The railroad fare was $68 dollar from Richmond to Lancaster PA in 2007 and it’s $67 from Richmond to Lancaster as of now. Amtrack currently could cut about three to four hours of this trip to Lancaster PA by adding two to four more trains from Harrsionburg to Philli and add more railroad tracks between Richmond and Washingtion and extened the eletric catenary to Richmond and Pitsburg and extending the catenary under current speeds would have knocked off two hours off of my 7 hour trip. On a lot of TV programs they say that Washingiton DC to Boston is were 60% of Amtrack’s revenew comes in. If we have another oil panic in 2011 and we have some of these high speed rail lines in Amtrack will make some big profits.

I was trying to make a point about Amtrak and I think I misrepresented myself. I fully believe that train lines should be subsidized all over the country! However, Amtrak is constantly fighting for its very survival and doesn’t have the resources to really re-construct the train system or build new lines. I wish it did, but it doesn’t. Under Amtrak ownership and operation, I think the NEC is operating far below its potential.

When you compare the proposed California High Speed Rail to the Acela service, for example, I think the inadequacies on the east coast become more clear. The proposed train trip from San Francisco to LA will cost $55, take 2 hours and 38 minutes, and be 438 miles long. Currently, a trip on the Acela from Boston to Washington DC costs $174 (minimum), takes 6 hours and 36 minutes, and is 440 miles long. Same distance, triple price, triple trip time.

Combined Amtrak service along the NEC has a ridership of about 15 million a year and does a bit better than breaking even. The California line estimates 88-117 million a year in 2030 and will turn a billion dollar profit in the first year (in theory). Given that the cities along the NEC have such better connecting options and there are twice as many people along the corridor (more or less), the discrepancies in ridership, speed, and profit are pathetic.

Maybe ME, MA, CT, RI, NY, NJ, PA, MD & VA could create their own version of Amtrak with dedicated tax revenues. The new agency’s purpose would be to build a TGV style line next to the NEC. Maybe they could allow a private company to operate and manage it. I don’t know what the solution is. I just know the Acela is too slow and too expensive to be as helpful as it should be. Imagine Boston to Washington in 3 hours!! DC-New York in 1.5 hours!! It would drastically change the northeast, and I can’t imagine Amtrak or the federal government that oversees Amtrak ever doing it.

Well that’s where we come in! It’s up to us as citizens to elect people that will support continued funding for HSR (preferably through a dedicated revenue source like the gas tax is for highway construction), or to work with our current elected officials so that they know how important this is and that we want it funded. Luckily we not only have a very pro-transit administration right now, but we also have a much more pro-transit Congress than in years past.

Well put. Thanks.

I really hope the 3-C corridor gets up and going soon. I think the potential benefits are greatly underestimated as anyone can tell who’s tried to drive from Columbus to Cleveland on I-71.

The Cascades in the Pacific Northwest and the Chicago / St. Louis corridor in the Midwest Hub are two corridors that are ready to go for upgrade to 110mph.

@ Jon, the full Ohio Hub is:

Buffalo / Cleveland / Columbus / Cincinnati / Indianapolis
Pittsburgh / Cleveland / Toledo / Fort Wayne
Pittsburgh / Columbus / Toledo / Detroit
Pittsburgh / Columbus / Fort Wayne

Cleveland / Toledo / Fort Wayne and Cincinnati / Indianapolis were original parts of the Midwest Hub. The Triple-C corridor was later added to the DoT designated corridors as part of the “Midwest” corridor system.

Obviously there is no rush to add the full Ohio Hub to the DoT map, since the Triple-C has to be established first before there’s going to be progress on the rest of the system.

Connecting via Buffalo to the Empire Corridor and points east, via Pittsburgh to the Keystone Corridor and points east, connecting via Fort Wayne to Chicago on the Midwest Hub and points west, connecting via Indianapolis to Chicago on the Midwest Hub and points west, connecting via Detroit to the proposed Windsor to Quebec City corridor in Canada.

@ Adam, a main point of interest in HSR is the ability to gain operating surpluses once the trains are going fast enough for the particular transport market. That shifts the debate from operating subsidies to capital spending, where the Federal government has a long established practice of subsidizing the construction of new transport corridors, from the early 1800’s in the days of the Erie Canal on to the present day.

Conventional passenger rail will continue to provide net economic benefits without being able to operate at a profit, because of the large share of the benefits that are external benefits … but HSR can be operate on the basis of “seed” investment in a backbone corridor getting operations going, and then when operating surpluses are achieved, those can be used to generate revenue bonds for the local match for Federal capital subsidies.

But you could think of it this way too. With the expansion of HSR, we could have multiple NEC’s. Then those amtrak subsidies you don’t like going to the rural routes, whatever the subsidy levels actually are, will be less and less of a drag on the entire system. The whole rail system will be stronger instead of relying on one corridor as the revenue producer.

I don’t think transportation should be privatized across an entire country and I tend to agree with the post from April 18. However, I am often very annoyed at the debate in city, state and federal governments over transportation dollars. For example, I remember reading that almost none of Missouri’s stimulus money went to St. Louis. These are the people we have entrusted with our rail system.

I believe long distance routes in the middle of the country should be subsidized and I think we need to become comfortable with that as a country. I just think the subsidies should come from taxes, not from the success of the NEC. All that money is not divided up by what dollars would do the most good. It’s divided up in the market for votes. Does it really make sense that the subsidy per passenger is so much higher for train riders in Montana than for those in New York? Wouldn’t a dollar spent on a train in New York yield a much higher economic and environmental return?

In my opinion, if Acela were partially privatized, or at least managed by an new Amtrak-like company, the shareholders of Acela, Inc. would encourage the company to put its profits back into the upkeep of the tracks and rolling stock and provide constantly improving service. I trust that model to provide better service than the wisdom of the House of Representatives.

“But this is the tangible progress toward getting travel time down to 4 hours 25 minutes between Richmond and Charlotte?”

Yes and no. First of all, at this point it’s not about Richmond (in VA). These are all projects strictly done by the state of North Carolina (so the trip they’re worried about is Raleigh to Charlotte). And because it’s completely state-funded and there’s no other sources of funding (i.e. federal), then yeah it’s hard to invest say 1 bn or 2 bn in improvements in a short amount of time. The “no” part is that this isn’t an exhaustive list of all the improvements. They’ve been working on this for about 10 years now, so there’s a lot of projects that have been completed.

There used to be a site on NCDOT’s webpage listing potentiall ARRA projects for rail and transit. They’ve taken it down now apparently. But on that list was a request for funds to double-track the entire length of rail from Greensboro to Selma, NC. That right there would go a long way towards the SE HSR corridor and it would also cost ~600 million. So the basic strategy of NC is to survive on the modest amount of money it put towards rail right now and wait for the feds to wake up and help out. Hopefully that day has come.

And not to sneer at spending $100 million on improving rail. That is more than 40 other states are doing. But this is the tangible progress toward getting travel time down to 4 hours 25 minutes between Richmond and Charlotte? At this rate, by the time they get this line to 79 mph the ice caps will have melted and the Outer Banks will be a memory.

Of course, we’re talking about changing the rate of progress. And $8 or $9 billion could speed things up here and there. But we need to be saying loud and clear that this funding is just a drop in the bucket!