Hacker News Reader

Comment by chungleong | Hacker News Reader

I normally live in Europe. At the moment I'm in Baltimore. The city's downtown area (around the inner harbor) is perfectly walkable. Nearby DC is also perfectly walkable, while driving is a nightmare. These two cities should be well connected by rail but they're not. People would drive to a parking lot beside a metro station and get into the city that way.

Two cities can only be linked effectively by rail when there aren't stops between them. That's impossible in America, where suburban areas are the political battlegrounds while cities are single-party fiefdoms.

View on HN

Washington-Baltimore is actually a very good connection by rail--you'll have a train at least once an hour--except that the station for Baltimore is in the wrong location. Baltimore Penn Station is located far to the north of the city, well outside the Inner Harbor that's going to be the center of tourism and visitors.

What happened is that, historically, Baltimore-Washington was mainly served by the B&O, whose Baltimore station would have been right next to Inner Harbor (Camden Yards is essentially built on old railroad property). When passenger service was consolidated into Amtrak, the Northeast Corridor instead chose to use Pennsylvania Railroad trackage instead of B&O from DC to NYC, and the freight trackage in the corridor consolidated onto the B&O tracks instead. The resulting residual commuter rail line has the standard commuter rail/freight rail politics going on that limits the number of trains that can transit the route.

Neither the metro or the lightrail reaches Penn. I don't know who designed the routes. Better connections between DC and BWI would better link the cities but they can't even maintain a bus line. Meanwhile, there's a billion dollar for the Silver line...

You’re wrong about the Baltimore light rail not reaching Penn Station. See the Camden Yards - Penn Station light rail line, it runs a few times/hour. https://www.mta.maryland.gov/schedule

Half a mile walk is not what I'd calling reaching. You can't even see Penn from the light-rail stop.

Sounds like you're referring to the University of Baltimore/MICA light rail stop[0], where you have to get off if heading south or heading north but not on the Penn line, to catch the 'Penn Station - Camden Yards' line. I mean, it's in the name of the light rail line...it lets you off right at the station[1].

[0] https://www.google.com/maps/place/University+of+Baltimore+-+...

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Penn+Station/@39.3071436,-...

Oh, my bad. I don't know how I managed to live a year in the city and not know about the second line. I've only ridden the BWI/Hunt Valley trains.

The real criticism of the light rail is that there's really _only_ one line, north to south. And the (part subway) metro train serves a similar route, NW to east side of downtown.[0]

99% of all the light rail "lines" ride the same track. The Penn-Camden "line" veers off the main tracks right at that Mt Royal stop (MICA/UB), and only goes to Penn, then back to the main line at Mt Royal, then headed to Camden Yards. It's probably the least common "line" to see.

[0] http://www.urbanrail.net/am/balt/baltimore.htm

> Washington-Baltimore is actually a very good connection by rail--you'll have a train at least once an hour

That's really not a lot, especially between major cities.

For comparison, in the UK there are around 8 trains per hour during peak times between London and Cambridge (around twice the distance of DC-Baltimore). I'd imagine there are cities that have even more per hour in central Europe.

Although according to Google Washington DC has 700,000 people and Baltimore 600,000. Probably a more realistic comparison would be Bristol and Southampton/Portsmouth where there is realistically 1 train an hour (technically 2, but the second one has a change and runs 8 minutes after the first one).

Comparing trains from London is not really fair because virtually every train in the south ends up in London eventually. Somewhat tragically, I once tried to take a train from Watford to visit Hatfield House, some 14 miles away. I think it took me 3 hours getting in and out of London :-)

>Washington DC has 700,000 people and Baltimore 600,000

You really have to look at the metro population.

London has a population of over 8 million and 14 million for the metro population. I was trying to pick something that had even close to a similar population density of of Washington Baltimore in the UK. Comparing to London is like comparing to NYC.

> Although according to Google Washington DC has 700,000 people and Baltimore 600,000. Probably a more realistic comparison would be Bristol and Southampton/Portsmouth where there is realistically 1 train an hour (technically 2, but the second one has a change and runs 8 minutes after the first one).

OTOH between Macon (pop 34000) and Lyon (pop 500000) there is up to 4 trains / hour at commute times (1 an hour otherwise), over a slightly longer distance.

that's a story and a half you could tell. No buses? And I wonder why blablacar hasn't taken off in the UK

Part of the problem with starting that here is that many railroads have to just stop roads dead for 5-10 minutes every time they go by. Even if it's a fast train and it's 2-4 minutes, that would cause a crazy traffic increase here, because you've just lost between 27 and 53% of your roads' capacity.

In a high traffic area, you'd just use bridges and tunnels. Level crossings in central Europe are usually only on minor roads in smaller towns.

London and Cambridge are exceptional cities for political and economic reasons, so that’s not a good comparison.

Plus, the connection ends around 9pm every night.

I don't know this area at all, but apparently there is a commuter rail service (as mentioned) from Camden Yards, which still has a station, to Washington. But it takes an hour and a quarter, where the Amtrak train takes 45 minutes.

This is depressingly familiar situation in the UK too (not sure about the rest of Europe). Usually, it's not politics that prevent more useful connections being made, but a lack of investment to do the necessary small bits of engineering.

Tokyo-Kyoto runs every twenty minutes, Berlin-Hamburg every 30.

Baltimore resident who commutes by train here. There's actually a line that goes to DC right by inner harbor- the Camden Line as opposed to Penn Line at Penn station.

As a consequence trains from Baltimore run a bit more often then once an hour - though I don't take Camden Line (It's for losers) so I don't know what the overlap is exactly.

> I don't take Camden Line (It's for losers)

Why is this? Full of tourists?

Oh, who knows. I've always thought that because the line is shared with freight rail - CSX - and it seems like it gets delayed more.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com