Passenger Trains > Metra BNSF Issues Continue

Rep. Dan Lipinski hosted a town hall meeting with Metra, BNSF and riders last night:
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-biz-metra-bnsf-delays-complaints-20181210-story.html

I had hoped to attend but, wouldn't you know it, my train was 12 minutes late last night. By the time I got home, got dinner ready and got the kids started on homework, it was after 7 pm.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/11/18 07:37 by kevink.

On NJT, lucky to be only 12 minutes late.

joemvcnj Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> On NJT, lucky to be only 12 minutes late.

Oh, the humanity.

Only 12 minutes late. We are certainly not Japan, you should know this. Put your big boy pants on, and deal with it. Boo-Hoo. SMMFH. How about you drive next time, then bitch about it here. 

amtrak34east Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Only 12 minutes late. We are certainly not Japan,
> you should know this. Put your big boy pants on,
> and deal with it. Boo-Hoo. SMMFH. How about you
> drive next time, then bitch about it here. 

Good grief!  Why the hostility towards KevinK?  Twelve minutes may not seem much to you, but that was all it took to cause him to miss a meeting he was hoping to attend.

For years, Metra, particularly its BN/BNSF service, had a reputation of being one of the most well-run commuter rail operations in the US.  Its commuters counted on it being reliable and it is not unreasonable for them to expect that reliability to continue with appropriate investments.

Considering the topic of the meeting, KevinK's post is one of irony, not complaint.
 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/11/18 20:30 by RuleG.

He sure was not bitching, just made a remark on why he missed the meeting.  Remark totally out of line.

amtrak34east Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Only 12 minutes late. We are certainly not Japan,
> you should know this. Put your big boy pants on,
> and deal with it. Boo-Hoo. SMMFH. How about you
> drive next time, then bitch about it here. 

Keep shaking your head pal, maybe some sense will fall into it. That’s 12 minutes late for a 30 minute scheduled trip.

Posted from iPhone

RuleG Wrote:
-----------------------------------------------------
> Considering the topic of the meeting, KevinK's
> post is one of irony, not complaint.
>  

Well mostly irony!

Over the past four years, my monthly pass has increased in price by 20%. Metra’s board promised that new locomotives and cars would be purchased with the additional revenue.

Many of the recent equipment issues causing delays and cancelled train have been attributed by Metra to the ages of the locomotives and cars.

To date, no new cars and only 2 dozen used locomotives have been purchased. While sorely needed, these F59PHI’s and F59PH’s do not meet current Tier 4 emissions standards so there won’t be much if any improvement in the air quality at Chicago Union Station.

Posted from iPhone

amtrak34east Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Only 12 minutes late. We are certainly not Japan,
> you should know this. Put your big boy pants on,
> and deal with it. Boo-Hoo. SMMFH. How about you
> drive next time, then bitch about it here. 

I remember a time when the Q commuter service was as close to Swiss precision as American railroading gets. 12 minutes late - yeah, a big deal.

TAW

Have some people living on the north side of the BNSF driven up to the UP-West line as an alternative ?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/12/18 06:55 by joemvcnj.

joemvcnj Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Have some people living on the north side of the
> BNSF driven up to the UP-West line as an
> alternative ?

Probably not.  It would be western suburbs folks driving up to UP west, if anyone.

kevink Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> Many of the recent equipment issues causing delays
> and cancelled train have been attributed by Metra
> to the ages of the locomotives and cars.

Kevin

I know some of the coaches are at least 60 years old and many locomotives are 40+ years.  Yet you would expect other Metra routes to be having the same problems, and apparently they're not doing as badly as BNSF.  Any ideas why BNSF is so challenged?

Also, BNSF owns some of the equipment--coaches and maybe locomotives too.  Have they experienced more problems than Metra owned stuff?

 

joemvcnj Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Have some people living on the north side of the
> BNSF driven up to the UP-West line as an
> alternative ?

As an emergency alternative, the UP-West line is an option but parking is a concern. The UP-West line is also heavily patronized and has some overcrowding issues of it own. I have used it to get home from downtown on several occasions. That meant someone at home had to drive to Elmhurst, pick me up and then drive me to Clarendon Hills to get my car. Now I suppose I could get a Lyft or Uber.

In my case, if the BNSF is shut down in the morning, I'll either wait it out or if I HAVE to be downtown, I will drive. At least until this May, my soon-to-be graduating daughter can drop me off at the Forest Park Blue Line stop on her way to Fenwick H.S. in Oak Park

Is some/any of this due to PTC upgrades occuring? I know when I visited back in June and took a weekend ride out to Western Springs and back, my return train and several others were nearly 30 minutes late due to "maintenance" which I seem to remember at the time was part of a PTC installation.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/12/18 09:36 by DJ-12.

TAW Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> I remember a time when the Q commuter service was
> as close to Swiss precision as American
> railroading gets. 12 minutes late - yeah, a big
> deal.
>
> TAW

I agree completely.  I remember when I lived in an apartment just east of the Lisle station in the late 1970s, my front room window and deck looked directly toward the BN main line.  You could practically set your watch by the westbound trains going by with brakes screeching as they approached their stop at Lisle, or the eastbounds with E units in throttle 8 shoving trains as they accelerated out of Lisle.

In those days, there were a lot of railroad officials from the head office who were headquartered dowtown and used the trains to and from work, so that kept BN employees on their toes with respect to the commuter trains (same with several other roads).  Although BN was headquartered in St. Paul after the merger in 1970, they still had a large regional staff in the old Q headquarters across from Union Station.

In some ways I think the BNSF line has become a victim of its own success in hauling commuters on this line.  They are by far the heaviest travelled of all the commuter lines radiating from Chicago, but Metra investments in equipment and infrastructure perhaps have not kept up with what is required to accomodate the growth.  I am glad to see DJ Mitchell from BNSF is working with Metra on resolving these issues.  He has probably done as much positive work for passenger rail in the western US as anyone in any capacity, and I know he has a long history working with Chicago Metra.

Larry Cena   A VP & later president of AT&SF rode the line every day.

kevink Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Over the past four years, my monthly pass has increased in price by 20%. Metra’s board
> promised that new locomotives and cars would be purchased with the additional revenue.
>
> Many of the recent equipment issues causing delays and cancelled train have been attributed by Metra
> to the ages of the locomotives and cars.
>
> To date, no new cars and only 2 dozen used locomotives have been purchased .  . .

For the information of non-locals:  The Metra plan also required substantial money from the State of Illinois, far more than that generated by the fare increase:  said money has not been forthcoming.  Accordingly, the Metra Board suspended the fare increase plan and instead signed on to a big political push for State capital money for all transportation modes.  Just yesterday, as part of the "push", the (lame duck) Mayor of Chicago called for a substantial increase in the state gasoline tax to fund this capital program.  With a new governor generally favorable to tax increases (only on the rich, of course) and continued dominance of the Cook County Democratic machine in the legislature, I'm sure I'll be paying a lot more in State taxes of one kind or another next year!  But I wonder if the politicians have been watching the news from Paris on CNN?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/12/18 16:25 by illini73.

In 2016 Metra announced that they would need approximately $11 billion dollars over the next ten years to replace old equipment, repair/replace old bridges and subsations (Electric route), etc.  They also said that the most they could expect from the usual funding sources was about $3 billion.  So where's the other eight billion gonna come from?

calumet Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I know some of the coaches are at least 60 years
> old and many locomotives are 40+ years.  Yet you
> would expect other Metra routes to be having the
> same problems, and apparently they're not doing as
> badly as BNSF.  Any ideas why BNSF is so
> challenged?

I have not tracked the other lines to the extent that I have the BNSF. I have heard of similar issues from co-workers that ride the UP West line.

I think part of the problem is that the BNSF line is at capacity. Thus what used to be routine issues now result in widespread delays.

The implementation of PTC last summer did not go smoothly. First, the schedules were adjusted for the longer turnaround time required to initialize PTC for the next run. Second, the schedules were adjusted again to provide additional capacity for commuters from the Naperville and Aurora stations. The trade-off was that the stations in Zones C and B saw a reduction in the number of trains serving those stops. From what co-workers that ride in from Naperville tell me, there is still overcrowding on their trains and those that ride in from Brookfield and Riverside say their trains are always standing room only. I should note that, for a few weeks, either of my two normal outbound trains were overly crowded but that seems to have dissipated as people adjusted to the new schedule. Looking back, it might have been better to first adjust the schedule for PTC, work out the inevitable issues and then make the changes to provide additional capacity at the outlying stations.

Another delay caused by overcrowded trains is that dwell times for both inbound and outbound trains increase. Boarding passengers have to wait for people already on the train to make rooms and passengers getting off the train have to wait for people in their way to exit the train first. Then the train was to wait for those people to reboard the train. The four steps up and down do not help either.
I suspect the equipment issues are due to the age of the equipment and the available money to maintain them.

> Also, BNSF owns some of the equipment--coaches and
> maybe locomotives too.  Have they experienced
> more problems than Metra owned stuff?

BNSF no longer owns any of the equipment. The old E9’s and all the old Q gallery cars went to the West Suburban Mass Transit District back in the 1970’s. I believe Metra has assumed ownership of the remaining WSMTD fleet.
Coaches and locomotives used on the BNSF and SouthWest Service get their daily maintenance and cleaning at BNSF’s 14th Street facility just south of Union Station. As far as I know this is covered under the Purchase of Service agreement between Metra and BNSF.
 
DJ-12 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Is some/any of this due to PTC upgrades occuring?
> I know when I visited back in June and took a
> weekend ride out to Western Springs and back, my
> return train and several others were nearly 30
> minutes late due to "maintenance" which I seem to
> remember at the time was part of a PTC
> installation.
If the delay notices that Metra posts via email are accurate, there are more delays caused by equipment issues than PTC issues on the BNSF.

Weekend trains can be delayed by anything including “heavy passenger boarding”, “freight train interference” and “track construction”. Most of the PTC installation was completed before last June so hard to say if that was the reason your train was late.