Stockbridge, Mass.
Rosalie Berger
President & CEO
RTR Technologies
As transit infrastructures around the United States are aging, millions are invested in comfortable, sleek train cars and modern track replacements. But in cold weather climates the imperatives for improvement call for a more intensive set of solutions: cold-region passengers, personnel and infrastructure are at risk without aggressive, reliable snow and ice mitigation technologies. And since winter weather troubles are among the top causes of leadership shakeups at transit authorities, there’s more than one reason to plan for the best possible cold-weather technology when it comes to infrastructure upgrades.
Contact rail heat, switch point heaters and ice and snow mitigation solutions for station platforms are readily available as integral aspects of infrastructure upgrades.
Although some such improvements are driven in response to bad winters, passenger upset and political considerations, increasingly there are pro-active exceptions: More transit leaders are prioritizing winter safety as integral to overall infrastructure improvements and modernization.
In Boston several years ago – prior to last winter’s crippling of the MBTA – the authority began exploring an improved contact rail heat and switch heat telemetry and control system. Those $9 million projects are now under way. The new Washington-Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project’s 23-mile Silver Line expansion includes switch heat systems to keep trains moving in a region easily paralyzed by cold, ice and snow – a $19.6 million installation.
Technologies such as contact rail heat and switch heat have translated well for winter-region transit authorities. The authorities in New York, Toronto, Chicago and Philadelphia using cold-weather technologies tally the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) and the highest ROI, along with vast improvements in mean time between failures and mean time to repair.
Winter safety solutions improve rider experience and reduce overtime costs associated with transit delays. But today’s winter solutions are also energy efficient and, therefore, cost-effective for the bottom line.
RTR projected a 10-year, $60 million energy cost savings for the New Jersey Transit Authority with new switch-point heaters. Two years into the new system, NJ Transit expects to meet or exceed those projections.
More frequently, energy companies are playing an increasingly vital role in the transition to more energy efficient winter technology, in partnerships with their own transit customers. In Boston, the MBTA’s Winter Resiliency Project, for instance, financing has been achieved in a partnership with a major energy supplier, along with a matching contribution by the MBTA. A similar partnership helped finance the New York City Transit Authority’s winter-weather improvements some years ago.
There’s no time like the present to plan for a pro-active, systematic integration of winter solutions in cold weather regions. Everyone wins – the customers, the personnel, the transit authorities and the bottom line.
