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

[vanshnookenraggen]

I didn't have much of a problem with the ticketed waiting area when I was last down there - seating was more than sufficient for my 6pm-ish NER. my bigger issue, and I realize this is more of a legacy of the century old Penn Station, is the inevitable bottleneck getting down to the platforms and your coach, and their escalator layout doesn't help. It's not meaningfully fixable without moving MSG, but I'd love to see what Penn Redesign means by "improve subterranean structure" and if it can open up some of the platforms.

The irony with this is that because I usually am taking Amtrak to Albany, I know it's only ever going to be on track 5 or 6. So while everyone is lined up upstairs, I wait in the cramped lower mezzanine and get to the train first.

 

[JeffDowntown]

I didn't have much of a problem with the ticketed waiting area when I was last down there - seating was more than sufficient for my 6pm-ish NER. my bigger issue, and I realize this is more of a legacy of the century old Penn Station, is the inevitable bottleneck getting down to the platforms and your coach, and their escalator layout doesn't help. It's not meaningfully fixable without moving MSG, but I'd love to see what Penn Redesign means by "improve subterranean structure" and if it can open up some of the platforms.

One or two delayed trains and the waiting area fills to capacity.

 

[as02155]

One or two delayed trains and the waiting area fills to capacity.

Super busy as well at about 2 p.m. with several long-distance departures and a regional. Sometimes that 6 p.m. push can get a bit too chaotic - thankfully that's more "commuter" types so folks just know to avoid the ticketed area and opt for something (anything) else.

 

[TL2C24]

Not a single bench to be found.

As someone who lived through a 3 hour Acela delay there (after they had lined us up to queue), less than ideal. There are some sitting areas off to the side (under the ticketed waiting room sign on the right) but agree with a few others that its hard to provide seating without interrupting the flow of foot traffic to the platforms

 

[riptide]

Amtrak Kicks Off Long-Delayed Planning for High-Speed Service Linking New Haven and Providence

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Paywalled article, but Amtrak is allegedly finally about to begin its New Haven to Providence Capacity Planning Study. (I say “allegedly” because they previously said they were about to begin at the beginning of 2024, and the last page of this FAQ sheet claims they began in early 2025, so only time will tell if this will be yet another false start.)

While the study’s scope is a little broader than just looking into opportunities for a high-speed rail bypass, I’m pretty sure that whole investigation a decade ago through the NEC Future process is what prompted the need for this study.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Amtrak Kicks Off Long-Delayed Planning for High-Speed Service Linking New Haven and Providence

Haven’t subscribed yet? Click here to subscribe. CT Examiner is just $20 a year. A one-month trial subscription is just $5. And if you want to unsubscribe? That’s online and […]

ctexaminer.com

Paywalled article, but Amtrak is allegedly finally about to begin its New Haven to Providence Capacity Planning Study. (I say “allegedly” because they previously said they were about to begin at the beginning of 2024, and the last page of this FAQ sheet claims they began in early 2025, so only time will tell if this will be yet another false start.)

While the study’s scope is a little broader than just looking into opportunities for a high-speed rail bypass, I’m pretty sure that whole investigation a decade ago through the NEC Future process is what prompted the need for this study.

The delays in starting the study were directly due to the controversies over NEC FUTURE's HSR bypasses, as the states threatened to spike funding if the Capacity Planning Study had any aims on reviving them. $4M of the $5M total project budget came from joint federal-state funding sources, with CT and RI demanding answers about study scope before they would commit their shares. It was pretty controversial with the two states' Congressional delegations, because in the early going Amtrak wouldn't say exactly what the study was going to be about leading to lots of suspicions that it was going to reintroduce the Old Saybrook-Kenyon bypass that the states hated so very much. It took some amount of haggling before things were clarified enough to get the go-ahead to proceed, which chewed up two years.

$5M is not much of a total funding pot for sprawling initiatives, so they're most likely going to stay conservative in scope with on-NEC capacity improvements around Commuter Rail interference and climate resiliency stuff. It's interesting that the FAQ includes the Springfield Line in the study area; it may be a sign that they're deadly serious about hourly Amtrak service via northward continuation of the Keystones to Springfield or beyond. But since the study's not going to contain any EIS'ing activities whatsoever, which the much broader NEC FUTURE study did, given the huge impacts of any of the projected bypasses you basically can't produce a new study product worth the paper it's printed on without any work quantifying impacts. So they might pay lip service to the fact that NEC FUTURE studied that stuff, but since the Old Saybrook-Kenyon bypass was officially withdrawn after the end of that study (plus the fact that they've already been shaken down by 2 states' Congresscritters before starting) they're definitely not going to re-breach the subject.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Aveila non-revenue moves from the Alstom factory are still banned on the Hudson and New Haven Lines due to the childish two-month old Metro-North dispute, so new set deliveries from the Hornell, NY plant have taken to going the long route via the serpentine Southern Tier corridor through Binghamton and Port Jervis. This is probably the most scenic ride an Acela is ever going to take.

 

[fatnoah]

Not a single bench to be found.

The ticketed passenger waiting area could be more spacious, but adding benches to the main hall would be a total disaster at peak times due to the sheer amount of foot traffic moving through the station. At 5pm when NJ Transit / LIRR commuters are sneaking down the escalators rather than use the other concourses and multiple Amtrak trains arriving & departing in a small window, it's amazingly busy. Toss in the way they do the track line up, and it would be total chaos.

BTW, an "official" reason i was given for why people are lined up outside the ropes at the track was that the track could be changed at the last second and moving people out of the ropes would be too chaotic, so everyone waits outside the ropes until the train is in the station, and then the line can move into the roped area.