DOUG KANTER / AFP / Getty Images
Amtrak's Acela Express leaving New York for Boston in 2000. The trip now takes 3 1/2 hours. A Penn student plan would cut that to 1:45; Amtrak's proposal would make it 3:08.
Last of four parts.
A class of graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania has created a plan to rebuild the Northeast Corridor as a true high-speed rail line that would transport passengers from Philadelphia to New York City in 37 minutes.
Amtrak, on the other hand, has a less ambitious view of the future for the nation's busiest rail corridor. Its new master plan calls for spending $52 billion by 2030 to cut travel time by about 20 minutes between New York and Washington and between New York and Boston. It envisions reducing travel time between New York and Philadelphia by four minutes.
"Amtrak's new plan leaves you with a really good early-20th-century rail system," said Robert Yaro, one of two Penn professors who taught the students in the School of Design's department of city and regional planning. Yaro is also president of the Regional Plan Association, a New York-area research and policy group.
Amtrak's vision of the future, unlike the students', does not include true high-speed travel, with trains operating at least at 155 m.p.h. on dedicated tracks, free of conflicts with commuter or freight trains.
The Penn students aren't the only ones with higher hopes for fast trains in the Northeast Corridor.
Northeastern members of Congress, including Reps. Jim Gerlach (R., Pa.), Joe Sestak (D., Pa.), Michael N. Castle (R., Del.), and Bill Pascrell (D., N.J.), introduced a bill in March to designate the Northeast Corridor a "high-speed corridor."
Ten other U.S. rail corridors have that designation (including the Keystone Corridor between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh), but not the Northeast Corridor, which has the nation's fastest trains.
"This lack of designation shuts states along the NEC out of competing for . . . grant money available to other rail lines, and has already resulted in the NEC missing out on adequate funding for badly needed infrastructure upgrades and rail-expansion projects," Castle, Sestak, Pascrell, and four other representatives said in a recent letter to House leaders. They asked for congressional hearings on high-speed rail development in the Northeast Corridor.
Federal Railroad Administrator Joseph C. Szabo said last week that a new national rail plan to be issued Sept. 15 would make clear the importance of the Northeast Corridor for high-speed rail. He said current distinctions between the designated "high-speed" corridors and the Northeast Corridor would be erased.
"There's no question the Northeast will be an integral part of high-speed rail development in this country. . . . The demographics are just too perfect for it not to be," he said.
Rep. John Mica (R., Fla.), top Republican on the Transportation Committee, criticized the administration for giving little of $8 billion in high-speed money to the Northeast.
"They practically ignored the region of the country where high-speed makes the most sense - the Northeast Corridor," he said. The corridor received $485 million, or 6 percent, of the stimulus funding.
And Mica, who wants to give private companies a chance to build and operate high-speed service in the Northeast, blamed Amtrak for doing too little to speed trains between Washington and Boston.
"If Amtrak hadn't screwed it up, they could go much faster," he said, blaming political intransigence and decade-old problems with the construction of Acela trains.
The trains are unable to fully use a built-in tilting mechanism because the car bodies were built four inches too wide. The tilting design was supposed to allow the trains to travel faster through curves, but with the extra width, if two Acela trains were going around a curve in opposite directions and the tilt system on one broke, the trains could hit each other. So Amtrak had to limit the tilt and reduce speeds.
Amtrak officials say the new master plan is the starting point - not the end - for designing a high-speed future for the Northeast Corridor.
A more visionary study is coming this summer, which will consider a true high-speed service on a realigned route, said Stephen J. Gardner, Amtrak's vice president for policy and development.
"This is the best shot we've had in decades to make the case and build the political consensus" for better, faster Northeast service, Gardner said.
One of the reasons the Northeast Corridor did not get more money from the $8 billion high-speed pot is a lack of a recent environmental-impact study of the corridor.
Amtrak and 11 Northeastern states in May asked the Federal Railroad Administration to do such an environmental study as part of a comprehensive examination of passenger rail's future in the corridor.
That could pave the way for more federal funding and more ambitious planning for high-speed service, Gardner said.
Amtrak calls its current Acela trains "high-speed," based on service that can reach 135 m.p.h. between New York and Washington and 150 m.p.h. for a brief stretch between New York and Boston. But the average speed for the Acela trains is considerably lower: 81 m.p.h. between New York and Washington and 65 m.p.h. between New York and Boston.
"The U.S. has a very unusual definition of 'high-speed rail,' " said Marilyn Jordan Taylor, dean of the Penn School of Design, who also was an instructor for the project. "Most nations use 160 miles an hour, and that was our benchmark."
The Penn students proposed a $98 billion project, with two dedicated high-speed tracks on a reconfigured route and a number of new stations, including a main Philadelphia stop at the Market East station in Center City.
