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Politics & Government

World-Class, High-Speed Rail Program Proposed by 2040

Amtrak eyes improvements to Northeast Corridor infrastructure and capacity.

High-speed rail service could be in service in the Northeast Corridor (NEC) by 2040.

Howard Sackel, acting assistant vice president of the Amtrak High Speed Rail (HSR) Program, presented the project, which he termed “of national significance,” at Monday morning’s meeting of the Raritan Valley Rail Coalition.

The region serves 50 million people and is a major link between Northeast business centers and is the world’s second largest “mega-region,” second only to an area in Japan, he pointed out.

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A ridership survey, Sackel said, shows “we need to upgrade service over the next decade.” That upgrade, he explained, would include infrastructure improvements and expanded capacity.

Somerset County Freeholder Peter Palmer, chairman of the Raritan Valley Rail Coalition, pointed out that “the bottlenecks” to the system were built during the 1900-1910 timeframe.

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If implemented according to schedule, the high-speed rail service would be fully operational in 2040, a time when ridership would be six times that of current Acela levels.

High-speed rail would be phased in over the term of the project. New Acela trains would be capable of traveling 220 miles per hour, similar to the high-speed trains used in Europe and Japan; current trains are capable of speeds up to 150 miles per hour, but generally travel in the 60-mile-per-hour range because of structural and capacity issues.

Amtrak, Sackel noted, has had record ridership of 28.7 million passengers in 2010 and is “on track to beat that significantly this year.” That is why Amtrak is focusing on the next generation HSR (Next-Gen HSR), particularly for the NEC. NEC travel is expected to double by 2050.

“NEC service needs to be brought to a state of good repair and capacity needs to be increased significantly,” he told the gathering. “The answer to meet the capacity needs of the future is Next-Gen HSR and to look beyond general repairs that need to be done.”

The Next-Gen HSR system would, according to Sackel, “reduce travel times significantly.” It would include a new alignment through Connecticut, several new stations, a dedicated two-track alignment and new high speed trains.

Travel time from New York to Boston, for example, would be reduced from 3 hours, 35 minutes to 1 hour, 24 minutes. Also included in the initiative is a Gateway 2 project, with new tunnels under the Hudson River to Manhattan.

“This will provide major increases in ridership and revenue,” Sackel said.

The project is currently in the planning, proposal and funding stages. An environmental analysis is expected to begin later this year.

“We are just beginning to look at how the whole program is going to be packaged,” Sackel said. He estimated that the project would generate 60,000 jobs at the peak of construction.

The project is expected to cost $4.7 billion per year over 25 years of construction (or $250 million per mile). Amtrak has already received $450 million from the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) of the U.S. Department of Transportation to upgrade infrastructure along the NEC. The FRA has also made the region eligible for designation as a high-speed corridor.

Project organizers are also looking into ways to privatize parts of the program. Sackel also encouraged the public to write their congressional representatives to support future funding.

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