To fix this the trains could simply go from 25 and 40 to 50 and 80 miles on hour by adding a third track from Petersubrg to Washingtion then adding over head catenary wires down to Petersburg to get rid of the catenary change over. They could have added two or three more round trips a day so if you do miss your train you don’t spend three hours at the station.

Cyk

Run the math on the difference in travel time impact of increasing 5 miles of track from 25 to 80 mph vs increasing the top speed of 25 miles of track from 80 mph to 150 mph.

Then consider the costs.

“”One hundred and ten is double the national speed limit” of 55 m.p.h. on highways, noted Boardman, who was administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration during several years of the Bush administration.”

Uh….Mr. Boardman, we don’t have a national speed limit anymore and haven’t for the last 15 years.

In fact, in the real world, I never got on the 8:30 morning train. knowing there is no reasonable return schedule

If Boardman is saying that we can cut travel time if I don’t have to hang around Kalamazoo for 5 hours until the next departure, then he’s right. More frequencies will get me home faster than any more speeding up of trains on the 100-mile stretch in Michigan that Amtrak owns.

But adding a lot more frequencies will require a lot more cars. So maybe Boardman is trying to start making a case for a major expansion of the number of trains, and the number of routes and corridors, and for the major order for the hundreds of new passenger railcars those improvements will require.

Lessee. California High Speed Rail estimated cost of $45 billion for 800-mile system. Allow me to round up to $600 million per 100 miles.

Hmmmn. Get 1,200 new railroad cars and double the number of Amtrak trains outside the NEC, or build a few hundred miles of one HSR line. You don’t want to make me choose.