Exchequer District Railway
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| Overview | |
|---|---|
| Native name | 內史鐵, nups-sre′-qlik |
| Owner | Crown corporation |
| Area served | Inner Region |
| Transit type | Suburban rail Commuter rail |
| Number of lines | 9 |
| Number of stations | 283 |
| Daily ridership | 2,130,000 |
| Headquarters | Yellow House |
| Operation | |
| Began operation | 1969 |
| Headway | 8 – 10 minutes (peak) 15 – 30 minutes (off peak) |
| Technical | |
| System length | 595 mi (958 km) |
| Track gauge | 1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in) standard gauge |
| Average speed | 60 mph (97 km/h) |
| Top speed | 100 mph (160 km/h) |
The Inner Region Regional Railway (Shinasthana: 內史鐵, nups-sre′-qlik; abbr. IRRR) is a network offering suburban train services around Kien-k'ang, the capital city of Themiclesia. The network is named after the Inner Department, a medieval department responsible for the administration of the city and its peripheral towns.
The suburban branch lines of the two national railways, National Rail and Themiclesian & Northwest, form the foundation of IRRR's network. Suburban services were offered by both railroads since the late 19th century but became increasingly unprofitable while demand only increased. Their suburban networks were purchased by the Crown in 1967, and services since were operated by the Inner Region Transit Board under the new brand of IRRR. Two new lines have since been added, and improvements to capacity and accessibility have been implemented.
The urban terminus of most IRRR services is the Twa-ts'uk-men Station. There are multiple stations allowing transfer to National Rail and Kien-k'ang Rapid Transit. National Rail continues to offer suburban or commuter services that run on its
History
Early commuter trains
The history of suburban lines around Kien-k'ang can be traced to when its first railway line opened in 1849; an extension of the main line opened at the same time to the suburb of Qlang-qrum, though this place has since been consumed by the city's expansion. In the first railway boom of the 1850s, branch lines sprawled from main-line termini to nearby towns, expecting both to deliver goods and compete with stagecoaches running to the city. For railroads, branches were critical to increasing the usage of the main lines by bringing goods to the terminus, though passenger service was also a source of revenues.
As branch lines multiplied, a commuting lifestyle developed around the towns they served and the capital city. By 1900, there were five termini and 30 railway lines crossing Kien-k'ang, including two elevated and one underground lines later forming part of the Kien-k'ang Rapid Transit network. At the same time, the inter-city railways agglomerated into two large networks, the government-owned National Railways, and the private Themiclesian & Great Northwest Railways. Both offered services from the capital city and between them provided commuter services on over 20 branch lines that diverged from the main lines at various points. This system survived T&GN's sale of its network to the government to become an independent operator in 1948.
Post-war
The road network still in its infancy, the post-war economic boom placed unprecedented demands on the country's rail network, and lines around the capital city became particularly congested with both freight and passenger trains. The increase in commuter traffic partly owes to the policy encouraging suburbanization, which the government pursued after 1945 to reduce residential density in parts of the city infamous for crime and disease. Expectedly, new communities appeared in suburbs already well-served by railways, boosting their passenger volume and necessitating increases in services. However, because branch lines converge with main lines to reach the urban terminus, they compete with inter-city trains in shared lines and encumbered scheduling.
In 1953, T&GN rebranded its commuter trains as "Regional Express", which became controversial as the trains, stopping at every station, were hardly express, and this tactic National Rail soon emulated, calling its commuter trains "City Express". These rebrandings were in no small part efforts to beautify the outdated, cramped rolling stock that both operators employed on suburban services. National Rail regularly used coaches built for the army in wartime—these had so few amenities that even brief journeys were barely tolerable.
The terminal shared by both operators at Twa-ts'uk-men Station was experiencing traffic five times its expected capacity by 1959, much of it from morning and evening rush hour trains arriving from the suburbs every few minutes. The unsafe conditions in rush hour was tragically brought to public attention by passengers crowded off the platforms and killed by trains.
Thought the station had 20 tracks, it could not cope with both commuter and inter-city traffic. To relieve main lines and the terminus, it was planned to restructure the suburban network so as to permit commuter trains to travel independently of the main lines and release passengers at several separate stations in the city, instead of a single terminus. At these stations, it was expected that commuters would avail themselves of the rapid transit and bus services. Thus, according to Ecole, "the new routes in the city were planned to be dependent on the rapid-transit network, a progressive insight of transit integration on the part of the planners."
Various realizations of the scheme were tabled before the City in the late 50s and early 60s, but all of them implied that many new tunnels were to be built if widespread demolition in the urban core was to be avoided. With the city under pressure from the central government to extend the highway network and widen roads, the plan did not receive the city's sanction until 1963. During the 60s, the operators looked to other commuter networks and adopted the double decker train as a solution to line capacity problems: that is, if they could not feasibly run more trains, each train must carry more passengers. These trains, however, were restricted by the loading guage of the Central Junction Railway, the 7-mile underground tunnel that led to the terminus. With a height of 14 ft 6 in (4.42 m), double-decker trains were quite cramped, each level being only 5 ft 10 in (1.78 m) in height.
Formation of IRRR
As an entity, the IRRR was proposed by both National Rail and T&GN at a time when both were seeking to simply their portfolios and reduce network length faced with competition from road voyage. From them, the new entity would both take over the maintenance and operation of the commuter network, which was less profitable than freight and inter-city service, and free main lines from commuter services, which meant they could run more freight and inter-city trains. Both companies were thus willing to underwrite some of the scheme's tremendous cost, estimated at $280 million in 1965. Much of this went towards eight new tunnels under the urban core, as the city was then determined to prevent the building of overhead railways, which "caused a permanent overcast on many streets".
IRRR planners required a height of 16 ft 6 in (5.03 m) throughout its network to accommodate more commodious double-decker trains. Undoubtedly, such dimensions contributed to the project's burgeoning costs, though the added capacity per train and scheduling "headroom" was warmly received by the city, which shared the belief that room for further increases in frequency was necessary in anticipation of future demands. A dedicated set of stations, within the urban centre and well-connected to the rapid-transit network, were intended to enable passengers to alight more quickly and at multiple points, rather than at the ageing Twa-ts′uk-men station, whose platforms were narrow and obstructed with dozens of structural columns.
Construction work on the new tracks necessary to make the commuter network independent of the inter-city network began in 1965, and the first line was complete by 1969. Twa-ts'uk-men Station was served by a new bank of six platforms, with ten tracks amongst them, built under the main-line platforms. Other stations were built at a shallower depth, though modifications to the rapid-transit stations were found necessary to enable convenient transfers; these included more waiting room and, in some places, increases in service frequencies.
At official launch on July 1, 1969, the IRRR announced, not without controversy, that it would replace the names of the branch lines with numbered trains. It was hoped that the renaming and new rolling stock would create the impression that the IRRR was a new service, rather than a continuation of the older suburban services. The launch also included new operating patterns, initially connecting the Krat line with the Mits line, which would allow trains to serve both commuters alighting at the city and travellers going across the city. These operational changes led to considerable and maligned confusion, though a publicity campaign mollified public opinion somewhat.
Network expansion
The IRRR assembled the branch lines it inherited into four numbered routes (№s 1 – 4) by the time their tunnels were completed in 1980. Between 1969 and 1980, the network also extended the reach of its lines considerably. Many of the branch lines only ventured into the near-suburbs established during the Industrial Revolution, and under the main-line management they were rarely extended to newer (particularly residential) suburbs or those deeper in the countryside. The IRRR was under government mandate to address this shortcoming [pun not intended] and extended all four of its initial routes by more than 40% by 1980, and another 50% by 1990.
Coverage was further extended in the 1980s and 90s by two new routes (5 and 6) and branch lines from its other routes. Line 5 connected to the tunnel of Line 1, and Line 6 to that of Line 4, to avoid new tunnels. Improvements to signalling and rolling stock were implemented in phases from 1992 onwards to enable trains to move in smaller blocking zones. Most recently, Line 7 was completed in 2009, and further extensions of the other lines have also continued.
Lines
| Icon | Route | Opened | Services | Length (mi) | Stations | Avg. distance (mi) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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1 | 1969 | Mrit Hall – Mlat Central | 70 | 33 | 2.2 |
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2 | 1970 | Trum-qit Manor – Nyah | 112 | 50 | 2.3 |
| Tryip Manor – Prem Manor | ||||||
| Trum-qit Manor – Hwar Manor | ||||||
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3 | 1973 | Byal – Rek | 98 | 53 | 1.9 |
| Byal – Krem | ||||||
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4 | 1977 | 45 | 23 | 2.0 | |
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5 | 1989 | 86 | 32 | 2.8 | |
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6 | 1997 | 124 | 48 | 2.6 | |
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7 | 2010 | 101 | 40 | 2.6 | |
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A | 1998 | 157 | 47 | 3.4 | |
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B | 1998 | 73 | 29 | 2.6 | |
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C | 1998 | 65 | 15 | 4.6 | |
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D | 1999 | 122 | 47 | 2.7 | |
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E | 1999 | 80 | 33 | 2.5 |
Fare
Infrasturcture
Much of the rural and suburban infrastructure operated by the IRRR were inherited from the main-line railways and subsequently upgraded, but tunnels and stations in the city-centre were largely built between 1965 and 1994 specifically for its operation. Three entirely new lines have been built during the same time period to serve newer communities.
Stations
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IRRR stations can be found at ground level, elevated, or underground. The majority of stations in rural areas are at ground level, being true also formerly of the branch lines. Elevated sections occur typically when the lines were extended and cannot avoid going through a settled area. Underground stations are mostly found in the centre of Kien-k'ang, where the cost of purchasing land along the route would be prohibitive: the IRRR is only liable for minor compensation for the land under which its tracks go.
Where it is inherited and where geographic permits, the IRRR station will have a headhouse containing a ticketing office. Bathrooms where they did not exist have been introduced to all IRRR stations. The scale of headhouses tends to be small in commuter suburbs as the station expects commuters to trickle in and out during morning and evening rush hours, but in the urban centre stations expect large, simultaneous boarding and alighting volumes and so have larger internal spaces. The size of the ticketing office corresponds to the expected passenger volume. Automatic ticketing machines have been introduced to the IRRR network in 1980, though many of its patrons commute with a seasonal ticket, which not only obviates queuing for tickets but also offers discounts.
One part of the initial IRRR project in the 60s is to integrate its stations with existing subway stations, which would be necessary to meet the transit requirements of large numbers of passengers alighting in the urban centre. When commuters alighted at Twa-ts′uk-men, they dispersed by the four subway lines that served it already in the 60s. New stations to alleviate pressure from Twa-ts′uk-men would need to accommodate adequate throughput lest commuters be stranded waiting for the next leg of their commute (the so-called "people jam" and "staircase bottleneck" problem). Accordingly, the best places to establish new commute stations would be those rapid-transit stations where multiple subway lines intersect; however, these stations were also the most challenging to build, owing to the need to avoid disturbing existing subway lines.
New commuter stations were thus constructed at great expense and at a deeper grade under the transit network, whose deep-level lines were typically dug at 25 – 30 m under surface. At new commuter stations, platform levels were 45 – 50 m underground, descending to 65 m at Twa-ts′uk-men to leave sufficient room for the high-speed rail tunnels. Such deep excavations in turn made staircases impractical, being the equivalent of climbing a 15-storey building, and demanded fast-moving escalators connecting to the subway platforms.