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As a former upstate NY resident, I'm all in favor of improved rail throughout the state, but as a current NYC resident I'm skeptical. My major question is: will adding better rail service to Western NY actually result in reduced development pressure in NYC?

The estimates in the first link you provided pegs travel time at 6 hours from NYC to Niagara Falls. Albany is already less than 3 hours on the Amtrak from NYC, but is still failing to "shed development pressure" from NYC. It's a chicken-and-egg problem: how do you convince jobs to move upstate without people, and how do you convince people to move upstate without jobs? Adding a train isn't enough unless it's quick enough to be a daily commute. There are other ways to entice residents but, at least in Albany's case, restrictive zoning and land use laws get in the way.

In the 1950s, the US federal government decided to go all-in on highways for medium and long distance travel. It would be costly to attempt to switch back to long distance rail now and would have a deep impact on American life. The reasons rail is so desirable in an urban context doesn't often translate to a medium or long distance route.

> even the most expensive improvements under consideration at $15 billion are cheaper than projects in NYC such as the Second Avenue subway (estimated completion at $17 billion for 8.5 miles!)

Sure, but in terms of how many people would be served by the 2nd Ave subway vs a long distance cross-state route (200k/day on the 2nd Ave subway vs 4m/year on the train line), it seems less absurd to invest that magnitude of funding on the subway.

Forget Western NY - there's no passenger rail service whatsoever on the entire West side of the Hudson River from NYC to Albany.

Newburgh, Kingston, and New Paltz are all ghosts of their former selves (there used to be a train, Newburgh was the first city in the US with electric lights, etc.) instead of thriving. And they really could thrive - not in a farmers-market-and-smorgasburg way, but in a Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill way. Except better, b/c they would have public transport between each other and a major metropolis.

Even closer than that, aside from Jersey City and Hoboken nothing on the west side of the Hudson has a direct rail connection. Extending the 7 line to Weehawken would help.

Yes, dispense with the pretty pictures, and things like an inane plan to turn the BQE into an autonomous self powered three lane Uber funded artisanal pod racing track or whatever that part said and build some fucking trains.

Not supertrains or hyperloop trains or complicated bullshit, straightforward European style trains that go from place to place fast and on time that we as a species figured out how to make work at least 20 years ago. Maybe 80 years ago.

Not fucking hanging trams across the Verazzano bridge. A train, on the ground or in a tunnel, with rails, and a place to sit, that goes fast, like every other fucking advanced country. An express train from the central business district to the airport. Seriously how fucking hard is this.

Here in NYC people actually like trains and will use them, they'll increase property values and bring more commerce and better quality of life. It's just an abject failure of our political system that we can't figure out how to build them in this region.

Instead, you should be like us Houstonians and spend a billion billion dollars moving main street 15 feet to the right and plop a 5mph tram on top of it. A tram that has to stop at red lights. A tram that gets stuck in intersections for 15+ minutes blocking other tram and car traffic. A tram that in downtown shares a lane with car traffic, which never causes accidents.

It boggles my mind that a city can spend billions of dollars building light rail, but not implement signal priority.

I feel similarly whenever I ride my bike in Mountain View. Awesome that we have bike lanes and all the lights here have sensors. Not so awesome that nobody realized bikes need to trip the sensors also.

Interestingly, Amsterdam has lots of street-level trams that share the road (without protective dividers in some of the busiest parts of the city) not just with cars but with millions of bicycles and pedestrians.

I'm kind of shocked that this would be allowed in Amsterdam, one of the most bike-friendly cities on the planet, considering how easy it is for bicycles to get their wheels stuck in the tram tracks while trying to cross them, and what a hazard trams are to bicycles and pedestrians.

The risk of injury is further aggravated by many of the pedestrians being drunk, stoned, or high on a large variety of substances easily available in the city, and many of them being tourists who are unfamiliar with the city and not used to expecting random trams popping out of the middle of nowhere while they're walking down an otherwise pedestrian- and bicycle-populated street.

Right now it takes between 100 and 120 minutes (scheduled) to go from Poughkeepsie to Grand Central Station or vice versa during peak times. For Riverhead to/from Penn that's 120 - 130. Add travel time on both ends to get door to door times, plus variability on the high side (very little chance of being early).

Most people consider that uncommutable though people do it.

Poughkeepsie is 73 track miles from GCS and Riverhead is 75.1 track miles to Penn Station. The average speeds that would be need to bring these areas into the reasonable commuting range are not Shinkansen-esque.

Even within the official borders of NYC there are some areas with quite difficult commutes to Manhattan. Consider the Bay Terrace neighborhood of Queens. From there to the NYSE stock exchange via public transportation google maps recommends the Q13 bus to the Bayside LIRR station, a Port Washington branch train to Penn Station, and then the number 2 subway. Total trip length: 130 minutes, monthly cost: $330.14. Or consider co-op city in the bronx, from there to the stock exchange google maps recommends a .9 mile walk to the 5 train and then an hour long ride on that subway. If walking that distance was a problem you could take the Bx30 and then the 2 subway for a total trip length of 106 minutes.

There are many many sensible transit projects. The big problem is that we have seemingly lost the ability to do transit projects in any sort of reasonable cost or time in the greater NYC area. I've posted some theories on why I think that is on here in the past, but the best thing you can do to get an overview of the issues involved is read this blog: https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/

I lived in Bay Terrace during my last three years of attending a high school on the Upper East Side. The bus-subway commute was brutal, about the same amount of time as the described LIRR-subway commute to the NYSE. Around the middle of my last year of high school I drove with my father to the Bayside LIRR station and took a series of subway lines to get from Penn Station to the Upper East Side. This was closer to an hour. Prior to 10th grade I lived in the middle of Brooklyn, and my one-fare subway commute to the same school was no more than an hour.

I remember reading that there were proposals to extend the present-day 7 line from Flushing to somewhere around Bayside in the late '60s or early '70s, but these were abandoned due to NIMBY-ism.

I actually have known of a few people who regularly commuted from Poughkeepsie (and a few other similar-distance places in Connecticut and New Jersey) to the city.

While Americans ponder about how rail is and can not be the solutions, the Chinese build train connections between megacities competing with aeroplanes in ground speed.

We're funny as a species. In projects like infrastructure, political constraints end up being much more powerful than physical or engineering ones.

I was in New York several months ago. I'm by no means familiar with the city, but came across a new development area Hudson Yards.

There was an initiative to leave alot of room for new subway. To start with, this is more NJ to NY. But still.

https://nec.amtrak.com/content/hudson-tunnel-project http://www.hudsontunnelproject.com/

From what I was reading, alot of the area or new buildings is elevated. To allow for new subway and rail lines.

http://fortune.com/2014/09/04/hudson-yards-city-on-stilts/

There are also new units in this area. But what is the price, and how afforadble will they be. There are new apartments coming up. But how many are bare essential without amenties. Where they push forward cheap living. Rather than a lavish experience.

http://www.hudsonyardsnewyork.com/live/

Even with all this I look at Amtrak, and I don't see it. I mean it feels upscale compared to public transit. By that I mean there are bathrooms, cafe, business class, more comfortable chairs etc. This is priced as premium service to me. So when I look at Amtrak it's great, but it's priced out of line for a daily commute option. Daily commute, high transit is a sardine can. Pack people in tight, ship em as quickly as you can from A -> B.

Some Quick Points One Way to Philadelphia

* Public Transit 8$ @ 1 -> 1.5 hours * Amtrak Peak Hours 10 Minutes 50$(NE Regional) 75$(Acela) * Amtrak Non Peak 10 Minutes 100$(NE Regional) 125$(Acela)

This is not New York, but I saw similar prices NYC to Phil.

Look at their Monthly pass about 700$. For me DE -> Philadelphia I pay 250$ a month in transit fares. If we look at either of those numbers my base house rent is 1k in DE. I add in the cheap public transit option. I can get a no frills apartment, 15 to 20 minutes from work, compared to a 2.5 hour ride. Add in the premium frills travel package. I can get something fancier closer to center city.

This is completely barring the constant budgetary issues with the public transit. That they're not making enough to support their employees. Risking constant strikes. It's cyclical. The cost of living goes up, the public transit employees need more money to live. Fares go up, and people are pushed further away.

https://www.amtrak.com/take-the-trains-across-america-with-u...

This is not dismissing public transit, or high speed rail. I would love to see it. But the infrastructure investment and end cost, is difficult to figure out. When I add in the cost for a monthly pass/frequent rider program. The time to travel, and everything else. Why not pay just a bit more and live near work.

I'm a little puzzled at everyone talking about commuters in New York taking Amtrak; surely almost nobody does. The LIRR and Metro-North seem like more obvious models (although they're quite different from the subway you're describing -- somewhere between that and Amtrak).

I'm not a New Yorker, so can't say. But I agree. With transit I constantly see Amtrak thrown in the mix. But as I was trying to say it doesn't add up.

Well I don't know where you live, but long-distance commuter trains are common enough in US cities (at least in the Northeast corridor) and they don't have people packed in like sardines.

The sardines remark was more for public transit. The long distance trains (Amtrak) are the opposite. Overly roomy for a daily commute.

What I'm saying is that commuter rail is yet a third category that you're ignoring.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_commuter...

Ah okay I usually hear to that referenced as public transit. Septa, on that list, is the public transit I was referring too. The trains on peak times are often packed.

No, nobody commutes on Amtrak.

People commute using: NYC Subway, PATH, NJ Transit, LIRR, MetroNorth.

LIRR and Metro-North are actually quite fantastic. You can now buy tickets on your phone; the trains run on time for the most part; and they're fast, comfortable and fun to ride.

The LIRR does not run the trains on time for the most part. The branch I take every day has an on time percentage of 94.2% for last month and six minutes late is considered on time. From personal experience, extremely long delays (30 minutes) or canceled trains are about a monthly occurrence.

Also, while you can now buy tickets on your phone, they still use a very labor intensive process of having conductors walk up and down the aisles and check tickets twice per trip. That contributes to the LIRR very high operating costs.

I'm more up on the situation in Boston than New York but I doubt the conductor checking the tickets is really that high up there on the list of reasons why both systems have financial troubles (at least except to the extent it enables fare evasion, which is apparently quite common).

This is a good post on the labor costs savings that could be realized with a proof of payment system: https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2015/07/26/why-...