Announcing the Annual Meeting of the Commuter Rail Subcommittee

2023 Annual Meeting of TRB's Commuter Rail Subcommittee

Tuesday, January 10, 2023. 15:45 - 17:30
Mint Room (M4), Marriott Marquis Hotel,

Washington DC. 

All are Welcome!  

Be prepared to discuss how the commuter railroad you know best is responding to the new "Work from Home" travel market. 

Click Here for Preliminary Agenda

Concerning the Post-2020 Commuter Railway

The public health crisis of 2020 and beyond had dramatic effects on our society and culture.

Some aspects of our collective culture will be changed forever.  One public service that may never be the same is the commuter railways that have carried office workers from their suburban homes to their downtown workplaces for more than century.  

Responding to the social distancing imperatives required by public health concerns, office workers and their employers exploited the latest commerically available tools for telecommunication to establish a new mode of "Working From Home".  WFH turned out to be big success that will likely endure long after the other painful memories of the pandemic eventually fade.  

Work from Home will likely change urban travel forever with dramatic effects on peak demand for commuter rail transit service to the urban core.   Click here for more thoughts on this transformative change.  

Innovative Service Planning Approaches for Urban Rail Transit Systems

 I’ll be presiding over an online poster session at the 100^th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board on Thursday, Jan 28: 2:30 PM  - 4:00 PM (Session 1402)

 Poster Presentations will cover a myriad of topics:

 Service Optimization of Urban Rail Transit Line with Short-turn and Express/ Local Services

Tao Feng, Qiyuan Peng, Dian Wang, Siyu Tao of Southwest Jiaotong University

 

Assessing the Bus Bridging Effectiveness on the Operational Resilience of the Subway Service in Toronto

Alaa Itani andAmer Shalaby of University of Toronto

 

Research on Critical Stations Identification for Operation of Urban Rail Transit Network

Jinyi Chen and Tiezhu Li of Southeast University and Yong Li and Wei Zheng of Nanjing Subway Operation Co.LTD

 

Ridership and human mobility of metro system under the typhoon weather event: A case study in Fuzhou, China

Yuchen Lin, Shixiong Jiang, Dewang Chen, of Fuzhou University

 

Multi-Objective Optimization for Skip-Stop Strategy Based on Smartcard Data Considering Total Travel Time and Equity

Sang-Wook Han, Eun Hak Lee, Dong-Kyu Kim of Seoul National University

 

A Method to Minimize Transfer Waiting Time on Urban Rail Trip Considering Rail Stopping Time Extension

Jumei Zhu, Xiucheng Guo, Junlan Chen, and Shuang Li of Southeast University

 

Network Design and Line Planning on Multi-modal Rail Transit Network Within Metropolitan Area

Xinmei Chen, Qiyuan Peng, and Siyu Tao of Southwest Jiaotong University

Virginie Lurkin, Technische Universiteit, Eindhoven

 

Stop-skipping Strategy Based on Stop-to-stop Dependent Demand in Urban Subway Lines

Mohammadjavad Javadinasr, Amir Bahador Parsa, and Abolfazl Mohammadian of University of Illinois, Chicago.   Yousef Shafahi, Sharif University of Technology

 

Skip-stop Train Service Stop Scheme In Urban Rail Transit Based On Passengers' Reverse Transfer

Sijia Zhang, Jiannan Mao, Yuting Chen, Hao Huang, and Lan Liu of Southwest Jiaotong University

Towards the Autonomous LRV

This Friday January 15, 2021 at 10:00 am EST  I'll be presenting the preliminary findings of research on the state of the industry and prospects for self-driving autonomous light rail vehicles.

You can join the presentation online at the 100th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board: Standing Committee on Urban Rail Transit Systems

Click here to preview the presentation

1st Virtual Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board

 The TRB 100th Annual Meeting will be conducted as a virtual event over a series of dates throughout January 2021

The decision to go virtual was made out of concern for the health and safety of all meeting attendees, in light of the  coronavirus disease (COVID-19). 

The Commuter Rail Subcommittee Meeting will be held Thursday January 14, 2021 | 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm (EST) 

For more details on the Commuter Rail Subcommittee meeting:  CLICK HERE

CNAM Conférences Ferroviaires Américain - 2020 SYLLABUS

The FEA127 seminar will meet ONLINE five times during the period 

13 May 2020 to 25 May 2020

Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers
MS TEAMS 
61 Rue du Landy | 93210 SAINT DENIS France

Anticipated topics with links to the notes and readings are listed below: 

1. Wednesday 13 May 2020 1400
Introduction to US Freight and Passenger Railroading
Click here for reading
Click Here for Recent Rail Freight Trends
Clink Here for US Rail Freight and the COVID Virus

2. Friday 15 May 2020 1400

Transport Capacity, Terminal Design and Placemaking 

Click here for reading on capacity
Click here for reading on terminals

3. Monday 18 May 2020 1400

Intermodal Freight and Containers

Click here for reading

Transit Service Reliability, 

Click here for reading on reliability

Click here for reading secondary reading on reliability

4. Wednesday 20 May 2020 1400

Transportation and Climate Change

Click here for reading
Sustainable Transport Networks
Click here for reading

5. Monday 25 May 2019 1400

US Rail Transport for Persons with Disabilities
Click here for reading on Light Rail accessibility
Click here for reading on Commuter Rail Accessibility 

The US Commuter Rail Renaissance: A 30 Year Progress Report

David O. Nelson, Jacobs Engineering Group, Boston Massachusetts

Kay O’Neil, Keolis Commuter Service, Boston, Massachusetts

To be presented at the 98th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board
January 14, 2019 | 8:00 am | Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Washington DC

In 1989 the first new US commuter railroad in living memory opened for business in South Florida running over a 41-mile route between Miami and Boca Raton. “Tri-Rail” quickly expanded to result in a 71-mile-long service that spanned three counties.  Tri-Rail soon had a long string of imitators among other

Sun Belt and western cities wrestling with highway congestion and a paucity of affordable fixed guideway transit options. New commuter rail services were started in other cities with no previous history of commuter rail service. Thirty years later commuter rail service is now offered in 14 new US jurisdictions. Most had no previous experience with commuter service.

The number of US commuter railroads has more than doubled in the last 30 years and the legacy systems have enjoyed a 50% growth in ridership.  This paper reviews this remarkable success story, tracing the “New Start” commuter rail phenomena while also reporting how the nine “Legacy” systems that were operating in 1988 have fared over the last 30 years. The paper uses the most recently published (2016) federally collected data to compare the New Start services with the older, and generally larger, legacy systems.

1987 also marked the US’ first competitively procured commuter rail service in Boston, soon followed by Miami in 1988. Today, 14 US commuter railroads are operated under the auspices of a competitively tendered procurement.  Eleven other railroads are “owner-operated” either by employees of the public agency sponsoring the service or by the private owner (freight railway) of the subject railway under the auspices of a negotiated service contract.  This paper considers how this management innovation has worked out by comparing the economic performance of the “competitive contract” services with the “owner-operators”.

Click Here for Full Paper

Click Here for Summary Power Point