We Have Northeast Corridor Runtimes
After finally looking at the options, we have a main low-investment proposal; the writeup will appear soon (optimistically this month, pessimistically next month). Here is the timetable for the fastest intercity trains:
Boston 0:00
Providence 0:23
New Haven 1:04
Stamford 1:30
New York 1:56 (arrival)
New York 1:59 (departure)
Newark 2:07
Philadelphia 2:46
Wilmington 3:00
Baltimore 3:32
Washington 3:55
This timetable incorporates schedule padding, of 4% on the Providence-New Haven section (dedicated to high-speed trains except at the north end with marginal commuter traffic) and 7% on the others. All station stops except New York take 1 minute, and the times above except that for Boston denote arrival time, not departure time.
This includes some nonnegotiable investments into reliability and capacity, such as switch upgrades within footprint at the major stations to raise speeds from 10 miles an hour to around 50 km/h and grade separations of some rail junctions near New York and Philadelphia; this post describes the main ones and is largely still valid. As far as big deviations from the existing Northeast Corridor right-of-way go, there’s only one: the bypass between Kingston and New Haven, saving around 27 minutes of trip time. None of the New Haven Line bypasses and curve easements on the webtool map has made it, except at Cos Cob Bridge, which should be turned from two short, sharp curves into one wider curve as it is replaced.
The menu of options of what to do with the corridor further, with speed impacts, is as follows:
- If the other long non-shared sections are timetabled with 4% and not 7% padding – New Haven-Stamford and New Brunswick-Perryville – then this saves, respectively, 43 and 93 seconds. But I am uncomfortable with this little timetable padding when these sections are directly adjacent to complex commuter rail track-sharing arrangements around New York and in Maryland.
- Restoring the Back Bay stop costs 107 seconds. Restoring the Route 128 stop costs 187 seconds. These and all subsequent figures include padding.
- There are a bunch of 1,746 m radius curves between the Canton Viaduct (which is very difficult to move) and Mansfield, all short and without difficult terrain or property on their inside; easing all of them to allow 320 km/h cruise speed saves 63 seconds.
- A New London stop for local intercity trains, in the middle of high-speed territory, costs 3:58; this should be padded to 5 minutes to space trains correctly to Boston, under a service pattern where out of every three trains going up to New Haven every 30 minutes, one runs express to Boston, one runs local, and one goes up to Hartford and Springfield.
- A rather destructive Milford curve easement saves 22 seconds (with 7% pad, not 4%), at the cost of four entire condo buildings near the station, 20 single-family houses, and most of Green Apartments; we do not recommend this even in a high-investment scenario due to the small time saving.
- A curve easement in Stratford taking some back space near the Walmart would by itself save 8 seconds, but the saving grows if adjacent curve fixes are conducted, for example, if the Milford curve easement is included, the saving is not 8 but 14 seconds, with intercity trains going at 240 km/h.
- A bypass complex for the curves of Bridgeport and Fairfield, including a tunnel under the Pequonnock, saves 2:54. The same bypass raises the time saving of the above Stratford curve by another 11 seconds, so combined they are 3:13, and the Milford easement would cut another 28 seconds.
- Trains can skip Stamford, saving 2:15.
- A destructive bypass of Darien would save 2:14, with trains running at 250 km/h, with around 300 properties taken, about as many as on the eight times as long Kingston-New Haven bypass. This figure assumes that trains continue to stop at Stamford. If the bypass is combined with skipping Stamford on express trains, then then are an extra 11 seconds saved.
- A bypass of Greenwich and Port Chester’s tight curves saves 63 seconds, and also changes the way intercity trains have to be timetabled with express commuter trains; whereas the default option without this bypass requires express trains to run as today and local trains to make all stops, the bypass forces express trains to stop at a rebuilt Greenwich station to be overtaken by intercity trains that use the bypass.
- A series of curve easements at Metuchen, not included in the plan, saves around 6 seconds and is not included.
- Trains could stop at Trenton, at the cost of 3:52 minutes. This could potentially be padded to 5 minutes to space trains south of Philadelphia correctly, if a train in three diverts at Philadelphia to the Keystone corridor.
- Trains could bypass Wilmington. On the current alignment, it only saves 1:44 due to sharp curves at both ends of the station, but if a bypass alignment near I-95 and the freight bypass is built, then trains would save about 3:20 compared with stopping trains.
- A bypass of BWI or realignment, including moving the station and the access road and parking garage, would save 15 seconds.
Pedestrian Observations 
Is it possible to do the route in 4:30 with 8 additional stops? It would be interesting to see an alternative adding stops between New Haven and New York at Brigdeport, White Plains, Woodlawn and near Bronx. Between Newark and Philly at Perth Amboy, New Brunswick, Princeton and Trenton.
If such a route means the travel time increases to above 5 hours, I would agree it probably isn’t worth it. But the system should not force people living in NYC suburbs into traveling in the wrong direction to get to Boston or Washington.
White Plains isn’t even on the Northeast Corridor. Potential local-intercity stops include all of the following:
1. Back Bay and Route 128. Those can even go in the main plan, potentially – it’s a tradeoff of the cost of extending the platforms to 16-car trains vs. the likely second overtake needed on the Providence Line if the trains are too fast.
2. Something in southern Rhode Island, perhaps Kingston – there’s no O&D ridership potential there, but it could be a transfer to regional trains to New Haven on the slow line, for service to intermediate points like Mystic.
3. New Rochelle, if the station is rebuilt. Bridgeport isn’t good for this – the station would need to be rebuilt anyway, and passengers there can take a commuter train to Stamford or New Haven and transfer there.
4. Trenton, as mentioned above. I can see a world with New Brunswick, but originating passengers can transfer at Trenton or Newark; Metropark is deprecated for the same reason.
5. If there’s a reroute, then a near-airport station in Philadelphia can be added. But the line would need to be rebuilt, since the freight line is full of level crossings.
6. BWI can also be added back, as kind of the Route 128 of Maryland.
Kingston, RI is next to a university with 18,000 students, many of whom live out of state. That should be non-zero ridership potential.
It’s also within taxi-cab distance of Narraganset, a semi-popular vacation town for people in the New York area, including my family. If we had been given the option of a 1.5 hour train ride plus 20 minute taxi ride instead of a 4 hour drive, we might have taken it.
I want your dealer’s because he’s got good shit.
1) In 2019 Back Bay was the second busiest station in Massachusetts. In very round numbers half of South Station or roughly the same as Providence. Route128 was the third busiest with around a third of South Station’s. The twice an hour train to the less busy stations doesn’t need to be 16 cars until automobiles are banned.
2)If the intercity trains are stopping in New London why would passengers who want something along the existing tracks in Connecticut have to go to Rhode Island? Other than your crayon had the urge to put a blob there?
3) The New Haven Line intercity stop, in Westchester doesn’t need to be in New Rochelle. It’s been in Rye or Port Chester in the past. Rye could have dedicated ramps to the spaghetti junction of I-287/Cross Westchester, I-95/New England Thruway and U.S.1/Boston Post Road. The enormous parking garage can be wedged between the flyovers etc. …. and I’m sure someone told them when they built the garage, in New Rochelle, right at the platforms that would be a bad idea someday. … Put it in Rye, the cab ride to the hotel along the Cross Westchester will be shorter. The mighty New York Boston and Westchester was going to out compete New Haven service to Grand Central. It seems the ROW is still there.
4) In 2019 Metropark was almost as busy as Trenton. Except for the bridge over the Raritan River just north of the New Brunswick station, the ROW is six or more tracks wide. All the way to Philadelphia. Squint at Metropark they have reserved space to turn the side platforms into island platforms.
5) Why would anybody in their right mind take the train past BWI or EWR to get to PHL? And the few people who have that peculiar urge can change trains in 30th Street for the airport.
6)New Carrolton is the Metropark of Washington D.C. They were the Pennsylvania Railroad’s park-n-ride experiments – Capital Beltway and Metropark. Along with Jersey Ave. There may be others lost to the mists of time. …. Cornwell’s Heights? WIkipedia doesn’t have history on it. BWI is Baltimore’s Metropark.
1. All trains need to have 16 cars, because the New York-area infrastructure needs the capacity. My modeling is not the world’s most sophisticated (there’s quite a lot of rage around), but it does project an annual traffic density of 49 million passengers on NY-Philly, pretending there’s nothing off-corridor. Run a 1,000-seat 16-car train every hour in each direction for 18 hours a day, fill it to 100% capacity, and you get 13.14 million passengers; at 6 tph, the average occupancy is 62%, which is on the high side for a flat timetable.
2. Shin-New London is not quite the same place as New London. Close enough the Shore Line Easts can go there but it’s off-corridor so they’d have to reverse to continue east if they were to take over regional service to Mystic and Westerly.
3. New Rochelle is just straight up the best place between Stamford and New York – it’s both a busy commuter stop and the reverse-branch point between Grand Central and Penn Station.
4. Yeah, but Trenton is easier to serve – there’s less commuter rail traffic to get stuck behind. It’s also better as a commuter rail connection, because SEPTA is not running through there (it’s you who pointed out to me the mismatch in demand, leading to a mismatch in train size, as a reason not to do it).
5. Elite status with American? Yeah, it’s not a particularly strong station given everything – it wouldn’t be at the terminal and the construction is annoying.
6. New Carrollton has low traffic. BWI, yeah, it has high traffic, about the same as Providence and a bit more than Wilmington (link, change state name in URL to get the others), but New Carrollton is weak, and Aberdeen is a meme.
I think before anyone makes declarative statements about “demand at X” station currently, it’s important to take a step back and realize so much of that right now heavily scales with AMTK frequency to the station, especially in New Jersey. Metropark gets good service so it gets good ridership.
You really need the box of crayons with 64 colors.
1 They don’t all have to be 16 cars long. One an hour can be 12 cars long and the reservation system can discourage people who want to travel between major stations from using them.
Or in many many projects over many many years they can build a few 16 car stations for a few hundred million. Though that’s not as dramatic.
2 The reason Mystic and Westerly get service is that the trains are passing through. They won’t be passing through anymore and whether the states want to spend money for almost empty trains to be wandering will likely get an answer of “no”.
I don’t know why the tracks are in downtown New London when the destination is the casinos. Shin- New London should be where the casinos…. fight over where it should be.
If you insist on putting it on the other side of the highway through downtown they can spend a few hundred million extending the commuter tracks there. Which is a lot cheaper than maintaining a long stretch of track for a short train once every other hour.
3 People crossing the platform to change trains don’t give a shit where they do that. Larchmont would work just as well for the commuter trains. Where there is plenty of space. Rye is closer to all the corporate offices off I-287. And the people who live along it. The spaghetti bowl isn’t dense walkable downtown and no one will care that there is an enormous parking garage at the station. Where the rental cars can be too,
4 There are four tracks between Philadelphia and New York. The train that makes all of the stops can finagle itself between the express commuter trains.
5 There are flights from EWR and BWI to Charlotte. Or wherever American’s hubs are in 2075. Assuming American hasn’t gone bankrupt three or four times and been spun off into six new airlines. Or sumptin. And flights to O’Hare. The budget for not-building something is close to nothing.
6 Park-n-rides at the beltway means there aren’t enormous parking garages in downtown and they aren’t driving in downtown. Or driving all the way.
You don’t even need the 64 color box of Crayolas, the 24 count might allow you imagine something complicated.
Or the smaller stations can do selective door opening. That’s pretty much standard on trains these days.
New Carrollton will have a significant ridership gain when the Purple Line connects to the station thus bringing in the University of Maryland (40,000 students) into the transit catchment area. The New Airo trains will make New Carrollton a more viable O/D station for trips with Virginia. These should both come online in the 2027/2028 timeframe.
Bridgeport and New London are ferry important. The connections to Long Island ferries brings an important intermodal connection to the NEC.
If the really high speed trains went to New Haven via Long Island driving to the enormous parking garages in East Yaphank would be faster than taking the ferry from Orient Point to New London. Taking the LIRR from Greenport to East Yaphank and changing trains would be faster than taking the ferry.
High speed rail from Ronkonkoma to New Haven would be faster than any trip involving a ferry.
Until that rail line is built, NEC stations at Bridgeport and New London will be essential connections for Long Islanders connecting with Amtrak.
Both of them.
Does anyone outside Japan achieve these stopping times?
If you look at e.g. the slightly late running 06:11 Leeds to Plymouth service (https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:C05697/2024-11-21/detailed) the timings it broadly manages are 2 minute stops in general, 4 minutes at Birmingham New Street and 3 minutes at Exeter/Sheffield (and presumably Bristol if there wasn’t a longer stop to allow time to be caught up and it wasn’t on time at that stage).
France has 3 minute stops timetabled in general with longer at the larger stops, no idea what Germany manages but difficult to believe it beats Britain meaningfully.
And yes sure our platforms aren’t fully level but is 915mm really causing a meaningful slowdown?
Going for say 5 minutes at New York, 3 minutes at Philadelphia and Baltimore and 2 minutes elsewhere might be achievable but would still be relatively ambitious.
The question should be how to achieve Japanese stop times for intercity trains. There’s some real tradeoffs like Japanese trains having more legroom, some things that might be hard to replicate like larger overhead racks to avoid choke points at luggage racks near the doors. And for people with luggage, the step and often wide gap is often significant, though that’s more obviously fixable.
However, there’s obvious stuff that is basically “free” like nudging and nagging passengers into being more prepared and orderly in alighting and boarding, that is just rare in Europe, and should be tried more.
If the train stops, and leaves that quick people will learn. You just need good customer service for people who miss their train (or miss their stop) because they were not ready to get on (off) in the time allowed. You also need enough doors on the train, space on the platforms, and correct station flow so that a 2 minute stop doesn’t feel rushed because of all the other people in your way. It should feel like purely your fault if you miss a train, and not that like it was such a rush it is impossible for everyone to get on/off – even if you are disabled.
This seems like a case where people will use whatever time you give them. If the train is waiting for 15 minutes they won’t try to board until 14:45. If they only get minutes they will spend 2:30 saying goodbye.
Certainly in the UK most of the dwell time is people actually boarding the train.
There is a bit of time waiting for the platform to be clear after boarding – but the only fix for that is platform edge doors, which need consistently sized rolling stock, which we don’t have.
And the other challenge is getting people to wait in the right place, but without a consistent stopping pattern and specific carriage markers that is also difficult.
There should be markers for each carriage/door on the platform. With several different door arrangements, the markers can be coded with shapes with matching digital signage of what shape to wait next to for what train. And platform doors that can accommodate many different train door layouts exist.
It is more complicated with multiple door arrangements, but if people form good queueing manners from lines with consistent door placement they will make an effort to figure out what to do with more complicated door placement.
Also. A lot of UK stations have so many platforms it’s hard to believe that door placement on each platform could not be made consistent per platform.
@Sassy, a sizeable number of the stations that even a fastish train like that Cross Country stop at only have a couple of platforms. It’s difficult.
The question with the topic at hand is whether you would be better with a half hourly Boston South-New York Penn-Philadelphia-DC express train. Would leave more room for local/regional service.
To also be clear the train linked above has two doors per carriage like the Shinkansen.
You mention twice that local stops could be used to go from a 10-10-10 frequency to a 15-15 frequency instead of 10-20, after trains divert to Springfield and Harrisburg.
Is this 15 minute pattern necessary for commuter rail timetabling or is it a nice to have?
It’s necessary for commuter rail timetabling on the Providence Line.
Yep – The Northeast Corridor from Boston’s South Station to Washington DC’s Union Station = Slow Boat to CHINA !!! Enjoy your Thanksgiving Day Folks !!!
Regarding padding, a fixed padding percentage makes sense when considering variations in driving style and dwell time, but are there specific failures that also require analysis. I.e., should padding be provided to allow for say an emergency slow zone (one stop penalty without dwell) between New Haven and Providence?
Alon,
Given NIMBYs and political resistance to spend a few $billion to save only 63 seconds, I doubt that Darien to Stamford Bypass would be built.
Do you advocate for Boston-DC Acela Express trains skipping Stamford, but stopping at Trenton?
I visit Amtrak BWI Station often. I don’t understand rebuilding the entire BWI Station, access road & parking. In my view, it only needs widening for a 4th track which will require rebuilding the westside platform, extending pedestrian overpass from Amtrak BWI Station on the eastside, and high-speed switching & signaling for Amtrak Northeast Regional trains to stop at BWI station along with MARC trains.
Thomas Dorsey
Current timetable has trains skipping Trenton (at least the fastest ones – either one or two trains in three should potentially stop there), but all serving Stamford. I’m uncertain about both decisions – Stamford and Trenton – and they could go either way.
Rebuilding BWI is only if the station is moved, to straighten the curves on both sides of it. Otherwise, it can stay in place; the time saving from relocation is very small, so it’s likely not worth it.
It is the Center of the Universe after all.
If you are running more than one train an hour then having some different stopping patterns to cover more stations is sensible and very normal.
Correction. After looking at Google Maps satelite view from Halethorpe station through BWI station, I see why the BWI station’s eastside platform & ped overpass need rebuilding to accomodate the 4th track. I don’t think, however, the BWI station waiting area, roadway or parking garage needs rebuilding. The satelite view suggests sufficent space from the station.
Thomas
Proposed BWI 4th Track Configuration: https://s3.amazonaws.com/mta-website-staging/mta-website-staging/files/Transit+Projects/FONSIAttachments.pdf#page=32
Why would anyone do any of these things? What reasons would anyone organization or government have to do any of this at all? There is no reason for anyone to do any of this among any organization, entity, or government as they currently exist in the US. Until the WHY and HOW are figured out, the WHAT is beside the point.
in theory Stephen garden would make a lot of money if he lead this.
Who else would benefit in any way from any of this? Until a number of people see ways in which they can individually and materially benefit from these things, none of them will happen.
The people using the existing slower services? That demonstrate that Real Americans(tm) will use trains when the trains are faster than the alternatives? Without turning into Communists, like George Will says they will.
https://www.newsweek.com/will-why-liberals-love-trains-68597
Even Ol’ George himself uses the trains.
https://archive.nytimes.com/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/diminished-individualism-watch/
Yes, many people want these improvements but in whose interest is it to do the hard political and financial work of actually making any of it happen? People WANT all sorts of things that they don’t get. Why? Because it’s not in anyone’s identifiable individual material interest to create those things. If something does not involve a substantial profit element in the US, it doesn’t happen because no individual or organization can identify any material advantage from doing so. Whose bank account, property values, and/or career will materially benefit from making these improvements? Without such people, none of these improvements will actually happen in the US. It’s not actually in Amtrak’s interests in have faster trains. It’s in Amtrak’s interests to have larger funding streams.
Since apparently the only thing that motivates you is money:
Some people can see that moving people faster between the cities that make the most money means those people have more time to make more money. And getting them out of airports means yokels from the hinterlands can fly in to make money. The alternatives are widening I-95 which isn’t going to be cheap and doesn’t save anybody any time which is why people who are interesting in making money instead of driving are on the train. Or expanding airports.
Apparently, you are independently wealthy and have never given a thought to how to make money from your efforts.
Yes, many people can SEE the advantages of these improvements. They just can’t figure out how to make money from doing the substantial work of actually creating these improvements. Introducing private capital and meaningful competition into trains is the only way to get any of these improvements.
I’m not stupid and take jobs that are paid by the hour.
How much money does the highway system make? Airlines fairly regularly wipe out their investor’s in this decade’s bankruptcy. How about airports? How much money does keeping the Mississippi navigable make?
Interstates made countless billions for private land owners and for-profit construction companies, not to mention the for-profit owners and developers of all the land near new interstate exits and the increase in car sales and gas taxes paid by private car owners. Airlines function in a competitive market using private capital serving airports owned by local and state governments. Private for-profit barge owners on the Mississippi pay fees to the Army Corp of Engineers, fees they gladly pay because any other form of transportation for bulk items is much more expensive. Any more questions?
People who make money on road projects are the same people who make money on airport projects and railroad projects. The freight companies spend lots of money on construction. All of the vendors for all of the projects will be bidding on the work. And will make money doing it. Almost all of them anyway.
Which doesn’t answer the questions about how much money the highway system makes or airports. or navigable waterways. I’m going to assume you are an unpaid curmudgeon. Paid trollery is usaully better quality.
How much money does Amtrak “make?” Construction companies in the US have much less experience and interest in bidding for rail projects. They are of a modest scale in difficult locations and come along irregularly in comparison to the steady stream of interstate projects that are their bread and butter. Even real estate investors aren’t that interested in land and buildings near rail stations because the stations are publicly owned and the land around the stations is already owned by well-established owners who have long since figured out how to take advantage of their location, though there is some scope for densification around a station with increased capacity. An economy built around expressways can not be easily reorganized to take advantage of rail projects.
What’s your point? That it’s difficult to tackle vested interests that don’t want to change the status quo or that we shouldn’t even try?
You still haven’t answered how much money highways make. How much money does I-94 wandering through the more desolate reaches of North Dakota and Montana? For that matter how much does it make in Illinois?
The difference between building a highway and building a railroad is that the highway gets asphalt on top of the gravel and the railroad gets rails on top of the gravel. Pouring concrete – and everything leading up to pouring concrete – is the same set of skills. Which is why the same sets of people do both kinds of work. There are specialist paving companies and specialist rail laying companies. Which is a very small part of either budget.
The real estate developers increasing density around railroad stations all over the Northeast and a few other places didn’t ask you and Howard Roark about development in the hinterlands and have been busy densifying.
It’s impossible to tackle vested interests that don’t want to change without a competing set of interests to challenge them. I would think that is self evident. You need to create a competing set of interests to do any of this. That could be another non-profit operator, it could be a for-profit competitor. It could be a new public agency separate from Amtrak. It could be for-profit investors building and leasing new sections of track in return for users fees from Amtrak and other operators. It could be for-profit investors owning stations and other land nearby stations as an opportunity to create dense multi-use development which they will lease or sell. Americans problem with passenger trains is not with passengers or trains. It’s with everything else BUT passengers and trains. The problems are systemic to American society.
We know how much United Airlines makes. We can find out how much a big box store next to an interstate exit makes in sales and how much they pay in taxes to a local government. We can figure out how much any given piece of real estate next to an interstate exit has increased in value and who has profited, including local governments that benefit from an increase in property tax income. We can’t know how much Amtrak or MTA “make” because they don’t exist for the purpose of ‘making money.’ Land by interstate exits are an ‘investment opportunity.’ Even publicly owned airports create investment opportunities nearby for warehouses and hotels. Sets of interests support increased interstate capacity, though less than in the past, because they see investment opportunities in the places interstates allow travel to. Local governments support interstate access because it allows them to have more retail that produces sales tax income, income that they might lose to a neighboring government. Passenger rail needs to create ‘investment opportunities.’
Passenger rail does create investment opportunities though? Massive property appreciation occurs near stations, and this is a widely used mechanism to support construction of transport infrastructure including in North America. Contemporary examples include Brightline and Translink, and historical examples include the transcontinental railroads. You can say that Brightline is subsidized, which is true, but it’s also true that even it is not capturing most of the real estate gains. Being closer to the station ensures more appreciation, but unrelated landlords and homeowners also gain a lot.
For example, the second Avenue subway extension increased property values enough to pay for itself, were they taxed, even at grossly inflated New York costs.
You mention all the exceptions that prove the larger rule of American society. Brightline IS an example of how to create new sets of interests to support expanding passenger rail today because it’s for-profit. The transcontinental railroad was supported by federal land grants but it was funded and operated by a for-profit railroad company that made as much money from selling the land along the line as from paying passengers. Manhattan proves that passenger rail can have broad support from private land owners and governments in dense places in the US. Wherever density meets private capital, passenger rail will grow there.
In great detail, in every bankruptcy. How many times have the airlines been bailed out since Acela went into service?
Neither do roads. You still haven’t said how much money the highway system makes.
You still haven’t said how much money Amtrak makes.
Here’s an example of how a project happens because TWO rail operators want it to happen. Imagine if half a dozen rail operators wanted a project to happen. Imagine the political pressure they could exert. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiWttevGcOE
Why does Amtrak have to make money when the highways don’t, the airports don’t and the naviagble waterways don’t. Or the odd funinuclar, aerial tramway or the San Francisco cable cars?
As I described above, highways make hundreds of billions for a vast array of property owners, investors, large corporations, local governments, and construction companies. Who does Amtrak make money for?
You aren’t disagreeing with me. You are disagreeing with the existence of the US.
^^Not sure if you’re being intentionally obtuse, or this is just a bit of fun for you.
“Who does Amtrak make money for?” Manhattan? Central Boston/Philly/DC/any other metro area in the NEC or elsewhere served by it that couldn’t possibly accommodate as many people driving in as come in by train? Every landlord/developer everywhere who can build more rentable space instead of more parking spaces, or who doesn’t have their property leveled so as to build a highway?
The mechanism of transit systems (which, in the broadest sense, includes cars/roads) “generating profit” is–and always has been/will be–what the people in the places the transit connects do when they use it to get to the places to do the things they do. By your own definition, the only roads that make money for anybody are toll roads for their owners. The difference in the application of your parameter for “who makes money” is so, so transparent. I genuinely don’t know how someone who truly can’t see that difference makes it onto a blog like this.
Riding trains saps the precious bodily fluids of Real Americans(tm). Who drive everywhere.
So people like Matt ignore that there is no place to park in places along the NEC where Acela stops. Or even where the Regionals stop. Or that there is execrable traffic all along the way. On roads with tolls. That the people along the NEC will be able to spend more time making money instead of spending time traveling. Add capacity along I-95 for everybody using Amtrak it’s adding a lane. Which would not be cheap.
I also suspect that it big cities which are cesspits of sin and depravity. And crime. Lets not forget crime.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-charges-conviction-guilty-verdict/
…..It not Real America(tm) so the tax money collected there should go out to the hinterland where Real America(tm) is.
I’m not being “obtuse” at all. You misunderstand my definition of ‘making money’ entirely. Yes, Amtrak makes money for those invested in a handful of the largest and most dense urban centers. That’s it. If you want Amtrak to do more elsewhere, it needs to ‘make money’ for those invested in places elsewhere. I live in Columbus, Ohio, drive a small car to my job and take buses as often as convenient in this modest midwestern town. I took subways, trains, and buses during my month long stay in July in NYC. Set aside your personal resentments long enough to actually see how the US actually functions. Don’t waste your time shooting the messenger.
Why should people in the large urban centers, where all the money you want to spend in the hinterlands, comes from, want to spend their money in the hinterlands?
I haven’t expressed any desires of any kind here….until now. I’d love to see a system of passenger trains connection all of Americans urban places with frequent and reliable service. The only way that will happen is if large amounts of private profit-seeking capital are involved. That’s simply how the US works. It’s how the US has always worked since its creation.
You’ve expressed you love for money in almost every post.
You’ve expressed your contempt for the US in almost every post.
You are mistaking pity for contempt. It’s very very sad that you think the only motivation people have is money.
You mistake my honesty for greed. It’s very very sad that you think that the only way that anything can or should be achieved is by imposition from above.
I haven’t suggested imposing anything on any one. You are projecting.
You are also confusing money with greed. People can be greedy for things other than money. The infamous stereotype is being greedy for power.
Who should pay for transportation in the US?
If the train takes 3h55, are you able to do a cycle (e.g. BOS-DC-BOS) in 8 hours flat, or would it be more like 8.5-9 hours? What kind of dwell times are you proposing for the termini? I know you claim 4 minutes is possible to turn a train around but I’m a little skeptical about that, especially for a service that takes four hours (and has the minimum necessary dwell time at NY Penn). And then there’s cleaning to take into account.
I can do the math in my head … most of the time … but please consider putting all times in seconds when discussing time savings.
e.g.,
A bypass complex for the curves of Bridgeport and Fairfield, including a tunnel under the Pequonnock, saves 174 seconds. The same bypass raises the time saving of the above Stratford curve by another 11 seconds, so combined they are 193 seconds, and the Milford easement would cut another 28 seconds.
It makes the orders of magnitude stand out better, IMHO.
And what was with “from 10 miles an hour to around 50 km/h”???? You’re losing it, Alon … 😀
Except for a a few blocks south of the Wilmington station, I-95 is west of the tracks, is squiggly and partly in trench. As has been pointed out many times before. And isn’t anywhere near the tracks north of Wilmington. You likely mean the broad sweeping curves of I-495 that is immediately parallel to the tracks north of Wilmington. And that parallel the former PRR freight tracks east of downtown. The majority of the freight these days is even farther west on the former B&O tracks.
If the train is stopping in Wilmington it doesn’t matter if there are slow curves on either side of the station because to stop, it has to slow down.
Does this scenario assume that two new bridges across the Connecticut River would be built in the span of ~10-15 years (the high-speed alignment and the currently funded replacement just south of the existing bridge)? It looks like funding has been finalized and the ship has sailed (pun intended) on the decision to rebuild the low-speed bridge in the same spot – seems unfortunate but unavoidable to have that duplicative spending.
The New Haven-Kingston bypass looks like the single largest source of time savings on the entire corridor and would be really transformative the regional level – imagine having New Haven closer to Boston in terms of travel time than Providence & Worcester are currently! I’d love to see this happen but worry that how feasible it will be in practice once the protests begin around property takings, etc. – I’d be curious if Alon came across other bypass scenarios that further minimized property takings, even if they involved more tunneling, longer travel times on the order of ~5-10 minutes, etc.
Bad spamfilter. Sorry.
And the protests are not the veto point everyone thinks they are. (And, for one, the bypass alignment we’re using mollifies two of three concerns in Old Lyme and Old Saybrook.)
You think the ancient rituals of Connecticut NIMBYs and BANANAs will somehow not apply. They will.
No, I think the rituals are going to be about as effective as the Pacheco vs. Altamont lawsuit.
Their great grandmothers and great great grandmothers stopped the widening of Boston Post Road. Shoved a parkway out into the rural hinterlands. Their grandmothers stopped the building of the Connecticut Turnpike. They had to sneak that past them by building “bypasses” of Boston Post Road and then exclaiming what a good idea it would be be to connect them together.
They have already had protest meetings about how building something near the Turnpike would ruin it’s bucolic charms and destroy the rustic beauty of it all.
And it’s all academic because the Northeast is filled with effete Easterner who are only good for funding the highways of Real America(tm).
Alon there were successful “NIMBY” protests in the 17th century in Amsterdam to prevent a boulevard being built up the Keizersgracht, and Abingdon on Thames had at least two protests against the railway in the 19th century (the Great Western mainline and the Cherwell line at least, and perhaps also the London-Birmingham line as well).
It seems pretty unlikely in the 21st century that you could avoid NIMBY protests in wealthy New England.
I don’t want to avoid protests, I want the state to beat them in court, which has recently happened in the same country, against comparably wealthy and connected opponents, in a state with NIMBY-friendlier laws.
Maybe at best you could promise to run a Chiltern railways esq service on the classic line to the destinations skipped by the high speed line, and like Chiltern that to be prioritised over and above the urban service.
@Alon, there is a fair argument that the state should be bolder, they are worried about the visual impact of electrification on the new railway line from Oxford to Cambridge which goes through nothing.
That said being more bold than we were in Britain in the 19th century is really going too far. The stuff that was a reaction to that happened because the 19th century was too much. The sensible balance is between now which is too cautious and the 19th century.