Amtrak High-Speed Rail Plan And 151 Billion - Amtrak's updated plan for high-speed train travel on the East Coast envisions 37-minute trips between Philadelphia and New York, after a $151 billion redevelopment of the entire Northeast Corridor.
Faster service would be phased in gradually, as Amtrak improves existing tracks, signals, bridges, and power lines and then builds a separate high-speed corridor between Washington and Boston to accommodate trains traveling at 220 m.p.h.
In a report released Monday, Amtrak revised its projections for costs, ridership, and the alignment of its proposed new 438-mile high-speed corridor. The high-speed segment between New York and Washington would be completed by about 2030, and the route between New York and Boston by 2040, according to the plan.
In Philadelphia, Amtrak envisions bullet trains traveling in tunnels beneath the city, with stops at a new airport station and an expanded Market East station. The plan calls for 30th Street Station, now the city's main intercity rail hub, to be used for slower regional train service.
The current corridor between Washington and Boston is old and crowded, with highways, airports, and railroads that are unable to handle growing population and demand, Amtrak president Joseph Boardman said. Without ambitious rail expansion, the region's economy will be stifled, he said.
"I think what's at stake here is the global economic engine of the Northeast," Boardman said in an interview. "The business community in the Northeast has to wake up - they're at risk."
Amtrak says the costs of building the new rail system would be offset by 40,000 construction jobs a year for 25 years, 22,000 new permanent jobs, and increased revenue and productivity for East Coast employers.
Amtrak's new report comes as 1,000 international high-speed rail operators and manufacturers convene this week in Philadelphia for the eighth World Congress on High-Speed Rail. It's the first time the biennial session has been held in the United States, which lags Europe and Asia in rail development.
"We are inheriting the lessons learned from nearly 50 years of development of this technology," said Stephen Gardner, Amtrak's vice president of Northeast Corridor infrastructure and investment development. "Everything is on our side. I know it has looked bleak at times, with the constrained economic period we're in, but time is on our side."
The new Amtrak report proposes a series of steps on the way to true high-speed rail service with 220 m.p.h. trains by 2030:
Read More:http://articles.philly.com/2012-07-09/news/32602302_1_amtrak-president-joseph-boardman-acela-express-northeast-corridor
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