Northeast Corridor High-Speed Rail

Testimony before House Transportation Committee on Northeast Corridor High-Speed Rail

Excerpts from testimony given by NARP President and CEO Ross Capon before the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee’s Jan. 27, 2011, field hearing in New York City on bringing high-speed rail to the Northeast Corridor:

We strongly endorse the testimony of Petra Todorovich, and join her in emphasizing the importance of continuing to progress the existing Northeast Corridor to a state of good repair and beyond, as provided for in the multi-agency Northeast Corridor Infrastructure Master Plan.  The country will not be well served if the Corridor fails apart while we are talking about the vision of a brand new railroad.

One immediate concern is replacement of the elderly Northeast Corridor bridge over the Hackensack River (“Portal”) a few miles west of here. This was to have been replaced in conjunction with the now-defunct ARC project. We are not sure but fear that the Portal project died with the ARC, which will present a huge problem if what is supposed to be a movable bridge stops moving.

Passengers want reliability, attractive trains, and—especially for business travel—reasonable speed. It is worth noting that the highly-regarded Virgin trains in the UK have relatively modest average speeds, as does the Keystone Corridor which has received much favorable comment today.

Route	Mileage	Average speed (mph)	Run time
New York-Washington	226	80.2	2:49 (Acela)
London-Liverpool	176.4	75.6	2:20 (range 2:08-2:36)
London-Manchester	160.6	75.3	2:08
Philadelphia-Harrisburg	104	64.3	1:37 (note 1)

Note 1: Fastest westbound run time, attained by one train, four others achieve 1:40; two eastbound achieve 1:35.

While we support Amtrak’s nextgen vision for the Northeast Corridor, no one should underestimate the challenges. The project will require condemnation of tens of thousands of private property parcels, the replacement of over a thousand bridges and the occupation of miles of wetlands. That will be a huge challenge for our democracy.

We have generally supported the Federal Railroad Administration’s approach to the $8 billion grant program. If this money had come on top of a robust program of capital grants for intercity passenger trains for states, then we would agree that the new money should be focused primarily on “true” high speed rail. But no such program exists; the Keystone Corridor Amtrak/Commonwealth of Pennsylvania joint project resulted from Amtrak happening to have the funds on hand when a Pennsylvania governor was interested.

So President Obama’s “high speed rail” program has had to do double duty serving conventional and high-speed rail, bearing in mind that many of the conventional corridors may ultimately become “high speed.”