Everyone agrees but insiders who know about the current state of the transit organizations consider this suggestion so absurd as to write an April Fools post[1] about it.
1: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/04/01/new-york-area-...
The difficulty comes down to regional politics. The regional rail systems (LIRR, Metro-North and NJTR) were set up to give those on Long Island, upstate/in Connecticut and in New Jersey, respectively, a dedicated regional transit authority. A politician attempting to unify operations would need to convince those voters should risk giving up their regional transit control.
Amtrak has owned and operated the HRT (tunnels built in 1905) since 1976 when it took over the NEC from the failing Penn lines in the early 70's. It's the busiest segment of track (Interlock-A) in the world and out of the busiest train station in the world (NYP).
You could reduce demand on the existing tunnels by building ARC.
Oddly, the GAO effort to figure out why infrastructure costs so much isn't in the budget, last time I checked: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/24/15681560/g...
Effectively the PATH & 4/5 train already do this with a transfer at Fulton Street. And while unifying the system may look good on paper, I'd hate for the PATH to descend to the MTA's low standards of reliability and cleanliness. Better part of the system work well than all of it work poorly.
How would this address the principal problem identified in the article, the rising cost per mile of building new track?
My point in this instance is that even at the inflated construction costs you could still accomplish a lot more with better planning and linking these systems up. A tunnel and new stops in manhatten connecting them is going to accomplish a lot more for the same price as capping a huge rail yard. Building new tunnels that terminate three separate systems in different locations. And building a new Penn station.
It’s a nightmare in my city just between neighboring counties. Only 2 counties were included in the initial build out of public trains and not any significant expansion since. The other counties vehemently reject any such proposals. One county is going through expansion talks again but the train will only go one stop to their bus hub. I bet they will end up rejecting all of it.
NIMBYism isn’t very strong in my city but it certainly is regarding public transport, trains especially.
The general exceptions to this rule are Kansas City and Washington, DC, where the workplace loci are truly distributed among multiple jurisdictions so that no one state is dominant. In DC, the standard subway (WMATA) runs across all three jurisdictions, although there is some amount of political football over funding. The commuter rail systems are not integrated, but that is largely due to limited capacity over the Long Bridge. (MARC, the Maryland system, is participating in the Long Bridge replacement project in part because they do intend to extend service to Alexandria once there's capacity to do so).
NYC is a truly special case because it's simply so massive. In terms of geographical boundaries, there are roughly three natural independent sheds: trans-Hudson, trans-East, and trans-Harlem rivers. Each of these sheds is massive enough to let each of the three commuter systems that focus on their own sheds to not have to coordinate. These sheds also happen to largely coincide with different states: NJ is trans-Hudson, NY (or, rather, Long Island) is trans-East, and CT (as well as parts of NY) is trans-Harlem.
DC's MetroRail system has a very large share of rides that begin in one jurisdiction and end in another, so it makes a lot of sense for it all to be managed centrally by WMATA. But I suspect there aren't a lot of commuter train rides that begin in Connecticut and end in Suffolk County (or that start in Baltimore and end in Prince William County). Given that, just how would a MetroNorth/LIRR merger help riders?
Yes, AMTRAK [0]
[0] https://history.amtrak.com/amtraks-history/historic-timeline
Amtrak is great for vacations or other travel but I don’t thinks its use case is daily commuters. At least it’s not the use case for the majority of the US.
You're thinking of the South Shore Line [0], which is entirely independent of Metra [1] and the RTA.
> and Southern Wisconsin
Metra has just one stop on one line in Wisconsin (Kenosha on the Union Pacific North line).
If you are standing in downtown Chicago, you can jump onto a train and conveniently go to O'Hare International (Blue Line CTA), Midway International (Orange Line CTA), Milwaukee International (Amtrak), and South Bend Regional (South Shore). South Bend has daily non-stops to NYC so I'm not sure why it's called a regional airport, but, well, there you go.
Furthermore, I'm not sure what good a Union Station to McCormick Place link would do. Union Station is already within a 20 minute walk to every single CTA/Metra/SS line. Furthermore no one really lives/works near McCormick Place. It's primarily a convention center.
Although it really sucks when someone misses the correct train and you have to drive to Winthrop Harbor to pick them up.
Instead you get this absurd patchwork of expensive stand alone projects, ARC, the huge building over of of a cap on the LIRR Hudson railyards which required maybe a billion in spending. Talks about a new Penn Station. Etc.
As a plus you reduce the demand on the existing Penn tunnels used by Amtrak.
If this had all be planned as one system the money already spent or being proposed to be spent on these disparate/disconnected things could provide do wonders.