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Its a long thread, so please forgive me if this has already been brought up: does the T have a contingency plan for if things hit the fan regarding US-China relations badly enough to mean the deal is pretty much dead?

My apologies for not being clearer - I should have specified I wasn’t just referring to rapid transit in the city. Your idea is exactly what my premise was. Regional rail along the highways, particularly along routes that are not served/underserved by the Commuter Rail and/or Amtrak. 95/128...

Suppose the order came down on high that rail lines were going to be built along highway ROWs, so just make it work. Obviously, highway and rail ROWs are… mediocre fits for each other, so it would take some effort to make work. What, in general, would be the best way to get it done? Elevate the...

Acela pitch: how difficult would it be to run an Acela along the inland NEC route (Boston-Springfield-New Haven-New York)? Looks a little rugged between Worcester and Springfield, but that stretch along the Connecticut River looks reasonably straight. I’m sure, overall, it would be a longer...

And yet, the NSRL is still not going anywhere. You gotta start convincing people that aren’t on board, and griping that someone is “anti tax/pro privatization” isn’t going to accomplish that.

And yet, the project has been DoA for the lifetime of everyone on this forum. Maybe a different strategy is worth pursuing. The party that is “supposed” to support this sort of projects has had power plenty of times, and hasn’t done it. Can’t come from the politicians - the parties are...

Well, if you’re looking for some to win over, try the specific ones being attacked in this thread: the Pioneer Institute. I’ve heard Dukakis stump for the NSRL, and it was just a political speech about why Republicans are evil. If thats the approach being taken by the most prominent proponents...

Maybe some effort should be made to court conservative support for the project. I know, thats capital-A Anathema, but given how little progress has been made over the decades, maybe a change of strategy is in order?

Doing a little digging, it looks like, after healthcare and power are spun off, the aerospace division will be the remaining division in GE. However, the aerospace division HQ is in Ohio, while the corporate HQ is in Boston. Which wins, I don't know. GE Healthcare's divisional HQ is in Chicago...

Yeah, the lanes make sense, but that signage for 'stay in this lane until the 3rd exit' is very non-intuitive. And I watch enough dashcam crash videos to know just how easily people can be confused by rotaries with confusing signage.

Not only that, they're splitting into 3 different companies. Hopefully at least 1 of them will do well - its an icon of American industrial success. That makes me wonder, and a very quick search didn't produce a result: will all 3 companies still be HQ'd in Boston? I know that they'll be...

Is that a left turn lane coming onto the rotary from the bridge? Does that strike anyone else as horribly confusing? I say this as someone who handles rotaries like they’re second nature.

Palmer is just a tad too remote. If they could manage something around Ludlow, that might be better. Not directly related to the inland route itself, but the mention of Windsor gave me a thought: but could a spur going off to Bradley be built (maybe going along rt 20)? No idea what sort of...

I guess my inquiry was just a few days prescient. I’ll be interested to see how “near term” the reintroduction of inland service is.

I have more thoughts, but we've already derailed (pun intended) this thread enough. Maybe the whole generational divide in urban planning outcomes deserves its own thread, I don't know.

50% sarcastic, 50% “we can’t complain that families keep moving to the suburbs if we keep making cities trendy playgrounds for 20-somethings.” And for the record, my wife and I moved to Kingston after having our first child. We would have stayed in Quincy (de facto “the city”) if our house was...

As @RandomWalk said, kids can be chaotic. If its supposed to be a community path, then that should be accommodated for. Or just accept that families belong in the suburbs and the city belong to young childless professionals.

Do we have any data on which sections of the NEC (or in general) are the most congested?

After having a discussion on HSR in the general Amtrak thread, I had a thought: Could an alternate Northeast Regional along the Inland Route be revived? It could go Boston-Springfield-New Haven (with whatever intervening stops are justified), and then as far south as makes sense. This could work...

I really feel like we’re talking at cross purposes here. I used Acela merely as a shorthand for our lone true HSR route. I’m not really talking about the branding. I’m talking about how it seems that funding gets thrown around at disparate networks rather than gradually building out one network.