My thoughts on New York's lnterborough Express as Light Rail
My assessment of New York's newest rail scheme.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re probably familiar with the fact that New York — a big city famous for not building new rail lines — is planning to do just that with the new rail line called the IBX.
The project is a new orbital rail service that will take over tracks, which currently for the most part are only lightly used by freight trains. The line will run from the Brooklyn Army Terminal to Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, making lots of stops and enabling connections to various subway lines. The project was, unsurprisingly, popular from the start, not only because a circular route in the outer boroughs would obviously be useful (there are many well-used bus routes that follow similar but less well connect routes) but also because the existing corridor should make it rather easy to construct, and the corridor runs near a number of major destinations and underserved communities.
Previously, the MTA had been looking at three different technologies for potentially creating a transit service — bus rapid transit, light rail, and “commuter rail”, but recently announced that it had chosen light rail as the preferred technology.
Diving immediately into the report discussing why the technology was chosen, I must say there are some eyebrow-raising claims, the most notable of which is probably that light rail would actually be faster than “commuter rail”. Other comments made in the report make slightly more sense, such as the potential for simplified construction with light rail, but these assumptions are pretty clearly centred on a New York worldview where somehow light rail would be built in accordance with global best practice, but mainline rail wouldn’t be. This is even as the MTA is seemingly simultaneously admitting that its approach to “commuter rail” from network planning to the actual trains themselves is out of line with what other global cities would do. But of course, I’m not sure what anyone would expect when they refer to a line that would not touch a central business district and would operate frequently all day as commuter rail.
It’s things like this that feel like sandbagging to me — more or less having a decided solution and working backwards, or taking a report and trying to push it a certain way. Saying things like “Light rail is faster!” even when there is no reasonable argument that that should be the case, and in fact, as I’ve talked about in previous content, the low door density of light rail likely makes it slower on high demand routes. That being said, it sort of makes sense that the MTA would want to build a project like this and come to these conclusions — it seems that they view light rail as a quick win-type of project, which I’m sure would be seen favourably in an organization that hasn’t managed to get a lot of major projects (i.e. new rail lines) built.
As it turns out, I’m actually doing a video on the topic of orbital light rail lines in Europe, which often do pop up as exemplar quick-win inexpensive projects. The video won’t actually mention New York because I think that may get people up in arms, but it’s certainly there if you read between the lines. A point I bring up in the video that I think it’s worth reiterating here is that most of the European cities with orbital light rail schemes already have other orbital rail lines.
This brings me to my take, which depends quite heavily on the fact that New York doesn’t have a clear path to another orbital rail line anytime soon: I believe light rail is a mistake for the service and I’ll try to sum it up pretty quickly.
For the type of suburban connectivity-dependent service that the IBX and supporters seemingly want, speed, capacity, and frequency all are very important. Unfortunately, light rail and low-floor light rail in particular limit your top speed, increase the cost of providing a convenient frequent service — which in the case of the IBX would go down to every 10-minutes or worse off-peak, and to the extent that infrastructure is not designed for light rail also limits capacity. One other issue worth mentioning is that station connections are not great, this is less of an issue thanks to the ease of using the OMNY card but, still it limits the potential of this excellent route.
Now, I’ve actually seen at least one argument that the limited frequency and speed of the IBX is a feature because it means light rail will be a suitable mode — this is the type of negative circular thinking that got me into the transit space in the first place. Worse service is not a feature!
And the bad thing is, as with most disused rail corridors, it’s not like the IBX will be ripped out in the future if it’s determined that a higher capacity mode is needed. New York is basically giving up a great chance to get a high-capacity orbital line simply, because it seems like getting something built that challenges the status quo the least and can be built quickly is the top priority.
By comparison, the London Overground — which the MTA surely would’ve brought up in their studies — is highly used and uses mainline style trains. The same is true with Moscow and its central (which, oddly, isn’t central) circle line. Both of these are actually very similar because they use corridors that are also used by freight. And both of these projects were built quite quickly and inexpensively — satisfying the desire in New York but not the assumptions the MTA has made.
My belief is that this corridor, like many suburban corridors, would be very well suited to an automated metro solution — even one that is lighter than traditional subway lines in New York.
For one you wouldn’t be giving up a great corridor for a rather low capacity service, automated metro would be well-suited for the capacity demands of the corridor. Perhaps more importantly, automated metro would have lower operating costs relative to service, which is clearly critical in making the project successful. Light rail would simply be less attractive to operate frequently all-day and late into the night, and even more so in New York, where the cost of operation is unusually high.
Of course, there’s also the matter of speed. Automated metro could likely have a slightly higher top speed, but the need for total grade separation would likely only make it faster — which seems like a worthy goal for a project that literally has express in the name! If you want to think really big, the project could have passing loops at minor stations and extra platforms at major ones. Given the high frequency, it seems feasible that such a system would be capable of operating both a local AND express service every 5 minutes.
The extra tracks would also obviously be helpful for 24-hour service where New York could look to Copenhagen for inspiration. Even if such a project cost twice as much — which it need not if you look at international exemplars, I’m fairly confident the benefit would be more than double in the long term. And of course, a metro solution has many of the same infrastructure, reuse, and flexibility benefits of light rail. At the same time, I think it would be a much more reasonable use of what is legitimately a huge opportunity! Frequency and speed matter a lot, and New York should really know that!
Basically, the TLDR is that New York is way behind on things other cities have done (unsurprisingly, and automated systems weren’t even one of the preferred options — in 2022!), and looks poised to throw away an excellent corridor on a service that will be substantially less than it could have been.
Now that you have my take, I want to end this piece in a self-reflective way. If I see the project as such a missed opportunity, why am I not screaming it from the rooftops? Well, I believe that outsiders will always take a different view to locals on the issue of making perfect is the enemy of the good. It’s easy to sit in the a city on the other side of the world and talk about the optimal way to do things when you don’t live with the status quo, and you’re also unlikely to live with the impacts of the project — for better or for worse. if this project was in Toronto, I probably would make a lot of noise, but I understand the perspective of wanting to just get something done.
I've not read any ridership predictions for the IBX (admittedly I haven't read any full length MTA report), nor populations served, parallel bus route ridership etc. As a result, I too believe that the choice of LRT is political rather than based on data and modelling.
One thing that London Overground learnt is that ridership was a lot more than predicted, due to frequent service, cleaning up the stations & platforms, and including the lines on the Tube Map. The result has been lengthening of trains and platforms, & some increase of service. Moreover, it's spawned other Overground lines, providing a full orbital network around London, plus some radial lines, almost all based on existing freight lines.
In a different approach, Paris has built orbital tram lines outside the gates of the city - I've not seen ridership figures for them, but the fact that Paris keeps building & extending these lines tells me that they are well used.
However, like anything NYC MTA, it all depends on execution. A reliable and minimum 10 minute service would be better than many of its subway lines, so should attract passengers. The roughly parallel but inner G subway line crosses many lines heading into Manhattan, but this line has anemic ridership. So in my mind, this needs to be investigated to ensure that similar low ridership conditions do not exist on the IBX corridor.
Correct as far as you go. It appears that someone at the MTA wants to join the Light Rail trend mentioned in your Orbital Light Rail video.
Basically, the LRV proposal lacks sufficient capacity and is crippled by the street-running section.
I will be commenting to the MTA on the IBX LRV proposal soon, and posting comments to my Substack page. I put a comment here when that is posted.