I have to agree with the need for a new ROW dedicated exclusively to the Acela. Running your superfast express train on the same tracks as a commuter rail is borderline psychotic, honestly, and it doesn't matter how fast you "could" run the train if you're going to have to brake for slower trains ahead again...
...and again...
...and again.
For that matter, stopping a dozen times between here and there is obnoxious. In the future, the Acela should blow through Back Bay, Route 128, and Providence at 150mph like it does at Kingston Station already. You get on at South Station, the next stop is New Yahwk.
It's not practical in this country to do that. Outside of California HSR where there's open land and very long distance between major cities (Big Dig-level bloat or not, that's a transformative project at any cost), we don't have the ability to take that much private land in century-plus entrenched communities to blaze through new construction. We shot that load overbuilding the Interstate highway system. We also have the oldest legacy RR route network in the world, with most lines built in the 19th and 20th century (UK has the only comparable-age system, and it's a self-contained island). Much like the interstate system it was built with the proven-false expectation that lines could be ripped up and reconfigured at will every 30 years to suit current needs, so there are wacky curves and whatnot all over the eastern network leftover from when mainlines had to zigzag off-target to meet short-lived branchlines and old customers who may not have existed for 100 years. We also have the most significant freight network in the world, and 50 years of decline or not it's persevered with the times and is a fact of life that drives the much tighter regulatory bureaucracy here. And the most privately-owned lines...a majority, in fact, outside the East Coast where the RR bankruptcies of the 1970's gifted the states and Amtrak a one-time bonanza of cheap ROW's locked up safely for the long haul.
It's only going to work by maximizing usage and the lines we have, which means some compromises on perfection. Forget about 200 MPH trains. Forget about meeting the "true" definition of HSR (160 MPH) outside of California and segments of the NEC. 125 MPH is a very reasonable goal on trunklines achievable even on commuter rail trains. Right now MARC in Maryland, only the 9th highest ridership system in the U.S. with only 4 lines, is the only CR in the country that does 125? Why? The entire NEC save for short gaps in Delaware and southern Rhode Island (for now...it's coming by 2020) has commuter rail trains...4 agencies having >4 times the ridership of MARC. We haven't even scratched the surface of how much better the corridor can be. Punch up the big 1994 study of HSR improvements and see how big a backlog still remains:
-- 11 grade crossings in southeastern Connecticut that were supposed to be gone by the end of the 90's which CDOT never took care of.
-- Several speed-restricted movable bridges (most of them in CT) that were deficient 15 years ago and have never been replaced.
-- Many low-platform commuter rail stations--almost all of them on the T and CT Shore Line East--that have much longer dwell times than high platforms with full level boarding. Half of the Shore Line East stops have only 1 platform and trains have to tie up the opposite track to stop there!
-- Several gaps south of NYC where the ROW shrinks below 3 tracks from 1970's removals that have still not been put back. Critical gap in Metro North 4-track west of New Haven. Critical gap in MBTA 3-track south of Readville. No passing tracks yet at stations like Sharon and Mansfield in 150 MPH territory, causing the Acela to have to slow. Derelict freight track from Providence to Central Falls shrinking it to 2 passenger tracks. Severe lack of passing sidings on the long 2-track stretch in CT.
-- Severe resistance from Metro North to updating their signal system or realigning the 2 center tracks to enable Acela tilting on the New Haven Line that they, not Amtrak owns. Everything's artificially capped at 90 MPH because of that turf war (and boy, is it ever a turf war, if the abusive MNRR employees on RR.net are any indication).
-- The T's slow-ass 79 MPH-capped (or worse, if the coaches on a trainset are from a deferred-maintenance part of the fleet) trains, by far the slowest on the NEC. And we'll be the only ones still running diesels when CT finishes its sparkling new M8 EMU order and assigns the last batch to SLE. This is an elephant in the room that MA is home to one of the longest stretches of 150 MPH running and we can't even top 90. You can do 90 on diesel if your equipment isn't shit. Our equipment is pure shit.
-- Curve fixes and signal fixes in New Jersey and Delaware that have been high-priority for 20 years, but bafflingly unfunded till just last year when the Feds dropped the year's single largest rail appropriation to fixing a 25-mile stretch.
-- Old, failing electrical infrastructure likewise deferred 20 years until Metro North and points south played agonizing catch-up the last few years (with their passengers swallowing many temporary delays).
-- Weight-inefficient equipment because there are 3 voltage changes on the line between New York and New Haven requiring heavier, more expensive transformers on the locomotives. The '94 study recommended junking the 1920's-era power draw from DC-NYC because it uses expensive, exclusive 25Hz power generation that hasn't been in use on this country's electrical grid since the days of Edison. They backed off doing that at all and renewing the infrastructure for the same brand new on-grid draw we've got New Haven-Boston in favor of just fixing up the 1920's system and its NEC-exclusive power plants. Hence, Amtrak locomotives and the CT M8's that have to go through the phase changes cost a kajillion dollars vs. the trains made for only one voltage. This is penny-wise, pound-foolish thinking. You pay the $2B to get it right the first time and not have to keep buying maintenance-intensive Frankenstein engines every 20 years.
-- Too much freight having to clog up the NEC because there's no way for CSX to get on either side of Manhattan without a 50-mile detour through Albany, and no way for P&W to get from New London to Hartford because all the east-west connecting track through the interior was shortsightedly abandoned by Penn Central when it was going down in bankruptcy flames.
...and tons of minor things, plus no branchlines of any effectiveness other than the 125 MPH Keystone Corridor because the Hudson and Springfield Lines are old diesel routes that are only now beginning to get useful rehab.
I mean, we're laughably far from utilizing it to what it can be...and in stretches, what it
used to be. And the problem is the politicians and much of the public has trouble seeing that a minute pared here and a minute pared there by getting caught up on the backlog adds up. They say, "Who freaking cares? I don't want my hard-earned tax dollars buying some pathetic minute nobody will notice!" Not knowing that there are so many lost minutes from infrastructure we let rot to subpar on this ostensibly 'premier' HSR line that the deferred maintenance alone adds up to like a half-hour or more when that humongous checklist gets cleared away. Moreso with a couple of the megaprojects like replacing the very speed-restricted crumbling downtown Baltimore tunnel and building the Gateway tunnel in New York to double up the insanely constricted 2-track squeeze into Penn used by hundreds of trains per day. We don't have to get into crazy transit pitches like taking hundreds of houses in eminent domain on the intractible shoreline and carve out a new ROW to make the NEC truly, absolutely competitive with short-distance air travel (which is disappearing anyway).
Spend the next 10 years getting caught up on the backlog...THEN get some of the inland trunks like Springfield electrified...and THEN we can talk about 160 MPH express trains blazing through the Eastern CT empty quarter and on the Worcester Line. We will need that in time for sure. But how can we even conceptualize that when we haven't paid the existing line enough mind to truly conceptualize what it can do firing on all cylinders? It doesn't need to be reimagined to go from second-rate to first-rate travel. It just needs TLC after 50 years of neglect and un-coordination.
