My theory is that people view houses on weekends, and so they think their new home is a 20 minute commuter.
I don't think anyone in NH would be deluded into thinking they could make work in Boston. Woburn, Burlington, maybe.
My theory is that people view houses on weekends, and so they think their new home is a 20 minute commuter.
Central Corridor Study was an answer seeking a question. ... snip
"How can we *imagineer* a passenger rail service that somehow manages to pull off the truly inspired feat of traversing 120+ miles of interior southeastern New England without coming remotely close to servicing metro Springfield (pop. 692,000); metro Worcester (pop. 923,000); metro Hartford (pop. 1.214 million); metro Providence (1.604 million); or metro New Haven (pop. 862,000)--while at the same time connecting nodes that aggregate to a population that is ... [*checks notes*] 3.48% of that of those metro areas combined?"
I don't think anyone in NH would be deluded into thinking they could make work in Boston. Woburn, Burlington, maybe.
This was pre-Google Maps, and what I had understood at the time was that the couple had seen the listing in Greater Providence, seen 495 running up around Boston to Lowell, and figured that that would be a reasonable commute (I think under the theory that circumferential highways like that out in the Southwest at the time tended to have quick-moving traffic).
Obviously it didn't work out. I don't remember what it was at the time, but I'd guess that that'd be a 2-hour drive, one-way.
It really is remarkable. I mean, you look at the map on Wikipedia and it really does jump out at you how that corridor seems to actively avoid going anywhere large numbers of passengers would need to go. Like F-Line said, reusable parts here and there, but remarkably hard to use otherwise.
I don't think anyone in NH would be deluded into thinking they could make work in Boston. Woburn, Burlington, maybe.
Comes now an outfit called AmeriStarRail, who along with being spectacularly unimaginative in the naming department, have a proposal to take over the NEC as a private operator and introduce various new, "innovative" services. The most locally relevant of these is they want to run some NEC service up the Inland Route to North Station via the Grand Junction, then continue up the Downeaster route to Brunswick ME.
They also propose closing two tracks at NY Penn and converting them to extended platforms with "platform flatcars", so they can have people exit the train on one side and enter on the other, like this. And run some service from the Empire Corridor out to Ronkonkoma on the LIRR.
Comes now an outfit called AmeriStarRail, who along with being spectacularly unimaginative in the naming department, have a proposal to take over the NEC as a private operator and introduce various new, "innovative" services. The most locally relevant of these is they want to run some NEC service up the Inland Route to North Station via the Grand Junction, then continue up the Downeaster route to Brunswick ME.
They also propose closing two tracks at NY Penn and converting them to extended platforms with "platform flatcars", so they can have people exit the train on one side and enter on the other, like this. And run some service from the Empire Corridor out to Ronkonkoma on the LIRR.
But, to be fair, Amtrak, NY, & the LIRR have been studying an L-shaped route from Albany-NYC-LIRR for about a year. as one of several possible additions to service at Penn Station that will be possible when some of LIRR is redirected to Grand Central in the East Side Access project.Through-running Empire Service to Ronkonkoma (presumably using dual modes running diesel for much of the journey) isn't something you stumble across every day,
Amtrak to Hoboken I dont think would happen unless the Hudson tunnels are flooded
But, I mean, that only seems imaginable in some sort of retro-futurist world where passenger rail enjoys a renaissance and resurgence.