Not with LIRR traffic to contend with, it won't. The Main Line exceeds the traffic-clogged New Haven Line in service density, and almost all of it is local/non-express traffic that's making frequent stops. You can't bob and weave a 200 MPH train around that kind of traffic.LIRR to Ronkonkoma then through the tunnel would be a bunch of straightaways where high speed trains could run long stretches at ~200mph. The curves on the current route through CT might limit trains to half that. I can't find my source, but I read somewhere that the tunnel option to get from NYC to New Haven could be 30-40 minutes faster than any other planned improvements going through southwest CT.
Anytime these plans come up, they're light on details. But I think what they're proposing is using the LIRR ROWs, but building new dedicated high speed track on top. So adding new high speed track at ground level where possible, and maybe a viaduct above LIRR tracks in other places. Or something like that. Again, they're light on details, so I'm guessing.Not with LIRR traffic to contend with, it won't. The Main Line exceeds the traffic-clogged New Haven Line in service density, and almost all of it is local/non-express traffic that's making frequent stops. You can't bob and weave a 200 MPH train around that kind of traffic.
These cross-Sound proposals mostly assume that the abandoned midsection of the Central Branch would be rebuilt as a high-speed bypass of the Main Line east of Floral Park. But that too would have local traffic to bob-and-weave around on two tracks, because the Central Branch is an LIRR-world Crazy Transit Pitch for the real-world capacity crunch on the Main Line for all the mouths it has to feed and all the growth that's going to those mouths. So you *might* get a few miles of relief between Bethpage Jct. and Floral Park, only to slam headfirst into the same dog-slow procession of local traffic on the last 16 miles to Penn. And, no, nobody's ever considered what kind of heinous costs this would entail. Even on the existing track you've got a shitton of grade crossings to full-on eliminate if you ever hope to legally run >110 MPH. To say nothing about the tunnel, the virgin north-south ROW to 'Koma, reactivating the densely-abutted Central Branch ROW, and making the incompatible electrification schemes mesh.Anytime these plans come up, they're light on details. But I think what they're proposing is using the LIRR ROWs, but building new dedicated high speed track on top. So adding new high speed track at ground level where possible, and maybe a viaduct above LIRR tracks in other places. Or something like that. Again, they're light on details, so I'm guessing.
That would solve your bobbing and weaving problem for sure. But this might be even more fantastically expensive than it looked at first glance.
