COMMUNITY Voice ~ Commuter Rail

Dear Maitland Neighbors,

The following email was originally sent to our Maitland City Mayor and Council on 04-10-2007. I am grateful that our re-elected Councilman Jeff Flowers recognized the value of forwarding this on to me this morning.

We must hear ALL the voices in our community !

Again, I encourage you to attend City Council Meetings every other Monday evening at 7P.M., but if unable to attend I urge you to listen to the recording of the minutes by clicking on the following link: http://www.itsmymaitland.com/meeting_recordings.aspx

Ann Lanier, 245 W. George Ave., (407) 622-1165, email: JustAskAnn@aol.com

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I attended last night's council meeting (04-09-2007) and would like to make some additional comments relating to commuter rail. The idea of crafting an agreement with Orange County that is acceptable to the Maitland Council and that limits the cost of closing a station after seven years is a good one, though it is disappointing to me to see so much concern about a potential failure of the project and the resulting impact on the City of Maitland. Even though the process of negotiating for a Maitland station is obviously frustrating for all concerned, I urge each of you to hang in there and push to get closure on this issue.

One of the problems I see with this effort is letting lawyers hammer out the agreement. Drafting an agreement should be the domain of city and county administrative managers, perhaps the transportation department. Then lawyers should dot the i's and cross the t's. Having attorneys draft a contract sets a high potential for aggravation, delays and unnecessary red tape. Councilman Miller pointed out that the Tri-Rail contract was only five pages long but the Central Florida Commuter Rail contract length was 16 pages. It's a good bet that the Tri-Rail contract was not written by lawyers.

While I hear much concern about costs relating to closing the station in seven years, I have heard nothing about the potential to generate revenues by using the station as retail space or of selling it if it be deemed desirable to close the station. Such revenue could be used to cover the cost of a necessary station closing.

I would also like to address some mis-information a citizen presented last night who obviously was against commuter rail.

1. He implied commuter trains may run late because Amtrak runs late and that is caused by the CSX having more freight business than they can handle. He also indicated commuter trains may run late because railroads restrict speed during heat waves due to the potential of rail buckling caused by heat expansion. The truth is about 10 freight trains will be rerouted and for 18 hours a day the right-of-way will be the exclusive domain of commuter trains and 4 Amtrak trains. So, freight trains will not be a cause for delays as he implies. It is true CSX has placed speed restrictions on trains during heat waves. What our fellow citizen failed to say was that the restriction reduced speed from the normal 79 MPH to 60 MPH. I don't think commuter trains will be scheduled faster than 60 MPH in congested areas such as south of Sanford.

2. He indicated there is no way 50 or more trains can operate daily on single track through Maitland. Doing the math proves him incorrect. Currently, there are approximately two miles of single track running through Maitland. At an average speed of 30 MPH, a commuter train could clear two miles in 4 minutes. Assume a two minute station stop in Maitland. Accordingly it would take a minimum of 6 minutes for a train to pass through Maitland including a station stop. Given these conditions a train could pass through Maitland every 10 ten minutes without the dispatcher having to be concerned with split-second timing. This would permit 6 trains per hour or 108 trains in an 18 hour period to operate on the existing single track route. My understanding is that commuter trains will operate on average every 45 minutes both north and south or less than 3 trains per hour. (During rush hours, trains will run every 30 minutes; other periods one every hour). Three trains per hour times 18 hours equates to 52 trains per operating day against a theoretical track capacity during an 18 hour period in excess of 108 trains. NOTE: The Burlington Northern R.R. operates about 50 freight trains a day (many a mile long) on slow running mountainous winding track along the Columbia River east of Portland, OR on single track.


AND FINALLY....I have heard concerns about the frequency of commuter trains potentially delaying auto traffic at track street crossings. Doing the math would quell those fears. I understand about 10 freight trains will be re-routed during the periods when commuter trains will operate. My observation is that most of these trains are long averaging perhaps a 100 cars or about a mile long. Using an average speed of 30 MPH passing through Maitland, it would take a mile long train 2 minutes to pass over a given crossing---and 30 seconds for crossing gates coming down ahead of the trains arrival and going back up after the passing of the train. This means it takes about 2 1/2 minutes for a long freight train to pass over a given crossing or about 25 minutes of crossing time currently tied up with the passing of these 10 trains. This crossing time will be eliminated when these trains are rerouted. Bring on the commuter trains----A two car train running at 30 MPH would take about 4 seconds to pass a given crossing plus 30 seconds for crossing gates to go down and back up. This means 44 commuter trains could pass a given crossing using the same amount of total crossing time (25 minutes) that are currently used by 10 freight trains. So the projected 52 commuter trains per day would use slightly more crossing time than the 10 freight trains currently require.


And for those who want to be politically correct in their support for commuter trains and are worried about mankind making a difference in slowing global warming, trains are much more efficient fuel consumption wise than vehicular traffic and spew far fewer environmental pollutants.


If the general public knew facts such as these, I think you would see even more support for commuter train operation. I am hopeful this kind of information will be helpful to each of you and will help you support your argument for commuter rail operations in Maitland.


Skip Penney

955 Gamewell Ave