soon as he saw the woman, he laid on the horn and pulled the emergency brake, but he was unable to stop.”

Trains on the Main, Bergen and Port Jervis lines resumed a normal schedule by 9:30 a.m., after operating with 30-minute delays during the morning rush hour.

Ramsey was one of several stations to have supplemental pedestrian fencing installed a few years ago to prevent passengers from sidestepping the crossing gates.

I'm constantly amazed at the stupidity of people who attempt to cross tracks when the gates are down. They will walk around the crossing gates, walk under the gates, and otherwise generally ignore all caution all to cross ahead of oncoming trains.

If you misjudge the speed of the oncoming train (which is all too possible when there are express trains that cross regularly in between local trains), or you trip and fall on the tracks themselves, you can end up quite and truly dead.

This woman appears to have completely ignored the signage, warning gates and lights, and didn't have a chance with the oncoming train mere feet away.

Now, the engineer of that train will have to live with the knowledge that he was at the controls when his train struck and killed a pedestrian.

NYC Metro Area Commuter Rail On-Time Performance Lags Official Data

While NJ Transit and the MTA both want people to think that they're maintaining high levels of on-time performance, the facts are quite different. The New York Times broke down the figures gathered by both agencies and found some serious problems. The worst lines in the area are the Northeast Corridor and North Jersey Coast Lines, both of which are delayed more than 10% of the time. On time performance also doesn't count just how long those delays are - some of which are 10-20 minutes or more.

On weekday mornings, 1 in 10 trains entering Pennsylvania Station arrived late, two-thirds by 10 minutes or more. At the peak of the rush, from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m., about 25 percent of New Jersey Transit trains entering Manhattan arrived late; about 2 in 5 of the late trains were tardy by at least 15 minutes. (The trains’ scheduled runs are a little more than an hour on average.)

These are among the findings of an examination by The New York Times of the more than 685,000 trips in 2009 involving the region’s three major commuter railroads, using records requested by The Times that had not previously been made available to the public.

The review found that the official figures for on-time performance, often used as a promotional tool, contrasted sharply with the experience of tens of thousands of passengers who regularly ride the trains at peak hours. In fact, the most important trips for daily commuters, those that can make or break breakfast with a client or dinner with a spouse, experience far more delays than the statistics may let on.

Even the New York Times misses on why trains are considered on time despite the fact that they are late to disembark passengers. Not only does NJ Transit consider trains late if the are more than 6 minutes over the scheduled time, but a train is considered to have arrived at terminals like Hoboken or Penn Station if they enter the attached rail yards. So, even if the train has to wait several minutes for a platform to become available, the train is technically on-time.

UPDATE:
Note too that one of the reasons for bottlenecks and delays on the NJ Transit lines serving NY Penn Station is the ancient 2-tunnel system feeding into Penn Station. It's at maximum capacity and the slightest problems with signals or a train breakdown cause a ripple effect causing delays for all trains through the tunnels in both directions. A delay of 5 minutes on 1 train will cause delays to 10-15 other trains in both directions.

That's a situation that will be somewhat rectified with the construction of the ARC tunnel, but that's not going to be available until 2017 at the earliest.

On My Nightstand: Appetite For America

Anyone who's ever traveled through the Southwest or visited the Grand Canyon has seen, heard, or experienced an exposure to Fred Harvey. Appetite For America by Stephen Fried is the tale of the man Fred Harvey and the company that went on to bear his name. It's the story of the rise of the hospitality industry, the rise and fall of railroading, and how the company came to epitomize travel and food service, creating the gold standard by which other companies were judged.

Harvey created a family business that not only survived his death, but thrived under the more than capable leadership of his son Ford, and the rest of his family, who carried on the family traditions for excellence in food service and hospitality.

It isn't much of an exaggeration to point out that Fred Harvey helped civilize the West and opened up the West to travelers by making destinations of places like the Grand Canyon and the stops all along the Sante Fe railroad.

NJ Transit Announces Funding For Portal Bridge Project

New Jersey Transit is getting $38.5 million of the nearly $1.3 billion needed for the replacement of the obsolete Portal Bridge that NJ Transit and Amtrak use for carrying Northeast Corridor traffic into New York Penn Station.

The reasons why the bridge needs to be replaced are legion, starting with the fact that the 100+ year old bridge is obsolete, insufficient to carry existing and future demand, and frequently breaks down causing delays throughout the Northeast Corridor.

The replacement bridges will actually carry five tracks with sufficient clearance over the Hackensack River to not require a moving span (the Portal Bridge is a swing bridge). It would also allow trains to travel at far greater speeds through the Meadowlands and cut trip times significantly in this area of the Corridor.

I just wonder why New Jersey's delegation is cheering at getting crumbs for this essential project (in many ways, it's more pressing in need than the ARC Tunnel project because the tunnels are at least not constantly breaking down thwarting all traffic on the corridor). Instead of providing all the money needed to get this project done in a more timely basis, individual projects limp along with insufficient funding that causes their costs to increase and to take longer to complete than if they were adequately funded from the outset.