Acela & Amtrak NEC (HSR BOS-NYP-WAS and branches only)

[Jahvon09]

Finally, & at long last, Amtrak Given the funds that it needs to make some improvements along the NEC!!!! $10B!!!

MSN

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

What would be "gooder" would be to see some MA related funding

Jump-starting Gateway and tackling the movable bridge bottlenecks downstream are very much to MA's benefit as they'll cut significant schedule padding leading to faster travel times, and allow for some future frequency increases. Strictly on-NEC there's not much to do east of the CT River Bridge until T Regional Rail, RIDOT intrastate CR, and Shore Line East extension force the issue. For Amtrak's sole purposes it's about as optimized as it's ever going to get.

 

[Jahvon09]

Jump-starting Gateway and tackling the movable bridge bottlenecks downstream are very much to MA's benefit as they'll cut significant schedule padding leading to faster travel times, and allow for some future frequency increases. Strictly on-NEC there's not much to do east of the CT River Bridge until T Regional Rail, RIDOT intrastate CR, and Shore Line East extension force the issue. For Amtrak's sole purposes it's about as optimized as it's ever going to get.

I thought that the new Gateway program is supposed to eliminate all or most of those old problems that Amtrak still suffers from. Guess not if they are needing more dough to fix the 100+-year-old glitches that really need to be fixed!!

 

[Stlin]

Jump-starting Gateway and tackling the movable bridge bottlenecks downstream are very much to MA's benefit as they'll cut significant schedule padding leading to faster travel times, and allow for some future frequency increases. Strictly on-NEC there's not much to do east of the CT River Bridge until T Regional Rail, RIDOT intrastate CR, and Shore Line East extension force the issue. For Amtrak's sole purposes it's about as optimized as it's ever going to get.

Do we think the New Haven - Providence Capacity Planning study will have enough heft behind it to consider new alignments through CT though? 5m isn't exactly a lot of money for that job. As I recall, the Old Saybrook to Kenyon Bypass was ultimately killed back in the 2017 EIS and RoD due to local opposition, but there isn't really that much you can do to speed things up on the shoreline route.

 

[Scalziand]

Absent a monolithic bypass, I think the best you can do for the shoreline is going to be incremental bypasses of the most problematic areas. These smaller projects could be done independently so one section doesn't hang up the rest of them. Although they wouldn't result in full blown HSR, it would still be faster than what exists. I envision it as separate projects in say, Millstone, Groton, Noank, and Stonington. Mystic I just don't see a good opportunity for a reasonable bypass.

 

[ritchiew]

Jump-starting Gateway and tackling the movable bridge bottlenecks downstream are very much to MA's benefit as they'll cut significant schedule padding leading to faster travel times, and allow for some future frequency increases. Strictly on-NEC there's not much to do east of the CT River Bridge until T Regional Rail, RIDOT intrastate CR, and Shore Line East extension force the issue. For Amtrak's sole purposes it's about as optimized as it's ever going to get.

If the MBTA was working on Regional Rail, what kinds of NEC projects would make sense in Massachusetts? Is that where you'd get money for NSRL or SSX?

 

[Stlin]

If the MBTA was working on Regional Rail, what kinds of NEC projects would make sense in Massachusetts? Is that where you'd get money for NSRL or SSX?

The qualifying criteria for this specific Fed/State NEC funding program had a few criteria, one of which was that a project had to be in the NEC project inventory. Fir this funding round in MA, there were exactly 4 projects, all in "bucket 2, [project development] not started by 2024."

1. South Station Expansion.
2. High Capacity Signalling from Boston to Canton.
3. 3rd track from Readville to Canton Junction.
4. Traction Power upgrades between Providence and Boston. (For 693M! )

For comparison, everything that did get funding was solidly further ahead in the priority pile, either major backlog (that being bucket 1) and/or already substantially advanced.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Do we think the New Haven - Providence Capacity Planning study will have enough heft behind it to consider new alignments through CT though? 5m isn't exactly a lot of money for that job. As I recall, the Old Saybrook to Kenyon Bypass was ultimately killed back in the 2017 EIS and RoD due to local opposition, but there isn't really that much you can do to speed things up on the shoreline route.

The Capacity Planning Study is a point of consternation to the Congressional delegations of CT and RI because even they don't know what it's about. The feds are being very cloak-and-dagger about it. Supposedly it's going to look at commuter vs. intercity traffic loading and climate resiliency on the Shoreline, which are all well and good for everyone even though speed increases physically can't be a part of it. They are, for example, moving to whack another 4 of the 11 CT grade crossings. But the same municipalities that violently rejected the 2017 FRA bypass proposal are concerned that the study is a trojan horse to try and reintroduce the bypass...although that fear might be overblown given the smallness of the study grant. Frankly, the climate resiliency stuff is worth it on its own for this segment.

 

[ceo]

Interestingly, only the CT River Bridge, Walk Bridge and Frederick Douglass Tunnel awards are for actual construction, the rest are for final planning and design. The Devon Bridge project is awarded $245,920,000 for that purpose, with an IOU for $2,213,280,000 for construction in a future grant. I'm no expert here, but how on God's green Earth can it cost $250 mil to just design a 4-track railroad drawbridge and $2.2 BILLION to build it?! OK, they're probably going to have to replace the two parallel bridges one at a time, but that still seems a little spendy.

 

[millerm277]

I'm no expert here, but how on God's green Earth can it cost $250 mil to just design a 4-track railroad drawbridge and $2.2 BILLION to build it?! OK, they're probably going to have to replace the two parallel bridges one at a time, but that still seems a little spendy.

On this same note, replacing the (6-8 lane) Moses Wheeler bridge next to it appears to have cost about $550m in 2023 dollars.

I do struggle to understand why seemingly pretty close to identical projects in terms of scale and complexity cost 4 times as much for the rail version.

 

[FK4]

Jump-starting Gateway and tackling the movable bridge bottlenecks downstream are very much to MA's benefit as they'll cut significant schedule padding leading to faster travel times, and allow for some future frequency increases. Strictly on-NEC there's not much to do east of the CT River Bridge until T Regional Rail, RIDOT intrastate CR, and Shore Line East extension force the issue. For Amtrak's sole purposes it's about as optimized as it's ever going to get.

Explain?

 

[Stlin]

On this same note, replacing the (6-8 lane) Moses Wheeler bridge next to it appears to have cost about $550m in 2023 dollars.

I do struggle to understand why seemingly pretty close to identical projects in terms of scale and complexity cost 4 times as much for the rail version.

I would posit that you don't have to look too far for some more flags on the play. For one, replacements of the Walk and Connecticut River Bridges are projected to have a total cost just north of a single billion dollars each, funded through the same program for similarly timelines, and are similar in span and construction. Granted, here you have what look uncommonly like high voltage transmission lines strung over the bridge, which I'm sure you'd have to relocate.

However, given the centrality of its location, and it's current topography, the relatively low height of the Moses Wheeler, and you might be able to get this onto a fixed span rather than a moveable bridge. I don't think this bridge opens nearly as much as the Cos Cob or the CT River bridge, but if the plan is to lift the alignment and approaches out of the way I'd be much less keen to complain about the cost. (Granted, given it doesn't open as much it would be fine to keep it a moveable.) The larger susquehanna bridge, which is admittedly also going from 2 track to 4, is planned to be a fixed bridge and is in the same price range.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Explain?

Right now there are punitive speed restrictions throughout the system at all of these old bridges being targeted for replacement. The bridge replacements lift all those restrictions to near-track speed through those areas, in some cases doubling the speed. All that is collectively worth a bunch of minutes in time reductions to Amtrak schedules, and less commuter interference in Metro-North territory where it's a very intricate procession of trains due to overall congestion. Additionally, there is wide schedule uncertainty because of meets/overtakes at some of these bridge bottlenecks, leading to large amounts of contingency padding on the Amtrak schedules. Fix the bottlenecks, and you strip out the schedule padding leading to a bunch more minutes in savings. To the point where you're talking double-digit minutes just for the bridges. Finally, you've got capacity chokes at the bridges that open the most...like Connecticut River and Walk. Replacing those spans with much faster-moving lifts and modern bascules pries open a few more slots outright. So does quadding up 2-track spans like Bush and Gunpowder. And obviously Gateway doubles the capacity of the big Penn Station bottleneck, which will allow more NYC-terminating trains to be extended to Boston and Springfield and much better behavior intermixing terminating NJ Transit, LIRR, and (future) Metro-North commuter trains with thru Amtrak trains. Beyond that you've also got a bunch of general state-of-repair items to tackle, especially on the New Haven Line and Philly-Maryland which will improve overall reliability and allow for a few more minutes of contingency padding to get stripped out of the schedules.

But beyond CT River Bridge, the New Haven-Boston Shoreline route is at full state-of-repair and full speed for its geometry. All of the other movable bridges are modern 1980's-2000's spans in good condition with no speed restrictions. So there's no more time savings to be realized for Northeast Regionals east of New Haven after the CT River Bridge improvements get done, and no more time savings to be realized for the Acela after the Acela 2 fleet uprates the 150 MPH territories in Rhode Island and Massachusetts to 160 MPH. So that's why there were no Massachusetts- or Rhode Island-specific projects in this grand funding dump. The remaining list of capacity tweaks on the Shoreline are all about better meets/overtakes with commuter traffic, and that's entirely dependent on the future trajectories of (1) MBTA Regional Rail, (2) Shore Line East frequency expansion and extension to Westerly, and (3) buildout of Rhode Island intrastate Commuter Rail. There's no funding for those items yet because CT/MA/RI have not fully committed to those commuter upgrades and the new meets/overtakes that they'll create. So for now there's nothing really for Amtrak to do up in this area except study the bucket list of future intercity vs. commuter capacity upgrades (which they're doing), and be ready to pounce when the states fully commit to those commuter rail expansions.

 

[sneijder]

Right now there are punitive speed restrictions throughout the system at all of these old bridges being targeted for replacement. The bridge replacements lift all those restrictions to near-track speed through those areas, in some cases doubling the speed. All that is collectively worth a bunch of minutes in time reductions to Amtrak schedules, and less commuter interference in Metro-North territory where it's a very intricate procession of trains due to overall congestion. Additionally, there is wide schedule uncertainty because of meets/overtakes at some of these bridge bottlenecks, leading to large amounts of contingency padding on the Amtrak schedules. Fix the bottlenecks, and you strip out the schedule padding leading to a bunch more minutes in savings. To the point where you're talking double-digit minutes just for the bridges. Finally, you've got capacity chokes at the bridges that open the most...like Connecticut River and Walk. Replacing those spans with much faster-moving lifts and modern bascules pries open a few more slots outright. So does quadding up 2-track spans like Bush and Gunpowder. And obviously Gateway doubles the capacity of the big Penn Station bottleneck, which will allow more NYC-terminating trains to be extended to Boston and Springfield and much better behavior intermixing terminating NJ Transit, LIRR, and (future) Metro-North commuter trains with thru Amtrak trains. Beyond that you've also got a bunch of general state-of-repair items to tackle, especially on the New Haven Line and Philly-Maryland which will improve overall reliability and allow for a few more minutes of contingency padding to get stripped out of the schedules.

But beyond CT River Bridge, the New Haven-Boston Shoreline route is at full state-of-repair and full speed for its geometry. All of the other movable bridges are modern 1980's-2000's spans in good condition with no speed restrictions. So there's no more time savings to be realized for Northeast Regionals east of New Haven after the CT River Bridge improvements get done, and no more time savings to be realized for the Acela after the Acela 2 fleet uprates the 150 MPH territories in Rhode Island and Massachusetts to 160 MPH. So that's why there were no Massachusetts- or Rhode Island-specific projects in this grand funding dump. The remaining list of capacity tweaks on the Shoreline are all about better meets/overtakes with commuter traffic, and that's entirely dependent on the future trajectories of (1) MBTA Regional Rail, (2) Shore Line East frequency expansion and extension to Westerly, and (3) buildout of Rhode Island intrastate Commuter Rail. There's no funding for those items yet because CT/MA/RI have not fully committed to those commuter upgrades and the new meets/overtakes that they'll create. So for now there's nothing really for Amtrak to do up in this area except study the bucket list of future intercity vs. commuter capacity upgrades (which they're doing), and be ready to pounce when the states fully commit to those commuter rail expansions.

Cool explanation. Improvement on the NYP-BOS acela from 3:35-3:45 to 3:15 or 3:10 could have some strong implications on market share. At 3 hours it no longer makes any sense to take a flight if you're traveling into Manhattan.

 

[bigeman312]

The qualifying criteria for this specific Fed/State NEC funding program had a few criteria, one of which was that a project had to be in the NEC project inventory. Fir this funding round in MA, there were exactly 4 projects, all in "bucket 2, [project development] not started by 2024."

1. South Station Expansion.
2. High Capacity Signalling from Boston to Canton.
3. 3rd track from Readville to Canton Junction.
4. Traction Power upgrades between Providence and Boston. (For 693M! )

For comparison, everything that did get funding was solidly further ahead in the priority pile, either major backlog (that being bucket 1) and/or already substantially advanced.

Where do these four projects stand in terms of planning and funding?

I’m not up to date on this area. Thanks for any info.

EDITED: Removed a silly question.

 

[bakgwailo]

Cool explanation. Improvement on the NYP-BOS acela from 3:35-3:45 to 3:15 or 3:10 could have some strong implications on market share. At 3 hours it no longer makes any sense to take a flight if you're traveling into Manhattan.

Wasn't there a few Acela runs BOS <=> NYC scheduled for around 3 hours years ago?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Where do these four projects stand in terms of planning and funding?

SSX has a Final Environmental Impact Review done. Though that one obviously stands apart from the others in terms of scope and complexity.

The other three are basically at the initial study stage. They're dependent on the T committing to electrified Regional Rail on Providence/Stoughton.

 

[bigeman312]

SSX has a Final Environmental Impact Review done. Though that one obviously stands apart from the others in terms of scope and complexity.

The other three are basically at the initial study stage. They're dependent on the T committing to electrified Regional Rail on Providence/Stoughton.

Forgive my ignorance, but shouldn’t this put SSX at the ‘eligible-for-funding’ stage, regardless of how one feels about the project itself?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Forgive my ignorance, but shouldn’t this out SSX at the ‘eligible-for-funding’ stage, regardless of how one feels about the project itself?

The project stopped dead after the 2016 FEIR release; Baker let it rot on the vine. Healey hasn't had enough time in office to pick it back up. So in the ensuing vacuum no one was advocating for it, and it wasn't involved in any substantive talks at the fed level leading up to the current funding dumps. The other stuff that did get awards had sustained and vocal advocacy from their member states.

 

[Stlin]

To be fair, SSX and the other MA projects are not nearly as mission critical to the operation of the NEC in the same way that Gateway / Hudson River tunnels, CT moveable bridges or Portal North are. The things they've funded in this round probably needed replacing several decades ago by sheer magnitude of decrepitude and how much of the NEC relies on them working to move trains - without them, you've functionally got no NEC north of NYC. SSX on the other hand is just a nice to have for expanded service.