Because then it would be another service that's been canceled during the Pandemic. I think Amtrak has managed to nominally keep most of its services active, but, as we know, many of the daily long-distance trains got dropped to tri-weekly, and plenty of other services have been curtailed. At one point, the Adirondack was short-turning at Albany -- basically just turning it into another Empire Service run. But, like the Vermonter, by keeping it in service they can avoid clickbaity news stories about "upstate rail service CANCELED".
Regional New England Rail (Amtrak & State DOT & NEC)
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Because then it would be another service that's been canceled during the Pandemic. I think Amtrak has managed to nominally keep most of its services active, but, as we know, many of the daily long-distance trains got dropped to tri-weekly, and plenty of other services have been curtailed. At one point, the Adirondack was short-turning at Albany -- basically just turning it into another Empire Service run. But, like the Vermonter, by keeping it in service they can avoid clickbaity news stories about "upstate rail service CANCELED".
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Maybe we need a New England regional and commuter services thread? (Amtrak state supported in CT RI ME (NH) and VT and then CTrail/SLE? That'd cover "New England People's Rail" ? (We do have something like that but we probably need better names)
Riverworks
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Or just rename this thread to "Intercity Rail - Amtrak, Regional Rail, etc.". That covers it.
Bottom line - We need faster, more frequent, more reliable intercity rail service from Boston to other key cities in New England (Providence, Worcester/Springfield, Hartford, Portland), and creation of new routes (to Manchester/Concord, Albany - not the Lakeshore, Cape, Vermont). We live in such a dense region, with seven states within a one to two hour reach of Boston. We should not be relying on automobiles 100% of the time to take us to/from these places.
Bottom line - We need faster, more frequent, more reliable intercity rail service from Boston to other key cities in New England (Providence, Worcester/Springfield, Hartford, Portland), and creation of new routes (to Manchester/Concord, Albany - not the Lakeshore, Cape, Vermont). We live in such a dense region, with seven states within a one to two hour reach of Boston. We should not be relying on automobiles 100% of the time to take us to/from these places.
millerm277
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I believe the reason is because unlike the LD network trains, the reason it's not running into VT at the moment is because VT doesn't want it running there right now. When VT calls Amtrak and wants it to start running again, it will. (and the subsidy money is still in the VT state budget for it).
Actually that totally makes more sense. I mean, you might hope that they'd still continue to run to Springfield or Greenfield, but it's not like those don't have other services. But yes -- Vermont is taking its travel restrictions very seriously (and appropriately so), so I could totally see that.
This is also a situation where both theories could easily be simultaneously true.
The EGE
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Truncating to New Haven (or New York, depending on ridership) for the time being has several advantages versus running to SPG or GFD. It allows use of only a single trainset, versus the regular two. Under normal ops, NB and SB meet near Springfield, so New Haven is the northernmost spot where you can turn the train in a single day. Greenfield is not equipped for overnight storage at all, and Springfield has limited overnight capacity as well. Plus, terminating at New Haven or south means no need for the diesel switch at NHV.
Riverworks
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This makes total sense. Amtrak has three types of services - Northeast Corridor (Amtrak funded), State-Supported (Amtrak/State funded), and Long Distance (Amtrak funded). Adirondack is a Long-Distance service, so makes sense for them to cut service on this line, when they are not getting any additional state support. Vermonter is a State-Supported service, as well as the New Haven to Springfield route, and the new Valley Flyer. Empire/Ethan Allen services are too. Interesting to see Vermont being proactive with suspending/limiting service, and conserving resources. I wonder if there are any others. The Downeaster is still in full swing.
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It's also the "Escape From New York" route...moreso the Ethan Allen than the Vermonter...so when Greater NYC infection rates were tipping the scales VT was a solid "No!" to the swells who wanted to camp out upstate and across the border.
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The North Atlantic Rail initiative is sitting up and begging for some of those sweet infrastructure billions the Biden administration is supposedly going to be shoveling out. I know we've talked about this idea for a Hartford-Providence greenfield HSR line, but I can't find the discussion offhand. The Long Island Sound tunnel has, of course, been on everyone's pie-in-the-sky wish list for about a century. It sounds like they want to build an entirely new line from NYP out to the middle on Long Island, which seems the most daunting component of all.
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Sure, if you can average 200mph the entire distance. That's what your $105 billion is paying for."100 minute rail link from Boston to NYC". Is that even possible?
F-Line to Dudley
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LOL...as if that's even a speed shining-examples world HSR even shoots for. Have 2 sizeable-enough metropolises to link together, and chances are there's something big enough in between them meriting an intermediate stop or three. I know how fun it is to dunk on Connecticut, but if Stamford is doing the Acela ridership it's doing no bestest-and-brightest world planner would opt to skip it either. Reference specs like 200 MPH are meaningless for megalopolis density where dollars and sense say to stop where the people are...nevermind the engineering task of trying to find perfectly straight lines through a built-up megalopolis.
165 MPH NEC/Aveila track class is middle Top 10 worldwide on raw speedometer. Few ever try for more than that because the cost starts hitting a punitive headwind anywhere in the world on realistic stop spacing vs. tapping the topmost 35 MPH on that quest for 200, and on achievable geometric perfection. Our problem is solely that the NEC can't string enough fast territory together before hitting a density- or geometry-induced speed kink...not the achievable topline radar reading between any 2 points. If it could be an even 125 max between most major city pairs--a gun reading that is by def "sub-" HSR...it would still be clock-faster than today out of sheer consistency.
It gets hard to take these blue-ribbon study panels seriously when they're all about warp-drive speeds between DC.-NY-BOS to total exclusion of any sense of balance in serving a diverse corridor that has more people living in-between the CBD's of 2-3 cities needing to get everywhere than simply the ping-pong between megacity CBD's. NEC FUTURE was a tone-deaf farce for not realizing that. This isn't a real auspicious start for the next blue-ribbon panel study, either.
Make it more consistently not-slow...that's all anyone's asking. I'm not sure who's asking the question of what's the straightest underwater line one could draw between Providence and Penn Station...because Stamford + Bridgeport ridership >>> Central L.I. bedroom communities to silliness. A *consistent* 95 MPH New Haven Line with occasional triple-digit flirts is going to rake way harder than 150 outbound of Ronkonkoma that then slams headfirst into a brick wall of LIRR locals congestion inbound to Jamaica. How are we still not learning this after NEC FUTURE sucked so hard chasing the wrong target fixation???
I found some footage of North Atlantic rail trainsets during their hour-long slog along LIRR tracks from the tunnel portal to NYP; I hear the dedicated high-speed line from the tunnel portal into New York will be built "any day now".
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F-Line to Dudley
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They used to run into London on a hella congested commuter rail line perennially stuck behind slow local trains with extremely dense stop spacing. That's the LIRR analogy: "How can this be high-speed when it's running up against the taillights of eleventy merging local patterns?" Since late-2007 the Eurostars were relocated off that high-congestion route onto the new High Speed 1 route that gave the U.K. side of the network par HSR performance with the French side, and they no longer have to suffer running slow like that.
Unfortunately, as far as Long Island is concerned there isn't an HS1 analogy to be had. You can rebuild the Central Branch as an HSR line west of Bethpage for a *little bit* of clock-inconsequential breathing room...but then hit the brick wall of congestion even harder at Floral Park and still go dog-slow behind the entirety of LIRR's local schedule the last 12 miles into Penn Station. This is why the L.I. diversion pales to just trying to crank up the New Haven Line through Bridgeport, Stamford, and New Rochelle to "good enough". At least if you keep it consistently 90+ you're hitting proven mega HSR ridership catchments on the CT shoreline that don't exist in Central L.I. Via Central L.I. you might hit 150 outside of LIRR congestion, but what good does that do when you're barely going to be topping 40 in all the congestion between Bethpage or Floral Park and Penn Station, and there are no big intermediate stop catchments besides Jamaica because everything diffuses to local-commuter stop granularity on the Island instead of massing up big like at Stamford (which does greater Acela ridership than larger-population New Haven because of Fairfield County's demographics being the better shoe-fit for premium-class).
When it all averages out you *at best* end up spending $10B or more to wind up with performance/ridership ratios that are par with spending a few hundred $M in New Haven Line state-of-repair. Not compelling enough to float a megaproject. You can make a wonk's case for it on its merits, but the galvanizing energy to actually put up and do it comes up lacking at every subsequent study look because the difference just isn't big enough so long as City Zone LIRR congestion is an unsolvable pickle.
There may indeed be compelling future need for building a cross-Sound rail tunnel by sometime midcentury. But HSR won't be the overarching driver for it. Probably some combination of sea level rise resiliency + local travel + freight with a Northeast Regional forked-route flavor is more like it rather than there being some galvanizing mandate to ever send the Acela under the Sound.
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I'd missed this: NNEPRA officially prefers moving next gen Portland station back to the former Union Station site (eliminating the Wye move and 15 minutes on trips to/from the north/east)
www.mainepublic.org
Maine Passenger Rail Authority Looks To Relocate Portland Station, Add Another Round Trip To Boston
The state transportation department has released a study of options for a new Portland train station. Currently, Amtrak’s Downeaster trains between Boston…
www.mainepublic.org
F-Line to Dudley
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I'd missed this: NNEPRA officially prefers moving next gen Portland station back to the former Union Station site (eliminating the Wye move and 15 minutes on trips to/from the north/east)
Maine Passenger Rail Authority Looks To Relocate Portland Station, Add Another Round Trip To Boston
The state transportation department has released a study of options for a new Portland train station. Currently, Amtrak’s Downeaster trains between Boston…
https://archboston.com/community/threads/crazy-transit-pitches-maine-edition.6288/page-3#post-393000
Tom Nevers
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Separate but somewhat related, there was an article in the Midcoast newspaper today about increasing the number of roundtrips on the Downeaster.I'd missed this: NNEPRA officially prefers moving next gen Portland station back to the former Union Station site (eliminating the Wye move and 15 minutes on trips to/from the north/east)
Maine Passenger Rail Authority Looks To Relocate Portland Station, Add Another Round Trip To Boston
The state transportation department has released a study of options for a new Portland train station. Currently, Amtrak’s Downeaster trains between Boston…