One thing I’d like to promote is the use of a service the MBTA has offered since July: online purchase of one-time fare additions and various passes, including the essential Monthly LinkPass.

General ignorance would suggest that people believe the passes can only be purchased during the month of the pass and not in advance. One can actually buy a pass for the upcoming month and there are station announcements regularly to advertise the availability of the following monthly pass. In fact, CharlieCards have the capacity to hold two simultaneous passes (current month and upcoming month after the 15th of the current) as well as regular fare.

I won’t reproduce all the benefits of the CharlieCard Web Programme here since they’re available on the site, but one particularly compelling feature is the ability to set up a monthly purchase option for your registered CharlieCards. This will bill you monthly to put the pass of your choice on your card and the following day, your card will quietly update itself at the fare gate. You can also report lost/stolen cards to secure the current balance/passes on the card and transfer it to a new one.

At the moment, online purchase of monthly passes is not available, likely due to the problems the MBTA was experiencing earlier today with their electronic payment system. Hopefully this will be available again soon.

I might just start plastering the stations I frequent with posters about the online payment program; there’s nothing that irks me more than people complaining about things that are otherwise avoidable…

I’ve become very active on Twitter as a result of my adding an MBTA search column to my TweetDeck apps on my computers and phone and subsequently replying to each and every irate commuter who shows up with a tweet in that column.

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Building and upgrading infrastructure is the foremost issue on everyone’s mind, but it may stand to begin answering this critical question now. Considering who will manage and how these lines will be managed is probably an integral part of each of these applications, but few sources have highlighted plans for their continued operation once service has been established along these routes. Might these be municipally owned and operated? Or perhaps joint public-private ventures?

Might I step out onto a limb and suggest a coordinated high speed rail deployment and operation? Perhaps a locally-operated, nationally-managed system of high speed rail operations integrated into Amtrak. After all, the bastard lovechild trainsets of Bombardier and Alstom under operation by Amrak on its Acela Service are the only high speed trainsets in operation in the United States. What unique lessons can Acela’s operators tell us about running high speed rail in the United States, as opposed to running high speed rail elsewhere? What benefits might we gain from such an organization and what terrors await?

One benefit would certainly be the possibility of creating uniform infrastructure in each high speed corridor. Along those lines, such an organization would be able to purchase standardized equipment en-masse, reducing initial purchase costs. Once you have nationally standardized infrastructure and equipment, you gain the ability to interoperate equipment and have overlapping service between these established corridors. This opens the door to a national high speed rail network, rather than islands of high speed rail access. A similar merger between LIRR and Metro North Railroad to form MTA Railroads has been considered to cut costs and reduce redundant staffing within the two organizations. The merger would allow joint orders of equipment, reducing the overhead and extra cost in having to complete two separate orders for nearly identically operating railroads.

By having each initial corridor locally operated by a local high speed rail division of Amtrak under a  national high speed rail division, each corridor can receive the specialized management it needs to thrive. But in this lies the danger of bureaucracy and local railroads being held hostage to the whim of different states. There’s also the issue of equipment failures. While the standardization of these trainsets across the national system would allow for equipment to be routed where necessary, it would also mean that if an issue comes up with the build quality of these trains, the whole network could be brought down, much like what happened with Acela in its first few months.

The idea of having high speed rail incorporated into Amtrak is a nightmare to Amtrak critics, who see the organization as a ‘mobile, money-burning machine’, among other things. Amtrak has suffered in the past in part due to poor management as a result of negligent appointments to the head of the organization, as well as negligence on the part of the government and the general public. A lot has improved recently within the organization, especially with the recent line of organization heads who have actually known a thing or two about managing a railway and advocating for its existence. Amtrak is certainly no British First Group, Eurostar, French SNCF, German Deutsche Bahn, or Japan Railways Group, but it’s all we’ve got and it’s managed to show through Acela that passenger service can break even or be profitable in the United States.

Believe it or not, but there are reasons to go upstate, because those trains are almost always packed with all types of passengers, from budget-minded families and college students to state officials and business people. It’s worth the $36-69 (fare varies based on how full the train is), or less if you have a discount card like Student Advantage. Not only does the line go along the Hudson and through the picturesque Hudson Valley, but it gets you from city center to city center in 2.5 hours flat. Try doing that in your car - even if you drive at 85 mph on I-89 (that speed is typical for that highway), you still have to negotiate NYC traffic if your destination is in the City or on Long Island.

Amtrak’s Empire Service into New York City is a bargain for the savings in time and hassle and I’m quite upset that it hasn’t garnered more attention. It is the best example of what is right with rail service in America. I could (if I wanted to waste a hour and a half on a bus) take a CDTA bus from RPI’s Student Union to Amtrak’s Albany-Rensselaer train station. Then when I get off at Penn Station, there’s usually an LIRR train to Babylon departing not more than 15 minutes after I arrive. If I’m lucky, I’ve already got my ticket and the train has already arrived in the station from the yard and is in the process of boarding. Then it’s only a quick, luxurious hour out to Wantagh, where I can either walk the 45 minutes to my family’s house, take a bus (if it’s operating), or get one of my parents to pick me up. That’s worth my $36-69 + $9.50 (LIRR) and 3.5 hours of my time (assuming I get a ride to and from train stations). You’d be hard-pressed to find such a transit value anywhere else in the country.

This is also a perfect example of how crappy bus service is in most suburban/rural areas across the nation and how it can often be the deterrent for most people to take advantage of otherwise convenient rail travel… but that’s for another blog post.

Granted, the Acela trainsets have a maximum speed of 165 mph but is limited to 150 by FRA regulations (see: grade level crossings) and limited further by several infrastructural differences in each municipality along its route. It turns out that Acela will actually only save you a few minutes over the ’slower’ and cheaper Northeast Regional service. What you really pay for is Bussiness Class accommodations actually worth the title and First Class accommodations not available anywhere else throughout the Amtrak network. Oh, and have I stressed enough the value of city center to city center travel?

At this point, I’ve racked up enough Amtrak Guest Reward Rail Points to travel one way via Acela First Class…

The Friday before commencement, I called up my dad to find out when they were going to be arriving so that I could be sure I was available to receive them. I went out for a bike ride at around 16:00 with Bill and Max toward Albany, a ride I’ve come to like a lot and will probably miss when I finally leave RPI this week, with all my worldly possessions. We arrived at Albany and decided it was time for dinner, so we crossed over the footbridge that goes over 787 to go to Wolff’s Biergarten. As we were arriving, I got a call from my dad asking me where I was and why I wasn’t getting ready for the School of IT graduation dinner. A couple of rather distressing minutes later, he explained that they were still a bit of a way off from Albany and were rushing as fast as they could to get there. I was still quite confused about this graduation dinner stuff.

Several weeks ago, invitations were sent out by all the schools for graduation dinners and I discussed with my mom a few of the details of that. Initially, she had responded to the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences dinner. Then I told her that my primary major was IT and that I should go to the dinner for that school, not realizing that I probably knew more people in HASS than IT. Though, truth be told, I wanted my parents to meet Jeff Miner, Deputy CIO of RPI, because I knew he’d be able to make a better impression on my parents that would be more representative of my work at RPI. So that’s where my mom and I left off with our plans. I was going to leave it up to her and my dad to figure out to which dinner they wanted to go (IT was $30 a plate and HASS was free).

Fast forward back to the biergarten. So we’re eating dinner and I get another call from my mom. I can barely make her out since she’s talking on the X5’s integrated speaker phone system and it’s loud where I am. So I hang up and call her back on her cell. It turns out that there’s been a severe disconnect in the communications between myself, my dad, and my mom. Big surprise. It turns out that my dad had told my mom that he had made ‘reservations’, not specifying for what he had made reservations. My mom took that, in context, to mean that he had made reservations for one of the dinners, particularly the IT dinner. In actuality, he had made reservations for the hotel and this was what he was actually confirming. My mom, now herself assured that reservations had been made, did nothing beyond cancelling the reservation for the HASS dinner. Meanwhile, I was assuming that all was well and that my parents had taken care of all the stuff they needed to take care of since the dinner was going to be costing them money and I didn’t want to be obligating them to more than they felt they should. (This, by the way, comes from a deeply rooted impulse of mine to acquiesce to my parents’ needs, ultimately resulting from having been convinced by my mom that I am manipulative and deceitful.)

When I got off the phone with my mom, it was clear that there were no dinner reservations, I was already having dinner and an hour bike ride away from Troy, and my dad was pissed off beyond belief because he had rushed off of Long Island, got stuck in rush hour traffic in the Bronx, and was speeding (90 mph on the NYS Thruway is not speeding) to Albany for most of the way.

At least they got the message about the laptop…though the message my dad was sending through it was a severely sour one as he presented it – one of biting sarcasm, bitter cost, and little pride. I hope one day he learns to stop being so angry and realizes that we do appreciate him and would appreciate him more if he’d realize that his passive aggressive and sometimes just plain aggressive attitude is what puts us off.

Unexpected Charges

First, the more annoying news. I noticed the charge on Sunday when I needed money for some random thing and went to make a transfer between my savings and my checking account. Turns out the charge is actually my family’s cell phone bill for the month of April. At first I thought this was a mistake or something because I’ve never used my debit card to contribute to the bill – only my Discover card. It must have been an accident or something, because neither of my parents know about the charge.

My mom sent me money to deal with the whole thing, but that doesn’t resolve the issue that my checking account was overdrawn and that I’ll be charged a fee. Is the $.68 I earned this month from my savings account really worth the chance of incurring a $35 fee for the occasional unexpected charge?

A Huge Disappointment…

Now the depressing news. I asked my mom if she and dad had gave any consideration into the computer purchase I had proposed as my graduation present way back over the winter and spring holidays. To that, she responded that she thought my dad had purchased a digital picture frame for my graduation present. I melted. The fact that such a momentus life achievement and rite of passage was going to be rewarded with a standalone LCD screen that couldn’t possibly cost more than $200 was heartbreaking. Not because I’m a materialistic SOB, but because I’m so used to my dad being stingy with buying things for me.

You’d think that because of this, I’d take this as typical dad, but it sends a message louder than any bullhorn could issue. It says to me that this event is no more important than any other event in my history. It says that he isn’t willing to put any thought into finding out what I for this occasion. It further says to me that he doesn’t listen to me when I speak, especially after the times I’ve explicitly told both he and mom what I want for graduation.

…Me or the Gift?

This only adds to the mounting depression I’ve been feeling with regards to my post graduate activities. I’m growing more and more unsure of my path and I fear that I don’t actually have the mental facilities to actually do what I want to do. For that matter, I’m not even sure I know what I want to do. I’ve got such a broad range of interests and experiences, but none of them have enough depth to prove myself qualified enough for anything.

I want to go into user interface design, but have had little or no experience. I want to go into support IT, but don’t have the qualifications. I want to go into graphic design but I fear not having the skills or the strength of concept to be competitive. I want to go into transportation planning, but my lack of formal education here is laughable. Within each, there are more things I aspire to do, but again, I feel qualified for none.

I used to think I was better than James for being able to stay afloat at RPI and graduate on time, but now I’m starting to feel self-depricating feelings again about post collegiate plans. A couple of months ago, I considered going co-terminal at RPI and getting my Masters Degree in HCI, transportation planning, or IT, but quickly found out that my GPA wouldn’t make the cut and that I’d have to take the GREs before I could even consider going co-terminal. Yesterday and today, Brian was talking about going co-terminal with HCI and I can’t help but agree with his reasons, but feel like no one in my life is nudging me in any particular direction. Boston, here I come.

One of those times happened to be this past Saturday night/early Sunday morning, when I sat at my computer and chopped up a bunch of the video I had taken on my iPhone of the Grand Marshal/President of the Union election results. A couple of long hours later, my toiling in Sony Vegas paid off with the final render of the video. Below is the result of that work.

This isn’t the best video quality in the world, but it’ll have to do, since my phone doesn’t natively support video, though there are hints that the next iteration of the iPhone may have it.

In any case, I’ve been uploading a bunch of my work onto Vimeo, most of it in HD. While YouTube does offer HD video without the same limitations as Vimeo (500MB and 1HD video per week) and even supports a slew of additional free features (annotations, etc.), there’s a strange allure to Vimeo. I’m not sure if it’s the beauty of the embedded video player with respect to YouTube’s or the amazing contrast between the interface of Vimeo’s web site with respect to YouTube’s. Vimeo even offers day-by-day tracking of video statistics, so you get a better idea of how popular your video actually is, rather than the flat view count YouTube provides. There’s also the fact that YouTube simply feels banal, despite all its merits. That doesn’t stop me from uploading my videos to it, though.

In any case, I’ve included a couple of my most recent Vimeo uploads. The first is my final project from Advanced Typography. The second is a glorified slide show I did back in senior year of high school, waaaay the hell back in 2004. Enjoy.

The MBTA 700 Series

The PATH PA5

The MTA R160

The Wikipedia article on PATH indicates that the PA5’s design similarity to the R142/R160s is no coincidence. Aside from both being built by Kawasaki, the heavy rail builder took the R142 design (the basis for the R143 and R160) and essentially modified and updated it for the PA5.

The PA5s one-up even the R160s with 4 sets of 2 LCDs in each car, financed by NBC Universal. These function in much the same way the LCD component on the FIND, but on steroids. Advertising agency JCDecaux has been brought in by the Port Authority to manage advertising on these screens, which will initially pump out NBC news, adverts, and the like, in addition to helpful wayfinding and train status information. The on-board LED displays are even higher resolution, and thus more legible from a distance, than those in the R160, let alone the LIRR’s barely legible M-7 internal displays.

The Wikipedia article on the MBTA Blue Line also seems to indicate a relation between the designs of the PATH trains and Blue Line trains. Older the older PA3 was actually the basis for the older 0600 series on the Blue Line. The PA3’s design was just a carrythrough of the original PA1, built by St. Louis Car Company, a significant builder of NYC rollingstock for years until Budd, and ultimately Bombardier, Alstom, and Kawasaki came onto the scene.  (You can very clearly see the progression of manufacturers over the decades in the manufacturers of PATH’s rollingstock.)

In any case, both the Blue Line and PATH rollingstock have shared lineage and you can see the clear influences in the units Bombardier (then Hawker Siddeley Canada Car and Foundry) made for the MBTA’s Blue and Orange Lines and the new Blue Line units by Seimens. The new PA5s have more R142/R143/R160 (built by Bombardier, Alstom, and Kawasaki) than they do PA3 in terms of design, but you can still find hints of its lineage in small details.

With all this crossbreeding, mostly due to the mix of all three major manufacturer’s significant involvement in transit orders lately, I wonder if we’ll ever see a unified, standardized transit system that could possibly come out of a merging of the transit systems that serve the eastern seaboard. While this comes with many dangers (the MTA still suffers from the poorly executed merger of the three original systems), the seeds of interoperability have already been sewn, what with how the three cities of Boston, Washington, D.C., and New York share workers and residents with each other. I long for the day I can use my MetroCard/Charlie Card on all three systems.

Speaking of new trains, the D.C. Metro will be ordering new trains which will be designated as the 7000 series. I’ll leave you with this poignant image of a consist of R160Bs next to a consist of R40 slants, the very cars the R160A/Bs will be replacing. America, welcome to your new transit future.

'Your days are numbered, buddy...'

My Train

I was driving train AT-6, a 200 level train which was supposed to start at 3:02 and be led by a couple of RS-3s. At the start, my train consisted of 15 empty hoppers, a couple of additional cars, and my caboose. My first pick up was at Chateaugay, where I was to pick up a few more cars then head out to Port Henry to drop off my 15 empty cars and pick up 15 full ones on two different tracks. Unfortunately, I got stuck at Chateaugay for quite a while because an engineer ahead of me was doing work in Port Henry. As I waited, the yard dispatcher ordered me to pull ahead out of the yard and switched me onto the main line. I backed up my excessively long goods train past the south switch into the yard and waited as another engineer entered a siding to my west and pulled her passenger train out of Chateaugay.

A rough view of the model railroad's layout.

Chateaugay to Port Henry

I finally got clearance out of Chateaugay as the engineer in Port Henry was finishing up his work. I said goodbye to the yard operator at Cheateaugay and made the short jaunt to Port Henry. When I arrived at Port Heny, I discovered that track 3, where I was supposed to drop my cars was too short, so I ended up splitting it between a siding and track 3.

While I was getting my train ready for the next jaunt to North Bennington, a milk train heading north needed to pass me. As it passed me and cleared the yard, I heard the yard operator at Chateaugay clear the milk train on the main line. Unfortunately, this was interpreted by a sitting goods train to be an order for them, so he headed out as well. A few minutes later, there was a near collision just north of the yard - someone’s hand stopped the two trains from actually colliding.

As the crisis was taken care of, I headed out of Port Henry after gaining clearance from dispatch.

Port Henry to North Bennington

When I left Port Henry on the main line, I was ordered to stop just before a switch to a siding at Vergennes so an equally long goods train could pass me. After the goods train passed me, I continued down to Lake George, where I again sat on the main line. This time to wait for a very long passenger train going north from South Hero over the Causeway. As the passenger train entered the Lake George siding, there was a derailment. In order for the operator to get his cars back onto the track, I had to pull my train forward, which worked out for me anway because my train was severely late. I gained clearance from dispatch and proceeded to North Bennington. I got in contact with the North Bennington dispatcher and he had me wait just outside the yard at the bridge at Grand Isle. When I finally entered the yard at North Bennington, my engine was ‘refueled’ and my caboose switched.

North Bennington to Rutland

When I was all prepped and ready to leave North Bennington, I asked dispatch up to where I was clear, received my orders, said goodbye to North Bennington dispatch, and pulled out of the yard. I was clear all the way out to Summit, where I was to wait again, as a passenger train behind me overtook me on the main line. After the passenger train pulled ahead of me, another goods train heading in the opposite direction passed me. Then I was cleared by dispatch to proceed as far as the switch just outside Johnsonville where the main line turns into double track.

The passenger train that had passed me was doing work at Saratoga, picking up a couple of cars to add to his train. I helped him speed up his work by switching the crossover track so that he could pull his cars from the siding at Saratoga over to his track and couple them to the end of his train. Once he was all set, he was cleared by dispatch to head to his final destination at Troy’s Union Station.

He left and I was given clearance into Saratoga, where I was told to wait. Dispatch cleared up the track ahead of me and I was given orders to cross over onto the east track on the main line. I would ride this all the way through Cohoes, Green Island, over the Green Island railroad bridge, and into the Rutland yard. I ended up almost overtaking the passenger train when I was ordered by Rutland dispatch to hold at the switch just after the Green Island bridge. With a bit of confusion, I was ordered onto track 8, which actually ended up being track 7 of the yard. Four hours on railroad time later, I arrived at my final destination. I dropped off the cards associated with each of my cars and headed out to enjoy the last few hours of daylight.