Sunday, January 29, 2006

New Mexico RailRunner - How Are We Going To Get There?

The Mid Rio Grande Council of Governments (MRCOG) has posted it Draft RailRunner Service Schedule for Public Comment. (Click the link and read the .pdf file.) Not bad over all.

The following are my comments mailed to the MRCOG for their consideration.

Suggestions:

1. Get your train numbers more in line with railroad practice. Odd north and even south, or visa versa. Imagine the dispatcher trying to figure out which Train 3 he/she was talking about.

2. What makes anyone think that there will be nobody wanting to ride the train to Belen from Albuquerque during morning rush hour? Make at least one trip Albuquerque to Belen during the morning rush.

3. Same suggestion, different hours. Ditto 2 for the evening rush hour.

4. This schedule will take 3 trainsets to cover. Maybe I have missed something, but it seems you will have to return two sets light to their starting points for the next morning at the end of the day. (A consequence of ending the three morning trains in Albuquerque and beginning three evening trains there.) Can you get something more efficient? Perhaps if you have to run them at a loss anyway, perhaps the extra trips can carry passengers. Seems like it would make more sense to start all morning trains in either Belen or Sandoval and all evening trains in Albuquerque with some evening trains making 1.5 trips per evening.

5. If this schedule takes 3 trainsets to cover, have you accounted for the possibility that you will need backup?


If anyone has any better ideas, please post a comment or go to the Passenger Rail group on Google Groups.

© 2006 - C. A. Turek - mistertrains@gmail.com

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