JOINT USE OF TRACK IN THE US

There is substantial and increasing interest worldwide in operating electric railway services on the same track with railway services. High capital costs to construct new exclusive trackage for electric railway transit service in a time when capital funding is severely limited has forced agencies to study and use existing railway track. In US, some fear that sharing a track with the freight railway may bring burdensome FRA regulations down upon the transit agency. The ICC definition of a railroad seems to be the key consideration as to whether track sharing will automatically mean that rapid transit will have to reclassified. The article looks at two examples of successful operation of railway wagonload freight on rapid transit tracks that did not cause the transit line to be classified as railroad: Chicago Rapid Transit Co. (CRT) and Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) joint operation of wagonload freight service and passenger service; and South Brooklyn Railway Co. (SBK) common carrier railway freight which operates on a short segment of the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Division of the MTA, where train separation is enforced by the absolute block rule by which only an SBK train or a NYCT train may be on the jointly-used track at one time.