RPA first proposed the Triboro Line in its third regional plan in 1996 as a means of transforming the city’s Manhattan-centric subway infrastructure into a system that better serves outer borough residents. The 24 mile proposed passenger rail line, traveling between Co-op City in the Bronx through Queens to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, would be built on existing elevated track and has the potential to serve over a hundred thousand riders daily, many of whom live in areas poorly served by the current transit system.
What stands in the way? One of the main concerns among Triboro critics is that the line would disrupt freight activity along a portion of the existing rail right of way. The 24 mile track is currently owned by multiple parties: Amtrak in the Bronx into Queens; CSX, the freight provider from northern Queens to Fresh Pond Junction; and LIRR to the south of Fresh Pond to 65th Street Yard in Brooklyn. As noted in our recent online brief on the Triboro, “These freight lines operate only one to two trains per day on average. In the future, as many as 21 trains, each roughly a mile in length, could run daily along segments of the Triboro, according to a study of the corridor conducted by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.”
Combining freight and passenger service along the same track is not new or novel. Just as we design and support multi-modal streets that combine personal auto use, public buses, goods movement, biking and walking, our rail lines can also accommodate multi-modal service as they already do in Chicago with Metra and in London on the North London Line of the Overground. All three of the region’s commuter railroads, Metro North, Long Island Rail Road and New Jersey Transit already manage a mix of both freight and passenger rail service over the same tracks.
In light of a 2008 collision in California involving freight and passenger rail, federal regulators have recently addressed the issues of mixing these uses on the same tracks. Far from segregating freight and passenger services, new regulations now mandate the introduction of new technologies - positive train control - to ensure that freight and passenger trains are able to safely interoperate together. The proposed Triboro line would comply with these federal regulations and work with regional freight operators to provide both reliable, timely and safe service.
Our research shows that the Triboro Line could meet a serious need for outer borough residents, especially lower-income households, who are less likely to own cars and rely heavily on mass transit for their daily commutes. Freight and passenger service can and should coexist over this right-of-way in order to improve regional mobility, divert more goods from our overcrowded roadways to rail and address the inequities in our transit system.
Photo: Triboro right of way in Brooklyn. Credit: Richard Barone