Can Intercity Trains into Boston Enter from Springfield?
From time to time, I see plans for intercity rail service into Boston going via Springfield. These include in-state rail plans to run trains between the two cities, but also grander plans to have train go between Boston and New Haven via Springfield, branded as the Inland Route, as an alternative to the present-day Northeast Corridor. In-state service is fine, and timed connections to New Haven are also fine for the benefit of interregional travel like Worcester-Hartford, but as an intercity connection, the Inland Route is a terrible choice, and no accommodation should be made for it in any plans. This post goes over why.
What is the Inland Route?
Via Wikipedia, here’s a map of the Northeast Corridor and connecting passenger rail lines:
Red denotes Amtrak ownership, and thus some non-Northeast Corridor sections owned by Amtrak are included, whereas the New Rochelle-New Haven section, while part of the corridor, is not in red because it is owned by state commuter rail authorities. Blue denotes commuter rail lines that use the corridor.
The Inland Route is the rail route in red and black from New Haven to Boston via Springfield. Historically, it was the first all-rail route between New York and Boston: the current route, called the Shore Line, was difficult to build with the technology of the 1840s because it required many river crossings, and only in 1889 was the last river bridged, the Thames just east of New London. However, as soon as the all-rail Shore Line route opened, mainline traffic shifted to it. Further investment in the Shore Line relegated the Inland Route to a secondary role, and today, the only passenger rail at all between Boston and Springfield comprises a daily night train to Chicago, the Lake Shore Limited. More recently, there has been investment in New Haven-Springfield trains, dubbed the Hartford Line, which runs every 1-2 hours with a few additional peak trips.
What rail service should run to Springfield?
Springfield is a secondary urban center, acting as the most significant city in the Pioneer Valley region, which has 700,000 people. It’s close to Hartford, with a metro population of 1.3 million, enough that the metro areas are in the process of merging; this is enough population that some rail service to both New York and Boston is merited.
In both cases, it’s important to follow best practices, which the current Hartford Line does not. I enumerated them for urban commuter rail yesterday, and in the case of intercity or interregional rail, the points about electrification and frequency remain apt. The frequency section on commuter rail talks about suburbs within 30 km of the city, and Springfield is much farther away, so the minimum viable frequency is lower than for suburban rail – hourly service is fine, and half-hourly service is at the limit beyond which further increases in frequency no longer generate much convenience benefit for passengers.
It’s also crucial to timetable the trains right. Not only should they be running on a clockface hourly (ideally half-hourly) schedule, but also everything should be timed to connect. This includes all of the following services:
- Intercity trains to Hartford, New Haven, and New York
- Intercity trains to Boston
- Regional trains upriver to smaller Pioneer Valley cities like Northampton and Greenfield (those must be at least half-hourly as they cover a shorter distance)
- Springfield buses serving Union Station, which acts as a combined bus-rail hub (PVTA service is infrequent, so the transfers can and should be timed)
The timed connections override all other considerations: if the demand to Boston and New York is asymmetric, and it almost certainly is, then the trains to New York should be longer than those to Boston. Through-running here is useful but not essential – there are at least three directions with viable service (New York, Boston, Greenfield) so some people have to transfer anyway, and the frequency is such that transfers have to be timed anyway.
What are the Inland Route plans?
There are perennial plans to add a few intercity trains on the New Haven-Springfield-Boston route. Some such trains ran in my lifetime – Amtrak only canceled the last ones in the 2000s, as improvements in the Shore Line for the Acela, including electrification of the New Haven-Boston section, made the Inland Route too slow to be viable.
Nonetheless, plans for restoration remain. These to some extent extend the plans for in-state Boston-Springfield rail, locally called East-West Rail: if trains run from Boston to Springfield and from Springfield to New Haven, then they might as well through-run. But some plans go further and posit that this should be a competitive end-to-end service, charging lower fares than the faster Northeast Corridor. Those plans, sitting on a shelf somewhere, are enough that Massachusetts is taking them into account when designing South Station.
Of note, no modernization is included in these plans. The trains are to be towed by diesel locomotives, and run on the existing line. Both the Inland Route and East-West plans assume frequency is measured in trains per day, designed by people who look backward to a mythologized golden age of American rail and not forward to foreign timetabling practices that have only been figured out in the last 50 years.
Is the Inland Route viable as an intercity route into Boston?
No. This is not even a slag on the existing plans; I’m happy assuming best practices in other cases, hence my talk of timed half-hourly connections between trains and buses above. The point is that even with best practices, there is no way to competitively run a New Haven-Springfield-Boston route.
The graphic above is suggestive of the first problem: the route is curvy. The Shore Line is very curvy as well, but less so; it has a bad reputation because its curves slow trains that in theory can run at 240 km/h down to about 150-180 km/h, but the Boston-Springfield Line has tighter curves over a longer stretch, they’re just less relevant now because the trains on the line don’t run fast anyway. In contrast, the existing Northeast Corridor route is fast in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
The Inland Route is also curvy on the Boston-Worcester stretch, where consideration for slow trains is a must. The main way to squeeze extra speed out of a curvy line is to cant it, but this is less viable if there is a mix of fast and slow trains, since slow trains would be overcanted. This, in fact, is the reason Amtrak trains outside the Northeast are slower than they were in the middle of the 20th century – long-distance passenger trains have less priority for infrastructure design than slow freight trains, and so cant is limited, especially when there are hills. Normally, it’s not a problem if the slower trains are commuter trains, which run fast enough that they can just take the curve, but some curves are adjacent to passenger train stations, where passengers would definitely notice the train sitting still on canted track, leaning to the inside of the curve.
Then, there is the issue of how one gets into Boston. The Providence Line is straight and fast and can be upgraded to provide extra capacity so that fast intercity trains can overtake slow ones if need be. The Worcester Line has a two-track narrows in Newton, hemmed by I-90 with no possibility of expansion, with three stations on this stretch and a good location for a fourth one at Newton Corner. Overtakes are possible elsewhere (one is being designed just to the west, in Wellesley – see my sample timetable here), but they still constrain capacity. It’s comparably difficult from the point of view of infrastructure design to run a 360 km/h intercity train every 15 minutes via Providence and to run a 160 km/h intercity train every 30 minutes via Springfield and Worcester. Both options require small overtake facilities; higher frequency requires much more in both cases.
The Worcester Line is difficult enough that Boston-Springfield trains should be viewed as Boston-Worcester trains that go farther west. If there’s room in the timetable to include more express trains then these can be the trains to Springfield, but if there’s any difficulty, or if the plan doesn’t have more than a train every half hour to Worcester, then trains to Springfield should be making the same stops as Boston-Worcester trains.
Incentives for passengers
The worst argument I’ve seen for Inland Route service is that it could offer a lower-priced alternative to the Northeast Corridor. This, frankly, is nuts.
The operating costs of slower trains are higher than those of faster trains; this is especially true if, as in current plans, the slow trains are not even electrified. Crew, train maintenance, and train acquisition costs all scale with trip time rather than trip distance. Energy costs are dominated by acceleration and deceleration cycles rather than by cruise speed at all speeds up to about 300 km/h. High-speed trains sometimes still manage lower energy consumption per seat-km than slow trains, since slow trains have many acceleration cycles as track speeds change between segments whereas high-speed lines are built for consistent cruise speed.
The only reason to charge less for the trains that are more expensive to operate is to break the market into slow trains for poor people and fast trains for rich people. But this doesn’t generate any value for the customer – it just grabs profits through price discrimination that are then wasted on the higher operating costs of the inferior service. It’s the intercity equivalent of charging more for trains than for buses within a city, which practice is both common in the United States and a big negative to public transit ridership.
If, in contrast, the goal is to provide passengers with good service, then intercity trains to Boston must go via Providence, not Springfield. It’s wise to keep investing in the Shore Line (including bypasses where necessary) to keep providing faster and more convenient service. Creating a class system doesn’t make for good transit at any scale.
Pedestrian Observations 
This price discrimination idea, charging a lower fare for the slower system, usually comes from contradictory mandates on a public railway. They must be profitable, but also accessible to everyone. Political pressure can force them to offer an affordable travel option even it’s deeply unprofitable, and so they make up for it by protecting their profits in their highest performing lines. That’s how you get sky high prices on the Acela, or an underpriced Germany-wide ticket which isn’t valid on ICEs.
This kind of price discrimination wouldn’t be possible in a competitive environment, because a competitor could just offer lower fares on the high speed routes. Even in a monopoly situation where the railway isn’t trying to serve the public (*cough* Thalys *cough*) it doesn’t really make sense. For a while Thalys had a lower priced service called Izy, they did save a little money by avoiding the outrageous track access fees on LGV Nord but those savings are eaten up by the fewer roundtrips per day those trainsets could make and the much lower fares they could charge. Why bother with that when they can make loads of money in their premium service.
To go back to the public railways, I think it would help if politicians understood how much of a waste of resources it is to transport passengers on a slow train if they could otherwise have taken a fast train. If they really want affordable travel, give those subsidies for high speed rail as well, it will be cheaper in the long run.
Amtrak has no such accessibility mandate, and charges higher fares on the Northeast Corridor than any high-speed rail network that I am aware of, splitting the revenue between extremely high operating costs and high profits that then subsidize night trains. In fact, it is illegal for Amtrak to operate money-losing services shorter than I believe 760 miles, a cutoff chosen to let it keep losing money on night trains; shorter routes than those require state operating subsidies.
The Northeast Corridor isn’t high speed. Post-TSA it’s faster than flying. …back in ancient times you could show up and go for the Eastern Shuttles. Back in ancient times you could check bags and be at the gate in 15-20 minutes too. There is enough demand along the NEC and it’s branches to have Nozomi, Hikari and Kodama. The rest of Canada and the U.S.? Maybe perhaps in a few places, Nozomi and Hikari because there won’t be enough stations to run a Kodama.
People like to brag and that Amtrak can charge a premium so they can brag “I took Acela” for marginally better service is a good thing. I don’t know the details of the pricing regulations but I suspect one of the reasons coach on Acela is branded as business is so they can finagle the regulations… It’s a good thing they can charge business class fares for coach seats.
What happened to different travel classes within the same vehicle? Rail reform proposals often imitate aviation — and planes mostly have a business/economy distinction. Likewise for historical railways; they had invented the concept of having 1st/2nd/3rd/4th classes in the same train.
Of course, the conceptual entanglement of speed and amentities can strike even if the organization keeps travel classes. In Hungary, MÁV introduced the Intercity brand for faster legacy trains with some very necessary amenities (notably, air conditioning in unmotorized coaches) with 1st and 2nd classes. Over a decade later, this lead to Budapest-Szeged trains having an IC 1st, IC 2nd, gyorsvonat 2nd and occasionally a gyorsvonat 1st class segment.
Those are still a thing, but of course the different classes within the same train only differ on comfert, the train of course has 1 frequency and 1 speed, and so is just as convenient for 1st as it is for 2nd/3rd/4th class passengers.
Yes, having a wider seat and your own armrests is genuinely nice, but there’s only so much of a premium people are willing to pay.
“This kind of price discrimination wouldn’t be possible in a competitive environment, because a competitor could just offer lower fares on the high speed routes.”
In England, Birmingham to London is served by three operators using two lines. The two slower services offer and market cheaper fares, on both advance and “walk up” tickets, to attract customers. I’ve ridden those cheap trains and they are often busy. But maybe the UK’s system doesn’t qualify as “a competitive environment”?
That’s a good point, I forgot to take capacity into account. UK railways are capacity constrained so even with competition you can raise prices quite high because there are far more people who want to travel than there are seats available.
The cheaper operators are likely subsidized for running local/regional traffic on their respective lines and are offering cheap long-distance tickets as a way to get some more money out of trains that are running anyway, similar to everybody else who’s selling discounted off-peak stuff.
Levy, do you know anything about what Andy Byford as Executive VP of HSR will be doing at Amtrak?
Any opinions on East-West Rail to Albany NY?
I’m skeptical of extending Boston-Springfield to Albany on existing track. The quality of the right-of-way gets worse through the Berkshires, and there’s more CSX bullshit involved. Save it for high-speed rail.
” I’m skeptical of extending Boston-Springfield to Albany on existing track. The quality of the right-of-way gets worse through the Berkshires, and there’s more CSX bullshit involved. Save it for high-speed rail. ”
— Alon Levy
Well, HSR Boston-Albany is likely decades away, if ever, it would be nice to have some trains within the next decade. The fastest the New York Central ran the 200-miles between Boston and Albany (176 miles by the I-90) was 4h 15m by Budd RDC ‘Beeliner’ in the early 1950s, which was 2h 15m Albany-Springfield, Springfield being about 98 miles from Boston.
I would agree that a major multi-billion-dollar investment in the existing mainline is unwise, but for several trains daily spread-out evenly through the day the cost shouldn’t be that high, and if East-West Rail is faster than the NYC Boston-Springfield, then that would benefit Boston-Albany, offsetting the slow running over the Berkshires and a route longer than the Mass Turnpike.
Politically they can’t do East-West Rail without including Berkshire County (Pittsfield) where many of the East-West Rail supporters live, and going to Pittsfield doesn’t make commercial sense without going to Albany which has both the population — the Capital District having over a million residents — and existing rail facilities for layover and maintenance of trains.
Politically they’re looking at East-West right now without Berkshire County.
You have inside info? The recent media articles I have read seem to indicate that they are now open to the service to Pittsfield ending at Albany.
I can understand doing the Boston-Springfield part as a first phase, and should be focus on building out a fast hourly service as non-HSR intercity services in Europe or Brightline, but it seems that you could add two additional roundtrips (morning and evening) Boston-Albany to the existing ‘Lake Shore Limited’ without having to spend a lot of money, and that would likely please the Berkshires, with Albany ensuring that those trains are well patronized. I’ve been at Springfield Union Station when the ‘Lake Shore’ comes in, a lot of people come off from the west and a lot get on going to Boston.
I have also not read anything from you on Brightline in Florida or Brightline West, lots of news and interviews from them as of late, be interested in your thoughts, don’t always agree, but you’re always informative to read.
The inside info I have is that East-West is at the same stage of “activists are begging for anything, literally anything” as the Regional Rail program 3-4 years ago.
And anything beyond the first phase is droppable; there’s lots of precedent for that even if there’s a promise to do subsequent phases, for example Second Avenue Subway was politically the brainchild of Sheldon Silver, whose district would only be served by phase 4, for which there are no plans at all right now.
Almost nobody lives in Pittsfield and nearly as few live in all of Berkshire County. They all own cars and they can, someday, drive to the HSR station near the Turnpike. If one is worth it for those few people. Otherwise they can drive to Albany or Springfield.
Getting people who drive to use the train has the significant advantage that the train has to be good or people won’t use it.
Probably forces the civil servants to actually make it good if you can trick them into building it as someone would be found at fault if it failed.
There aren’t a whole lot of people in Berkshire County and relentlessly aiming at of few blocks of Downtown Pittsfield made sense in 1860. The BRTA can schedule a 12 passenger bus, that manages to stop in few other villages, twice an hour during the day, to HSR station. If it’s worth building an HSR station in Berkshire County. It may, with humongous long term parking for people using the car to their dacha in the woods.
Matthew Hutton: you’re optimistic in assuming the level of functioning where that corrective works.
– I’m not sure the effect is even monotonous; if it has a ridership of zero, people will go “oh, I don’t know what the train is like, personally I’ve never ridden it”, and autocomplete it with their default expectations. Whereas if virtually everyone uses it, like the weather, then complaining about it becomes standard smalltalk.
– In any case, the covariance is not much, since many people get caught up on some overrider opinion, from “what did you expect, it’s a government project” to “trains are inherently good (virtuous? climate-friendly?), the only reason they currently appear bad is due to historical disinvestment, the obvious solution is to throw more money at the agency”. As an individual, you can discard this as noise; as feedback signal in a mechanism, it’s a biased setpoint.
– Politicians specialize in explaining why arbitrary situations (i.e. good and bad ones equally) imply that they deserve credit and someone else deserves blame.
– For someone to be found at fault requires a scandal, which is pretty random (sic!) and a function of the media.
Save it for high-speed rail.
That’s precisely what I wanted to ask you about. A direct east-west line from Boston to Albany (through Springfield) looks to me like a logical connection to the proposed Empire Corridor along the Hudson. Obviously, that would be a very ambitious project involving entirely new, dedicated track for much of it, but the result would be a substantial increase in routing possibilities.
Is a built-out inland route not possible that could be a first step to a later high-speed (or higher speed) connection through the Berkshires to Albany?`(Now that I continue reading the thread, I guess I’m basically repeating Benjamin Turon’s suggestion. Apologies for being repetitive.)
The ‘Empire Corridor’ is not proposed but existing, even with seasonal service to Pittsfield with the ‘Berkshire Flyer’. However, nothing officially proposed, or studied would be “High Speed Rail”…
I’m talking about proposed HSR service, not the existing one. Apparently, fast and high-speed alternatives for the Empire Corridor have been studied as recently as this year.
https://www.dot.ny.gov/empire-corridor
They study the Empire Corridor fairly regularly. They file it away with all the other past studies and don’t do much of anything west of Albany.
The Empire Corridor HSR Tier One FEIS study took 14 years to complete (2009-2023) and was released this spring with no fanfare or press release, its recommended alternative was “90B” which referred to the top speed of 90-mph (145-kph) west of Schenectady to Buffalo on a new dedicated track on the surplus right-of-way of the CSX mainline. The existing 110-mph territory on Amtrak tracks in the Capital District would be extended down to Poughkeepsie. So not “High Speed Rail” — they should have gone with the term “Inter-City” opposed to “High-Speed Rail” which they were never serious to consider.
I think that the Final Alterative could be modified to give a ‘Brightline’ level of service along the corridor NYC-Buffalo, a two-tier service with limited-stop express trains and some new 125-mph track Utica-Dewitt Yard (Syracuse) could cut off 40-minutes for express trains. Right now, the Hochul Administration seems to have no interest, there are some state lawmakers talking about “high-speed rail”.
West of Little Falls it’s dead flat and straight ROW exists. They aren’t being serious. They can file it away with all the other proposals.
Yes, you could go 125-mph on the CSX right-of-way west of Little Falls… if this was Britain, France, or Sweden… but it ain’t, the FRA limits you to 110-mph on lines with grade crossings and CSX has a 90-mph speed limit, which the state ignoring cost them 10 years with the EIS. If you could go 110-mph that would cut off 15 minutes according to the DEIS over 90-mph, so if you run a limited-stops express, you’re to Buffalo under six hours.
The state does have projects lined up and some underway for the Hudson Line, getting you to hourly service with a 2:15 travel time, 2:00 for non-stop express, but they don’t seem to have interest in spending a few billion west of Schenectady.
Six hours is as fast as driving – with no pit stops or traffic – and the only thing that will attract is people who can’t drive or people who don’t want to deal with New York City traffic and parking…. there are non stops from Buffalo to all three NYC airports. Flight time is 1:30-ish or less… they aren’t being serious.
Albany has once an hour-ish now. Whoppee. Though people in the know pick the trains that originate in Albany because the other ones are notoriously late, southbound. I’m mildly annoyed that Vermont extended the Ethan Allen to Burlington because it arrives in Saratoga Springs later in the day which means I drive to Rensselaer.
It’s dead flat and straight ROW is available west of Little Falls. A serious proposal would be for 220 mph/350 kph high speed. That someday connects to the high speed line east of Little Falls… nothing stopping them from running diesels on it until the line east is built..
Well 200-mph bullet train is pie-in-the-sky for now, and no you wouldn’t use CSX, but the NYS Thruway like Brightline West with the I-15 — it’s a shame Rochester exists, because the I-90 could take you from the outskirts of Syracuse to just the other side of the airport from Buffalo-Depew. It would be a very good path, if you electrified the Hudson Line, electrified that dedicated track Hoffmans to Utica along CSX, and then went new ROW from Utica, you could get Buffalo to within 4 hours of New York City. The Thruway passes well south of Rochester, but if you had a bi-hourly service NYC-Buffalo than half the trains could serve the downtown station, and the other half a suburban park-n’-ride station in Henrietta on the I-90.
Yet still, 6 hours NYC-Buffalo is faster than driving the NYS Thruway I-87/I-90, and about the same as driving across the Southern Tier, and it would be as fast as Brightline in Florida (Miami-Orlando) in terms of average speed. The infrastructure laid out in the FEIS could allow for a near 6-hour service Penn Station — Buffalo-Depew, the equivalent of the Deltics on the East Coast Main Line before the Intercity 125. I think ridership would be could enough that you would have full hourly trains, the biggest benefit would be to Utica and Syracuse that would be 3 and 4 hours from New York City, Rochester about five hours, with limited-stop express trains on the infrastructure of ALT 90B.
If we had the SNCF, DB, or British Rail instead of CSX, that would solve a lot of issues 😀
Sorry Adirondacker,
I suck as a passenger rail advocate: to your issue with the ‘Ethan Allen’, the Empire Corridor FEIS in the Appendix H ‘Service Development Plan’ at a proposed timetable with an addition round-trips NYC-Saratoga, including a 6:00am and 8:00am departure from Saratoga Springs to New York City and a 5:20pm and 8:50pm arrival from NYC. The issue of having an early train down from Saratoga and Schenectady and a late return train has gotten some traction with local chamber of commerce, tourist bureaus, and elected officials, it would actual help if you e-mailed them your support, as this IS SOMETHING that could be done in the next few years, if not sooner.
With the new NEC Airo trainsets I was thinking that the early down and late evening up trains to Saratoga could even terminate in Washington instead of New York City, with the mid-day ‘Ethan Allen’ being extended to Washington too, as with the Vermonter.
Ben 🙂
Empire Corridor Tier One EIS
https://www.esparail.org/resources/empire-corridor-eis/
They have been proposing a few train terminating in Saratoga Springs forever. They know how to do it because they have run “extras” during the racing season. They have to get the padding out of the schedule. It would shift some ridership out of Rennselaer, avoiding turning the parking desert into garages.
They change engines on the Vermonter in New Haven. Where if they loiter around longer than scheduled, it’s not a big deal. There is no place to change engines from the Hudson Line. Not cheaply anyway. … no, don’t even think about it, nobody, who isn’t a railfan, wants third rail north of Croton…
You’d do 25kV AC overhead for new stuff – and then buy trains that do third rail and 25kV AC
Third rail sucks for anything other than suburban service and it’s not that great for that if you want express trains. Until somebody finds the money to convert the NEC south of Queens to 60hz it would need to be tri mode, third rail, 60Hz and 25Hz. Meh, change trains in New York for the next few decades while people in the various DOTs fart around with diesels.
The original Eurostar (British class 373) could do 25kV@50Hz AC, 3kV DC, 1.5kV DC all overhead and 750V DC third rail.
The new one (British class 374) can do 25kV@50Hz AC, 15kV@16.7Hz AC, 3kV DC and 1.5kV DC all overhead.
So plenty of different voltages are possible.
Other option is you run with diesel on the third rail sections.
They can get into all sorts of contortions. That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.
Why not ??? Just add the necessary electrification and track improvements for same and you’re good to go, along with high level platforms at the stations affected for ADA compliance. They did same between New Haven & Boston and it worked out successfully as well.
Amtrak already runs some through Regional trains to Springfield, might make sense to just extend them Worcester to avoid the commuter traffic, allowing passengers bound for NY and DC to go west without going east to Boston. Another possibility is to run those few Regional trains to Portland via the connection to North Station, this could even be a route for an overnight train DC-Portland. Electrification of the New Haven-Springfield route should be done, and if they go for a dedicated track Springfield-Worcester for East-West Rail, then that should be done.
I would agree that overall high-speed high-frequency service NYC-Boston should be on the Shore Line. The focus I think for the Commonwealth west of Boston needs to be East-West Rail Boston-Springfield-Pittsfield-Albany, while continuing working with Connecticut to improve the “Pioneer Valley” route through Hartford to New Haven, which has seen a lot of investment and improvement.
Why not since it will be money well spent, instead of wasting it in the black hole known as the Ukraine.
Well, I disagree about Ukraine; but I think aiming to get East-West Rail to a Brightline Florida level of infrastructure and investment — with hourly trains Boston-Springfield, and half of those going to New Haven, and the other half to Albany — I think would be money well spent.
But I agree with Levy, that the Inland Route is not a good alternative to the Shore Line for NYC-Boston traffic, but it’s worth investing in for other reasons.
If you say so, since many of America’s railroads are NOT in a state of good repair, and requires a huge amount of money and capital for maintenance and upgrades as well, and since the Buyden Administration keeps pumping hundreds of billions of dollars and weapons into Ukraine, and the smaller Ukraine becomes. THIW’s..
I desperately need to blog about why SOGR is a scam. (Note that the Ukrainians manage to keep Ukrzaliznytsia in a state of good repair even while bombed. And no, it’s not US aid – US aid goes to the military.)
Most of Florida is dead flat and the ROW Brightline uses was laid out in a very straight line. You can’t get the same kind of average speeds when trains are squiggle around mountains on a ROW laid out in the 1850s.
State of better repair would mean freight can move from trucks to rail. NS and CSX are up to something. CSX bought PanAm, But not PanAm Southern, CSX and NS are going to keep that with their Conrail-y Shared Assets arrangement. There’s a lot of “exports” from Maine and New Brunswick that can be sent back to rail, which is what the railfans think they are aiming for. There are lot of others from the more urban areas. And lots of stuff coming in. They are up to something. Which is a good thing, it keeps trucks off the road.
If you’re worried about China, Ukraine is the bargain of the century. Much cheaper to send weapons to Ukraine to hollow out the Russian armed forces, then once Russia is no longer a threat to Europe / NATO, you can send all of your European spending to Asia Pac to deal with China.
I don’t think the USA’s large military budget is to blame for the state of our rail transit and intercity infrastructure and services — the lack of will the to build and the knowledge/institutions are largely to blame. China spends big on its military too, has built the world’s largest navy, while also building the largest high-speed rail system in the world.
I would point out the US Navy seems in its building program to suffer from many of the issues that bedevil rail projects in the USA, it plans poorly, builds expensively, and the ships it builds come out with major issues, the LCS program being the poster child for all three. Private defense contractors according to recent reports in the media have been greatly overcharging the Pentagon for years, its procurement staff having been downsized. The Navy lost the ability to build its own ships and weapons in public yards, as it had through WW2 into the Cold War, hurting its ability to manage contracts with private partners.
Meanwhile China has built the largest navy and high-speed rail system not just because they poured a lot of money in both, but because they have become very efficient at doing so, including building standardized designs at scale. If the US could reform its public sector while finding the willpower to build, and build well, we could have both the largest Navy (again) and a decent intercity rail network.
1. Chinese high-speed rail construction costs are higher than European ones in comparable terrain, thanks to all the viaducts.
2. The US military is fairly efficient at building things by global standards; see, for example, the Puma, or for that matter how shit the readiness of the Heer is when it has the same spending as a percentage of GDP as the US Army, the difference in military spending being entirely navy and air force.
3. PLAN tonnage is around half of US Navy tonnage. Having a lot of ships doesn’t matter if they’re corvettes.
There is no terrain in Europe comparable to the rice fields and river plains in Asia. Rice field needs a lot of water and flooding is common. Rivers in Asia have more water due to climate and geography, and do you know that the riverbed of the last 800 km of the Yellow River is above ground level? And then there’s the rainstorms and typhoons.
Viaduct is the best way to avoid flooding. Earthwork would need an impervious core and/or frequent repair, and might divert floodwater to other places you don’t want to flood.
That’s not why Asia doesn’t do earthworks. For one, lines in other geographies in Asia are viaduct or tunnel too, not earthworks. For two, Siemens has been heavily marketing Transrapid’s all-viaduct format as a positive in general, not just as a unique adaptation.
Well, I was specifically referring to the US Navy; the USAF for example reportedly is doing a good job with the procurement of the B-21 Raider, having learned lessons from previous defense projects.
Yes, PLAN lags behind the USN in tonnage — 100,000-ton super carriers really adding to the USN total — but its adding new cruisers and destroyers at a steady pace while the USN will be shrinking. The last of the overage Tico cruisers will need to go, and they want to get rid of half of the brand new LCSs too. Add to that the need for the USN to have “global reach” and the ability of PLAN to concentrate in home waters, and the ability of the USN and USAF to deter China from attacking Taiwan (or win a war) becomes doubtful, at least without the JMSDF and other allies.
My point is that as with passenger rail, the US Navy needs reform in its planning and procurement, and it needs to learn from both its own past and foreign competitors. The USN still has some significant advantages over PLAN in experience, technology, super-carriers, and nuclear submarines — but those advantages are narrowing and in a conflict in East Asia the advantage may soon tilt to PLAN.
Ironically the USN could use more corvettes/sloops too like PLAN, as cheaper warships could maintain “presence” across most of the globe, allowing the USN to concentrate most of its major warships in the Pacific. It’s been pointed out that the US Coast Guard’s Legend-class (of which there is an up-armed naval-ized proposed version) and Heritage-class cutters (which can be built in more private yards) could fulfill this role for the USN, allowing not just concentration in the Pacific, but more time for maintenance, training, and rest of the big combatants, as the current fleet is being deployed at an unsustainable level, wearing out both ships and crews.
Sorry for the rant, but along with trains, ships are a bit of a passion 😀
Because the route is so curvy that it’s never going to be time-competitive with the Shore Line end-to-end.
While I agree that full HSR isn’t worth it, I think building it between Springfield and Worcester only and electrifying the Worcester Line and Hartford Line would generate a lot of trips and may bring the Boston-New Haven travel time to 2:00.
It’s around 2 hours now, on Acela, between Boston and New Haven, now.
If there’s actually a train at all. There’s only 5 Acela trains on a Saturday, and only 4 between Boston and New York. Last train arrives at its destination before 8pm.
The last Acela Southbound Sunday-Friday arriving into Washington DC at 11pm is respectable, but the last one leaving Boston at 4pm on Sunday and 5:25pm on a weekday is pretty shocking. You can’t even go for a beer after work if you’ve gone to Boston for the day from New York.
Spending enormous amounts of money to make it equally lousy via Springfield isn’t going to encourage more people to show up.
not forward to foreign timetabling practices that have only been figured out in the last 50 years.
They figured that out in the mid 19th Century. The train going north/south could meet the train going east/west in Fumbuck Union Station and people could change trains. Some of them, eventually, had through service sleeping cars.
Change in Jamaica has been the bane of the LIRR forever. Between three trains at the same time. Passengers can walk through the train on the Spanish Solution track to change trains. Apparently that’s going away with the opening of East Side Access.
Hourly timed transfers as a planning principle go back to the invention of the InterCity in 1971 and timetable changes in Switzerland in the following years. Jamaica transfers are not at all designed on that principle – they were sporadic and there was no attempt to run everything on a consistent timetable.
Trains run through Jamaica multiple times an hour even in the dead of night. Have been forever. I have an Official Guide from 1956. They were timed. A few minutes between arrival and departure, when you had to change trains. A minute between arrival and departure when you didn’t. They are timed in Jamaica now. They were timed for New York-Philadelphia expresses too. Departure times for Penna. Sta, Hudson Term, Jersey City H&M Sta. and Newark and arrival times for North Philadelphia and 30th Street. Or vice versa. And a column showing what services were available. There was a separate schedule for the trains that made more stops. Or less stops because it was a through train. And the super duper expresses didn’t stop in Philadelphia at all. If you wanted to go to Philadelphia you took a different train.
That didn’t stop people from changing trains out in the middle of nowhere because that was where two lines crossed, back in the 19th Century. Or having through sleeper service.
360 km/h intercity train every 15 minutes via Providence and to run a 160 km/h intercity train every 30 minutes via Springfield and Worcester.
In the 22nd Century when there are 360 kph trains going through Rhode Island why wouldn’t there be 360 kph trains across Massachusetts to Albany and beyond? Keep in mind that everything east of the Rockies is going to be Amtrak loading gauge. Everything north or west of Albany will be there for the traffic to New York. Using it is “free”.
Worchester County, metro Springfield and Hartford county have almost as many people as metro Baltimore. Baltimore and BWI had 1.75 million boardings and alightings in 2019. That’s an average of 4800 a day. Today, on the very mediocre service. Baltimore has faster than driving and the Inland Route has slower than a bus.
Hartford County because it would be rather silly to drive from Old Saybrook to Hartford to catch a train to New York or Boston when there are trains to New York or Boston in Old Saybrook…. No reason why there can’t a Kodama ish thing on the existing Shore Line East once an hour or so. Or New London which is also part of Hartford’s CSA.
…no reason why New Rochelle, Stamford and Bridgeport get once or twice an hour Kodama-ish and the very high speed trains go through Long Island either.
.. Fairfield, New Haven and Hartford counties are also Baltimore-ish and there’s no reason why there can’t be every other hour to Montreal and every other hour to Toronto…. Change at Shin Rochester, out by the airport where there is parking, rental cars and very straight ROW, for Buffalo, Detroit and Ohio.
…. No reason to “fix” downtown Wilmington. They could have the Philadelphia-Boston Nozomi and a New York-DC Kodama every hour. …the West Trenton line NY-DC Kodama… Wilmington has a lot of banking. And vestigal corporate offices. No reason why there can’t be once an hour to Boston via Wall Street either. It’s all the same loading gauge… There’s going to Son of East Side Access Wall Street with through service to Son of East Side Access Brooklyn isn’t there?
Because it’s maybe $4 billion to speed up New Haven-Kingston and a lot more than that to build the same between Boston and Albany for fewer passengers.
New England can do two things. Cheapest way to get from Boston to New York is along the forgiving terrain parallel to I-95. Eventually they can build something along I-90 and that covers almost everything and everyone.
Via Wikipedia, here’s a map of the Northeast Corridor and connecting passenger rail lines:
Someone needs to update the map. If New Haven-Springfield and Philadelphia-Harrisburg are branches off the NEC so is NY-Albany. Amtrak or Metro North control it to just west of Schenectady. Since late 2012. There have even been a few marginal service improvements since then.
Once again, the reasons that the Inland Route isn’t just a terrible choice, but should be the first HSR route NY-Bos, with the shore line upgraded later:
1) The current slow portion of of NY-BOS is from New Haven to NY; upgrading that brings Bos-Prov-NY to about 2:30 *with no work elsewhere on the line, including the curvy part of the shore line.* Thus building Bos-Hart-NY automatically upgrades Bos-Prov-NY for “free”. Conversely, building Bos-Prov-NY does nothing for Hart/Spring/Wor unless you spend additional money to electrify the line.
2) There will always be more demand from DC-NY than Bos-NY. Providing two HSR paths NY-Bos means you can send all trains north and productively service all the people in southern New England, instead of either over serving Prov or short turning trains in NY and leaving a population approx. the size of the Baltimore MSA unserved.
3) There are about 50% more people in Hart/Spring/Wor than Prov/N. London. Absolutely astounding that Alon can claim the 2M people in Hart-Spr alone only merits “some rail service” to Bos & NY, while publishing HSR plans with lines to barely-1M-MSAs like Birmingham and Memphis.
4) New Haven is a great HSR distance from NY & Bos, a reasonable 1:15 from each, a travel time that would dominate the market. Prov by comparison is so close to Bos that it is unlikely that HSR would increase ridership between them much, the time is already so competitive
5) Empirically, the Hartford line gets more passengers per train than all Shore line stations south of Boston (or it did before Covid). This was despite not getting any passengers from Wor, doesn’t have any service to Bos, much service to NY has to transfer, and it has no high speed option like Acela. This indicates latent demand along the route is much higher and ridership would leap with proper HSR service (from Wor-NY traffice, Hart-Bos traffic, increased Hart/Spring-NY traffic, etc.)
2:30 NY-Hart-Bos isn’t crazy (0:30 NY-NH, 0:45 NH-Spr, 1:15 Spr-Bos) and doesn’t place outlandish demands on the NH-Bos portion (average speed of 80 mph those sections). This would make both the Inland Route and Shore Line HSR per international standards of 200kph/124mph top speed (which equals about 87mph avg. express speed, Bos-NY in 2:30 would be about 90-95 mph avg. speed overall either route).
Note, I do not contest that an upgraded shore line with an I-95 bypass would be ultimately faster. But if you do NY-Hart-Bos first, then the NY-NH portion at true HSR speeds (300kph+) can be fully reused at no extra cost when you re-build part of the Shore Line to the I-95 route and get 1:30 NY-Bos times, while leaving HSR connectivity to both NY and Bos for 2.8M people.
1. It goes the other way, actually. North of New Haven, the Hartford route can be upgraded relatively painlessly to Springfield, but going from there (or from Hartford via I-84) to Boston is a pain. In contrast, New Haven-Kingston requires a (relatively straightforward) $4 billion bypass whereas Kingston-Boston requires very little work. The upshot is that if the high-speed route is along I-95, then New York-Springfield is already pretty good with just electrification and some trackwork, whereas if the high-speed route is along I-91 and either I-90 or I-84, then New York-Providence is meh.
2. This, again, goes the other way. It’s straightforward to send surplus trains to Hartford and Springfield. It’s less straightforward to do this toward Providence, due to bridge limitations: about the outer limit that can be timetabled on the movable bridges is a train every half hour in each direction, which is fine for regional trains, but then if the intercities are force to become the regional trains between New Haven and Providence then it a) wastes expensive trainsets on regional runs and b) forces platform upgrades all over the line to 16-car trains.
3. Every map I crayon nowadays that has service to Memphis also has service to Hartford.
4. This is a real limitation of my modeling, but, my intercity rail model literally doesn’t know the difference between any of these trip times; this is obviously not right, but it does mean that it’s hard to extract useful information out of “Hartford is midway between New York and Boston” vs. “Providence is 22 minutes from Boston and 1:18 from New York.”
5. The Hartford Line got 2,000 passengers/weekday in 2019. That’s really little; there are individual MBTA stations that get more than this, including most on the Providence Line.
3. NYC-Hartford isn’t roughly equivalent to Nashville-Memphis. It’s vastly superior, because NYC is so much bigger than Nashville.
Or look at it different ways. Massachuesetts and Tennessee have the same population give or take 100,000. Boston to Amsterdam NY, the western edge of metro Albany, is the same distance as Memphis to Nashville. Or metro Worchester, metro Springfield and Hartford County Connecticut have the same population as Memphis and Nashville combined.
… the median center of the U.S. population is in southwest Indiana. The northeastern quadrant is really dense… which also means roughly half the population lives in the Eastern Time Zone. Memphis and Nashville are on Central Time.
1. It doesn’t go the other way. The equation to consider is that with an I-95 route Hart/Spring to Bos is ZERO (I am of course discounting the Lake Shore Limited) while Wor-NY is also ZERO. If you go I-91/90 for the initial HSR section then NY-Prov isn’t meh, it’s 2:00, compared to 3+ today. What’s more, if electrification and upgraded track is good enough for Hart/Spring then it should be good enough for Providence (i.e. the current state of the NEC) – Hart+Spring is the same size or slightly larger than Prov+N. London.
2. This makes no sense. The NEC from N. Haven to Bos is already heavily used by Acela and the Regionals. That traffic doesn’t need to increase (at first). The point is that with a Hartford routing, instead of stopping trains in NYC you can continue them to Bos through Hart-Spr-Wor, giving people in Bos more service to NY (the prime market) while also giving one seat service to NY for Hart/Spr/Wor and service to Bos for Hart/Spr. Sending surplus trains to Hart/Spr doesn’t get anyone in those cities to Bos or anyone in Wor to NY.
3. Eric2 already said it as good as I can.
4. Just because your model doesn’t account for it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Hart-Bos or Hart-NY in 1:00/1:30 is a much more attractive trip that will generate more rides compared to alternatives than Prov-Bos in 0:22. Also, I believe you have shown how you can get Bos-Prov below 30 min without expensive works, so why not have both.
5. Yes, but the Hartford line also had only 6 trains per day (7 with the Vermonter!), no service to Boston, most trains required a cross platform transfer to get to NY, and no express service (i.e. Acela). If you account for how much better current service is along the Shore Line, Old Saybrook to Prov is arguably underperforming State St. to Springfield.
3. Upon consideration, I do want to expand on what Eric2 said. It isn’t just that NYC is bigger than Nashville, it’s that Hartford+Springfield are bigger than Memphis (almost a million more people), and with Worcester they are in the same league as Baltimore, St. Louis, or Orlando and noticeably larger than Pittsburg, Cinncinnati, or Indianapolis. In fact, just Hart/Spring (which Alon notes is merging to a single metro) is larger than Nashville, the larger part of the Memphis pairing. It is also larger than Cleveland, which everyone accepts should get 115 mi of track to get to Toledo and then ride the Chicago-Detroit rails to the 10m people in Chi. The idea that 160mi of track to get Hart/Spr/Wor to the 24.5m people in NYC+Bos isn’t somehow justified when the others are is crazy. Especially since the 2.9m people in these three metros are all arranged in a nice linear corridor at higher density than anywhere in the Midwest in mostly pre-pre-war communities that are walkable and transit friendly (compared to say Columbus, Charlotte, etc., if not as good as Boston/NYC).
It’s more or less continuous suburb between New Haven and Springfield and getting that down below 45 minutes would be very very very expensive. Going along I-84 misses Springfield and doesn’t facilitate getting to Albany and beyond. There’s a lot of beyond-Albany. ( Very very high speed between New Haven and Springfield would be 20-25 minutes. Coupled with high speed from Boston to Albany and beyond, 45 is good enough. )
…Vermont did a study and it concluded that there isn’t enough demand for Boston-Montreal via New Hampshire and Vermont, considering the difficulty of the terrain. It would be around two hours and diverting through Albany would make it 2:45. Under three beats anything other than private helicopter. There are more people in metro Albany than there are in Vermont. And more people between Albany and Niagara Falls Ontario than there are in New Hampshire. Getting from Boston to Toronto via Montreal doesn’t get you to Ohio. There are more people in Ohio than there are in Greater Greater Toronto…. everything north or west of Albany will be there for the traffic to New York and using it is “free”… Doing customs and immigration while in motion between Saratoga Springs and Montreal makes Washington D.C. to Montreal competitive…
The existing movable bridges would not support 300 kph service. They can be they can be used for Shore Line East commuter service and the occasional Kodama that runs along them. Sending “surplus” trains to New England means you are sending empty to seat to New England. Turn them around in Sunnyside or even Penn Station, they can be earning revenue….The demand in New London County isn’t in downtown New London. It’s a few miles north at the casinos. New London County and the casinos can fight it out…. Send SLE to Shin New London in Uncasville. where the Shore Line Kodama merges back onto the high speed line.. Require them to run 25 passenger buses every 15 minutes, which anyone can use.. Lots of options.
…The Hartford line gets low usage because it’s slower than a bus. Springfield is roughly as far from New York as Albany is. Metro Albany gets a million-ish passengers a year. Because it’s faster than a bus…. There are more people in Hartford County and Hampden County, where Springfield is than there are in metro Albany.
“more of less continuous suburb”
This is a feature, not a bug, it means there are lots of people there who will ride the faster train with better direct service. It is even more continuous city/suburb over the 75 mi from NYC to New Haven, but everyone believes you can upgrade that route to 30 min. The existing line NH-Spr absurdly curvy, upgrade the 62 mi to 45 min won’t be ridiculously expensive.
[everything about Montreal, Vermont, etc.]
This is all a non-sequitur, nothing about establishing NY-Bos service via Hartford involves Albany, Montreal, or anything else you mention here.
“The existing movable bridges would not support 300 kph service.”
Which is why my plan is very explicitly to continue existing Acela style service on the Shore Line until passenger traffic has built to justify an I-95 bypass for 300 kph+.
You are not sending empty seats to New England, you are using them to carry people Stamford to Springfield, Hartford to Bos, Worcester to NY, Springfield to PA, etc.
“because it’s slower than a bus.”
Hence my very explicit plan to improve the service to meet the standard for HSR on an upgraded line (200 kph) making it faster than a bus.
“There are more people in Hartford County and Hampden County, where Springfield is than there are in metro Albany.”
Yes, this is why this line deserves faster and better service than what Albany has now or will in the future.
45 minutes new haven to Springfield is significantly faster than driving which appears to take ~1h20 around 3:30pm and ~1h around 10:30pm.
I think that’s pretty good actually.
And having to slow down for some bridges with a modern EMU that can accelerate at 2mph/s2 doesn’t feel like the end of the world either to be honest.
I give up, Hartford is obviously the navel of universe and must the goals of everything everywhere.
One of the primary reasons that planners obsess over the Inland Route, is the Coast Guard restrictions on the number of trains per day on the movable bridges between New Haven and Providence, most especially CONN in Old Saybrook and THAMES in New London. Even as these have been repaired or replaced, the USCG puts hard limits on how many times these bridges can close to ship traffic. The Inland Route may be slow, but in the eyes of the planners it’s at least unconstrained.
The obvious problem with this thinking is that we’re not getting maximum value for the existing slots; only when all Amtrak trains are running 10-12 cars can we claim that these slots are full. After that, the priority should be short bypasses of the bridges for intercity/HSR trains, which as costly as they might be will be cheaper than a full upgrade to SPG-BOS.
There’s also one pair of slots we can repurpose: the slots for 65/66/67, the overnight NEC trains. Those trains can be split up between overnight WAS-BOS trains via the Inland Route, taking an extra hour to run instead of sitting on a platform in NYP for an hour as currently scheduled, plus a Boston-Westerly-Boston train pair for the RI-BOS supercommuters who are the other primary market for those trains. (My overnight train crayon also sends the NYP-Maine train via the Inland Route specifically to avoid the bridge slot issue.)
At speed, it’s cheaper to build an I-95 bypass than to bother with anything inland, and then give the slots on the bridges to regional trains.
The FRA, CTDOT etc. aren’t going to let you run 350 kph trains over the existing bridges. And the squiggles through every former fishing village hugging the coast aren’t good for it either. It’s got to be someplace a bit farther inland where there is no river traffic and it can be at grade-ish. Once people in Connecticut are convinced that trains will not ruin the bucolic charm of the vicinity of the Turnpike.
Yes, although I have deep concerns about I-95 being far enough up/north to represent a good bypass of New London, which is the single worst spot on the Corridor. That everything adjacent to the town is eaten by a mess of interchange ramps bodes *very* poorly for a Shin-New London station, and that just gets worse if there’s meant to be any interface between HSR/intercity trains on the high level and local trains on the riverside.
I-95 being already assembled is the only reason why I’m not a doomer about the long-term future of the Shore Line; PVD-HFD would probably turn into HS2 Part 2 as the pastoralists NIMBYed the line underground, but if it ever happened, at least it would be straightish enough for Real HSR.
Vaguely in the vicinity of I-95 because there are too many curves on the highway itself. The destination in New London County is up at the casinos. Put it out there. Extend SLE there for six times a day connection or have the casinos run a bus every half or quarter hour – to the ferries would be good. They might get dozens or scores of people using it when a boat comes in.
The demand in New England is NOT between Hartford and Providence. If there is so much unrequited demand for it they can run different trains along the Shore Line or the Inland Line.
HS2 has only had so many problems because it is eye-wateringly expensive and because they didn’t add enough stops along the way.
As far as I can tell the best trains have an acceleration or around 1m/ss so can do 0-320km/h in around 90 seconds. That means a stop with a small number of passengers getting on or off could have a stopping penalty as short as 2 minutes including the stop itself.
“the best trains have an acceleration or around 1m/ss so can do 0-320km/h in around 90 seconds”
Performance figures like 1m/s/s generally refer to starting acceleration, which tapers off as the train picks up speed, resulting in a lower average acceleration.
The N700 Series Shinkansen, probably the fastest-accelerating high-speed train, does 0 – 270 km/h in around 180 seconds. The E5 Series Shinkansen usually takes about 4 minutes to do 0 – 320 km/h.
Trains that are going really really fast take a really really long time and distance to stop too.
Things in the Northeast are close together. Assuming the twice hourly train via Springfield will be stopping in Hartford, it’s 37 miles/60 kilometers between New Haven and Hartford and 25 miles/40 kilometers between Hartford and Springfield. 62/100 New Haven to Springfield.
You don’t have to stop the super fast express trains – although a penalty of 4 minutes is small. However you do need an inventive alternative. 4 tracking parts of a high speed line to allow some trains to stop doesn’t actually increase costs that much – especially if as a quid-pro-quo you avoid expensive tunnelling.
I mean the break even point on a high speed line is what 2-3 trains an hour – and 4 tracking a 2 track section is like what 1 train an hour or less? A lot of these more minor destinations would easily support that level of service.
Matthew Hutton: you’re out of your depth (d = 1/2 a t^2 type primary school arithmetic depth.)
Stop digging!
Mixed speeds, mixed stopping patterns kill capacity. Full stop.
“Super-fast express trains” operating at super-faster maximum speeds than other trains’ top speed kill capacity.
Just slowing the slow trains to the diverging speed for a slow track, even before slowing to stop on the slow track, costs mainline average speed = costs mainline capacity.
Quad-tracking isn’t some “inventive alternative” — it’s the first thing anybody thinks of! Of course it can work and does work (eg pretty much every Shinkansen line) but it isn’t inventive, and it isn’t free — neither free in capital cost nor free in trunk capacity cost.
(That aside, HS2 is still a shitty project undertaken by shitty people at shitty expense, and shits all over all budgets for all rail in Britain, and by Anglospheric consultant contagion, the rest of the English-afflicted world.)
It’s not the Tokaido, it’s Southern New England. A bit less than 11 million people in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. The train that only stops in New Haven and Providence can leave at :00 and :30. The train that also stops in Jamaica, New London, and Route 128 at :02 and :32 and the train that uses the Inland Route can leave at :06 and :36. Any more trains than that and you run out of demand.
4 tracking some sections doesn’t help much as from what I can tell nobody makes a switch that lets to cross it at high speed, so the train will slow down anyway. It doesn’t have to stop, but it can’t be going top speed. (can anyone give more information) So if you have a switch you may as well put a station just before/after and stop the trains anyway – you lose a few more sections, but you are not losing much more. Particularly if you build your system for fast unloading/loading so that people can get on/off and be on their way quick.
Richard you’re right that I’m overstepping my knowledge. Sorry.
That said HS2 was never going to get away with being constructed on the surface through an area of natural beauty without concessions.
Whether that’s putting the whole thing in a tunnel or whether that’s stops or whether that’s extra tracks and extra trains that start at the M25 is a question of what the right approach is. But doing literally nothing was never going to happen politically.
Also keeping the costs down and making at least some effort to reduce car journeys would have helped reduce some of the other criticisms too.
In terms of New England it’s difficult for me to know exactly how it will play out. However I don’t think steamrolling it through the suburbs without compromising will be a successful approach.
How many high speed trains are going to be passing through Providence, in each direction, every hour? Three? Four?
If you don’t come up with new right of way in Connecticut and Massachusetts-not-the-Northeast-Corridor, it’s not going to be high speed. It’s too squiggly.
I haven’t see that this idea has been proposed in another comment (quite possibly because it’s bad, but also maybe because it’s so novel — gotta take a chance sometimes 😉 ), but I just had the crazy thought of merging the current Northeast Corridor with the Inland Route, building out a high-speed line that veers inland from New Haven to hit Hartford and Springfield, but then, instead of going through Worcester, curves back down to Providence to rejoin the current route into Boston. This would connect far more populated areas while avoiding the problem bridges and low-populated areas along the coast.
Yes, by my calculations the route would be roughly 60 km longer, but the far greater potential ridership and increase in route pairs of major cities could offset that negative, and the higher speed that might be achievable on the new overland route from Springfield to Providence could additionally lessen that impact.
The problems Alon mentions about the difficulty of incorporating Worcester into an HSR system would also be avoided by my proposal. Rail alternatives for the city could then be more easily provided with slower, but still frequent connections to both Boston and Springfield (or even to Providence), which would ideally be coordinated with the timetable of this new Northeast Corridor route.
As an aside, I noticed I’m getting email notifications about comments here although I haven’t checked either of those options on my previous comments.
60km is 1/5 of an hour at speed. That’s not necessarily unreasonable to be honest.
And it’s basically what they did with LGV Nord by going via Lille.
It’s not at speed, is the issue – all of these cities force you to stop, because the approaches are slow. The Hartford-Providence route was 9 minutes slower than the direct one when I tried running the numbers 10 years ago.
Do you want this to be faster than flying or faster than a bus? And faster than flying to where? New York or Washington D.C.? Faster than flying to New York or Washington D.C., Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Toronto and Montreal? And from the point of view of a Springfielder, faster to Providence or faster to Boston? New Englanders just have to manage to get to New York State where they can leech off the tracks that are there for the demand to New York City.
How many gazillions of dollars do the tunnels and viaducts across the river valleys of northern Connecticut and the approach tunnel across Providence cost versus spending the money someplace else?
Given Americans are prepared to drive up to 1000 miles before they fly I think they probably judge flying as an activity that takes 4-5 hours per leg – and that for a decent number of journeys you need two legs.
If they judged it as being quicker than that no way would you spend 16 hours in the car vs that. Especially when compared to Europeans Americans are time poor.
Masochists are willing to drive 1,000 miles. Which is why there are lots of short haul flights.
I have an old post explaining why a slightly more direct route (Hartford-Providence) is suboptimal.
That’s very helpful — thanks!
I see your points, but it seems to me the high-speed connection of intermediate metropolitan areas should have a weighting that allows for a deviance of some magnitude from an optimal primary route (in this case NYC – Boston). A deviation for Hartford certainly looks like it would add such significant value to the primary route that it should be worth it, despite the penalties.
Maybe including Springfield to the route is really too much, but to me it seemed it was a way to optimize the intrastate connection between Greater Springfield and Boston (maybe an hour quicker than current rail connections) while also providing for a potential future high-speed connection westwards to Albany, which would undoubtedly go through Springfield anyway.
Weird, I was wondering about this last week as I drove from just outside of Hartford, where I Iive, to a client workshop located very close to University Ave Amtrak station in Westwood with Google Maps showing a 25 minute slow down where 90 meets 95. And the reasons you outline are exactly why it will probably be implemented… for no really useful reason. And why traffic is unlikely to decrease anytime soon in the New England area.
Alon, will the New Haven-Providence section be faster if the I-95 ROW is used instead of straightening the Shore Line?
Yeah, what I keep advocating for is going along I-95, probably just north of the freeway.
I think once Brightlines East and West settle into their highway-adjacent RoWs, we’ll see more of this. Yes, there is already a NM Rail Runner line down I-25 but Brightline’s trains will run fast enough to make a lot of people go “hey …”
You would have to tear down wide swaths of towns so that trains could NOT stop there. Trains that are NOT stopping in town don’t have to pass through the platforms there. There can be other trains, like the existing ones, that use the existing tracks, that do. Or there aren’t any intercity trains and they get on a commuter train to go to New Haven or New London to change trains.
Too many comments to read them all (or any?) but the Wikipedia map is in need of an update. Part of what the MTA calls their Hudson Line, I assume north of Poughkeepsie, is now leased by Amtrak giving them de-facto control. Likewise, the section of the NEC from the RI state line into Boston is under de-facto control of Amtrak because the Commonwealth gave them control decades ago. Both those items need to be reflected on the map, somehow, probably with a different color.
Likewise, since the map only seems to show lines with passenger service, the black line that (presumably) represented the old route of the Vermonter (ex-Montrealer) needs to be moved back over to Springfield give that the train was rerouted years and years ago … and there is now additional service north from Springfield as well.
The last time the map was updated was in 2012. Around the time Amtrak leased the Hudson Line and years before the Vermonter shifted west. I don’t remember when Amtrak changed the branding on the Virginia trains to Northeast Regional…the Virginia trains are branded as Northeast Regionals these days. The map needs to be updated.
SPUI made it but his account is gone, sadly. He did a LOT of transport-related wikiwork. It’s a good synopsis of operations on the NEC and it’s branches if out of date.
New Haven to Springfield has commuter service these days too. Someone needs to update it but it’s close enough.
If the MBTA extends Worcester trains to Springfield the railfans who take commuter trains between Boston and New York, New York and Washington D.C. or D.C. and Boston won’t have to find the bus in New England anymore!!
Or the T could run down from Kingston (or whatever) to New London … or do both and then you could make a non-Amtrak loop … Because why not?
I’d rather that the MBTA learned about electric traction though and stopped running Diesels under wire. CDOT needs to do the same thing, really.
I’m being told that it’s “Wickford Junction” …
CTDOT runs electric M8s alllll the way out to New London. They moved the diesels from the Shore Line to the Hartford line. Sorta kinda hourly on the Hartford line.
There aren’t a lot of people between New London and Wickford Junction. Or not many between Worcester and Springfield. Or Newark Delaware and Perryville Maryland. Running almost empty trains doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Alon, I agree that the Worcester to Springfield segment will have less ridership than Bos-Worc and NH-Springfield, but that eastern and western segments have close enough to equal ridership to warrant through running.
Regarding Newton, I don’t see how there is no possibility of expansion to four tracks. The narrowest portion I could find (at Auburn St and Melrose St) is ~19.5m. I believe you have mentioned that >160kph requires 4.5m track spacing so four tracks would need 18m; it just fits.
There are a few places where the current track bed is narrower than this, but they are all adjacent to I-95 shoulder (can be removed, the freeway switches between shoulder/no shoulder frequently here), Washington St (which has parking on that side of the street – including angled parking! – that can be removed) or yards/buildings (can be taken via eminent domain). There appears to be a parking lot/building(s) built over the freeway/tracks at Centre St, that would probably be most difficult and require a full taking/demolition instead of moving the property line a few meters.
Yes, this is a tight spot, but I don’t think any Japanese rail engineer, or a French one for that matter, would look at a ROW bordered much of the way by bare dirt and trees – to say nothing of a four lane street with parking on both sides – and say “Nope, so space here!”
Why, in some far off fantastical future would you need more than two tracks? The fantastical future when the MBTA is running an express to Worcester every 20 minutes and local to Framingham every 20?
Hey, give me some credit, the MBTA can run 15/15 without widening Newton. The problem is intercities.
After they get Boston-New York down to 90-100 in minutes in 2135 they can contemplate the tunnels and viaducts needed to make Boston-Albany 60-75. Those trains won’t be passing through the platforms. Until then a few Worcester expresses can be extended to Springfield.
If you do 30/30 through this section, can you get 4 tph intercity without four tracks, by having the local/express leaving Boston Landing immediately after an intercity, and then moving to four tracks after the line passes South of I-90 and the ROW opens up?
Back of the napkin math suggests the local/expresses would only need to average 45kph or better for this to work (commuter train leaves Boston Landing 12.5 minutes before intercity, and needs to arrive at four track switch 2.5 min before it = 10 min. Intercity will need 3.75 min to cover 10km. 10min+3.75 min = min 13.75 travel window for commuter. 10km in 13.75 min is 43.6kph).
What about express leaves 2.5 min before local, so there is a 25 min window to push 2 intercities through (with an Express/Limited-Nozomi/Hikari preceeding a Regional-Kodama). This obviously constrains schedules to fit this stretch, but provides more flexibility than the tight timeline above.
Does the commuter line need 8 tph? What about 30/15 express/local with two tph intercity taking the place of two expresses (remember there are still intercities running Bos-NY through Providence in my scenario).
In what alternate universe is there enough demand west of Worcester for 4 trains an hour?
In what universe is there demand for 4ph from Bos to NYC in 2:30? This universe and every other universe. You do realize that we are discussing the possibility of sending intercity HSR from NY to Bos via Hartford-Springfield correct?
2:30 is not high speed.
Amtrak almost makes it between New York and Washington D.C. in 2:30. A much higher demand market and they manage two and halfish short trains.
It’s not going to happen on a squiggly railroad route laid in the 1830s.
There are station platforms on the sides. And the four-lane street with parking is at a different grade from the railway; the only within-right-of-way expansion involves taking lanes from the Turnpike.
“There are station platforms on the sides”
Yes, but 19.5m is the *minimum* ROW I could find without takings. At many of the stations there is more, for instance at West Newton it is 25.5m. You can get more space by moving stations slightly; for instance moving the Newtonville station to W of Walnut street gives a 26m ROW without taking anything from I-90 or Washington St. Right now there appears to be a single side platform each station, putting this as a center platform between two middle tracks (which is the superior Fast-Slow-Slow-Fast track arrangement for a mixed commuter-intercity ROW) means you can use part of the track spacing as platform to get enough space (centers are 4.5m but trains are only 3.2m wide).
“he four-lane street with parking is at a different grade from the railway”
Is all of it? At this location the road, rail ROW and freeway all seem to be at the same grade:
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3548607,-71.1958196,3a,75y,110.68h,88.43t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sUTo0RibYq1o0HQ5OGW-o0w!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu
Where there is a grade difference between Washington St and the railway just use a retaining wall; from my scan of google streetview the difference can’t be more than 3m at worst, which is peanuts for transportation infrastructure, this isn’t major earthworks. Or you use the freeway barrier as a low retaining wall to raise the railbed a meter or so to make the retaining wall to the street shorter and cheaper.