"Here is an example of where Amtrak is today. The New Haven had a freight train 1st Advanced BO-1, the “Jet”, which guaranteed delivery from Boston to Chicago in 24 hours. Forty five years later Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited takes almost 22 hours from Boston to Chicago. The Merchants Limited circa 1963, with a fifteen minute switch from electric to diesel locomotive power at New Haven would cover the distance from New York to Boston in 3 hours and 55 minutes. The Acela Express, in the same time slot and far from it’s proposed goal of 3 hours, covers the distance in 3 hours and 40 minutes.49 years have passed and countless millions (perhaps billions) spent in track improvements and wire installation and the resulting time cut from the schedule is zero minutes! Is this considered progress? I have seen the high speed trains come and go. The New Haven’s two forays into HST’s proved to be futile on the existing roadbed just as Amtrak’s is today. Europe and Japan were bombed in to rubble in WW II and the Marshall Plan and SCAP rebuilt their infrastructures with an eye on the future. The railroads were built as straight as the geography allowed. The NEC infrastructure dates from the 1800’s taking a circuitous route between industries.
Outdated Interstate system is responsible for passenger increase not Amtrak’s business acumen.
Folks want good dependable transportation.
Amtrak can wrest the 500 mile and under market from airlines.
FY 2012 Regional up 6.6% Acela up 0.5% 2nd best year ever
And the means to finance??? Even bakers dough required flour and yeast among other things. Your ‘solution’ doesn’t even get in the oven to be half baked.
You imply developing a new RoW with fewer curves, modern track, signals and catenary. I believe that was already proposed by the pertinent agency, even the precise route. However, funding and securing the land in such a congested region will be tough.
Good luck with that. Fixing the antique North River tunnels is taking forever. The NEC is very congested. The Acela IIs have higher capacity than the older equipment. That will help. But you probably prefer GG1s, P70s and Clockers of days gone by.
Actually still a range of routes … he doesn’t seem to want to say, but google “NECIP” for all the information a discussion like this probably needs.
(The discussion of BO-2 is a little poignant, because it almost certainly involved first going from Cedar Hill over the Poughkeepsie Bridge – speed-competitive even with the 10mph restriction across that substantial-length structure – and then down the ‘alphabet route’, many track miles of which no longer exist. I have to wonder what the current alternatives to that service, either via the Lehigh Line or some other ‘functional alternative’ like a great way 'round involving Selkirk, might be – the sad truth being that we’ll never again see through freight either via the Corridor or the Pennsylvania state service to Harrisburg, or the well-engineered low-grade cutoffs that used parts of them).
It seems to me, though, that the important gist of his argument regarding the Acela II has always been that designing equipment to run on such improved facilities is premature, and we should look instead at improving what we have, incrementally if necessary following the true German development model, to get to where a reasonable percentage of the NEC route mileage allows sustained 125mph speed … and design the replacement equipment for that peak speed, which not incidentally is tremendously less, much of it already costed-down via PRIIA and other development efforts, and reasonably buff-and-draft compliant, than true modern HSR designs that have to depend on CEM and clever engineering like the intercar connections on Talgo trains to ‘make’ their higher peak speed in any practical way. While I can’t point to any version of a study in NE
People like the Acela I and pay for it instead of more traditional NEC Regional, even though the speed and time benefits are marginally small. So it makes sense to replace them with similar but better equipment that has greater capacity, even without going to double-decker cars.
Remember too that I’m almost cackling with joy that Amtrak is buying these things and they will constitute a large incentive to spend even more on improving track work to run them in even limited areas … likely over 160mph through Princeton Junction now that the crossovers are out … I’ll be watching, and when I get the chance riding; I only hope they are as well-built and reliable as the SC-44s and ACS-64s have been.
From a marketing standpoint it’s going to be interesting how Amtrak addresses the relative paucity of actual high speed running these trains do. They certainly have little trouble keeping the public thinking of the Acela service as high speed worth a premium price – and I’m not going to spend much time spilling the beans to say it’s not…
Remember too that I’m almost cackling with joy that Amtrak is buying these things and they will constitute a large incentive to spend even more on improving track work to run them in even limited areas … likely over 160mph through Princeton Junction now that the crossovers are out … I’ll be watching, and when I get the chance riding; I only hope they are as well-built and reliable as the SC-44s and ACS-64s have been.
From a marketing standpoint it’s going to be interesting how Amtrak addresses the relative paucity of actual high speed running these trains do. They certainly have little trouble keeping the public thinking of the Acela service as high speed worth a premium price – and I’m not going to spend much time spilling the beans to say it’s not…
(Especially now that the money’s safely spent, the lovely trains are a’building, and the die has been cast to have true HSR grade equipment actually running at last…)
Oh, and a prediction: the best name for the ‘second generation’ trains and hence the service ought to be ‘Acelia’ …
I don’t think either of you realize that people are willing to spend more for that service because of the comfort, not the speed. Those people who do are neither naïve nor ignorant about that, no matter what Joe believes. He apparently hates the Triebwagen concept.