“They probably need more money to stabilize the infrastructure they have now,” Westcott, 42, said before boarding at Union Station, “and then start working on improvements.”
There lies the railroad’s struggle. As Amtrak celebrates its 40th anniversary this month, it is working to replace aging tunnels, bridges and track while also expanding to meet future demand, particularly between Washington and Boston. Its plan for “next generation” service in the Northeast Corridor got a major boost this week, when the Obama administration announced Amtrak would receive $450 million in the latest round of high-speed rail funding.
Amtrak said it will use the money to upgrade electrical power and tracks to speed up trains on a 24-mile section between Morrisville, Pa., and New Brunswick, N.J., — part of a larger plan to double Acela Express service over the next decade to supplement jammed highways and crowded airspace in the busy Northeast Corridor.
Amtrak passengers aren’t the only ones with much at stake in the railroad’s rehabilitation and growth. In addition to the Northeast Corridor serving one-third of Amtrak’s 75,000 daily passengers, it carries about 850,000 weekday riders on commuter trains that Amtrak operates or dispatches.
Those include
the Penn Line of the Maryland Area Regional Commuter service. Seven freight railroads also operate on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor tracks.
The Obama administration also awarded $22 million to Maryland to begin work on an $800 million plan to replace and widen a 105-year-old Amtrak bridge that MARC trains use between Perryville and Havre de Grace. Train traffic on the bridge is expected to more than double over the next two decades, Maryland officials said.
The entire Northeast Corridor, which is so congested that trains heading into Manhattan are sometimes threaded 150 seconds apart, must be upgraded and expanded to handle the growth projected in the economically vital Northeast, Amtrak officials say.
Within two decades, they say, nearly 3,300 trains — 40 percent more than today — will need to travel the corridor daily, leaving many sections of track operating at full capacity. Amtrak has proposed building separate tracks for high-speed trains, a proposal that would require buying expensive land along most of a route that borders back yards and businesses.
Some transportation leaders in Congress say unprofitable Amtrak has proven it can’t run a cost-efficient rail line, no matter how fast it is.
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