Tram-Trains in the US?

[zoltan]

Tram-Trains are a German concept that run as streetcars or light rail at times, and on standard railroad tracks at others, that is being considered in quite a few European cities. They are largely used to permit commuter rail to penetrate the centres of cities. An informative post about the tram-trains in karlsruhe, Germany is available on the Human Transit blog.

They interest me because they offer a huge degree of flexibility in how you build urban transport. Already San Francisco's muni metro doubles as a frequent, fast subway downtown and a very low-cost streetcar in the suburbs. Imagine that you had your streetcar and your subway, and then decided that you next wanted to build commuter rail, you could provide direct services to the rest of your network.

For the sake of argument, imagine that you'd never had the huge amounts of money to throw at the transbay tubes in The Bay Area, but you were willing to give up two lanes of the Oakland Bay Bridge for light rail, and you wanted to get the Muni Metro out onto the existing rail lined to Fremont via Jack London Square. And imagine that you'd wanted, meanwhile, to serve San Bruno and Millbrae by way of extending the T-Third line via the Caltrain tracks. If you want, you could also think to the MARC Camden Line in Maryland, which terminates next to the commuter Baltimore Light rail, and imagine it running on through downtown Baltimore on the light rail tracks instead.

So the idea seems to have potential in The US as well as Europe, but the US has one particular problem - The FRA, and their desire to have trains built like tanks. Trains already run on streets in such places as Oakland, CA, Ashland, VA and Michigan City, IN, but outside of these grandfathered rights, I wonder whether such big and heavy trains as the FRA requires would find themselves conflicting with regulations on the safety of vehicles allowed to use roads around other vehicles and pedestrians.

So, what are your thoughts on how well the tram-train concept could be applied to the United States, given the sort of vehicles that would be required on the railroad segments?

 

[Eric S]

I didn't realize FRA regulations prohibited "mainline" railroad equipment from operating in streets. I had always thought the problem with FRA regulations was that they prohibited "transit-type" equipment (think light rail/streetcar equipment) from operating on "mainline" railroad lines, unless there is complete time separation, such as with NJT's River Line between Camden and Trenton.

 

[battalion51]

I would argue that a lot of the light rail operations operate in a similar fashion. Light Rail in Baltimore for example has dedicated ROW for a large portion of the line it runs, but it shares the streets of Downtown Baltimore when it's in the urban area. It runs on former mainline ROW for portions of the trip, and gets up to a decent clip (at least 60 MPH in some areas). Obviously there's always room for more services like it though.

 

[stntylr]

The Red Line commuter train in Austin started service this year and is a Tram Train. It runs most of the way on a track it shares with frieght service but at the end comes into downtown Austin on the street.

They had a hard time getting the train set they bought approved by the FRA for use on a freight line.

 

[rrdude]

I would argue that a lot of the light rail operations operate in a similar fashion. Light Rail in Baltimore for example has dedicated ROW for a large portion of the line it runs, but it shares the streets of Downtown Baltimore when it's in the urban area. It runs on former mainline ROW for portions of the trip, and gets up to a decent clip (at least 60 MPH in some areas). Obviously there's always room for more services like it though.

And didn't the Baltimore Light Rail share the northern part of it's route, up to Timonium, with Conrail for some time? Of course, Conrail only ran at night. Or, as usual, am I wrong........

 

[MattW]

For short distances (<15 miles) it might work, but for effective commuter service, you either need larger faster train cars which wouldn't do that well street running (I'm assuming they'd be limited to 10mph), or very frequent service to handle the demand. You'd also need new right of way I'm afraid as the FRA and freight railroads would likely have collective heart attacks at "streetcars" blasting down their mainlines particularly for the required traffic density if you don't use full-size train cars. That's why something like what Portland did works best, you have light rail shooting down abandoned (or lightly-used, time-shared) freight lines, then moving along the streets (and then you have the streetcar, but that's another thing sort of). Unfortunately, something like that wouldn't really work in a place like Atlanta I'm afraid. A. we only have a little bit of un-built-on right of way and B. the shorter stop intervals of a tram don't really work here outside I-285 except in a few cities themselves (Marietta/Kennesaw, Peachtree city, maybe Alpharetta etc.).

 

[zoltan]

I didn't realize FRA regulations prohibited "mainline" railroad equipment from operating in streets. I had always thought the problem with FRA regulations was that they prohibited "transit-type" equipment (think light rail/streetcar equipment) from operating on "mainline" railroad lines, unless there is complete time separation, such as with NJT's River Line between Camden and Trenton.

They don't; what I wonder about is whether other authorities responsible for assessing the roadworthiness of vehicles would have a problem with FRA-compliant equipment.

 

[AlanB]

I would argue that a lot of the light rail operations operate in a similar fashion. Light Rail in Baltimore for example has dedicated ROW for a large portion of the line it runs, but it shares the streets of Downtown Baltimore when it's in the urban area. It runs on former mainline ROW for portions of the trip, and gets up to a decent clip (at least 60 MPH in some areas). Obviously there's always room for more services like it though.

And didn't the Baltimore Light Rail share the northern part of it's route, up to Timonium, with Conrail for some time? Of course, Conrail only ran at night. Or, as usual, am I wrong........

You are correct Jerry.

I just read recently though that all freight service has ceased on the northern end of the line. It now belongs exclusively to light rail.

 

[rrdude]

I would argue that a lot of the light rail operations operate in a similar fashion. Light Rail in Baltimore for example has dedicated ROW for a large portion of the line it runs, but it shares the streets of Downtown Baltimore when it's in the urban area. It runs on former mainline ROW for portions of the trip, and gets up to a decent clip (at least 60 MPH in some areas). Obviously there's always room for more services like it though.

And didn't the Baltimore Light Rail share the northern part of it's route, up to Timonium, with Conrail for some time? Of course, Conrail only ran at night. Or, as usual, am I wrong........

You are correct Jerry.

I just read recently though that all freight service has ceased on the northern end of the line. It now belongs exclusively to light rail.

As another shipper(s) abandons rail..........

 

[zoltan]

For short distances (<15 miles) it might work, but for effective commuter service, you either need larger faster train cars which wouldn't do that well street running (I'm assuming they'd be limited to 10mph), or very frequent service to handle the demand. You'd also need new right of way I'm afraid as the FRA and freight railroads would likely have collective heart attacks at "streetcars" blasting down their mainlines particularly for the required traffic density if you don't use full-size train cars. That's why something like what Portland did works best, you have light rail shooting down abandoned (or lightly-used, time-shared) freight lines, then moving along the streets (and then you have the streetcar, but that's another thing sort of). Unfortunately, something like that wouldn't really work in a place like Atlanta I'm afraid. A. we only have a little bit of un-built-on right of way and B. the shorter stop intervals of a tram don't really work here outside I-285 except in a few cities themselves (Marietta/Kennesaw, Peachtree city, maybe Alpharetta etc.).

Two thoughts from Baltimore:

- The Baltimore light rail branches into routes individually running every 30 minutes, which is also the frequency of Maryland's commuter rail lines at peak times.

- Baltimore's LRVs carry more passengers in four-car sets than the commuter rail trains carry in 3-car push-pull sets. While the cars are shorter, you can, of course, have more of them (Baltimore could, I believe, manage six cars if it ever wanted to).

Obviously, suddenly introducing a lot of service onto heavily-used freight lines isn't a good idea, but the idea has potential when you have/are considering developing commuter rail already.

 

[battalion51]

I would argue that a lot of the light rail operations operate in a similar fashion. Light Rail in Baltimore for example has dedicated ROW for a large portion of the line it runs, but it shares the streets of Downtown Baltimore when it's in the urban area. It runs on former mainline ROW for portions of the trip, and gets up to a decent clip (at least 60 MPH in some areas). Obviously there's always room for more services like it though.

And didn't the Baltimore Light Rail share the northern part of it's route, up to Timonium, with Conrail for some time? Of course, Conrail only ran at night. Or, as usual, am I wrong........

You are correct Jerry.

I just read recently though that all freight service has ceased on the northern end of the line. It now belongs exclusively to light rail.

There were a couple of rock quarries in Cockeysville sandwiched between the ROW and 83 that were being serviced by Conrail (and later CSX). I don't know when that service ceased, but from living in the area for awhile there didn't seem like there was a whole heck of a lot of production coming out of there, which would lead to the lack of servicing. The furthest north freight service could get was the spur at Warren Road. North of there the curves were very sharp as the line winds through the industrial parks of Cockeysville before arriving in Hunt Valley. IIRC the curve just past the Warren Road is 10 or 15 MPH for the light rail trains, if that tells you anything about how sharp the curves are.