What if I told you there was a way to get a train network that was faster, safer,
more connected, and cheaper to run with just one simple trick. Now don’t click off that dial,
this isn’t a get rich quick scheme, it's about through-running train services. So stay tuned!
So to understand why through-running services are, in general,
a better option, we need to understand what the alternative is and the issues with it.
Now with any train line you have essentially 2 options, either a loop or a line. We will
be ignoring loops but that is a good topic for a future video. That leaves us with the humble line.
Now how can you mess up a line? Train goes in, train goes out,
simple right? Well the big differentiation between train services is where they start and stop.
Those points are called the termination points, and that’s where terminal stations go.
At those terminal stations a handful of things happen. First there if a train needs servicing
it will do so here, cleaning, emptying trash and sewage, topping off fuel and so on.
Second, there will be some downtime for the crew, so they can eat, use the restroom and the like.
Lastly, it's an opportunity to change the train configuration,
adding or removing train cars and turning trains around if needed.
Chicago Union Station and New York Grand Central Station
are two notable examples of large terminal stations inside cities.
Note how the tracks just end and the trains reverse out of the station.
And here are some example terminals on the suburban side of a line.
So now we know what terminals are. Why is it a bad idea to have them in our cities?
The first and most obvious issue is land use, remember Chicago Union Station and New York
Grand Central Station. They are absolutely massive and even with all the infrastructure underground,
it still poses a myriad of issues, like being hard to modify and difficult to work around in general.
City terminals are also generally a single point of failure. So between being hard to work
on due to their size and being the only option for a stop within the city, terminals are generally
frozen in amber, until a massive pile of cash comes around to tear up everything around them.
Safety in terminals is also an issue as any runaway train, while rare,
would not have a safe way to be stopped.
There is a long list of deadly train terminal incidents, which have brought about rules on
how fast a train can enter a terminal. Which brings up the capacity issue in two parts.
First with how slow trains must go in entering a terminal for safety concerns
and second when trains enter the terminal, they must exit the same way they came in.
This is where much of the complexity of terminals comes from, as trains that are on a platform need
to cross over trains that are coming into the station. The more trains running into
the station the more complex scheduling gets and when a schedule does get missed,
it can cause cascading failures due to the terminal being a bottleneck.
Lastly the trains that don’t get sent back out on their routes, known as an equipment move,
need a place to go. So they either cross over trains in revenue service, aka making money
moving passengers, to get to a rail yard for storage, or they are moved away from incoming
traffic to another rail yard in the city, for the aforementioned train servicing and staff movement.
Here comes our hero to solve the city terminal issue, through-running.
The general idea being to not terminate trains in the middle of the city but
outside of the city. A wildly simple concept with some huge benefits. So let's look at how
through-running helps solve the issue of urban terminals and what systems already implement it.
Let's look at a theoretical system to see at a mile high view. We have a Terminal East
and a Terminal West both with a couple commuter rail lines running into them.
Currently regional trains will enter each station, a handful will remain on platform
for rush hour and some will return back out to the end of the branch for another run into the city.
There will also be a few inter city trains which will enter the city,
disembark passengers, then enter a yard for tomorrow's run.
This exemplifies all the issues explained before, so lets add through running services
to fix this issue. To do this we will need a new piece of infrastructure, a connection
between the two terminals, making them no longer terminals but through stations. Let's call this
the Cross City Tunnel, going under our cities downtown and surfacing to connect East and West.
Now instead of our regional services coming in at rush hour in the morning and terminating in the
city center. They will continue on to the opposite side of the city and on to the end of the line.
For intercity services we can now have trains either continue on through our city to another
city, or just serve both sides of the city then go off to the yard to wait for the next service.
First and most importantly this connects 2 separate stations
while keeping people in their seats. No need for a connector bus or anything of that sort.
Convenience makes the service more useful.
Next, the type of service pattern that can be run should reduce dwell time.
Dwell time is how long a train waits on a platform. This spreads out passengers over
multiple stations rather than just one terminal, meaning less people need to get off per stop.
Think of how much longer it takes a train to leave a station when people are crowding the doors.
This also means that less space is needed in the city center to run more trains.
By continuing the train service beyond the city center,
storage yards can be located outside of the city where land is cheap and abundant.
Now that the service yards are outside of the city but
still on a useful route, the train can continue in revenue service for longer.
Which means less time moving trains around without passengers on them.
This configuration is also much safer at higher speeds
since trains can enter the city center stations at the same speed they would for any station,
not needing to consider that the tracks end in the station.
And the thing I think is the unsung value of through services,
increased connectivity. Making trips from the branches deep into the suburbs fast and simple.
Trips that many times are only easy today by car.
I could go on and on about other minor benefits like changes in land use
but I think you should be getting the point by now that through-running services have many benefits.
Enough theoreticals let's look at some systems which were composed of terminating services
and were updated to through-running services.
Most famously there is the Berlin S-Bahn which is where many through running plans
get their name from. Calling their systems “S-Bahns” or “Stadtbahn”
which in English roughly translates to “city railway”
which is a different concept than the American “metro” or “subway”.
Back in the mid 19th century the railways, mostly focused around freight and long haul passenger
journeys, terminated outside of the city with a linking line that ran through the streets.
As traffic increased the railway could no longer run giant steam
locomotives on the street so a link was made in a ring around the city.
An east-west link was built a few decades later,
this project was called the “Stadtbahn” and put East West trains on a viaduct.
Increasing capacity, circulation, and connectivity. The next major connection
through the city was a north-south link which was completed in the late 1930’s.
Interspersed with these projects were major electrification projects over the decades.
With how early Berlin’s center city through-running network was created is why it is
used as both an example and why it lends its name to the concept of through running-services.
This unique setup not only allows for running plenty of services through the
city but also fast intercity services and suburban connector routes around the city.
Berlin's early investment in optimizing train circulation has been paying off for nearly a
century, where today Belin has the highest share of trips taken by train in Germany.
Now you may think “Is this only for Europe, can the US not have nice things?”,
and you may be surprised to know that we already have the infrastructure set up for
an S-Bahn in a major US city. Let’s check out one more modern through running scheme,
Philadelphia’s Center City Commuter Connector.
Like many cities in the US, the current passenger rail network is made up of the rail infrastructure
of multiple former freight rail companies. The Reading Railroad and the Pennsylvania Railroad
in this case. The Connector linked these two disparate systems with a 4 track tunnel.
This allowed for the Reading Railroad terminal to be reused as a market
and increased the theoretical throughput of both systems. Now while the Connector is, subjectively,
underused by SEPTA, there are plans to change that if the agency goes through with one of its
proposals for metro-like frequency. Why this matters is because these lines went from under
used freight and suburban commuter lines to what can be a suburban metro with frequent
electrified trains and suburb-to-suburb connections through the middle of the city.
Something we should be striving for with many of our existing unconnected legacy rail lines,
making them true rail networks. Also worth noting, this was done fairly recently, completing in 1984
for a fairly reasonable price in today's dollars.
Hopefully the benefits of unifying and electrifying current rail networks
becomes the priority of politicians as we continue
to need ways to efficiently and cleanly move people around our growing cities.
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