PATCO Speedline

PATCO Speedline
Route length:	22.86 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Power system :	700 V  =
Opening:	15th February 1969
Power supply:	lateral busbar coated from above
Legend 0.0 15th-16th & Locust Streets Walnut-Locust Broad Street Line 0.5 12th-13th & Locust Streets 1.0 9th-10th & Locust Streets 1.6 8th & Market Streets Market – Frankford Line 8th & Market Streets Broad Street Line to Fern Rock Franklin Square (closed 1979) Market – Frankford Line Benjamin Franklin Bridge , Delaware River , Pennsylvania - New Jersey   Border Shoehorn Yard depot 5.3 City Hall ( Camden ) River Line to Camden 6.0 Broadway ( Camden ) ( Walter Rand Transportation Center ) River Line to Trenton Conrail Vineland Secondary to Millville 9.2 Ferry Avenue 11.7 Collingswood 13.5 Westmont Atlantic City Line to Philadelphia 14.8 Haddonfield Cooper River 18.7 Woodcrest 20.0 Ashland 22.9 Lindenwold Atlantic City Line to Atlantic City PATCO Yard depot

The PATCO Speedline is a subway , the -line Philadelphia in the US -Bundesstaat Pennsylvania with its suburbs on the opposite side of the Delaware connects. It leads from the city center over the Benjamin Franklin Bridge over to Camden and then further on a formerly conventional railway line in a southeast direction to Lindenwold in the US state of New Jersey. It opened on February 15, 1969, is 14.2 miles (22.86 km) long and serves 13 stations.

Unlike most Philadelphia public transportation, the PATCO Speedline is not operated by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA), but rather by the Port Authority Transit Corporation (PATCO), a subsidiary of the Delaware River Port Authority (DRPA). There is no collective bargaining community.

PATCO was the first railroad in the United States to use Automatic Train Control (ATC) and sell their tickets only through machines.

Course and appearance

The route begins underground at 15th-16th & Locust Streets station on the southwestern edge of downtown Philadelphia and initially runs under Locust Street to the east. On the southeastern edge of downtown, it takes a tight curve northwards under 8th Street. About a kilometer further north, it swings back east and crosses the Delaware on the Benjamin Franklin Bridge . After two more underground stations in downtown Camden , the line finally reaches the surface and continues on a railway embankment through the suburbs in a south-easterly direction to the terminus Lindenwold in the town of the same name.

About halfway up the above-ground section, at Westmont , the Atlantic City Line from Philadelphia joins it from the north . This runs parallel to the PATCO Speedline to Lindenwold and beyond to Atlantic City . The intermediate stops on the shared section are only served by the PATCO Speedline; Only in Lindenwold is it possible to change trains between trains.

With the exception of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, the route runs underground for the first six kilometers, the rest of the route is above ground on a railway embankment. Some of the intermediate stations on this section are elevated. The entire length of the route has been developed without intersections .

The train stations in the inner cities of Philadelphia and Camden are very close to each other, while outside there are usually several kilometers in between. Five stations, including the two terminal stations and the important inner-city transfer stations, are handicapped accessible. All stations on the periphery are equipped with spacious park-and-ride facilities. The company workshop is in Lindenwold next to the terminus.

Emergence

The Camden and Atlantic Railroad

Today's PATCO Speedline consists of various, mostly much older sections of the route, some of which date back to the 19th century. The oldest section is the Camden and Atlantic Railroad. This was opened on July 1, 1854 and led from the city center in Camden via Lindenwold and Berlin to Atlantic City. The line went on in 1932 in the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines .

The Bridge Line

The second oldest section dates from 1926 and is on the Benjamin Franklin Bridge . From the beginning, this was equipped with two separate railroad tracks, which a few years later served as the basis for a high-speed train connection, which became known as the Delaware River Bridge Speed ​​Line or Bridge (Speed) Line for short. The line began at 8th & Market Streets subway station in Philadelphia and led over to what is now Broadway station in Camden and opened on June 7, 1936. The already planned section under Locust Street to station 15th-16th & Locust Streets could only be opened over a decade later, on October 2, 1952 , as a result of the Great Depression and World War II . Operationally, the Bridge Line was then integrated into Philadelphia's Broad Street Subway ; trains could run from 15th-16th & Locust Streets via 8th & Market Streets to both Camden and north to Girard and Olney.

Extension to the east

In 1960, under the direction of the Delaware River Port Authority (DRPA), which had previously been responsible for the construction and operation of the bridge, plans began for a high-speed rail network that would connect the suburbs in New Jersey with Philadelphia. The decision was ultimately made in favor of an extension of the Bridge Line, which was to be extended beyond Camden with a total of three branches. The line to Lindenwold was to be the first to be built because the highest number of passengers was to be expected there. Construction on the $ 94 million project began in 1964.

To this end, a rail connection to the Camden and Atlantic Railroad was initially built from Broadway station . This in turn was bought by the DRPA between Camden and Lindenwold and expanded without crossing. The number of stopovers has been reduced compared to the Seashore Lines in order to achieve a higher cruising speed.

The existing subway route between 15th-16th & Locust Streets and Broadway had to be technically upgraded before the start of operations, which resulted in several months of operations being interrupted. The Bridge Line trains last operated on August 23, 1968. The Broad Street Subway courses from the north were withdrawn to 8th & Market Streets station. A new side platform was built there on the mezzanine floor and the track connection to the Bridge Line was cut.

The first trains between Camden and Lindenwold ran on January 4, 1969. A good month later, on February 15, 1969, the full length of the PATCO Speedline was finally opened between 15th-16th & Locust and Lindenwold. Since then there have only been two changes:

• 1979 Franklin Square was closed due to low passenger traffic; the station has been passed through without stopping since then.
• In 1980, Woodcrest Station was built between Haddonfield and Ashland.

The plans for the other two branches of the route have not yet been implemented. The most recent investigations from 2005 envisage the construction of a second PATCO route, which should lead either in a south-southeast direction to Williamstown or in a south direction to Rowan University in Glassboro . According to the current status, completion is expected by 2012.

Rolling material

The fleet consists of a total of 121 four-axle electric multiple units, of which 25 are solo and 25 type PATCO I multiple units and 23 type PATCO II twin multiple units. The PATCO I vehicles were built by Budd in 1968 and are all original equipment. The PATCO II vehicles are based on the same design, but were built under license from Canadian Vickers . Both types are visually indistinguishable from each other.

The individual cars are 67 '6 "(20.57 m) long, weigh 39 tons and can accommodate 120 people. The car body is made of stainless steel and is not painted in color apart from a thin red decorative strip all around and dark gray highlighted windows on the front of the car . The cars have two double pocket sliding doors on each side, air conditioning and automatic passenger information systems. The side windows are low and are based heavily on the rolling stock of conventional railways. Contrary to US conventions, the driver's cabs are on the left instead of the right in the direction of travel and are not separated from the passenger compartment.

All vehicle types can be coupled with one another as required; Trains can be made up of single and double railcars up to a maximum length of six cars. The maximum design speed is 75 mph (120 km / h).

business

The PATCO Speedline operates around the clock, seven days a week. Trains run approximately every 12 minutes during the day and every four minutes at rush hour. In the evenings, at night and on the weekends, the timetable is gradually thinned out to a maximum of 45 minutes. The trains consist of one to six cars, depending on the time of day and demand. The travel time between 15th-16th & Locust Streets and Lindenwold is 25 minutes, the average speed is around 55 km / h.

Some trains going into the city do not stop everywhere in the outdoor areas during the morning rush hour. Furthermore, the 9th-10th & Locust station will be closed at night and will be passed through without stopping during this time.

In 2007 the PATCO Speedline had 9.4 million passengers. With sales of $ 20,416,000 and operating expenses of $ 42,468,000, the recovery rate was 48.07%.

When tickets were originally used magnetic cards , which at vending machines were available and when entering and leaving the stations turnstiles are introduced had. In 1969, PATCO was the first railroad in the United States to have no sales force at all.

The magnetic cards were replaced in March 2008 by a system based on chip cards that work on the principle of the electronic wallet . The cards can be purchased for a small amount at vending machines and loaded there for a fee. The amount of money to be paid is then debited from the chip card when passing the turnstiles at the train stations.

Train protection

The system used for train protection ( Automatic Train Control , ATC) includes automatic train protection in the actual sense (Automatic Train Protection, ATP) and automatic train control (Automatic Train Operation, ATO), but no automatic train monitoring (Automatic Train Supervision, ATS). The two automatic subsystems are designed so that manual interventions are possible in several stages.

In practice, the ATC system manifests itself in the fact that there are no fixed signals along the route, except for branch points ( sweeping systems , etc.) and the signaling takes place in the driver's cab instead. The platoon leader therefore only has monitoring tasks; he handles the train at the station, presses a button, and the system automatically controls the acceleration, maximum speed and braking.

In contrast to the train driver, the dispatcher in the operations center works largely manually. The initial train notification to the system with start and destination is done manually. The route is then automatically restored and checked for each train .

The reason for not using automatic train detection is that the ATC system should, above all, be as reliable as possible and should therefore be kept as simple as possible technically. When building the other two planned branch lines, the problem would arise that the correspondingly complex train routes in connection with the expected dense train sequence would no longer be manageable with the current manual train notification procedure.

literature

• US Congress, Office of Technology Assessment : Automatic Train Control in Rail Rapid Transit . United States Government Printing Office , Washington, DC May 1976, NTIS # PB-254738, pp. 65ff. ( Full text in the archives of Princeton University )

Web links

• Port Authority Transit Corporation. Port Authority Transit Corporation, accessed June 6, 2009 (Official PATCO website). 
• DRPA :: Delaware River Port Authority. Delaware River Port Authority, accessed June 8, 2009 (Official DRPA website). 
• Peggy Darlington, David Pirmann: PATCO. www.nycsubway.org, accessed June 6, 2009 . 

Individual evidence

1. ^ Gentle, Peter S. and Binder, RW: PATCO RAIL GRINDING PROGRAM. (PDF; 66 kB) The American Railway Engineering and Maintenance-of-Way Association, 1999, p. 1 , accessed on June 7, 2009 (English). 
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} DRPA HISTORY TIMELINE - Delaware River Port Authority - 80 Years of Progress. (No longer available online.) Delaware River Port Authority, 2009, archived from original on March 26, 2009 ; accessed on June 7, 2009 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ^ Camden & Atlantic Railroad - A history of the line that made Atlantic City. (PDF; 15.7 MB) Cultural Ressource Consulting Group, accessed on June 7, 2009 (English, after 2001). 
4. ↑ MAP OF THE RAIL ROADS OF NEW JERSEY. (JPEG) JL Smith, 1873, accessed June 7, 2009 (The Camden & Atlantic RR runs southeast from Camden via Atco and Winslow to Atlantic City. PATCO's Lindenwold terminus is now between Ashland and White Horse. ). 
5. ↑ ^{a b} A HISTORY OF COMMITMENT. Port Authority Transit Corporation, 2009, accessed June 7, 2009 . 
6. ↑ STREET CAR, BUS AND SUBWAY-ELEVATED LINES. Philadelphia Transportation Company, 1944, accessed June 7, 2009 (Map shows the name “Delaware River Bridge Speed ​​Line” and the detail section shows “Bridge Speed ​​Line.” The route runs from 8th Street over the bridge to Camden to the terminus Broadway .). 
7. ↑ ^{a b} Darlington, P. et al .: Broad Street Subway. nycsubway.org, 2005, accessed June 7, 2009 . 
8. ↑ Michael Brotzman: PATCO Track Map. (ZIP / GIF) nycsubway.org, 2000, accessed June 7, 2009 . 
9. ^ Southern New Jersey to Philadelphia Transit Study. Final report. (PDF; 4.5 MB) Delaware River Port Authority, STV Incorporated, October 2005, pp. 5-9ff. , accessed June 8, 2009 . 
10. ↑ ^{a b} PATCO Timetable (PDF; 169 kB) Port Authority Transit Corporation. June 6, 2009. Retrieved February 9, 2011.
11. ↑ Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (PDF; 10.6 MB) Delaware River Port Authority of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. 2008. Retrieved February 9, 2011.
12. ↑ ^{a b c d} Automatic Train Control in Rail Rapid Transit, p. 67ff.