It’s been a rough few years
for Metro-North what with derailments, crashes and commuter deaths. But it finally seems like service and safety
are coming back.
The best metric of that is
the recent surge in ridership, up 1.7% compared to last year. That works out to more than 3000 additional
riders every day!
Certainly this ridership
gain is a sign of more people finding jobs, but with gasoline prices near a
record low, there’s a reason these folks are training instead of driving: they like what they see.
The trains are 96% on time. Yes, running slower than in years past, but
what’s a few minutes if it means better safety? What matters most is that the 7:37 shows up
at 7:37, plus a minute or so, and arrives pretty close to on-time. It’s much more dependable than last
winter.
There have been no
fare increases (at least in Connecticut), even though our fares are still
the highest in the nation. And off-peak
and weekends, it’s a lot cheaper.
There’s more
service too: at least two trains per
hour, even in off-peak. That means more
options.
And we have the spiffy new
M8 railcars, at last. Riders seem to
like the clean, modern
So for all of these reasons,
a lot more people are taking the train.
Good news, right? Yeah, but in
the long run, not so good news because we’re not keeping up with demand.
More riders without
additional capacity means crowding, and we’re hearing more reports about that,
especially at rush hour when some trains are SRO. And that’s only going to get worse.
The problem is, we didn’t
order enough new M8 cars back
in 2005 when we placed our order:
just 300 cars for $762 million.
That worked out to $2.54 million per car.
By the time those cars
finally went into service in 2011, CDOT and Metro-North realized they should
order more. This time, just single un-powered cars, so trains could run with 7
or 9 cars, not just 6, 8 or 10 using the “married pairs” in the original order.
But by then, Kawasaki
whacked us $3.3 million per car… and those newest single cars don’t even have
motors. Were we to try ordering more M8
cars today, who knows the price… or delivery time.
From the legislature’s
approval of the M8’s in 2005 through design,
testing and construction, the first M8’s took 6 years. The latest single-car order took 4
years. So even if we were to call
Kawasaki today, we couldn’t get new cars until probably 2020 even if we could
find the money.
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| Photo courtesy CTNewsjunkie.com |
Meanwhile, the Malloy
administration is pushing an almost $10
billion, multi-year plan to widen I-95 and I-84. By the time it’s done, crowding could be so
bad on our trains that getting on a four-lane wide interstate might just be
better alternative. Ironic, no?
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