Regional New England Rail (Amtrak & State DOT & NEC)

BostonTrainGuy said:
So this is even faster then the planned 160 mph? They would have had to reach 170 mph testing to do this right? I thought they only got it up to 166.8 mph.
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The A1's were once clocked at a one-time high of 173 MPH in pure testing mode (i.e. overnight when tracks are empty and no crews were out, because it's cheating against the signal system). I would imagine the Aveilas have done similar in their signal-override tests tests, whether there was somebody standing on a platform with a radar gun to witness it or no.

Doesn't really matter for revenue service. The cab signals cap it at 165 in the top speed zone and assess a braking penalty if the limit's exceeded. 165 will be the observed speed limit for the new equipment, not 160. They've already done dozens of qualifying reps at that speed.
 
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Amtrak can't seem to afford the new trackway that would be set aside mainly for the Acela, along with regular NEC service. Along with the Acela, The Sprinters could also benefit from using slightly higher speeds to get to Washington a little bit sooner.
 
Jahvon09 said:
Amtrak can't seem to afford the new trackway that would be set aside mainly for the Acela, along with regular NEC service. Along with the Acela, The Sprinters could also benefit from using slightly higher speeds to get to Washington a little bit sooner.
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Um, did I miss the proposal of a new corridor line? Or did I take a wrong turn at the forum index and wind up in Crazy Transit Pitches???
 
Brattle Loop said:
Um, did I miss the proposal of a new corridor line? Or did I take a wrong turn at the forum index and wind up in Crazy Transit Pitches???
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I'm pretty sure he's referring to the ACS-64, aka the "Amtrak Cities Sprinter," itself derived from the EuroSprinter, aka the locomotive model that hauls Keystones and Regionals.

If not, I'm equally lost.
 
Stlin said:
I'm pretty sure he's referring to the ACS-64, aka the "Amtrak Cities Sprinter," itself derived from the EuroSprinter, aka the locomotive model that hauls Keystones and Regionals.

If not, I'm equally lost.
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I blanked on the Sprinter reference until I remembered the full unwieldy designation of the ACS-64s, so I'm still good and lost.
 
Speaking of Regional Rail, wasn’t there supo to be an NEC coalition of states that were going to raise like a penny per gallon fuel tax? This would seem to be a good time to start straightening curves and improving station access.
 
Quicky Update on NH Capitol Corridor: first, and I think only, public information meeting has been scheduled for next Wednesday. Notably, NHDOT hasn't published a press release or news item on it's website for this event.
Screenshot_20211108-081532_Acrobat for Samsung.jpg

There's also zero mention anywhere in the draft 10 year improvements plan, also currently under discussion. (They're taking public comment on that this Wednesday) That may be pending the publication of the final report from AECOM, but given the new federal dollars available... It should be somewhere.

They may be assuming that Amtrak will pay for it, but I'm not so sure. While Amtrak definitely is thinking about coming to town, visiting back in August to lobby for state support, I don't how that's going to go, since the MBTA CR is clearly the correct modal choice here. I think Amtrak should pivot to Concord- Manchester - Worcester - Woonsocket - Providence - the Boston Surface proposal, basically. All of that infrastructure would also benefit MBTA CR ops into NH and RI intrastate rail, and the MBTA doesn't have the track rights to do it, so it's always be Amtrak.
 
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Stlin said:
I think Amtrak should pivot to Concord- Manchester - Worcester - Woonsocket - Providence - the Boston Surface proposal, basically. All of that infrastructure would also benefit MBTA CR ops into NH and RI intrastate rail, and the MBTA doesn't have the track rights to do it, so it's always be Amtrak.
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Huh, that's an interesting idea. It's unfortunate that the track layout requires this route to just miss Lowell. If this route coordinated with Northeast Regional schedules and had a reliable timed transfer at Providence, you could perhaps pick up some intercity travelers heading to Connecticut, New York, and points south.

Hmm...

goes off to look at Google Maps, a bunch of intercity bus schedules, and do some back-of-the-napkin math

Huh. This might actually not be such a crazy idea.

Concord-Worcester-Providence is roughly 120 miles. Assuming all the tracks were upgraded, perhaps we could estimate an average speed of 45 mph, once we take curves and stops into consideration (which is also consistent with the Downeaster's average speed Portland to Boston). That would lead to an end-to-end travel time of 2h40m.

A journey from Providence to New York takes between 3h and 3h30m, depending on how many stops you make. Let's assume 10m for a cross-platform transfer at Providence (citing precedent for the current Valley Flyer transfer at New Haven). That would put a Concord-NYC journey at roughly 6 hours. (Assuming Amtrak can guarantee priority for its trains against freight -- in theory, a solvable problem with the right political support.)

There are no intercity buses direct from Concord (or Manchester) to NYC that I could find. (Though there is direct service from Hanover/Lebanon and from Portsmouth.) The best I can find is to take a Greyhound bus to Boston, have a ~1 hour layover, and then take the bus to New York. Total travel time is just over 7 hours, including that layover.

So... that's actually not too bad as a starting point. For NH-NYC riders, an Amtrak journey could potentially be competitive. (Worcester-NYC is currently advertised on Peter Pan as 3h30m, so it's probably less competitive there -- though, again, if Amtrak can guarantee priority for its trains, it's possible that the reliability of a rail schedule might be preferable to the traffic-dependent delays of a busy.)

But beyond the NH-NYC journey, there's a whole universe of other journeys that open up. Of course, you have your local commuters within the corridor -- NH to Worcester, for example, and Worcester-Providence; I wouldn't expect these numbers to be astronomical, but I think they'd contribute.

But you'd also provide access to points throughout Connecticut (New Haven, Bridgeport, Stamford). And then on top of that you'd open up access to the rest of the Northeast Corridor -- two-seat timed transfer rides from New Hampshire to New Jersey, Philadelphia, Washington DC and Virginia.

Add those all together (NH-NYC, local commuters, NH-CT, Worcester-CT, NH-Northeast Corridor)... and you just might have something.
 
I woke up this morning and read that an Amtrak spokesperson said CSX and 2 regional freight carriers were all ready to foot half the bill on the NSRL just to be able to move freight between their southern, western and northern regional nodes in an 'overnight program'. Massport agreed to co-underwrite a huge portion of the remaining expense with the MBTA in order to get the bond issue started. The Baker administration said it was "a very smart, progressive and cost effective plan that he was proud to have quietly engineered and endorsed", adding that, "full commuter rail electrification makes sense for the entire region. " Baker continued "The Commonwealth will no longer be held hostage to the whims and agendas of other states," and continued, "We can stand on our own."

Then I realized I had not been fully awake and really woke up, covered in shame and sadness. 😴😳😥
 
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Riverside said:
There are no intercity buses direct from Concord (or Manchester) to NYC that I could find. (Though there is direct service from Hanover/Lebanon and from Portsmouth.) The best I can find is to take a Greyhound bus to Boston, have a ~1 hour layover, and then take the bus to New York. Total travel time is just over 7 hours, including that layover.
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Pre-pandemic there was Concord Coach service from Concord (via Nashua) to NYC. It was scheduled at 5h30min Concord-NYC, 4h45min Nashua-NYC. It currently remains "suspended".

That said, it was only 1-2x/day each way, and was aimed at a somewhat premium market - $140-150 for a round trip to/from Concord, reservation only, nicer amenities than the typical bus.

2019 archived info:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190530203633/https://concordcoachlines.com/the-plus-bus/
https://web.archive.org/web/2019121...lines.com/route/concord-nashua-new-york-city/
 
^ Thanks! I figured it was possible there was a suspended service I couldn’t find. (And, parenthetically, damn is it hard to sort through all the intercity buses in New England.)

Honestly, even at 5h30m, the whole thing isn’t as implausible as I would’ve thought at first glance. What’s more, if the average rail speed could be bumped up to 60mph (probably a tall order, but…), the Amtrak journey would also drop down to about 5h30m.

And again, you have all those other destination pairs — including the Beyond-NYC group —, which still may add up.

To be clear, I’m not per se advocating for this, nor even saying that it’s necessarily a good idea. My point is that an idea that struck me as “wildly implausible” at first glance may probably be closer to “moderately implausible.”
 
Are there any plans for speed improvements on the Downeaster? IIRC the current top speed is 79 MPH, I’m curious if there’s been any consideration into upgrading the track to class 5 or class 6 for 90 MPH or 110 MPH service.
 
themissinglink said:
Are there any plans for speed improvements on the Downeaster? IIRC the current top speed is 79 MPH, I’m curious if there’s been any consideration into upgrading the track to class 5 or class 6 for 90 MPH or 110 MPH service.
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Not really. MassDOT could invest in Class 5/90 MPH for the Lowell Line south of Wilmington, as you'd probably be able to hit 90 for some of Somerville-Anderson...but it would kind of need Concord super-expresses on the schedule as a service tag-team to make adequate use of that because it's not a super lot of new 90 MPH territory uncorked. For the rest, nah. The Western Route has curves (Lawrence-Haverhill for sure, some meanders in NH), and a bunny-hop's worth of hills in NH that functionally preclude much speed increase over today, and tippy-top historical speeds at B&M's passenger height were pretty much the same as now. What small things will disappear are the annoying deferred maint speed restrictions that constantly pop in and out from the DE schedule like a whack-a-mole game, since CSX will maintain the track proactively without needing a gun put to their heads. What will help the schedule reliability and density bigtime is that CSX is planning to start running at the max authorized freight speed for Class 4 track, 60 MPH. Pan Am currently artificially slows all of its freights on the route to 40 MPH so they can pinch pennies on wear on the infrastructure, and that ends up delaying the DE constantly when they're running late and slow.


If you want an electrified 110 MPH corridor for the DE you're going to have to rebuild the Eastern Route to Portsmouth and then backfill the missing west half of the Newington Branch alongside the NH 16 median west of Piscataqua River to loop back into Dover like it used to before the highway cannibalized the ROW. Then pump that arrow-straight and crossing-few reconnected Eastern to Class 6/110 MPH Revere-north to mow down the schedules for everything Dover-south. Then, since the North Berwick-Saco and Saco-South Portland segments of Eastern (also way straight) have been much longer gone and are non-landbanked (though they're pretty well unencroached because of the lack of built-up density), probably force-fit whatever curve/superelevation mods you can onto the existing Western Route inside of Maine to push it tauter and clear it for freights-under-wire so the rest to Portland is pounded into the bestest shape it can possibly be. Clearly a megaproject, but if Newburyport-Portsmouth commuter rail restoration comes first you've got a down payment and there's only about 5 miles of median work along NH 16 that you'd have to cleanroom to loop back into Dover. Nowhere near as complicated an ordeal as, say, bypassing any part of the NEC in Connecticut.
 
This is more related to the NEC overall, and to New York City, but I thought I'd share this here (with more details in the "Other People's Rail" thread), since it does cover a fair portion of New England: this is a map of Amtrak routes and stations out of NYC which see enough trains at good times to support a "super commute" into NYC -- board train at 7:30am, arrive in NYC at 10:30am, leave around 4pm, and be home in your armchair by 8pm, that kind of thing.

It is a surprisingly expansive and (at least pre-pandemic) relatively robustly scheduled network.

And here's the map:

AmtrakNEC.png
 
Nice summary of the rail & signal = speed improvements that CSX made / is making on PanAm since acquisition
www.trains.com

A year after acquisition, CSX continues making improvements to former Pan Am Railways trackage - Trains

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — CSX Transportation has made major upgrades to Pan Am Railways’ physical plant since acquiring the New England regional a year ago — and there’s more to come as part of its two-year plan. “Since the CSX acquisition of the former Pan Am Railways, significant progress has been...
www.trains.com www.trains.com
 
More Amtrak Airo Trainsets Ordered to Meet Surging Demand
With 10 more trainsets, 83 total Amtrak Airo units will transform rail travel
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I'm in favor of this, even though I don't understand it.
And I put it in "New England" (instead of Other People's Rail) because so many of the routes being enabled will end up being service on the NEC or through Springfield even Pittsfield.

But I don't see how you can call it "demand" that you're accommodating when the first car in the whole order won't be in service until 2026.

Either it is a "surge in forecasted demand based on currently-strong passenger volumes"
or
a surge at the State DOT level for more state-sponsored NEC-Connected service (from NY, MA, CT, VT, and ME that could all touch Massachusetts, and may include even some Virginia trains that start in Springfield (as happens on Sat/Sun only currently)

WASHINGTON – Amtrak executed a contract option to order 10 additional Amtrak Airo trainsets as demand for passenger rail travel exceeds expectations.
This brings the total contract order to 83 trainsets.
The first Amtrak Airo trainset is scheduled to debut in 2026 and these new trains will operate on routes throughout the country.
...
Customers will experience new Amtrak Airo trainsets on the
Northeast Regional,
Empire Service,
Virginia Services,
Keystone Service,
Downeaster,
Cascades,
Maple Leaf,
New Haven/Springfield Service,
Palmetto, (technically an Amtrak LD service operated without sleepers)
Carolinian,
Pennsylvanian,
Vermonter,
Ethan Allen Express and Adirondack.
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Northern Tier Passenger Rail Study final report was published last week: https://www.mass.gov/doc/northern-tier-passenger-rail-study-final-report/download

Not surprisingly, they punted on any serious recommendations by concluding that more study was needed about travel demand on the corridor (translation: they couldn't find hardly any west of Commuter Rail territory). They did mention in passing evaluating better coach bus service on the corridor as a route priming strategy...but it was literally only one sentence so not all that clear they're giving it serious thought.
 
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