Is Delaware on board for more passenger rail?
That’s the question behind a number of projects and studies that aim to reduce traffic congestion, cut energy use, and improve air quality by boosting the opportunities for Delawareans to take the train rather than drive between cities in and out of state.
Both SEPTA and Amtrak report a long-term increase in the number of people taking the train, a trend officials attribute to factors including gas prices, parking fees, traffic congestion, and riders’ abilities to use their travel time working.
[caption id="attachment_21018" align="alignright" width="300" caption="The train station in Wilmington serves an increasing number of SEPTA and Amtrak riders."]
SEPTA, whose services connect Newark and Wilmington with Philadelphia, has sharply increased ridership within Delaware since its inception in 1989. In the FY2011, the service reported 1.1 million passenger trips, a 63 percent increase since it began, thanks in part to more frequent service and the addition of stops at Churchman’s Crossing and Newark.
Amtrak reported 728,413 riders using Wilmington and Newark stations along the busy Northeast Corridor in the year to Sept. 30, up 3 percent from the previous year.
This local ridership increase mirrors national and regional trends. Nationally, Amtrak said it carried a record 30.2 million passengers in the 2011 fiscal year, up 5 percent from the previous year and a 44 percent increase since FY2000. Ridership on the northeast regional service grew 5.1 percent. The railroad attributed the increases to high gas prices and growing business travel on its Acela trains.
In Delaware, parking lots are bulging at some stations, suggesting that more drivers see the train as a convenient and comfortable alternative to battling with traffic on the state’s congested highways.
Although train fares, particularly on Amtrak, are likely to exceed gasoline costs, there are signs that people are increasingly willing to pay more if it means not having to find and pay for parking at their destination, while also avoiding traffic delays. These are the people who say the time is right for improving existing rail service and perhaps even adding to it.
“At certain times of day, I-95 just isn’t a fun place to drive,” said David Gula, a senior transportation planner at the Wilmington Area Planning Council (WILMAPCO), a regional transportation planning agency for New Castle County, Del. and Cecil County, Md.
Traffic congestion is just one of the factors underlying several current projects or proposals to improve passenger rail in Delaware.
Gula cited a study focused on the possibility of reopening Newport’s rail station; and the ongoing improvements to the station at Newark, which will ease congestion between passenger and freight trains and double passenger capacity; he also referred to a study on needed improvements at Claymont’s rail station, where the parking lot is routinely full, a passenger tunnel under the tracks floods during heavy rains, and disabled access is poor.
At Newport, whose station closed in the 1970s, WILMAPCO is working with town officials on a study of how many people would use a reopened station along the Amtrak line. It’s not immediately clear whether there would be enough train riders to support a new station; but until the data is in, officials at state and municipal levels are backing the idea
“The state is supportive of developments that support transit,” Gula said.
Also on the list of improvements is a $50 million project to lay a third track over approximately 1.5 miles between Newport and Wilmington, easing a bottleneck that currently prevents more Septa trains from running to Newark. Completion in late 2014 or early 2015 will allow the agency to run twice as many trains to Newark as it does currently.
That project ran into a possible delay when DelDOT was sued by a contractor which asked Chancery Court to stop the agency awarding the contract to a rival. But state officials said on Dec. 19 that they expect to prevail in court, and the work should resume without any “meaningful delays”. A hearing is scheduled for Jan. 4.
The most ambitious proposal currently on the table is to restart passenger service on a Delmarva Peninsula line where passenger trains last ran in 1961, and which is now used only by freight trains. If this proposed service becomes a reality, it would link Georgetown, Dover and Middletown with the main Amtrak line at Newark.
The result would be relieved congestion in the corridor that links residential development in central and southern Delaware with employment centers in the north of the state, according to Parsons Brinckerhoff, a construction consultant that is conducting a feasibility study.
Passenger trains on the line would, in theory, remove some of the 51,000 cars a day that use Route 1 in the vicinity of Route 9, and the 15,000 cars a day that drive Route 13 north of Dover, according to data from the Delaware Department of Transportation.
The Delmarva line represents “significant under-utilized transportation capacity” since it’s used by only four to six Norfolk Southern freight trains a day, and could accommodate passenger service with a “reasonable level of infrastructure improvements,” according to an outline of the study, whose $900,000 cost is being split by Delaware and the federal government, along with $45,000 from Maryland.
The study also takes into account the viability of running passenger service as far south as Berlin/Ocean City, MD to serve residential and beach resort markets.
The “driving” factors in the push for more passenger rail in Delaware
Senator Tom Carper and DelDOT Secretary Shailen Bhatt discuss factors involved in expanding rail service.
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In 2001-05, the Delaware Transit Corp., a division of the state transportation department, looked into starting a commuter service on the Delmarva line and concluded there wouldn’t be enough riders to support it. The current study, by contrast, is considering limited-stop intercity service with just one or two roundtrips a day, requiring lower capital and operating costs than a commuter service.
But even the intercity model would require subsidy, said Ken Potts, Director of Development for the DTC. Public transit needs government support, he argued, citing the $9 million a year that Delaware pays to Septa and Amtrak for regional rail service.
“We believe that it’s an investment the state will support,” he said.
Potts added that a new service, likely run by Amtrak, would be modeled on the passenger railroad’s other services that run successfully between urban and rural areas, such as The Vermonter between Vermont and Washington DC.
He argued that increased ridership on existing rail services suggests the time is right to revive passenger service on the Delmarva Peninsula. “The market is robust for passenger rail locally and nationally,” he said.
Such a service would be useful for retirees in Sussex County who could use the train to connect with main-line north-south services at Newark, or for parents paying weekend visits to vacationing families on the Delaware or Maryland shores, Potts said.
U.S. Senator Tom Carper, who has backed rail as a Senator and former state Governor, said rail use helps to ease congestion and improve air quality.
“Encouraging alternative means of transportation that help all Delawareans save money on gas, save time by reducing traffic, and live healthier lives by curbing air pollution, has long been one of my top priorities,” Carper said in a statement.
But he played down the chances of passenger rail in southern Delaware becoming a reality because he said there aren’t enough people in that part of the state to make it viable.
“For passenger rail, you need a lot of population density, otherwise you run trains that are largely empty,” Carper said.
While northern Delaware has the population density to support passenger rail, there would be insufficient demand for it in areas like Sussex County, he said.
“That’s something that will have to wait for another day,” he said in an interview with DFM News.
But DelDOT Secretary Shailen Bhatt, speaking at an update for the $85 million I-95/Route 1 interchange project near Christiana Mall, said downstate rail could ease congestion on Route 1, especially in the summer, and could be useful for commuters. “It’s something that we want to look at,” he said.
The idea of providing rail service close to beach resorts should be popular given the notorious summer traffic jams on the peninsula, argued Thomas Posatko, president of the Delmarva Rail Passenger Association, a citizens’ group dedicated to improving local rail service.
“People feel that we ought to have rail service down to the beach,” he said.
Posatko said he wasn’t convinced by environmental arguments for rail but said its convenience and safety relative to the automobile seems to be increasingly appealing to people.
And after being ignored or even opposed by policymakers in the 1980s and ‘90s, officials are now taking another look at whether rail should become a more important part of transportation infrastructure.
“It does seem that there is more interest now in trying to take the rail component of transportation more seriously,” Posatko said. “You can’t pave your way out of congestion, and people are beginning to realize that.”