I did mean Alternative G, meaning the routing through to Grand Central Terminal. In addition, I sincerely doubt there is demand for an additional 25 trains per hour. Trains pull in from NJCL and NEC during rush hour at a rate of one every 10 minutes each, and MidTOWN Direct is about the same frequency, IIRC. RVL doesn't haul that many passengers, and the number that want to continue to 34th Street is fairly limited- most of them take Path. Actually, it shocks me that any people don't take Path since it is much cheaper.
[...... much elided for the sake of brevity ......]
That's 21, not 25. Re-configuring Penn to better move trains to Sunnyside could cover most of that if you built another pair of tunnels. Plus you really don't need much in the way of expanded service that I factored in- longer trains would cover it.
I'm pretty sure Pascack isn't even included. (Please correct me if I'm wrong!)
Well what the FTA approved in the SDEIS can be found on page 2-13 of
Chapter 2: Project Alternatives. No further comments forthcoming from me since I don't have any special additional information that cannot already be found from the SDEIS. My attempt here is to simply try to base the discussion on established numbers as they currently exist in the plans in question, instead of conjectures. Frankly, I have no idea whether that many people from Bergen County want to take the train to Manhattan or not. Someone else will have to attack or defend those numbers.
Suffice it to say though that there is no way in gods earth that you can get 48 trains per hour through Penn Station in addition to its LIRR traffic in the rush hours, even if you managed to build two additional tunnels to get them to A interlocking, no matter what you do to the platforms and tracks there within that constrained space. And my additional observation is if one does not believe that they will ever need to run more than 25 trains per hour all the way out to 2030, then why bother building new tunnels? Might as well bag the whole thing and save all 9 billion dollars. You don't even need Alternative G or Alternative anything. Just shorten block sizes some more, run the commuter service like a freight operation with longest possible trains, reduce speed limit to 40mph through the tunnels and you got it. And that would be fine by me too, but it appears that the politicians, decisions makers and a considerable majority of others AFAICT don't particularly agree with that alternative, somehow.