Commuting Boston Student
Senior Member
- Joined
- Jan 17, 2012
- Messages
- 1,168
- Reaction score
- 1
One of the less immediately apparent (yet still fascinating) missteps buried within Amtrak's ridiculous Vision statement is their plans for redistributing traffic around the Philadelphia area. Completely overshadowed by the boondoggle proposal of a new tunnel for high-speed trains itself, Amtrak's proposed corridor services map - and more importantly, just which trains would be using that tunnel - reveals something fascinating.
The big things to note here are, of course, the complete lack of any apparent connection between 30th Street Station and the new Market East Station, and the service pattern for future Keystone Corridor services - which continue to use 30th Street en route to New York City only. This is fascinating for a number of reasons:
Remind me why we need the new tunnel in Philadelphia again?
The big things to note here are, of course, the complete lack of any apparent connection between 30th Street Station and the new Market East Station, and the service pattern for future Keystone Corridor services - which continue to use 30th Street en route to New York City only. This is fascinating for a number of reasons:
- This mirrors the existing Keystone Service pattern - presumably right down to the required directional reverse on the platform at 30th Street, which needs to be eliminated.
- It shows Amtrak is either unable or unwilling to utilize the existing tunnel and the existing Market East Station - the infrastructure for routing future Keystones onto the upper level of 30th Street Station and into the Commuter Tunnel to reach North Philadelphia and New York City without having to reverse directions is already in place and in active revenue service.
- Despite Washington D.C. being similar in size and importance to New York City, Amtrak has no imagination for new service from Harrisburg (or Pittsburgh) to Washington D.C. beyond what is provided (and I use that term loosely) already by the Capitol Limited - even though such a service is a relatively trivial implementation and would not require a direction reverse on the platform at 30th Street Station.
Remind me why we need the new tunnel in Philadelphia again?