Other People's Rail: Amtrak, commuter rail, rapid transit news & views outside New England

I was trying to find an image of what the new connecticut river bridge was going to look like and this is all I could find. The new span in the center is a bascule truss, meant to invoke the historical bridge.

Connecticut-river-railroad-bridge-1-1320x375.png


https://ctexaminer.com/wp-content/u...rcally_Compatible_Design_Assessment_Final.pdf

Also heres what the susqehanna river rail bridge is proposed to look like, another network tied arch just like the portal bridges. No more movable bridge span.
112122Bridge.jpg


https://www.progressiverailroading....-Susquehanna-River-Rail-Bridge-project--68021

Heres the portal north bridge in nj. Its being built with a higher clearance so no more need for a swing span here either.
512bac6a12e6027f50e928f302c6b6f9.jpg

https://www.tapinto.net/towns/hills...ridge-project-moves-closer-to-federal-funding

And eventually at full build out will have portal bridges north and south. Tied arches everywhere.
portal_replacement.jpg

https://sjheng.com/ProjectDetailsNew.aspx?Id=109
 
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I was trying to find an image of what the new connecticut river bridge was going to look like and this is all I could find. The new span in the center is a bascule truss, meant to invoke the historical bridge.

Connecticut-river-railroad-bridge-1-1320x375.png


https://ctexaminer.com/wp-content/u...rcally_Compatible_Design_Assessment_Final.pdf
The difference is that the new bascule will open/close much faster than the old. The sluggish rate that the current span moves was the big reason for it being such a traffic chokepoint.


Also heres what the susqehanna river rail bridge is proposed to look like, another network tied arch just like the portal bridges. No more movable bridge span.
112122Bridge.jpg


https://www.progressiverailroading....-Susquehanna-River-Rail-Bridge-project--68021

Heres the portal north bridge in nj. Its being built with a higher clearance so no more need for a swing span here either.
512bac6a12e6027f50e928f302c6b6f9.jpg

https://www.tapinto.net/towns/hills...ridge-project-moves-closer-to-federal-funding

With those two taken care of there'll functionally be no more moving spans anywhere from D.C. to NYC. Dock Lift in NJ will be the last one, but that one has opened only twice in the last 18 years for maritime traffic, requires 24-hour notice to Amtrak for any scheduled openings, and is temporarily closed to maritime openings until its lift mechanism is rehabilitated (if they even bother to rehab it).
 
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Just a generic question on high speed rail in the US. I know there’s a lot of projects across the country that are always being studied, but little is being done. Is there any effort to prioritize building out HSR in areas that are connected to the current Acela line? For example, along the Keystone or Empire Corridors?

While I can appreciate the political impetus to spread funds around to as many different congressional districts as possible, it seems to me that the best bang-for-our-buck by expanding out where there actually is existing HSR. This instinct seems reinforced by the map on wikipedia of the federal funding of different HSR projects, and how much cheaper the ones in the Northeast are.

 
Just a generic question on high speed rail in the US. I know there’s a lot of projects across the country that are always being studied, but little is being done. Is there any effort to prioritize building out HSR in areas that are connected to the current Acela line? For example, along the Keystone or Empire Corridors?

While I can appreciate the political impetus to spread funds around to as many different congressional districts as possible, it seems to me that the best bang-for-our-buck by expanding out where there actually is existing HSR. This instinct seems reinforced by the map on wikipedia of the federal funding of different HSR projects, and how much cheaper the ones in the Northeast are.


I guess the real question would be: is there ridership to merit HSR - even the fake/half assed HSR that we see on the NEC? I think the resounding answer is: no, it wouldn't make sense and any money spent going to class 8 (or even 7) track would be better spent upgrading the actual NEC. I could only see HSR expansion if it went some where, which at reasonable distances would be Toronto or Montreal. Maybe Chicago from DC, but, ~700 miles is really pushing the theoretical best distance for real HSR. Otherwise both the Keystone and Empire corridors are rather dead ends, and HSR demands city pairings.
 
I guess the real question would be: is there ridership to merit HSR - even the fake/half assed HSR that we see on the NEC? I think the resounding answer is: no, it wouldn't make sense and any money spent going to class 8 (or even 7) track would be better spent upgrading the actual NEC. I could only see HSR expansion if it went some where, which at reasonable distances would be Toronto or Montreal. Maybe Chicago from DC, but, ~700 miles is really pushing the theoretical best distance for real HSR. Otherwise both the Keystone and Empire corridors are rather dead ends, and HSR demands city pairings.
Empire corridor ridership between Albany and NYC is remarkably strong. That corridor at least merits wires and 125 MPH service.
 
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Southeast High Speed Rail (SEHSR) is about 4 segments that all should get 110 or 125 without wires:
DC2RV (Washington to Richmond, where Virginia has bought one side of the ROW from CSX (probably 90 to 110 when “done”)

Richmond to Raleigh which is new track on currently trackless ROW

Raleigh to Charlotte = The North Carolina RR (state owned, probably limited to 90 mph)

Charlotte to Atlanta: stalled proposed 150 ~ 220 mph line
 
I guess the real question would be: is there ridership to merit HSR - even the fake/half assed HSR that we see on the NEC? I think the resounding answer is: no, it wouldn't make sense and any money spent going to class 8 (or even 7) track would be better spent upgrading the actual NEC. I could only see HSR expansion if it went some where, which at reasonable distances would be Toronto or Montreal. Maybe Chicago from DC, but, ~700 miles is really pushing the theoretical best distance for real HSR. Otherwise both the Keystone and Empire corridors are rather dead ends, and HSR demands city pairings.

Certainly the existing demand matters a lot, which is why my inquiry is about expanding existing service. At the moment, the two busiest lines are the Acela and NE Regional, and are followed reasonably closely by the Empire and Keystone. However, those second two should not be viewed in a vacuum, but should be considered as potential extensions of the Acela. Imagine if there were two Acela lines, that shared the DC-NYC route, and then broke off at NYC toward Boston and somewhere along the Empire Corridor (maybe even Montreal or Toronto, if we're being ambitious). Or something similar, with the Keystone.
 
However, those second two should not be viewed in a vacuum, but should be considered as potential extensions of the Acela. Imagine if there were two Acela lines, that shared the DC-NYC route, and then broke off at NYC toward Boston and somewhere along the Empire Corridor (maybe even Montreal or Toronto, if we're being ambitious). Or something similar, with the Keystone.

Imagining is all well and good, but this isn't Crazy Transit Pitches. The Acela at present is basically two lines (WAS-PHL-NYP and the slower NYP-BOS) serving a distinct market (i.e. the biggest population centers, in a manner that is - particularly on the southern end - faster and more convenient than the airline shuttles). It's a premium service (with a premium price tag) and the fancy trains and higher speeds are justifiable in terms of improving and differentiating a premium service. The Empire Service and the Keystones aren't a premium service; they're Northeast Regionals on state-owned corridors. Keystone's purpose is to serve Pennsylvania (with service to New York being incidental to PA but beneficial to Amtrak, in part by adding capacity that the Regionals wouldn't have to absorb), Empire's to serve New York State into NYC. Neither Harrisburg nor Albany rates the kind of premium, express service at the frequencies that would justify the expense of upgrading the track class to HSR speeds, and anywhere past those places that might is in massive-costs-to-upgrade territory. It's not lack of imagination or ambition that these things aren't HSR, it's math; the Empire and Keystone corridors don't rate the HSR premium, and the potential destinations you could extend them to cost too much with too little in the middle and quite possibly too little ridership at the potential ends to make the numbers work.
 
Imagining is all well and good, but this isn't Crazy Transit Pitches. The Acela at present is basically two lines (WAS-PHL-NYP and the slower NYP-BOS) serving a distinct market (i.e. the biggest population centers, in a manner that is - particularly on the southern end - faster and more convenient than the airline shuttles). It's a premium service (with a premium price tag) and the fancy trains and higher speeds are justifiable in terms of improving and differentiating a premium service. The Empire Service and the Keystones aren't a premium service; they're Northeast Regionals on state-owned corridors. Keystone's purpose is to serve Pennsylvania (with service to New York being incidental to PA but beneficial to Amtrak, in part by adding capacity that the Regionals wouldn't have to absorb), Empire's to serve New York State into NYC. Neither Harrisburg nor Albany rates the kind of premium, express service at the frequencies that would justify the expense of upgrading the track class to HSR speeds, and anywhere past those places that might is in massive-costs-to-upgrade territory. It's not lack of imagination or ambition that these things aren't HSR, it's math; the Empire and Keystone corridors don't rate the HSR premium, and the potential destinations you could extend them to cost too much with too little in the middle and quite possibly too little ridership at the potential ends to make the numbers work.

I'm not really making a transit pitch here. Just to use the Empire Corridor as an example, I'm curious why the topic is approached from the point of view of "here is one place where the powers that be would like to see High Speed Rail" and not "here's somewhere we could expand the Acela network." There is an effort to get HSR there, but I haven't see anything about the connecting to the existing singular HSR route we already have. That seems odd to me.
 
I'm not really making a transit pitch here. Just to use the Empire Corridor as an example, I'm curious why the topic is approached from the point of view of "here is one place where the powers that be would like to see High Speed Rail" and not "here's somewhere we could expand the Acela network." There is an effort to get HSR there, but I haven't see anything about the connecting to the existing singular HSR route we already have. That seems odd to me.

At least part of it is because the Acela isn't a network, it's a service. That the Empire Corridor and the Acela both touch NYP doesn't mean they're serving similar purposes or markets. There isn't an Acela network in any real sense, and after the debacle that was the Acela Regional brand confusion two decades ago, Amtrak isn't likely going to look favorably on expanding the Acela brand outside the NEC trunk service. That's useful for this discussion, because it helps separate out the infrastructure from the services, the Acela being the latter. And, with respect to the Empire Service in particular (though this also applies in some degree to the Keystone), it's a state-supported service. New York State's interest in Empire Corridor HSR (to the extent that it's not a vanity project of the type Albany is inordinately fond of) doesn't meaningfully extend past NYP. (I'm sure NYS wouldn't mind leeching off the NEC and cross-running trains off the southern NEC onto the Empire, but that's not their money.) NY and PA either don't have the money or don't have the will (or both) to bring their existing corridors up to HSR standard (and NY very clearly wants federal dollars to do it). Amtrak proper isn't calling the shots here like they are on the NEC. These are three separate corridors, financed and serving essentially three separate masters (NYS, PA, and Amtrak proper), which, in practical terms, just happen to be operated by Amtrak. Amtrak's bean counters clearly understand that there's probably not that much benefit for them in expending any money or political capital of their own on some notion of expanding HSR off the Corridor (the existing Keystones and Empire Service are presumably considered perfectly acceptable branch services off the main trunk), and neither NY nor PA particularly cares about Amtrak itself beyond its ability to serve their interests. (The TL;DR answer to the question is that the connection isn't talked about because neither party particularly cares about the other, and neither thinks they should, because their interests aren't the same. Amtrak doesn't care what state-owned equipment they run or how fast it goes, and NY cares more about serving its interests than whether it's Acela branded.)
 
Southeast High Speed Rail (SEHSR) is about 4 segments that all should get 110 or 125 without wires:
DC2RV (Washington to Richmond, where Virginia has bought one side of the ROW from CSX (probably 90 to 110 when “done”)

Richmond to Raleigh which is new track on currently trackless ROW

Raleigh to Charlotte = The North Carolina RR (state owned, probably limited to 90 mph)

Charlotte to Atlanta: stalled proposed 150 ~ 220 mph line
Something for us all to consider when imagining SEHSR: the following cities are all spaced very roughly 100 miles apart, more or less in a line:
  • Portland, ME
  • Boston, MA
  • Hartford, CT
  • New York, NY
  • Philadelphia, PA
  • Washington, DC
  • Richmond, VA
  • Raleigh or Durham, NC
  • Charlotte, NC
  • Atlanta, GA
Put another way, each of these cities is roughly equidistant to the next:
  • Boston, MA,
    • for Eastern and Northern New England
  • New York, NY,
    • for the Tri-States
  • Washington, DC,
    • for Northern and West Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware
  • Raleigh/Durham, NC,
    • for North Carolina and Southern Virginia
  • Charlotte, NC,
    • for South Carolina
  • Atlanta, GA
    • for Georgia and destinations across the Southeast
Which is to say, Washington <> Raleigh/Durham is actually comparable distance to Boston <> NYC. The next leg, Raleigh/Durham <> Charlotte, is actually significantly shorter, by about a third (something like NYC <> Delaware). And then Charlotte <> Atlanta is once again largely comparable to Boston <> NYC or NYC <> Washington.

It's not a perfect comparison by any means. Some of that track, as @Arlington lays out, is going to be slower than the NEC. And the density is lower between nodes, which has benefits and drawbacks (reduced demand -> reduced revenue, but also reduced demand -> fewer stops -> faster journeys).

The BosWash megalopolis largely peters out in Virginia, but only in that the medium density built-up area filling in the gaps between the major cities disappears. The regular cadence of large cities appearing roughly every 200 miles continues uninterrupted, stretching from Boston all the way to Atlanta. (And in fact further, depending which direction you continue in.)

Even at modest speeds averaging 100 mph, that still puts each of those pairs at a very reasonable 2 hours of travel time. By comparison, driving Washington <> Raleigh looks like it takes 4-6 hours, and even flying takes over an hour of airtime, nevermind airport time.

My point is that even a modest investment in high(er)-speed rail would be transformative.
 
I'm not really making a transit pitch here. Just to use the Empire Corridor as an example, I'm curious why the topic is approached from the point of view of "here is one place where the powers that be would like to see High Speed Rail" and not "here's somewhere we could expand the Acela network." There is an effort to get HSR there, but I haven't see anything about the connecting to the existing singular HSR route we already have. That seems odd to me.

So I'll also add my take: perhaps the corridor could support electrified up to 90-100mph if there was ridership. This would be, to me, an extension of Regional level service. Expanding actual HSR (150+mph service) is only viable with strong endpoints on the line - in the case of the Acela that is the population density sinks in Boston <> NYC <> DC. Neither corridor has that on its own. As for if it did, extending the Acela branding would be an interesting idea, but, I am also not sure if through-running onto these new lines would even operationally makes sense especially given existing NEC congestion and the increased service planned with the Acela 2s. It might make sense to just do easy/timed platform-to-platform transfers at Penn which have worked very well in my experience in Japan and Europe. In the end, sure, reusing and expanding the Acela branding might be interesting past the NEC, but in the case of these corridors, I can't see anything other than an electrified Regional level of service with whatever works operationally for the NEC. Expanding the "Acela" brand to them at the service level they would merit would most likely damage and cheapen it.
 
So I'll also add my take: perhaps the corridor could support electrified up to 90-100mph if there was ridership. This would be, to me, an extension of Regional level service.

Agreed. The Keystones in particular are a half-step at most below the Regionals, and the Empire Service (at least to Albany) isn't too much farther behind. (In terms of speeds and the like, not so much amenities, being somewhat lacking in the food department by comparison.) Upgrading the Empire Corridor (at least to Albany) to Class 7/125mph max, in tandem with electrification, might well make sense (though I don't know whether the improved travel times over Class 6/110mph would be worth the additional expense, someone better at, well, math could possibly answer that). But Class 7 would simply put the Empires (and Keystones) on par with the max of the Northeast Regionals, which is probably the maximum of what those corridors deserve, given their identified lack of heavyweight population centers at the far ends of their corridors to cement the value proposition for HSR premium service.

I am also not sure if through-running onto these new lines would even operationally makes sense especially given existing NEC congestion and the increased service planned with the Acela 2s. It might make sense to just do easy/timed platform-to-platform transfers at Penn which have worked very well in my experience in Japan and Europe.

I think they'd be perfectly happy through-running Regionals from the Empire corridor onto the NEC as-needed, in the same way that Keystones essentially turn into a hybrid Regional-Clocker between PHL and NYP and the same way that Regionals from the various Virginia branches eventually all merge into the same service (and then end up mostly but not always in Boston). They wouldn't divert HSR off the NYP-BOS section to NYP-ALB, so congestion of the southern half of the NEC would definitely be a relevant concern because anything running ALB-NYP-PHL/WAS would have to be additional to the existing Corridor mix.

Expanding the "Acela" brand to them at the service level they would merit would most likely damage and cheapen it.

I expect Amtrak to be very, very jealous about the Acela brand. The Acela-everything approach they tried before was a deeply confusing disaster and they were mildly fortunate that it didn't irreparably damage the Acela brand. (Customers thinking of shiny new trains winding up on ratty old red-seated Amfleets does not a good impression make.) They are unlikely to make the same mistake again, especially not now after two decades of the Acela name referring to one service on one corridor between one specific set of stations with no branching. (To the point of them literally dropping "Express" from the name, the last vestige of the Acela-everything naming scheme.) The only potential exceptions I could see would be for HSR premium express services (with dedicated, equipment of equivalent service-quality to the Avelia Liberty) on the Keystone and Empire corridors...the exact type of service we seemingly agree that these corridors don't rate. (Besides, I'd wager PA and NY would prefer some state branding reflecting their investments rather than being subsumed as the younger sibling of the mainline Acela.)
 
At least part of it is because the Acela isn't a network, it's a service. That the Empire Corridor and the Acela both touch NYP doesn't mean they're serving similar purposes or markets. There isn't an Acela network in any real sense, and after the debacle that was the Acela Regional brand confusion two decades ago, Amtrak isn't likely going to look favorably on expanding the Acela brand outside the NEC trunk service. That's useful for this discussion, because it helps separate out the infrastructure from the services, the Acela being the latter. And, with respect to the Empire Service in particular (though this also applies in some degree to the Keystone), it's a state-supported service. New York State's interest in Empire Corridor HSR (to the extent that it's not a vanity project of the type Albany is inordinately fond of) doesn't meaningfully extend past NYP. (I'm sure NYS wouldn't mind leeching off the NEC and cross-running trains off the southern NEC onto the Empire, but that's not their money.) NY and PA either don't have the money or don't have the will (or both) to bring their existing corridors up to HSR standard (and NY very clearly wants federal dollars to do it). Amtrak proper isn't calling the shots here like they are on the NEC. These are three separate corridors, financed and serving essentially three separate masters (NYS, PA, and Amtrak proper), which, in practical terms, just happen to be operated by Amtrak. Amtrak's bean counters clearly understand that there's probably not that much benefit for them in expending any money or political capital of their own on some notion of expanding HSR off the Corridor (the existing Keystones and Empire Service are presumably considered perfectly acceptable branch services off the main trunk), and neither NY nor PA particularly cares about Amtrak itself beyond its ability to serve their interests. (The TL;DR answer to the question is that the connection isn't talked about because neither party particularly cares about the other, and neither thinks they should, because their interests aren't the same. Amtrak doesn't care what state-owned equipment they run or how fast it goes, and NY cares more about serving its interests than whether it's Acela branded.)

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.
 
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.

Fair enough. Part of the explanation is absolutely political, given that the biggest pot of money is controlled by people who are accountable to their individual states/districts (and that's mirrored on the state level too). Economic coattail effects aside, Pennsylvania's representatives in Congress may or may not, in the abstract, care if a bunch of federal dollars got chucked at NYS to upgrade the Empire Corridor to HSR, but they'd much rather that money got allocated to the Keystone corridor...and that's true for the politicians in any given place (and which is functionally independent of whether it is the most efficient allocation, because the politicians aren't spending their own money and therefore don't really have to care about whether it makes sense beyond their political/campaign/constituency's interests). And, especially in politics, big new shiny thing where nothing is now tends to be more attractive than "nuts and bolts upgrades" (see, for instance, the entirety of the MBTA falling apart while the politicians only ever really show up at ribbon-cuttings). In addition to the basic, if inefficient, quid-pro-quo of federal funding negotiations, at the state level you have both that same dynamic and less money to work with, and smaller incentives (because they don't have the external quid-pro-quo that might make them even consider network effects; federal reps at least can understand that they have to chuck CA some money to get some for NY, but NY's own politicians don't have any meaningful reason to do anything other than fight for the most they can get for themselves...and blame the feds if they don't get enough).

The other part of the explanation is because HSR doesn't really scale as a network in a vacuum. As discussed previously, it's an open question as to whether points north of Albany or west of Harrisburg even rate HSR service (and I think reasonably certain that Harrisburg and Albany proper - and, I would argue, Pittsburgh - absolutely don't). Raising any of these corridors to HSR-spec solely for the sake of it would be the epitome of a vanity project, and for it not to be that it would need to have a proper business case for the service itself because of the cost involved in upgrading to and maintaining HSR corridors (not to mention even more capital expenditure if it's electrified). Upgrading the Empire Corridor to Albany or the Keystone Corridor to Harrisburg to HSR-spec doesn't make it cheaper to upgrade the lines to Montreal or Pittsburgh or Toronto or Chicago. They'd need to rate HSR on their own terms past the existing corridors. Pittsburgh probably doesn't rate that investment, Toronto probably doesn't rate that investment, and Chicago definitely doesn't rate that investment (because the distance involved is probably semi-permanently too extreme). Montreal might, but the only network effect involved would be in frontloading some of the capital expenditures on the ALB-NYP segment; if ALB-MTL didn't rate the investment then there's no amount of work on the ALB-NYP stretch that would change that fact. In that context, it becomes clearer why the politicians prefer to chuck money at corridors/projects that (appear to) rate investment, despite being disparate and unconnected. A California network (well, one not bungled like CAHSR) has a clearer business case justifying HSR-level expense than HSR-ifying the Empire Service or the Keystones, in the same way that the NEC proper has a better business case for higher-speed and more-frequent services than either of those branches.
 
The Raleigh-Charlotte-Atlanta super region is a market that is huge and ideal for rail.

Yes the pine barrens between Richmond and Raleigh are empty but that’s why they are ideal for a 110 to 220 mph sprint between the Northeast and Southeast corridors
 
Atlanta really could (should) be the Chicago of the south if they brought back passenger rail to the many cities surrounding it. Its perfectly located in the center of about 10 large to medium sized cities that had historic rail connections to the city. As mentioned earlier its also located along the string of cities along the east coast where it would make sense to bring the NEC all the way down to Atlanta. If Atlanta was brought in to the NEC corridor and also expanded passenger rail out to the many surrounding cities it could really be an absolutely major hub city for passenger rail like Chicago has historically been and would be one of the most important passenger rail cities in the country.
 
So I'll also add my take: perhaps the corridor could support electrified up to 90-100mph if there was ridership. This would be, to me, an extension of Regional level service. Expanding actual HSR (150+mph service) is only viable with strong endpoints on the line - in the case of the Acela that is the population density sinks in Boston <> NYC <> DC. Neither corridor has that on its own. As for if it did, extending the Acela branding would be an interesting idea, but, I am also not sure if through-running onto these new lines would even operationally makes sense especially given existing NEC congestion and the increased service planned with the Acela 2s. It might make sense to just do easy/timed platform-to-platform transfers at Penn which have worked very well in my experience in Japan and Europe. In the end, sure, reusing and expanding the Acela branding might be interesting past the NEC, but in the case of these corridors, I can't see anything other than an electrified Regional level of service with whatever works operationally for the NEC. Expanding the "Acela" brand to them at the service level they would merit would most likely damage and cheapen it.

100% agreed with this take. Portland <--> Atlanta (in a world with a North-South Rail Link) would not be an appropriate HSR route, and would be better off broken up into multiple routes, ideally with well-timed transfers.

Frankly, Boston <--> Atlanta is still not an appropriate station pair to anchor a HSR route.

Atlanta <--> DC could be a good route, for example, but not the only possibility.
 
On a completely different note, I recorded the speed of a Northeast Regional trip I took from BBY to NYP on 11/22. I started recording as we were passing through Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The map is color-coded heat map for speed (green is fastest and red is slowest):

Northeast_Regional_11_22.jpg


Some findings:
  • We reached our max speed of 126 mph in North Kingstown, RI.
  • I clocked us above 100 mph over the following segments:
    • Cranston, RI -> Warwick, RI
    • A few miles in Warwick, RI
    • East Greenwich, RI -> South Kingstown, RI (until we slowed to a stop at Kingston Station)
      • The longest continuous segment over 100 mph
    • Madison, CT -> Guilford, CT
  • I clocked us above 80 mph over the following segments:
    • Providence, RI -> South Kingstown, RI (until we slowed to a stop at Kingston Station)
      • The longest continuous segment over 80 mph
    • South Kingstown, RI -> Richmond, RI
      • Excepting the deceleration and acceleration immediately before/after stopping at Kingston Station, the stretch from Providence to Richmond was the longest continuous segment over 80 mph.
    • Charlestown, RI to Westerly, RI
    • A few miles in Westerly, RI (until we slowed to a stop at Westerly Station)
    • A couple short segments in Stonington, CT
    • A short segment in Groton, CT
    • A few short segments in East Lyme, CT and Old Lyme, CT
    • Westbrook, CT -> Clinton, CT
    • Madison, CT -> Guilford, CT
    • Guilford, CT -> Branford, CT
    • A short segment in New Haven, CT
    • Pelham Manor, NY -> The Bronx, NYC
  • I clocked us above 60 mph over the following segments:
    • Providence, RI -> South Kingstown, RI (until we slowed to a stop at Kingston Station)
      • The longest continuous segment by mileage over 60 mph.
    • South Kingstown, RI -> Westerly, RI (until we slowed to a stop at Westerly Station)
      • Excepting the deceleration and acceleration immediately before/after stopping at Kingston Station, the stretch from Providence to Westerly was the longest continuous segment over 60 mph.
    • A few miles in Stonington, CT
    • A few miles in Groton, CT
    • Waterford, CT -> Old Lyme, CT
    • Old Saybrook, CT -> Branford, CT
      • The longest continuous segment by time spent over 60 mph.
    • Branford, CT -> East Haven, CT
    • East Haven, CT -> New Haven, CT
    • West Haven, CT -> Orange, CT
    • A couple short segments in Milford, CT
    • Stratford, CT -> Bridgeport, CT
    • Bridgeport, CT -> Westport, CT
    • Westport, CT -> Norwalk, CT
    • Norwalk, CT -> Darien, CT
    • Stamford, CT -> Greenwich, CT
    • A few miles in Greenwich, CT
    • A few miles in Port Chester, NY
    • Harrison, NY to Larchmont, NY
    • Pelham Manor, NY -> The Bronx, NYC
    • Multiple short srgments in The Bronx, NYC
EDITED TO ADD: The train was mostly on-time. The biggest delay was while waiting at New Haven. We arrived at New haven five minutes early and departed New Haven eight minutes late. Go figure.

Reflection: Westerly and Old Saybrook aren't worth having as stops on this train. Old Saybrook is already a Shore Line East stop and that's sufficient. Extend the Shore Line East to Westerly. Minimize travel time on Amtrak between Kingston and New London and between New London and New Haven.
 
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Do we have any data on which sections of the NEC (or in general) are the most congested?
 

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