Today Amtrak took a huge step forward in establishing a long-term program towards true high speed rail on the Northeast Corridor.  The proposal can be found here .

The plan is to build an entirely new two-track right of way on the east coast.  The document contains many possible routings that could be used but the recommended one is show above.  The new right of way would allow operation of 220 mph trains with an average operating speed of 140 mph.  This would allow for 96 minute trips between New York and Washington and 84 minute trips between New York and Boston.  Trips from Boston to DC could be completed in just 3 hours and 23 minutes.  The likelihood of this happening anytime soon is hindered by the cost.  It would cost $42 Billion in 2010 dollars or $117 Billion in year of expenditure dollars.  This puts the cost at approximately the same as the California High Speed Rail project. This would require approximately $4.7 Billion dollars a year in funding.  The likes of  which has never been allocated by congress for infrastructure save the interstate highway system.

Further Analysis can be found at:

The Transport Politic

DC Streetsblog

The fiscal year 2010 applications for high speed rail money have mostly been submitted by the states.  You can check them out below and click on the links to see the official applications and press realeases.

• New York: $151 Million for improvements to Empire Corridor
• Connecticut: $220 Million for upgrading New Haven-Hartford-Springfield Line
• Florida: $1.1 Billion for Tampa-Orlando Project by 2015
• Iowa/Illinois: $248 Million for Chicago-Quad Cities-Iowa City
• California: $1.58 Billion for Los Angeles-San Fransisco
• New Jersey: $885 Million for Upgrading Northeast Corridor

There is lots of good news.  For the first time, money has been requested for the Northeast Corridor.  New Jersey Transit has requested money to replace the ancient Portal Bridge.  It is currently one of the main bottlenecks on the Northeast Corridor.  The new bridge would include a third track to increase capacity.   Connecticut and New York also applied for money to upgrade their feeder lines for the Northeast Corridor.  This is good news as it will increase accessibility to other destinations for those using the corridor.

The only true high speed rail projects in the country in California and Florida also have asked for more money.  While the other applications are only for upgrading conventional speed trains.  There is definitely a lot less states applying than for the stimulus funding.  This is probably due to the necessity to now provide a 20% match to the federal money.  This was difficult for a lot of states to come up with due to the financial distress put on them by the recession.

• LaHood was on a whistle stop tour in upstate New York discussing and providing encouraging words for the future of high speed rail through the upstate.  WXXA

Last week congress announced the recipients of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act High Speed Rail Grants.  There is a detail of the grants are up over at The Transport Politic.  More information can be found at the White House page as well.  Anyways the Northeast corridor pretty much got shafted. California, the Midwest, and Florida were the big winners.  Actually all that was designated for the Northeast Corridor was $112 Million to study making improvements to the NEC.  This has already been previously announced and so really there is nothing new.   There was some money given to New York, Pennsylvania, Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont and Connecticut which are all feeder lines for the NEC.   The whole region only got $485 Million despite having a large percentage of the nation’s population.  I think this is probably due to the lack of any larger organization lobbying the federal government for money for the NEC.  In fact, most the states only requested money for projects in their respective states and not for the NEC which travels through their states.   Hopefully Amtrak or the states can join together next time to make a more concerted effort to lobby for money.

I apologize for the appearance of this website I will start changing the look in the future.  It needs a logo too which I have no idea to make so it may be a while.

Welcome to the future home of Northeast High Speed Rail on the web.