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New era of rail: Amtrak improves Northeast Corridor tracks between Boston and Washington DC (north-eastern USA)
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- Title
- Amtrak Improves Northeast Corridor Tracks
- Authors
- Beth Toll
- Published
- Jul 18 2023
- Word count
- 357 words
Amtrak's "New Era of Rail," sparked by a literally once-in-a-generation $66 billion federal investment in national rail service, includes a number of projects meant to improve reliability, speed, and frequency between cities in the country's populous northeast.
The region most affected is the general vicinity of New York City, but upgrades stretch from Washington, DC to Boston. This summer will see about $124–130 million in infrastructure improvements along the Northeast Corridor. Work includes:
Construction may involve some temporary delays along affected areas, but Amtrak assures passengers that the inconvenience is worth it in the long run. The NEC is the United States' most trafficked rail corridor (by an enormous margin), as well as one of Amtrak's only profitable routes (also by a considerable margin), so even incremental upgrades to accommodate genuine high-speed rail are welcome. Clear benefits include economic growth as well as an obvious increase in quality of life for commuters and anyone else seeking inter-city transportation, as well as the environmental benefit of using an efficient and clean method of transportation like rail rather than a personal vehicle or airplane to travel long distances.
The New Era of Rail initiative is funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), which apparently offers funding "greater than all 50+ years of federal funding provided to Amtrak since our creation." That's pretty wild.
Improvements to the Northeast Corridor will be reflected by faster service from Amtrak's new Acela trainsets (codenamed "Avelia Liberty"), which are currently undergoing testing and are set to enter passenger service in 2024. The new traincars, featuring advanced tilting technology to take curves at higher speeds, have a capacity of 386 passengers per car (+25%) and a theoretical maximum speed of 220mph on straight track. While on a curve requiring tilting, they can manage 186mph. Realistically, in service, the trains would not exceed 160mph in the NEC's most optimized track segments, a modest increase from the Acela Express' maximum realistic service speed of 150mph. And until the infrastructure changes Amtrak intends to make are completed, many track segments will continue to operate at speeds closer to the NEC's 70mph average or as low as 30mph at some particularly tight bottlenecks (see, for instance, the Baltimore & Potomac EIS Summary).
The Northeast Corridor needs dramatically more investment to become true high-speed rail. However, this is a major step in the right direction.
See also:
Forgive my ignorance, but the actual work -- replacing switches and a meager 25 miles of rail -- sounds like routine maintenance, not the dawn of a "new era of rail."
It also sounds like the upshot of this plus the new trains is a whopping 10 mph speed increase.
Is there some reason people who are served by this line should be excited? Because to me this read like a sugar coated maintenance announcement
I shared this post because it contained easy-to-digest infrastructure changes happening this summer. Clearly, $130 million is a drop in the bucket of the $66 billion Amtrak has been allocated by the federal government.
Amtrak's maintenance is so backlogged that it is negatively affecting service. They have been underfunded since their creation. Bringing their lines back to a "state of good repair" is a lot more meaningful than it might sound at a glance. And they have plans for more. The links at the bottom of my summary describe both high-level plans and specific projects for the Northeast Corridor through 2040.
My comment about maximum speeds with the Avelia Liberty trainsets is tangential. The max speed is relatively insignificant because most of the bottlenecks in travel time are related to very slow sections. The faster trains are nice, and the greater capacity is nice, but what's more nice is that they're replacing their 20-year-old Acela trainsets at all.
If you're interested in reading about the plans for the Northeast Corridor, check out the Tier 1 Final Environmental Impact Statement issued a few years ago. This is essentially a highly scrutinized statement of intent after 5+ years of environmental review that will be followed by a Tier 2 document outlining specific project plans and construction timelines. Some of the projects mentioned in it are already underway, however. The language of the document may feel obscure, but they've decided to move forward with what they've called the "preferred alternative." Out of four infrastructure plans, basically "no change," "slight upgrades," "major upgrades," and "transformative upgrades," the preferred alternative is closest to a set of major upgrades but falls short of being completely transformative. Realistically speaking, it still has an enormous impact on our society. Highlights include:
For example, the Baltimore & Potomac Tunnel in Maryland is so old and in such poor repair that trains have to slow to 30 mph in it. The Portal North Bridge is too low for water traffic to pass underneath, so it has to raise itself, causing delays. It's also extremely unreliable, causing more delays. It's also right outside of New York City, where you really don't want delays. Other projects of note include the Hudson River Tunnel Project, which is what will double capacity in this choke point as well as allowing for better overall service. But there are many more infrastructure plans happening with this $66 billion.
Resolving these bottlenecks has a significant effect on service by improving reliability. That means dramatically more frequent trains, far fewer delays, and also faster travel time altogether. For example, The WAS–NYC segment could see an improvement of 30 minutes and the NYC–BOS segment 45 minutes. For example, that would be 1:20 to get between WAS–PHL. Importantly, Amtrak is also coordinating with regional transit authorities to improve their service and align schedules to benefit passengers. The time savings are best understood by multiplying minutes saved by number of passengers.
The inventory map lists out some projects of note and their stages of completion. You will definitely want to read the Tier 1 Final EIS for useful information though. If you want to look at a map of the new route, see Appendix AA (and Appendix BB for technical explanations). You can see that many sections in and around New Jersey, New York, and particularly Connecticut are seeing major routing upgrades.
I was initially somewhat disappointed that the NEC Commission didn't select Alternative 3 of their Draft EIS, but upon reading the reasoning laid out in the Final EIS, I understand the decision and I find the current infrastructure upgrades planned to be reasonable. While the cost of the preferred alternative is significant ($123–128 billion), it would be outweighed by the cumulative benefits to reliability, safety, service, and travel time.
That's a rich resource (even if they managed to break the drop down navs...). I don't know how much I expect, after reading the goals and some of the impacts.
Reading comments here, and from my own experience as someone who has lived up and down the NE corridor, the major problems stopping people from preferring rail to alternatives have been:
Most of the improvements are aimed at capacity and speed, which is great, but unlikely to be transformative on their own. Speed boosts are modest. Boston <-> DC in two hours NY<-> DC in ~1 hour would be transformative (doable at 220mph). But that's not part of the vision. And the capacity increases are to keep pace with demand. They don't plan on, e.g., running trains so frequently that you can whimsically show up to a station and be on your way within 20 mins.
Addressing ease-of-access probably requires regional rail to pick up the slack (DC Metro to Union is great. Philly... less so. SEPTA is baffling.), but it is nice to see expanded and additional hubs.
But no where in the docs did I find concrete plans to reduce cost to riders. Chapter 9 touts "travel market effects" but only offers two sentences:
How would it reduce travel costs, exactly? If I'm driving from DC to NYC with two people, that's ~$110 gas and $30 in tolls. Split three ways, that's <$50pp. But the Amtrak tickets are going to run the group > $700. Plus travel two and from the stations. Why would I chose that?
Amtrak is starting to look like an OK alternative to flying to boston for a long trip (a weekend trip is right out the window given current times), but that's only because flying has become so godawful I'd prefer to stay at home than do it.
My expectations remain tempered—we won't beat France's TGV for some time—but I'm optimistic about these realistic improvements to transportation along the NEC.
Capacity is not meant to increase exactly in line with demand (that would have been Alternative 1 of the Draft EIS, which is not what they went with, according to the Record of Decision). The Preferred Alternative will meet demand in every region, but not exceed it in every region (that would have been Alternative 3), just some. It will also accommodate significant growth post-2040 north of New York City. Alternative 3 would have done the same in all regions, but for now that appears to remain a problem for the future. You can see a demand breakdown in the Preferred Alternative's Table 4-1 (page 4-3).
This is more or less in the plan, minus full-on whimsicality. :) It doesn't appear that they intend to integrate a subway-style fare system that avoids pre-booking for inter-city travel—I guess this is just too difficult to implement?—but there is a concerted effort to use common ticketing platforms and align schedules in such a way that, once you have your ticket, transfers become trivial. Many of the tables in the Preferred Alternative discuss regional/local access and service improvements that will complement upgrades to the NEC itself. One of the definitions they provide for service types, in addition to "Intercity-Express" and "Intercity-Corridor," is a new service offering called "Metropolitan":
This kind of service would connect local stations with hub and terminal stations more effectively, allowing for easier access from smaller local cities to major regional cities and more robust connection scheduling. There's a lot of emphasis here on providing one-seat rides from lines adjacent to the Northeast Corridor proper, rather than transferring at the spoke of a branch line. We know that even a single transfer can dramatically reduce demand for a route, so evening this out is significant.
Alternative 2 (which resembles the Preferred Alternative) would offer a peak of approximately 4 trains per hour (TPH) in Metropolitan service. The Preferred Alternative seems to be vague about the exact TPH it would aim for and where this service would be implemented, though it does state that the Keystone Corridor in Pennsylvania could see Metropolitan service "at 30-minute frequencies in peak periods." Other regions would probably see similar service.
My reading of Table 9-18 is that the "travel market effects" described are economic impacts and not ticket price drops. The proposal notes annual "Total Intercity Travel-Time Savings" around $1 billion. That is, the minutes saved by these improvements have quantitative value which can then be spent in more productive ways in other areas of the economy. This is not to state the indirect economic effects of greater inter-city transportation: inducing greater travel in an efficient manner (as opposed to inducing motorway maintenance costs) saves the government money, but more convenient travel induces more travel in general, which has self-evident benefits to economic growth.
Except for ambiguously lower Metropolitan service fares, I don't know if lowering ticket prices is a specific goal of this infrastructure plan. Amtrak is technically organized as a for-profit corporation, and Congressional legislation would be necessary to change that. I think that adjusting ticket prices may also be out of scope for the NEC Future plan, which is not authored by Amtrak, but rather by the NEC Commision/Federal Railroad Administration, who make recommendations to Congress about funding infrastructure projects that may be used along the Northeast Corridor—Amtrak happens to be one of the entities which offer service there, along with the Metro-North Railroad and other entities.
I agree with you that Amtrak should be less expensive. I will note that a one-way ticket between DC and NYC will only be in the $200+ range if you buy for a peak time and with short notice. If you buy a couple weeks in advance (sometimes less), you can get a ticket at a reasonable hour for as low as $20. For example, a Friday evening ticket around dinner (6pm) would run you $31. This is perhaps still higher than it needs to be, but it's actually pretty affordable. I was amazed to get a ticket from Philadelphia to Baltimore earlier this year for $5! (It costs more to take SEPTA from Center City out a couple zones into the suburbs.) If your final destination is suburban, the scheduling coordination planned between Amtrak and municipal transit authorities should, in theory, make a transfer to a regional rail relatively trivial. I'll believe it when I see it, but I'm not pessimistic.
Carpooling trips with three or more people offer a cost advantage higher than if you're traveling alone. One of the issues with the transportation system in the US is that an unnecessarily large proportion of personal vehicle trips are taken with no passengers. For all trips, the figure is something like 40% with just the driver. This is inefficient and environmentally unfriendly, leads to pointless traffic, and results in more wear on roadways relative to their per-capita use (which leads to severely bloated highway budgets). Better NEC infrastructure has, according to the EIS, the potential to shift 49% of trips including but not limited to these onto rail. If the train gets people where they want to go, they'll take it: simple!
In theory, the 30 minutes south of NY and the 45 minutes north would reduce travel time between Washington, DC and Boston from ~6.5 hours to about 5.25. Driving is more or less off the table with a theoretical time of 8 hours by car (realistically, probably not fewer than 9–10). The actual flight time of air travel is 1.5 hours, but travel to the airport, security, boarding, unboarding, luggage, and travel from the airport to the city puts realistic travel time of at least 5 hours. I agree that a marginal time saving of flying isn't necessarily worth the stress. I drove from Boston to Philadelphia this week for what I hope to be the last time. (I never enjoy myself on this journey.) I've had layovers between New York and Boston in the past, but never flown from Philly. I don't think it would be worth it for me, but I see the case for DC. Still, I would rather take the train simply for comfort. I like my legroom. And not being harassed by the TSA. :P
This document lays out plans for max speeds of 160mph. The time savings don't appear to be based on theoretical 220mph speeds (Alternative 3, if only...). But I would expect future infrastructure upgrades to result in even more time savings between these cities. In general, any high-speed rail route under ~600 miles tends to have a time-competitiveness advantage over both car and air, with a peak advantage around 250 miles. The entire NEC is within this range length-wise, so with the upgrades in the NEC Future Tier 1 EIS—especially the 220mph segments they intend to construct—I think it will become a truly dominant mode within the next couple decades.
While I have many more hopes for the NEC, I'm happy that they're finally being funded enough to address the egregiously slow speeds in many sections of track as well as the poor service and frequent delays between major destinations. The little things make a big difference. As many wise railroad men have said: "If you want to go fast, don't go slow."
I dislike flying enough to where I'd be willing to eat a significant time loss to take the train instead. Generally if I'm taking a flight half my day is shot anyway, so as long as the comparable train-ride gets me there in under a day (without weird sleep disrupting timings) I'm good. It really only starts to be an issue once you're getting up into the 10+ hour range for the train ride.
When time is critical, like for business travel sure I'll still fly. But taking a train is just so much more comfortable and pleasant of an experience (assuming no delays or cancellations). What really kills it is price. It's often more expensive than flying and any destination outside the Acela Corridor or a few of the nearby lines (like the Pennsylvania one) is incredibly slow. I used to check out the price of tickets from DC to Florida and it's as much as a plane ticket but it takes close to 20 hours. I could fly to Dubai in that time!
One thing I find stressful about air travel is how rigid the scheduling is. Generally if you miss a train it's not a big deal to just transfer your ticket and get a later train. But if you miss a plane because, say, your car got a flat on the drive there you're just kinda fucked. The airline does not have any sympathy.
All fair points.
I just took umbrage with the "transformative" claims. I just can't see an en masse switch to trains without the timing being aggressively convenient, and the prices coming down. If (I mentioned this in another comment) they're competing with flight, then it's an OK plan. But if they want to get people out of their cars, they need to run frequently and cheaply.
None of that is to argue against necessary and incremental improvements.
How are you finding those $40 fares? I just went to amtrak and looked at one way monday tickets, and nothing was below $150. If you leave on a weekend they're way higher. I was pricing things with the idea of a weekend getaway.
But, more to the point, if Amtrak's goal is to compete with flying, then I guess the fares are OK. But their stated goal is to lure people away from driving. And it's not faster to Boston, and barely faster to NYC. Not to mention if you want to get somewhere that isn't down town (e.g., dc suburbs to cambridge ma).
Ah, I see. They have punitive pricing for "last minute" bookings, like the airline industry. Why? Does it cost more to run the train if I decide to meet up with friends in NY tomorrow vs a month from now? If the goal is to get people to change their behavior and not to gouge people for every cent they can (the airline strategy), then this practice isn't helping.
Just to add to this, the annual revenue for Amtrak has usually stayed under $5B per year, including ticket sales and government funding. For a sense of scale, that $66B they just got is pretty close to what the US spends on roads every year.
These funds have been extremely overdue.
Live near DC and frequently travel up to NYC using Amtrak. Not the quickest, but absolutely the least stressful way to travel (can’t beat avoiding 95 traffic and getting dropped off right in the middle of Manhattan). Love that we’re actually investing money in trains.
Stress reduction is the biggest draw for me. Driving in highway traffic is unpleasant and doing it consistently has negative effects on mental health and by extension physical health. The acute stress of driving within an urban area as well as constantly worrying about the vehicle and looking for parking is particularly bothersome for me personally. I'd rather hop on a train and simply get where I want to go: a fast, leisurely ride.
I also want to avoid owning a car for as long as I possibly can, mostly for financial and environmental reasons in addition to personal health. The existence of the NEC makes that possible for my lifestyle.
On Amtrak, the Philadelphia to New York segment I take most frequently is an hour and change from Philly's 30th St Station to New York Penn Station. No traffic, no bad drivers, no hassle! I can relax. In a car, it would take at least two hours, potentially three in traffic, and it's always grueling. (Honestly, even in a bus I find that I can't relax, especially because it tends to be loud, cramped, and bumpy.) The train has always been my favorite mode to travel between these particular cities.
I just wish that the rest of the Northeast Corridor and elsewhere had that same appeal. The train from Philly to Boston is about 5.25 hours on paper (vs. 6 driving, or 7+ with stops, or 8–9+ with traffic). Having just made that drive yesterday, I am never going to do it again. What a nightmare. If only the tracks between NYC and New Haven were properly upgraded! And honestly, even the NYC–Philly portion could be much faster. If we (magically) had a ~200mph train on the Corridor (as in the passed-up Alternative 3 of the NEC Future Tier 1 Draft EIS), then even with stops, travel time between these cities could be close to half an hour. That would really be something!
This kind of large scale improvement is sorely needed to get ridership numbers up. As someone living in WNY most of the investment won’t be targeted towards my lines, but there’s 3 big reasons I chose driving over taking Amtrak to visit Syracuse, NYC, and Boston.
I would love to utilize Amtrak for my regular weekend travel within the NorthEast, but because of the above it remains more of a “novelty” option for when we can afford the extra time, risk of delay, and arrange dog boarding.
Thanks for your great insights. I'm not as familiar with the Empire Corridor as I am with the Northeast Corridor, but it's still an important line serving many people. It would be more important if trains ran directly to Toronto. Currently, you need to go through customs in Buffalo and transfer to a new train. The whole trip takes at least 12.5 hours on paper (~11 just for the trains, ~51mph average). By contrast, it's only 8.5 hours to Montréal, which is about the same distance as the crow flies – and with no transfer. At an average speed of ~39mph, efficiency is terrible, but at least they've coordinated the border well enough to allow for higher demand.
There is a direct/no-transfer Amtrak train from New York to Buffalo taking about 9.5 hours, including stops. Unfortunately, this is significantly slower than the equivalent via Greyhound buses of only 8 hours, which are also cheaper (~$100 compared to ~$180 in advance). Driving in a personal vehicle could conceivably take as little as 6.5 hours. (The cost of gasoline is about the cost of an Amtrak ticket.) A normal human being would realistically spend closer to 9 hours driving (stops for food, gas, etc.), but even so: when inter-city driving is faster than rail, there's a problem.
There are about ten million different infrastructure, policy, and logistical problems affecting the Empire Corridor that prevent true high-speed rail from being created. Important bottlenecks include:
The most embarrassing part about the Empire Corridor is that we had faster trains in the 1890s. I'm not joking. The Empire State Express ran from NYC to Buffalo in 7 hours. Yes, that's right: a train from 132 years ago ran between these cities faster than the trains run today. It's no wonder that most people drive.
This country used to have a state-of-the-art passenger rail system until we destroyed our own infrastructure to prioritize the construction of automobile highways.
I'm actually kinda in the same boat, even as someone who's being directly served by the Northeast Corridor. I used to live in Boston, now back in my home state of New Jersey, but I've never taken the train as my first option. A drive from where I am to Boston is about the same as taking the train, and it's not really that difficult of a drive either. The Amtrak from NJ to NYC at least should be one of the higher ridership, but it's honestly not that much more comfortable either. I just got back from Japan, and in the spring spent a couple of weeks in Europe, and both those rail experiences were more comfortable and reliable.
Just rode Philly to Boston last month (Acella business on the way up, Amtrack coach on the way back)
Comparing the 3 ways...
Flying has a lot of padded time w/ TSA and lines that amtrack didn't have, Baggage issues as well
Driving has traffic and pay for parking, but cheapest (have car, but need to pay for parking).
the train has lots of legroom, bar car, and you can walk around.
I dont think i would ever fly (to boston) again, since its price and overall time are similar to the train. Plus the leg room, walking around, larger seats, less hassle etc.
Also for boston, being right in downtown, as opposed to at the airport. business class wasn't worth the extra cost but it has fewer stops, bigger windows, and we sat at a table.
I abhor flying and I regret that I must do it so often. Even with TSA Pre-Check, the theatrics of their pointless security proceedings and the hopelessly inefficient airplane boarding process are almost too much to bear.
There's an interesting chart out there (popularized, I think, by Ray Delahanty/CityNerd) conveying the dominance of high-speed rail over both automobiles and planes in inter-city travel. He talks about this very cool graph in his video "U.S. High Speed Rail: What's Next? Analyzing Extensions and Expansions, and What Makes Sense" (4:24) and elsewhere. I can't actually find a still image of it, but it's similar to Figure 2 from Profillidis and Botzoris 2013. CityNerd's graph is better, though the study linked has some interesting high-level content.
The graph suggests that travel distances under about 75 miles tend to offer a slight time-competitiveness advantage to automobiles over rail and a major advantage over flying. However, rail quickly becomes the most efficient mode between 75 and 600 miles, with a peak around 250 miles. Car trips become extraordinarily inefficient above ~250 miles. Above 600 miles, air beats out high-speed rail, but only by a small margin. You can read this data to mean that building and maintaining high-speed rail service between city pairs within literally 600 miles of each other (and particularly within 300 miles of each other) will provide major time savings to passengers, with all associated economic productivity.
Some potentially dominant high-speed rail city pairings include:
These are just the pairings where high-speed rail would absolutely trounce car and plane, if it existed. Those of us who don't enjoy flying would be happy to go even farther distances by train even if it's slightly slower than air, on account of being far less of a hassle and far more comfortable.
And consider needing a car at your destination, this was a quick boston trip, very walkable... but we couldnt' go out an visit rockport for a day. could always rent a car... but that's a hassle.... too far to uber.
but i could read on the trip up, and didn't need to pay for parking or sit in traffic!
I really wish that we could get that Las Vegas <-> Los Angeles HSR going. I have family in the vicinity of both of those places, and the option to take a train is vastly more appealing than driving or flying. Most of the trip is desert (which is not a fun place to break down), and because it's so far away it usually means spending almost the entire day driving. And as others have mentioned flying is a big pain in and of itself with all the hoops you have to jump through, and usually has higher hidden costs in terms of actually getting to and from the airports.
Las Vegas isn't also particularly great when it comes to public transportation outside of the strip.
Brightline West is coming along. Last week (July 12, 2023), the Federal Rail Authority completed its environmental review of the final portion of the route, around Rancho Cucamonga.
The company has agreed to lease a right of way from the California Department of Transportation in the median of I-15. Clearing the environmental review and agreeing on a major length of the route so cleanly is a positive sign. Brightline has been asked to construct a number of wildlife crossings along the track, but $12 billion in funding for the project overall is apparently not a major issue. Some of the grades in the route are as steep as 4.5%, which may result in construction challenges and operational delays early on. However, all things considered, they're in a good spot.
Construction is meant to start this year. Speeds will apparently reach 140–186mph with a travel time of 2.5 hours. We'll have high-speed rail between Los Angeles and Las Vegas as early as 2027. For a project of this magnitude, that's an incredible timeline.