Posted on 07/10/2012 10:32:59 AM PDT by Olog-hai
Amtrak announced a $151 billion improvement plan on Monday that includes 37-minute trips from New York to Philadelphia at speeds approaching 220 miles per hour (354 km per hour).
However, the U.S. passenger railroad will need substantial financial support from both state and federal governments to make its ambitious plan to transform rail travel in the Northeast a reality.
The railroad predicted that super-fast train trips along the East Coast could be a reality by 2040. Travel times from New York to either Washington or Boston—both about 200 miles (350 km) in distance—would also be slashed, to 94 minutes, the report said.
Current travel times from New York to Philadelphia on Amtrak's sleek Acela trains are 1 hour, 15 minutes. Travel between New York and Washington currently takes 2 hours, 45 minutes and New York to Boston takes 3 hours, 41 minutes, according to Amtrak's website.
"The NEC (Northeast Corridor) region is America's economic powerhouse and is facing a severe crisis with an aging and congested multi-model transportation network that routinely operates at or near capacity in key segments," Amtrak's President Joe Boardman said in a statement.
The traditionally cash-starved railroad is funded by Congress, where Republicans have been reluctant to finance prior plans to develop high-speed rail in the United States. …
The newest Amtrak improvement plan also calls for direct links to airports and listed Newark, Philadelphia, Baltimore and White Plains, New York, as possible candidates for Amtrak service. Some are already served by local commuter rail lines, such as Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, which connects to the Philadelphia International Airport. …
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Make New York and Pennsylvania PAY FOR THE G*DD***ED THING!!!!
If you're going to an airport, why not fly ... at 600 mph?
Pay for what? My point was that the planned new railroad ain’t necessary. Nobody should have to pay $336 million per mile for any railroad at all, even a subway line.
The headline is misleading (it IS Reuters, after all!). 2040 is when Amtrak's version of a high-speed train is supposed to arrive in Philly!!
The train left NYC yesterday!
If American travelers absolutely want, need, and are willing to pay for and support “high speed rail” on the “north east corridor” from Washington, D.C. to Boston (if it is economically legitimate) then it can best be achieved by selling Amtrak in an IPO, supporting it in government when it comes to trying to develop “rights of way” and letting private capital investment, technology and the “inter-modal” transportation market place decide how it will all work out.
In other words, get all the politics off the table and let the private sector try to work it out.
That is the only kind of “high speed rail” development that Conservatives should be supporting.
"PAGING CALIFORNIA, PAGING CALIFORNIA. PLEASE PICK UP THE WHITE PAGING PHONE!"
Not to worry. Doubt if we even have a country left by 2040.
They already have stops at EWR and BWI. That’s more than enough airports, really. The EWR station contributes to making average speeds slower (especially that of NJ Transit) and doesn’t pull in all that much revenue.
Maybe they should have left the railroad in question in the hands of the Pennsylvania Railroad and New Haven Railroad companies, and removed the tangle of taxation and ICC regulation that they were strangling them with?
I’m confused by this articles assumption that Amtrak will be around in 2040.
Of course it will be, unless the DNC disappears. It’s one of the DNC’s favorite political footballs after all, even though they didn’t make it law (Nixon did).
At least NYC to Philly makes more sense than Bakersfield to Madera lol...
Politicians will get paid, Unions will get paid, Government will get paid; taxpayers will get raped.
Just what the hell is it for? So the typical welfare recipient can shuttle quickly between two states to apply for, administer and arrange for doubled-dipped welfare checks....
Don't think I'm joking; this has been done before - a lot!
Just believe really, really, really, really hard that you will be in Philly from NYC and it will happen! They teach us that in school! You can do anything you believe you can!
I only meant that a train service should be financed by the people who benefit from it.
A federally funded train is unfair to the other 98% who have to pay but don't ride. AMTRAK is a federal welfare program for the East coast.
Probably longer than that. France builds LGVs for a lot less than $20 million per mile. But we don’t even need a duplicate railroad; if the costs were kept under control (yeah, imagine that), it ought to cost a minuscule fraction in order to get average speeds into the triple digit range like they were talking back in the 1960s. Of course, nothing “out of the box” in Europe will be permitted to run in the USA thanks to the Federal Railroad Administration’s regulations regarding crashworthiness and other things . . .
Cripes, if our gov’t wasn’t doing everything in its power to kill innovation and capitalism, by 2040 we ought to have the technology to BEAM someone from NY to Philadelphia in 37 milliseconds!
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