Train Talk: Commuters, Reverse and Otherwise

Question: what proportion of Metro-North riders commute into Grand Central Terminal?
Answer: 51%. The rest are either reverse commuters from Manhattan to the northern suburbs, non-peak hour travellers, or those going between intermediate stations. This surprising (to me, at least) information is from the February 2007 issue of Mileposts, the newsletter that appears on the seats of Metro-North trains. Another statistic from the same issue: ridership in 2006 increased by 3.2% to 76.8 million.

Views from Peekskill Station

Top: Peekskill Bay with Bear Mountain and Popolopen Torne on a chilly Saturday afternoon (February 17, 2007; from south-bound platform).
Bottom: New York train departing Peekskill (locomotive is pushing).

When Groundwater Breaks Free

Driving home from the EagleFest site at the mouth of the Croton River last Sunday, I stopped along Route 129 and walked down into the Croton Gorge to take these pictures in the road cut. The bottom picture shows the scene at the EagleFest. You'll have to trust me when I tell you that there was a lone bald eagle in the trees on the far shore. Remember, click on the images to see a larger view.

Time for Old Technology

In a commentary in today's Financial Times, Guillaume Pepy, CEO of SNCF, the French railways, says, "What is at stake here is the sustainable development of Europe." He is referring to the need for continued progress toward the creation of a unified, high-speed passenger rail network across the continent. Here in the US, we are decades behind but the challenge is similar. Unfortunately, we seem committed to the unsustainable combination of individual transportation and suburban sprawl. Techno-fixes like hybrid- or hydrogen-powered cars are not the answer. We need to return to the proven technologies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries when widespread, efficient light rail (interurban) and heavy (commuter) rail systems were built in most American cities and surrounding regions. See Fred Jandt's blog in Mass Transit magazine for a good discussion of how President Bush misses the point (no surprise there) about the importance of sustaining and expanding existing mass transit systems.

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