Re: North-South Rail Link
Alon -- this thing is pure fantasy -- the only funding possible for the N-S Rail is for Amtrak NE Corridor
No one is going to spend $3 to $5B for tunneling when all is said and done + the cost of electrification of all the Commuter Rail routes just to offer someone in Newburyport a single seat ride to Plymouth or someone in Fitchburg a single seat ride to Worcester
The demand for such long CR trips is measured on the fingers of one hand per week
Okay, then it won't happen, because Amtrak has no reason to care. And if it does offer the NSRL, I will be happy to point out that it's engaging in agency imperialism, of the same kind that led it to propose Gateway (which is of limited use for it - it's much more useful for commuter rail), at much higher cost than ARC because it's Amtrak. Basically, an Amtrak that's willing to offer Massachusetts the NSRL is an Amtrak that's too incompetent for Massachusetts to want to deal with it.
Where Amtrak could be useful is electrification, at least on lines that tie into the Providence Line. To avoid long three- and four-track segments, the Providence Line needs to speed up commuter trains, so it's in Amtrak's interest to offer the MBTA help in procuring EMUs for the Providence Line and maybe even electrify the New Bedford and Fall River; if Massachusetts is willing to set $2 billion on fire for New Bedford, Amtrak could throw in $200 million on stringing catenary so the trains won't interfere with faster Acelas. However, there's zero reason for Amtrak to spend money on electrifying North Side lines, and not much reason for it to spend money on electrifying Worcester, Franklin, or the Old Colony. Fairmount, sure, if Amtrak wants to divert intercity trains there and leave the Southwest Corridor to commuter trains. But the rest are all wonderful scope for an integrated Northeastern mainline rail plan and terrible for a plan focused on faster intercity trips.
Electrification and through-service aren't really about Newburyport-Plymouth trips, and of course not about Fitchburg-Worcester ones, which will always be faster by car. They're about more convenient trips to the core and to secondary destinations: Lowell-South Station, Salem-Back Bay, Bridgewater-Lynn, Readville-Brandeis, Dedham-Tufts, Allston-Malden. Some of those are possible today but with annoying transfers in the Boston CBD; commuters are especially averse to destination-end transfers, even ones who will drive multiple kilometers to a better park-and-ride. Others are subway/bus trips because the commuter trains don't make enough urban stops, and are even slower. All of these turn into one-seat rides, or two-seat rides with a cross-platform transfer at Aquarium. With the Grand Junction, even trips to Kendall, the region's third business district, become two-seat rides with a cross-platform transfer at North Station or Aquarium.
It's also about speed. Lowell-North Station today is 45 minutes - about the same schedule as when the Boston and Lowell first opened (although that was for nonstops). A FLIRT could do the trip, making all current stops, in less than 30 minutes, including schedule contingency. It would reliably beat the roads even when there's no traffic, boosting off-peak ridership, which is cheaper to provide than peak ridership (no need for new equipment or infrastructure for it).
Nor is there any demand for once an hour service from anywhere to/from Portland
Hourly trains from Boston to Portland aren't fantasy at all, provided the speed is adequate. Portland's metro area is slightly smaller than Malmö's. Boston's is twice as large as Stockholm's, and New York's is ten times as large. The Stockholm-Malmö express service, which runs shitty 200 km/h tilting trains but still averages 140 km/h, runs hourly. Stockholm-Malmö is about 500 km, whereas Boston-Portland is 200, but at this range, ridership doesn't depend on distance - more people travel Boston-Portland than Stockholm-Malmö, but assuming equal train average speed, more will drive in the US because the shorter distance means the train's speed advantage translates to a smaller trip time advantage than in Sweden.