Tracking Tracks — Motivation

✪ Denotes a ride along the full primary passenger route on a service’s inaugural passenger trip.

Jeff Rules™ to System Completion

At what point does a system count as being “complete”?

Since there are enough people who have asked me, both out of curiosity, and for their own adventures, I’m officially documenting the guidelines by which a system is marked as such: A system is considered “complete” when every route mile in regular service has been traversed, and at least a portion of the territory was traversed on the system’s own equipment.

There are several implications from this, guidance of which is below.

• Riding the entirety of a service’s territory on an intercity train does not count in and of itself, until one has also used the service itself.
  • e.g. Riding Amtrak between New Haven and New London does not count for SLE until SLE itself has been ridden.
    
• Not all of the territory must have been ridden at the same time, on the same trip, or even on the same service, provided the entire territory of the service is traversed
  • e.g. MNR’s Hudson Line could be completed by riding a MNR train to Riverdale, and taking Amtrak betwen Penn Station and Poughkeepsie on a separate occasion; doing so traverses the entire territory and covers the service.
• Every route-mile does NOT mean every track-mile. Where express tracks run parallel to local tracks, they both count as the same route and either can be used to traverse the territory.
  • Where lines split, merge, and operate unilateral segments, these need not be traversed independendently unless the route itself (e.g. customer-facing messaging, stops, etc.) diverges to operate separate one-way segments.
  • Where different services operate on isolated trackage/networks, there is a preference for covering the adjacent segments on each network, although this is not required.
  • e.g. Riding the MBTA Commuter Rail’s Old Colony Lines to Braintree would generally not count for the MBTA Red Line Braintree Branch.
• Where bidirectional services operate different one-way route segments, each one-way segment must be traversed.
  • e.g. Tri-Met’s MAX in Portland operates several one-way segments through the downtown core, each of which must be traversed separately.
  • The start/end of bidirectional trackage need not be traversed per the above guidance on route miles vs track miles.
• A territory must see regularly-scheduled service to be considered a required segment for a system’s completion.
  • Other territories can certainly be counted and tracked as part of a system’s rare mileage, but need not be completed to consider a system “complete.”
  • e.g. The multi-year suspension of the SEPTA Route 15 Trolley and GCRTA Waterfront Line, and the event-only MBTA CR service between Mansfield and Foxboro, exclude them from the required components of their respective systems. However, these can still be tracked as rare mileage.
• When in doubt, the “Line of Sight” heuristic applies: if the territory could be seen from the adjacent territory, it counts; if it can’t be seen, it doesn’t.
  • e.g. Riding the Brunswick Line’s branch to Frederick, MD, returning to Point of Rocks, and riding the other segment to Martinsburg, WV counts for the system’s completion since the wye at Point of Rocks is visible from the Brunswick Line’s tracks (and is visible from the station itself).