Improving The Northeast Corridor and Acela Into World Class High Speed Rail

The Northeast Corridor IS high speed rail. Fight me to the death! This is the only high speed rail we have in the United States, at least for 5 or 10 years until Brightline West or California High Speed Rail are operating.
ATTN: at 2:21 I made an attribution error. This video is actually / @stevegettingaroundphilly
Thanks very much to / @stevegettingaroundphilly and massive apologies for the error. Please go view their videos.
The NEC and Acela service are roundly derided as not real high speed rail, and some of that is deserved. It's certainly not fast high speed rail, and it's not high speed rail at an international standard, at least not in the last 30 years. However, there is room for improvement and its possible to turn the corridor around and make it more respectable compared to modern high speed rail. Places with far few resources than the United States have decent HSR right now, so I think it's reasonable to expect the same here at home. Capital investment on high speed rail isn't cheap. This video will look at various options and ideas being floated and will try to conclude what travel times might be achieved and at what cost.
Special thanks to EPICSNAKE for the great NEC footage featured throughout the video. Please show your gratitude and check out their channel when you get a chance.
/ @epicsnake21
If you are so inclined, come join the continuing conversation in the Discord Lucid Group:
/ discord
Stock footage from Pexels.com and Pixabay.com
Attribution:
Penn Central 4879, ready to leave for New York City with the continuation of the Southern Railway's Crescent, in May 1976. Construction was for a visitor center in connection with the Bicentennial.
by Drew Jacksich
creativecommons.org/licenses/...
0 series shinkansen near Yurakucho Station in Tokyo
by Roger Wollstadt
creativecommons.org/licenses/...
View of the Atlantic City Boardwalk, looking south from the skyway at Caesars Atlantic City, in Atlantic City, NJ, US
by Silveira Neto
creativecommons.org/licenses/...
Chapters:
0:00 Hey, it's your old pal Lucid Stew, again!
0:15 A Brief History of the NEC
2:45 The Region
4:32 Between Washington D.C. and Baltimore
5:56 Super Simple Estimating Algo
6:20 Baltimore
7:20 Between Baltimore and Wilmington
9:21 Wilmington Bypass
10:47 Philly Bypass
13:53 Manhattan Bypass
14:24 Southwest Connecticut
14:48 NEC FUTURE NYC to Boston
15:54 New Haven to Hartford
16:47 NYC Harlem Line to Hartford
18:37 Long Island High Speed Railroad
21:23 Hartford to Boston via Worcester
24:16 NYC-White Plains-Hartford-Boston
24:50 The Voyage Under the Sea
25:24 NYC-New Haven-Hartford-Boston
26:32 Summary
27:01 Up Next
27:25 See you on that big, beautiful freeway!
Topics:
NEC
Northeast Corridor
Federal Railroad Administration
high speed rail
Acela Express
Pennsylvania Railroad
Washington D.C.
Philadelphia
Boston
New York City
New York Penn Station
North River Tunnels
Hell Gate Bridge
Penn Central
Amtrak
Metroliner
Shinkansen
Acela II
Alstom Avelia Liberty
Massachusetts
Rhode Island
Connecticut
New York
New Jersey
Pennsylvania
Delaware
Maryland
District of Columbia
Baltimore
Providence
Washington Union
Seabrook
Baltimore Washington International
Patuxent Research Refuge
Odenton
MARC
Baltimore Metro
Frederick Douglass tunnel
Baltimore Penn Station
Gunpowder River Bridge
Bush River Bridge
Susquehanna River Bridge
Perryville
Aberdeen
Wilmington
Newark
Trenton
Delaware River
New Jersey Turnpike
PATCO
Camden
Atlantic City
Bronx
Fordham Plaza
New Haven
Hartford
White Plains
Danbury
Waterbury
Long Island
Long Island Sound
Worcester
Harlem Line
Hartford Union Station
Grand Central Terminal
Jamaica Station
Queens
Long Island Railroad
MTA Metro-North
MTA-LIRR
Boston South Station

[@itisnotmeMARCO]

Bypassing downtown Philadelphia and Manhattan is silly. The benefit of trains vs. flying is that you get dropped off close to your ultimate destination near the city center. Philadelphia and Manhattan have too much demand where it makes sense to decrease the level of service for their travelers.

[@LucidStew]

Those would be in addition, not in replacement.

[@qjtvaddict]

Ohh well

[@hackia274]

Italy and France have done this years. It works!

[@deemanDavid]

That would be a lot of cost for a route that would likely run once or twice per day. The vast majority of riders will be stopping in Manhattan (if they ride that far up)

[@LucidStew]

@@deemanDavid My major argument for is removing traffic from the core route, and Manhattan could certainly use that. Also, if we're talking about shaving ~2 hours off the Boston-D.C. length, you're going to pull more riders from air travel and will need the core route relief.

[@DivineDart]

any way to get Boston to NYC below 3 hours is a win in my book.

[@ronclark9724]

It can be done, but those century old bridges will have to be replaced with very expensive tunnels...

[@StephenSmith304]

I love the effort put into the visualizations! Also I really appreciate the clear labeling of points of interest on route maps, with no unrelated labels to confuse and with labels popping in when you talk about it, makes it much easier to follow along for people not familiar with the geography, or people who are just geography impaired 😂 a lot of other channels will just throw up a fully labeled map which leaves viewers having to sift through a sea of labels to find each POI as they are mentioned.

[@LucidStew]

Thanks. I occasionally use the same, but try to avoid those when the information on them is intrusive to the point. I used to skimp on various geographic description, but realized I'm familiar with these maps by working with them and should not assume the same for the viewer, so I try to point out location in just about every cut now.

[@thomasrengel5577]

Yes. First time I've seen such a detailed discussion of the line on a mile per mile basis. How much RR history do you know? Would you recognize the name New York & New England Railroad (1873-1895)? It operated a large part of that "parallel to the Sound" route you describe on I-84. Oh, no one EVER built a line from Worcester to Hartford---not even a RR charter for a never-built line! Geography and lack of population--there's a reason that end of CT in its northeast is called The Quiet Corner!

[@LucidStew]

@@thomasrengel5577 Part of the motivation behind the FRA HSR corridors series in particular is so that I can learn because people have asked me to make more videos when I started out really as someone who had a grievance with California High Speed Rail. Lots of these areas are not strong spots as evidenced by the lack of New York & New England discussion in the video. It has been mentioned by several commenters, though, so I'm planning a follow-up video to talk about that and other ideas I may have missed in the first one.

[@Altranite]

Lot of people dont understand the downtown bypasses are in addition to the current pathing to provide a travel time on longer journeys that would make the route competitive with air travel, not to make that the new standard route. I suppose a proper express would remove the smaller stops but it looks like the major time savings are from the new routing. I liked the video, and the graphics

[@LucidStew]

Honestly, this is as big a problem as any with American passenger rail where there is an insistence that it stop absolutely everywhere in between the major origin and destination. People need to understand that a high speed trunk has a specific purpose AND that this possibility of local branches/loops using that trunk still exists. Instead, its viewed as those communities being left behind, when it reality a bypass has the potential to improve longer distance service to those areas.

[@StefanWithTrains3222]

This really deserves applause 👏. Great video, man! I hope that some of these projects will come true!

[@LucidStew]

New Haven-Hartford at a minimum seems like a no-brainer

[@StefanWithTrains3222]

@LucidStew Well, CTDOT has a list of feasible improvements and electrification of the Hardford line is part of that.

[@LucidStew]

​@@StefanWithTrains3222 Well, I guess the double-tracking is a step in that direction. Just kind of mind blowing that we're not giving FSP money to this. It's not in the backlog! Can you imagine this being the reason?

[@AllTheUrbanLegends]

This is great for speed but, realistically, bypassing Wilmington, Philly, and Trenton basically bypasses half of the ridership on the southern half of the NEC. NYP - PHL is the busiest city pair in the entire NEC and WAS - PHL is the 4th busiest pair.

[@LucidStew]

I think its ok to bypass major metros if your core service to them remains. I'm thinking further out into the future when the east coast line could be electrified down to Atlanta, and you wouldn't be talking about connecting NYC to just Philadelphia-Baltimore-D.C. Plus the faster a train goes, the more traffic it can pull from airlines, which would increase Acela's NYC-D.C. market share. If I had a choice between a 2 hour train trip and a 3 hour flight experience for about the same cost, I'd take the train every time. You also have your ancillary benefits of better access to southwest New Jersey.

[@qjtvaddict]

It creates new transfer opportunities due to the stops and transfers available

[@qjtvaddict]

@@LucidStewa maglev route can accommodate the bypass route at higher speeds 😊

[@LucidStew]

@@qjtvaddict Guess we'll have to wait for Northeast Maglev to steal this...

[@onetwothreeabc]

@@qjtvaddict Maglev ain't gonna happen. Too expensive to build, too expensive to operate, and too expensive to fix/maintain.

[@wintermath3173]

7:15 since you asked, Baltimore's intercity rail service (run by the MARC) has good bones but is only useful for a small subset of uses right now - mainly people commuting from Baltimore to DC for work. One of the two rail lines is only in the peak direction. Given Maryland's budgetary issues, reverse service on the Camden line or any increases in frequency - possible in theory with little new construction - will likely have to be paired with substantial transit oriented development around stations to drive ticket sales up enough. The FBI's decision to move to Greenbelt, which has a MARC station, a DC Metro station, and an under construction purple line station, will help. Secondly, once the "long bridge" across the Potomac river is upgraded (planned completion 2030) all three of MARC's lines could run through DC union station to Crystal City (including the Pentagon) and Alexandria, two major employment centers in the region. TLDR: 1. transit oriented development in Maryland 2. upgrade the long bridge and do through service to northern Virginia.

[@LucidStew]

Thanks, I appreciate. I've seen proposals that would like to put an intercity station downtown, but I never figured out the logistics of how exactly those would work. Lot of tunnelling, I suspect. It's a very complicated situation over there.

[@wintermath3173]

I just remembered: Baltimore is planning a new transit line, called the "Red Line," which will stop at the west Baltimore MARC station and go downtown. So that may further reduce the need for a downtown train station. Significant Transit Oriented Development is planned there as well.

[@tomdubay2225]

Nice video! Note: Hartford's metro population is 1.2 million and it is a strong reason why it should be part of the future high speed solution. Add in it's connections to Springfield and New Haven and it becomes a slam dunk.

[@ronclark9724]

Europeans and Japanese think in terms of HSR terminus cities with significantly larger population numbers. FIVE million metro, not ONE million metro. You need that density to fill the numerous trains running on the tracks. Since they are so expensive to build and maintain, you want as many trains using the HSR line as possible safely...

[@tomdubay2225]

@@ronclark9724 Hartford would be a link between Boston and New York, which are the larger destinations. If you have a cutoff of 5 million, then even Boston doesn't have that.

[@botmes4044]

Drop the Philly Bypass and the Baltimore Crosstown Tunnel (instead quad-track the Douglas Tunnel as they originally proposed), route via NEC to Hartford and Worcester, and include all the other curve enhancements, highway alignments, and bypasses you mentioned (except through the Bronx), then you'd have a very strong proposal which you should mail to the President.

[@LucidStew]

:D In my original script, I had a wrap-up portion in the end where I picked the portions I thought were the best and I agreed with your assessment. (except for the President part)

[@overcaffeinatedengineering]

As a Pennsylvanian, it was hard to hear the proposal to skip Philly, but it makes a lot of sense when I see it. I think it would be great to run a lot of these services in parallel. In Germany, there's 2 high-speed rail variants called Inter-City (IC) and Inter-City Express (ICE), which skips some of the smaller cities along the route. I don't hate the idea of skipping some important cities to make the longest route faster, as long as some routes include them. I wonder how fast a DC-NY-Boston trip could be without any intermediate stops.

[@botmes4044]

@@overcaffeinatedengineering I think a DC-Philly-NYC-Boston Super Express would have higher ridership, even with the slowdown through 30 St Station.

[@LucidStew]

@@overcaffeinatedengineering The NEC FUTURE analysis concludes its doable in 3 hours 20 mins. If you added up the most extreme examples I can think of(philly bypass, and the other NYC-DC improvement, even crazier tunnel from Long Island straight in Rhode Island... you might be able to pull that off. They estimated the cost of a 3h20m route at $300 billion.($100 billion of that is already planned with quite a bit allocated). If you're talking existing, you gain about 5 minutes for each stop skipped if you're not improving the route, so it would cut off maybe 40 minutes?

[@LucidStew]

@@botmes4044 Yeah, have to agree with that. Philadelphia is a big draw. The bypass idea was mainly meant to pull through traffic, that didn't want to stop in Philadelphia, off the main line, make that a faster option, and to provide additional options for southwestern New Jersey

[@diddy5678]

Having worked the NE Corridor for 42 years (Shoreline and Metro North), I would suggest a straight shot from Attleboro ( Hebronville and East Junction) Straight to East Providence with a tunnel emerging at Cranston RI. With some straightening ( another tunnel perhaps) at East Greenwich RI, that route would provide very high speed rail from Mansfield MA, MP 205, to Kingston RI. MP 152. There would be a station stop for RI at Green Airport. and Regional service would continue on the original route. The next step would be a straighter route through RI to the Thames River Movable bridge in New London. From there you could follow Rte 95 to Old Saybrook . It would be a way to concentrate the improvements in blocks .

[@LucidStew]

I appreciate your experience and I will look into that.

[@SteveGettingAroundPhilly]

Great that you finally got it out, and thanks for throwing in the correction on the source of that one clip. We all make mistakes, and it didn't really detract. Overall, it's good that someone finally put the challenges of upgrading the NEC into something digestible (relatively speaking, anyway), though there are a few areas of critique that I have. The Baltimore Union Station idea, while really cool and could be a best case scenario, seems to be a case of diminishing returns to me. I do like it in principle, especially for connections right into downtown as well as to light rail, subway and the MARC Camden line if they ever want to extend that through the Howard Street tunnel and build a station there, but it doesn't seem to be as big a time saver on the NEC, especially with the Frederick Douglass tunnel under construction that seems to save around a similar amount of time that the Union Station idea saves, unless I'm reading it wrong and/or the Douglass tunnel was factored in. Penn Station already has connections to the light rail, and it seems to me to be possible to route the Camden line to Penn Station through the Howard Street Tunnel, and perhaps give that line more of a purpose given how ridiculously underused and infrequent it is. That in turn could free up capacity on the NEC for more Amtrak services, and give more of an incentive to improve track geometry south of Baltimore (plus putting back the fourth track on that part of the line), which, alongside that viaduct idea you mentioned, could make DC to Baltimore insanely quicker than it is now, along similar lines to the track geometry upgrades from Baltimore to Elkton. I can understand Wilmington getting a bypass to a degree for express services, though I would still imagine most trains, even most Acelas being routed through Wilmington, since that station is the 11th busiest on Amtrak's system (which says a lot about the rest of the country frankly), but Philly getting a bypass doesn't seem to have much benefit outside of raw speed. You'd essentially bypass the Third busiest station on the entire Amtrak network, and while you would get way better speed with the bypass, I'm not sold on if it will be worth it, just to run express to NYC. It'd be kind of like CAHSR bypassing San Jose to run express to San Francisco...somehow. It's hard to improve a lot of the parts of the line around Philly, but not impossible, though for my future video project on the NEC, I intend to investigate that case further. I know ideas have been put forth to straighten the curve at Frankford Junction, though that would likely require a tunnel under Kensington to make that work, and there are several areas where you would need to straighten a few of the curves both north and south of the station, but while I don't deny building that bypass would help speed overall, my main concern is balance of speed and ridership practicality. At least we both agree that bypassing NYC isn't practical. The portal bridge replacement and the new tunnels should at least help reliability in that area. For me, the jury's still out about which alternative to improving Agony, thine name is Connecticut makes the most sense. We all know that the New Haven line currently in use is rubbish, largely because it's not owned by Amtrak and is overcrowded with Metro-North and Amtrak services, so I'm in favor if finding an alternative in any case. I've lowkey been a fan of the Long Island idea, even if I worry about Jamaica station getting crowded by both local LIRR services and intercity services, so that would require a major upgrade. Always felt it was more practical given the morass of issues that could possibly come from connecting Penn Station and Grand Central, as much as in principle I like the idea, and think there should be a tunnel system connecting Grand Central, Penn, Hoboken and Atlantic Terminals, creating a unified commuter and regional rail system. Just seems like more of a mess than the others, even if the Harlem line idea is the non-Long Island idea that I might like the most. Following the Port Jefferson branch seems to be an odd choice given how windy it is, though the tunnels help. Was always seeing proposals for that idea being to run it along the Ronkonkoma branch and then turn north, though I can imagine issues there in its own right, and I'm willing to be talked out of that. Running up the Hartford line would be generally a good move for me, especially for true high speed services, though I'm personally not entirely sold on the new right of way following interstates and leaving out Springfield, Mass. The tracks that run up there seem to be mostly solid and can be upgraded, with the obvious area to fix being to reroute and rebuild the bridge of the Connecticut River at Windsor Locks so that it doesn't take an S-curve to do it. Again, trying to balance speed and ridership potential, though I can obviously see the benefit of your idea being running more direct from Hartford to Worcester, which I can agree with as an express option. I guess my thing overall is that, I like the overarching ideas here, though I'm more imagining the high-speed NEC as the spine of a larger network than just the single DC-NYC-Boston route. I know that's likely what you're thinking as well, but while some of the ideas make sense, others seem to be a bit more trouble than their worth, even if I can see the value in them in principle. Like I said, I'm making my own long-term project about the NEC, and I'll definitely be taking these ideas into consideration, since being local to the region, I would love to see the NEC be a true rail speed palace that rail nerds love to envision it as. Overall, good stuff Stew. I'm sure this will lead to some spirited chat on the discord server lol.

[@LucidStew]

Cool, I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with so I can compare and contrast. We're talking probably 20 years until things like this are built, so there's lots of time to come up with ideas and talk about them. I think that's the important part. Nothing ever gets built if no one cares about it. Thanks for your contribution and sorry again for the oversight.

[@SteveGettingAroundPhilly]

Very true. I do like that stuff is underway now, though there is a lot more to discuss and advocate for. You'd likely be right that we're looking at around 20 years before a lot of it is in place, but no time like the present to get ideas out there and refine them. I'll definitely be referring to some of the ideas here, and I'd love to get feedback from you and others when putting together my project. Being a guy whos love of trains and things that go fast was helped by living near the NEC, I know it has a lot of problems, but a lot of potential too.

[@Gnefitisis]

​@@SteveGettingAroundPhillyHey there. If you are you should also read into the North Atlantic Rail scheme. The jist is connect Hartford to Springfield first and then to Worcester because Springfield has been proposed to be reconnecting to Albany again. Also with new track, speeds can be improved over realignments. Plus this would allow direct Boston to Toronto and put Montreal journeys as a branch off a major NEC route. Plus, Amtrak would have full ROW instead of playing nice with Providence....not considering RI and oceanside tracks are a liability with NIMBYS and climate change.

[@jaymikevillanueva1212]

We really need a true world class HSR service. A Charlotte to Boston service would do great wonders for the East Coast. Hopefully once other East Coast states down further in The South see the benefit of HSR service, they'd want to do the same thing and invest on electrifying route and update the tracks. The replacing and updating entire infrastructure would be pricey, no doubt but this allows travelers another option besides flying or driving. We only need to look at Europe to get the idea. Smaller rail regional and state rail services could greatly benefit from this as well. You WANT as much people to have access to rail services, be it MSR or HSR.

[@JordanPeace]

I think a nice route for an express between NYC and Boston would be to follow the Ronkonkoma Branch all the way out to Greenport with a tunnel underneath the islands between there and Avondale/Westerly. Then from there you follow the existing NEC alignment through Rhode Island and Massachusetts since that’s already one of the sections capable of higher top speeds, maybe with some smaller adjustments made to some sharper curves along the route.

[@made_of_paper]

Great video. I say shell out for all of what is suggested. At 13:30 you have NYC to Boston but I think you mean NYC to DC.

[@LucidStew]

$87 billion it is!

[@made_of_paper]

@@LucidStew 🤝

[@ronclark9724]

@@LucidStew ZERO is better.... Pipe dreams are UNAFFORDABLE...

[@nicoresnik2943]

Thanks for giving Worcester some love❤❤

[@LucidStew]

I have my doubts. Getting through town is a pretty rough situation, but I can't see bypassing it entirely on I-90 either.

[@davidorazine8239]

@@LucidStew 90 technically enters Worcester briefly, but a junction station in Auburn with an extension of the commuter rail would be nice.

[@LucidStew]

@@davidorazine8239 I definitely considered that. My original plan for the video was for the NYC-Boston portion to be about an I-395 route I came up with. For that, I was on the fence about putting the station in Worcester or Auburn. However that route came in expensive relative to options I dismissed off-hand, so I redid the second half and decided Auburn wasn't acceptable if coming from Hartford. Another option is Worcester as described and then a Worcester bypass along I-90. I did look at I-90 through there. It's 125mph to I-495. I looked at the options in the area probably more than anything else. It's something of a Kobayashi Maru.

[@mattheworsini6876]

I like the south Jersey idea because it not only increases speed, but also enhances access to transit.

[@andyartze4529]

Awesome video! The new graphics look phenomenal!

[@psychoT233]

I second that! Nice work!

[@JAXONcreed]

Love the unreal engine 5 stuff. Where did you get the google maps data?

[@LucidStew]

That is a service called Cesium ION.

[@carlsmith5545]

Do it right! You already have the bullets that has the capability of 200 plus mph. You build a new line called, "The United States Atlantic bullet line." This would be a bullet line from Boston Massachusetts to Jacksonville Florida, stopping in one city in each state it travels through. You could move millions of americans up and down the entire United States Eastern seaboard with great comfort and at speeds of up to 200 plus mph and not a ripple on your martinis. I could board in Philadelphia Pennsylvania and be in Jacksonville Florida in about 4 to 6 hours instead of 12 hours by car or 14 hours by EV. Or, i could board in Philadelphia Pennsylvania and be in New York city in 30 minutes or less to go to work and still be home in time for supper! This is something the mighty United States of America should of done decades ago but, americans would rather spend 600 billion dollars to put some fool on mars which would benefit absolutely no one except for the fool going there, than spend 500 billion dollars to build the Atlantic bullet line. I do however give a hats off to the California highspeed rail project currently under construction. The first state in the entire United States to stand up and take on this endeavor. Unlike 110 to 130 mph offerd by Amtrak, the California highspeed rail will provide trains that can reach speeds of up to 225 mph. In the meantime, Japan in moving up to the next level in highspeed bullet technology. Maglev super train technology. Trains that travel useing magnetic levitation and reaching speeds of up to 375mph. But ofcourse this is expected from the far more advanced countries of the far east. One day the United States will wake up, roll up their sleeves and go to work on these modern marvels of transportation. Highspeed bullet trains and maglev super train technology which is also, (fully electric) will be the new american dream....

[@TheLiamster]

My favourite proposal is from North Atlantic Rail which would reroute trains through Long Island and build a tunnel under the Long Island Sound to New Haven before connecting Hartford and Springfield and ending in Boston. There’s also a plan to build a connection between North and South station which would benefit the MBTA. I would improve the NEC by building new tunnels through the downtowns of Baltimore and Philadelphia with stations at Charles Center and Jefferson respectively. Intercity and regional services can still use the current alignment and stations but providing a connection to downtown as well as the airports would be very beneficial

[@michaelimbesi2314]

Missed idea: roughly follow the LIRR out to Orient Point, and then follow the chain of islands across the sound to join back into the NEC in Rhode Island. This might be cheaper because that chain of islands is part of the same glacial moraine responsible for the North Fork of the island and so it should be somewhat shallower than the surrounding water)

[@thomasrengel5577]

In the early 1990's the Real Estate Crowd in eastern Long Island was excited at the prospect of the corridor improvements. Their idea was that with high(er) speed rail connecting with a hydrofoil New London-Orient Point then eastern Long Island could become commuter territory to Rhode Island and Massachusetts, boosting real estate values.

[@peterjohnson525]

Great plans…but CT just needs to figure it out! I live in CT and love taking the Acela

[@timothystamm3200]

Another benefit of the Hartford by Harlem alternative is if that is built theoretically any train in the New York area would be able to go anywhere else if it was the right kind of tri-mode except out the north end of Secaucus junction and even that could be fixed with a ring around Secaucus. At that point it might be possible to run RER/S-Bahn service on the regional rail lines.

[@brucehain]

There is the NY&NE (New York & New England) which involves skipping both Hartford and Providence, replacing the two with a Connecticut town no longer shown on the map but called Willimantic. It was the fastest route at one time, and carried a white and gold-leaf luxury train that was so famous it rated it's own poem by Rudyard Kipling. (which was actually the whole point of this commenting exercise, if I can find it) Without a jar, or roll or antic, Without a stop at Willimantic, The New England Limited takes its way At three o'clock each day, Maids and Matrons, daintily dimited, Ride every day on the New England Limited; Rain nor snow ne'er stops its flight, It makes New York at nine each night. One half the glories have not been told Of that wonderful train of white and gold Which leaves each day for New York at three Over the N.Y. & N.E. Contrary to the conventional wisdom about this route I'm unable to find any grade necessarily over 2% though lots of it's subsumed. On the other hand nothing's developed in the way either. It's a pretty level route and Willimantic would make a nice stop, in addition to one with an existing fancy old station in MBTA territory. Happy New Year and Cheers to the soon-coming Ascendancy of Passenger Railroading in America!

[@LucidStew]

I'll have to look into it and see if I can find it. Having never been there, but now having looked at it in 3D quite a bit, I did conclude that Connecticut is an uneven land, but I did not find it so much so as to be unmanageable.

[@LucidStew]

I did consider the part between Brewster and Danbury, not knowing what it was. The part between Waterbury and Hartford doesn't look too bad. You can't get much worse than I-84 in that area, but maybe these NEC FUTURE lines-on-map are implying this instead between Brewster and Hartford. Putnam into the Boston area looks decent. I notice they also converted parts of this into hiking trail. While being a hiker myself, I find this kind of a stupid use of a potential mass transit corridor. When looking at these I'm always curious what the odds would be of getting something like that overturned.

[@brucehain]

@@LucidStew If you have the USGS map on Google Earth it should show it. It's shorter than the current route. Going north towards Hartford from New Haven it cuts off to the right where the Shore Line exits south to New London, then crosses the Connecticut River at Middletown. The part west of the river is still in use probably by CSX. You should be able to locate the rest using the USGS map. (Yup, it's there - you might need some modern prestidigitation (Like a Tunnel) to get around such as East Hampton. I had traced it once and futzed with it enough to satisfy me the route was viable but lost the file. I got as far as some multi-track shortcut improvement in New Haven to connect it, that was it.) What I object to most about that professor with the cross-Long Island Sound thing (besides there's less than no capacity on the LIRR for it since advent of East Side Access - they have to run twice as many trains) is they never showed a way to continue on past Hartford. It looks pretty much impossible to me but they've been promoting this thing for at least ten years to where they got the Mayor of Hartford behind it a couple of years ago. Hate to disappoint him but that's what happens with these rail experts, all of 'em. One has to be aware is all. (asking the impossible in politics, I know.)

[@brucehain]

The official figures two moths ago was 140% trains now, with 70% passengers as in 2019. That was sort of hidden in one of their reports with the two figures on different pages.

[@jasonreed7522]

​@@brucehainhaving spent 2 years in the area, that Middletown crossing is an old rotating rail bridge that would definitely need to be replaced to maintain top speed. (Unless you gave them a stop, but express trains would still be slowed down) Also hills in Connecticut general run north south as a continuation of the Appalachian Mountains. (It feels wrong to call anything in Connecticut a mountain being used to NY mountain standards) This means that generally if you can keep the corridor on a North/south trajectory it would be better than an east/west one. (Without looking at a detailed topo map to plot a route)

[@MrBaskins2010]

love how you broke everything down

[@TheWebber34]

Love the plans, and we should be pouring money into them to make the NEC a world class HSR line (minus the Philly and Manhattan bypasses-- I actually disagree that Wilmington-NYC cannot be improved. Many curves could be significantly straightened with only industrial ROW acquisition, which should face a lot less pushback). For the Long Island route, I think it would either 1) head south at Floral Park and use the Hempstead Branch and rebuilt central branch or 2) turn south at Hicksville to remain on the main line. Then both options would use the Ronkonkoma Branch to a station at MacArthur Airport and use the power line ROW all the way up to the tunnel portal to continue to New Haven and Hartford. These alignments could support 200-220 mph for most of it outside of a few curves. Instead of going to New Haven, a more out-there option that potentially avoids tunneling under Long Island Sound would be to continue on the Ronkonkoma Branch all the way to Greenpoint. Then peninsula/island hop with bridges and viaducts (it is mostly quite shallow, with one grand bridge) and rejoin the NEC at Wequetequock River, where it mostly straight and undeveloped enough to straighten curves to support 200-220 mph all the way to greater Boston, excluding the Providence approaches. You lose New Haven on this route, but more easily keep a Providence stop vs the Hartford routing.

[@ani2595]

I'd love to see Amtrak make an extension that goes from DC to Charlotte and even to Atlanta. That would make the line so ideal!

[@ronclark9724]

Why? HSR has a limiting factor many HSR advocates FAIL to acknowledge. Trains win the ridership battle with the airlines at around THREE hours, FOUR hours tops. The truth is in the pudding with Amtrak FACTS. Amtrak wins handily the ridership competing against the airlines with the less than three hour journey from Washington to New York, but loses the ridership battle with the nearly four hour journey from New York to Boston. BUT LOSES BADLY the ridership battle with the nearly SEVEN hour journey from Washington to Boston.... Why spend TRILLIONS extending to Atlanta when the airlines will still sweep up ninety percent of the ridership from Atlanta to New York? Your toy train isn't worth it... I could care less whether HSR turned a profit, but by god, why bother to spend so much if you won't win the ridership battle?

[@ronclark9724]

Furthermore, Atlanta would rather have more slow train options to Nashville and Savannah than a HSR line to Charlotte when they already have a slow train to Charlotte...

[@bjturon]

Great video -- the animations worked out really well, I'm very impressed! 😃

[@TheRailwayDrone]

My only question is why the hell are you not working for either Amtrak or the FRA? This was a very good video.

[@ybennehoff]

The American people to Amtrak: You gotta pump up those speed numbers. Those are rookie numbers. 😉

[@coldestshark4310]

For the long island option, what about running up the Ronkonkoma branch all the way to green port then tunneling or bridging from there? The ronkonkoma branch is exceptionally straight for most of its run and you could straighten out a few curves and get a ludicrously straight row. I think it would be a shorter tunnel than the other option and if you follow the islands right off of there you could get basically right to the rhode island section of the neck which is also one of the fastest parts!

[@robertklose2140]

What are the prospects for connecting North and South Stations in Boston? Then Amtrak trains from south of Boston could smoothly continue into northern New England.

[@LucidStew]

I'm going to look into it in the Northern New England video. I've just briefly examined the issue otherwise. It seems like it was a massive mistake to not do it during the Big Dig project.

[@robertklose2140]

@@LucidStew Thank you. I was hoping this project could be addressed because of the 60 billion Biden has directed toward rail. Keep up the good work with these videos.

[@GustavSvard]

A most excellent video. Very nice use of maps & Unreal 5 animations. As to the suggested bypasses and major re-routings: 1. make sure the land needed is safeguarded asap! 2. Keep upgrading the old line. Always do this. 3. If/when the capacity limits of the sections are hit they ought to start building the bypasses past those places. With designs to make them possible to link up. 4. Keep upgrading the old line. Services then to be run both on the old lines and the new lines. People going NYC-Phille mostly won't be using the service on the bypass past Philly, but people going NYC-DC won't care. People going Providence - NYC will want Acela on the old line. People going NYC-Boston won't care if the train is going on the old or new line really, they'll care about cost, speed, & capacity. in other words: Build it when *capacity* is needed. And run the fast trains on both the old and new lines.

[@rljets_83]

The Worcester option ignores the fact of an abundance of existing 150+ mph track existing for the approach to Boston stretching into southern Rhode Island. The Providence station also serves more than 3-4x Worcester and Hartford combined. I’d run Hartford/springfield as a spur and tuck the NEC inland with a stop at the casinos in eastern CT replacing Nee London

[@MSNWindows7]

Agreed -- the section between NYC and New Haven is the glaring issue, after that the speeds and track quality improves quite a bit, and throwing a bit of money at smoothing out New London and replacing some bridges seems to me like the way to go. The only issue with this is the beach house owners in CT will fight even the smallest improvement to the alignment tooth and nail, as already demonstrated :( Heck, maybe we build a New Haven-Kingston tunnel!

[@aidanpeck180]

Agreed the most important the of the Boston to NYC alignment is bottleneck between New Haven and NYC. The only real issue beyond that is the tracks between Westerly RI and Kingston RI can’t be straightened because of Federally protected Native American Reservation land and thus there would probably need to be new alignment made from that area North of Westerly. Though it provides an opportunity to clean up the mess that is New London with a new alignment that cleans up the curves a bit north of where the curve tracks are now. Providence itself is also a pretty gnarly bottle neck that would likely need to be bypassed through Cranston and East Providence about 5-10 miles away to the west from the current station and route which isn’t ideal or a more extensive straightening and tunneling solution into Massachusetts that allows for a cleaner through line of Providence Down town.

[@tomdubay2225]

The whole idea of having it run through Hartford, Springfield, and Wocester is to finally link those cities to Boston (and NYC) so as to be one similar footing to Providence in terms of service. This would be a huge economic enabler for those cities because workers could literally do daily 45-minute or less commutes into Boston (and 45 minutes for Hartford to NYC). This would be transformative for these 3 cities.

[@biotrekker]

Your channel is a Godsend. Keep up the good work!

[@letsplaypetrus4802]

Very good video. Really liked the model driving through the map. And now criticing on a high level: The streetcar-looking front left me confused the first time, otherwise really nice model. Keep them coming

[@LucidStew]

I purchased a package that makes it much easier for me to get up and running. I haven't gotten to the level of swapping out models yet. I'm not sure if I'd be able to buy appropriate models, or if I'd have to create them myself, but its a longer-term maybe.

[@brianwithoutay2291]

@@LucidStew - I like the model you are currently using. Reminds me a bit of the Lego high-speed train!

[@khalifahmuhammad1574]

In regards to the Manhattan bypass, I am thoroughly compromised. I was born and raised in the Bronx AND I am graduate of Fordham Prep (Rose Hill campus in the Fordham area of the Bronx). As such, I have only one opinion on the Manhattan bypass. In my best Ben Stiller voice (think the scene on Starksky and Hutch), "Do it!"

[@MrCubsfan3]

Stew, thanks for the amazing video! I just discovered your channel yesterday, but if you haven't,could you make a video exploring a philly-style tunnel connecting Boston South and North stations, allowing thru-running?

[@LucidStew]

There's been an extensive study of the concept. I don't really have anything to add to it. They looked at it quite thoroughly and the conclusions make sense to me. www.mass.gov/north-south-rail-link-feasibility-reassessment-study

[@oldgandy5355]

Really good job with the visualizations. You succeeded.

[@romanrat5613]

The main reason Manhattan would not be bypassed is that not that it is Manhattan but because Penn Station is the convergence of so many subway and the 3 regional railroads which connect all of NYC and surroundings. (Once metro-north penn access is done)

[@LucidStew]

Right, but its also a choke point if one is simply trying to move through it.

[@DDELE7]

Has anyone considered building a new superstation at Sunnyside?

[@rebeccawinter472]

For the Baltimore realignment, I don’t know if you need to tunnel the whole way, US 40 could simple be closed and the right of way turned over to the rail line. It could run in the current trench, with the bridges already built, until it reached MLK Blvd where it would have to enter a tunnel. It would be about 2 miles or so including the new Union station. It would also open up a beautiful new urban park (unfortunately bisected by MLk Blvd) about 400m in length. The challenge with the touting is I don’t see how it can connect to the Metro, and it’s not clear how the MARC trains heading north could use the station, at least without a second tunnel connecting to the tracks by Penn Station. I like it for the NEC, but I don’t know if it’s worth the cost as it doesn’t bring everything together. More ideal would be to find a way to make the trip to Penn Station faster, as you already have a decent hub there (and a possible future Metro stop if they ever build a subway line to the NE).

[@NES2728]

It's great that you showed the advantages of constructing the Hartford-Worcester shortcut, saving at lot of time at a relatively reasonable cost. I don't think that getting into Worcester Union Station would be that difficult. CSX has demonstrated in Virginia that they are willing to trade ROW for cash. If it's necessary to take some privately-owned parcels this should be possible since property values in Worcester are not that high. Getting through the yard east of the station will be more difficult, but is doable.

[@awrybowtie5591]

The visualizations were *really* nice, love them!

[@LucidStew]

thank you!

[@mysteryman7877]

That Baltimore routing might get canned quickly as they’re already planning on putting the Red Line along that alignment west of your new proposed station. Maybe using Camden Station could be a good alternative?

[@Gnefitisis]

As promised. Thank you for your work putting this together. :)

[@Gnefitisis]

So now it's time for me to get my little critic hat on. I digested this video a bit more now. I'm not surprised by some of your conclusions, since I've also read a lot of those FRA documents as you (and the proposals and the alt options and prefer options...). I do appreciate a common sense breakdown of the speed benefits of a each potential Eastern Connecticut route- I really think there's a lot of sense of a Hartford bypass of Providence...but you didn't mention (or perhaps don't know about) the North Atlantic Rail scheme. In a nutshell it is what colored the FRAs flavors of different CT bypasses by proposing the Queens to Jamaica Station tunnel (thanks for the $$ numbers); but, it also suggests a Springfield, MA junction. I was hoping you would comment or discuss that because there's a lot of talk of rebuilding the old ROW from Springfield to Albany, allowing direct routes to Toronto and a connection to Montreal from Boston. Isn't that worth a mention or consideration? That would also change the calculation from Hartford to Worcester into Hartford to Springfield to Worcester (which IDK if it's faster). Thoughts?

[@rebeccawinter472]

I like the concept of bypasses but the problem is that most people are using the trip to travel to major cities - so while a small bypass may make sense - like cutting Wilmington off the Acela route and only providing service by NE Regional trains - the bypass of Philly, while tempting, just isn’t worth the cost, tho I like the idea. For the cost spent, what would be the cost of just elevating:tunneling a more straight route into/out of Philly? And is there a way to employ your idea for the Trenton bypass while keeping Philly in the mix? As for the North Atlantic section - I think you’re probably right in that they’re not going to spend $50+ billion to tunnel under Long Island sound. But they definitely need to do serious upgrades all along that route as the current travel times kill the whole possibility of Acela even being considered for “High Speed Rail”. The New Haven to Hartford to Worcester to Boston route looks promising and, combined with upgrades between NYC and New Haven, maybe it’ll make for improvements. You don’t save *that* many miles tunneling under the Ocean. I would love it but I would have a hard time arguing the case if there was even only 1 Trillion dollars to spend on rail upgrades - which, really, there should be.

[@skylord4025]

Great video as always Stew. I would also rework Frankford junction In Philly because it connects two parts that are 80-110 with a curve that’s at 50-60

[@Nderak]

sick visuals

[@cocoacrispy7802]

Very illuminating, thanks. (Interestingly, the sponsor is an auto company, Honda lol)

[@AustinKelly94]

You are very very good at this, LucidStew

[@moshecohen127]

Stew!! great video! loving the 3d animations going on. I appreciate how much time and effort you put into making all of your videos! one boo boo, maybe im the idiot but at 22:36 did you mean to say east of Worcester? Also, is upgrading the exisiting line east of new haven so riduculous that it doesnt even get a mention? All the best!

[@LucidStew]

yes, east. I did not find anything I liked east of new haven on the current line(or west for that matter). I did a bit of a reboot halfway through the production process on the NYC-Boston portion, as I previously focused on my I-395 idea, but came to the conclusion it was a bit expensive. Given the inclusion of the Long Island Sound idea(because I-395 made it look not so bad), things like the New London rerouting, extended to Old Saybrook(essentially I-95) would not be so outlandish.

[@commorevpenguin9602]

Phenomenal video!

[@LucidStew]

Thank you!

[@jaydeeification]

Loving the video renderings. One minor boo-boo: at 13:21 you reference a potential 2hr travel time between NYC and DC but the text on screen says NYC to Boston.

[@epicsnake21]

Amazing work Lucid Stew! I knew you could do it! I don't ever remember sending you footage that looks like 2:21 to 2:31. You might want to check who you got it from to credit them properly

[@LucidStew]

Thanks

[@michael029138]

What we have today on the NEC, is a very modern high speed train, running on a very old twisty out of date Mainline track. This track was good 100 years for slower steam powered trains, but has not updated for higher speed trains. What good is a train that can do 150 mph for only short distance, can we really call it a high speed train service? They need to tear up the mainline curves where they can and lay them as straight as possible. That would take billions of dollars, to which, the USA will not spend. As long as they have Jets and cars, this will not happen any time soon.

[@dvderek]

amazing video thank u bro

[@benbreeck3363]

It looks like the most cost-effective route would be north from Grand Central Station to Hartford, and east from there according to that route. Tunnels that wide that don't cross national borders should be avoided as much as possible.

[@RedFerrari23]

Is Hartford to Worcester via Springfield worth looking at? Adding another metro area of 700k feels pretty good and MA certainly wants more trains to that neck of the woods (if only they wanted it enough to pay for it and make it happen anytime soon…). Of course given how indirect it would become at that point, can’t imagine you save too much time over the current route without dumping too much money into it or having CSX get in the way. Great video btw, think this is like my 3rd rewatch 😅

[@LucidStew]

I covered that a little in my Northern New England video. I don't think you're going to get very fast trains through there. It's kind of a tough area to deal with, but connecting to the NEC if you electrify the Hartford line is kind of a no-brainer. I'll be doing a follow-up to this within a month or so based on various ideas and questions in the comments, so there's more coming.

[@lassepeterson2740]

Smaller on going incremental improvements seems perfectly good enough to me .

[@glennfordyce8540]

Is it possible to remove freight trains fr the NEC?

[@SoCalHighIron]

24:43 interesting choice of caricature for the person begging for dependable and fast transit... Not sure that's appreciated. Other than that, great video, as always! I'm constantly impressed by the level of detail which you delve into exploring route options and weighing the costs and benefits. It does feel discouraging that so much money needs to be spent in order to see relatively meager travel time improvements over so much of this area. But, I guess that's because this is where we currently have the fastest trains in the country, so progress will naturally be incremental. Looking to forward to seeing more about Brightline West in the future. That will truly be a leap into the future for the region.

[@LucidStew]

You're reading a lot into that choice. I just picked it because its funny. Some of these sections seem like a bargain compared to $105 billion just to get the thing to normal state of repair and upgrade a few bridges.

[@SoCalHighIron]

@@LucidStew The meme war rages all around us, and you are fighting it. True enough regarding comparative cost... Your video from last year showing how all the allotted grant money was going to be spent was pretty painful to watch. But they say "It never gets cheaper to build", so if we want anything better than what we have, just suck it up and build it, already.

[@LucidStew]

@@SoCalHighIron I totally agree that NEC needs its older infrastructure upgraded. It's just that some of the costs are not low, and then you get to thinking what else you could buy with all that. One bridge in CT or electrify to Hartford... North River Tunnels or the entire Atlanta-Charlotte project...

[@trainworms]

question I'd like to ask is, which city pairs would be the best to have their section done first?

[@LucidStew]

I really like New Haven to Hartford for the money. Washington D.C. - Baltimore sub $1 billion for a 5 minute gain is pretty good. I think you'll something similar between D.C. and Wilmington as most of that is in the NEC FUTURE 2017 eis and a pretty good portion of it is already funded. Fundamentally, access in and out of NY Penn is probably the most important part, but again, it's funded. Just a matter of waiting for construction to be complete in 10-15 years. This video is really about a step beyond that, which they haven't really decided yet.

[@ludlow1774]

I think it would be better to connect Springfield to the new alignment since it's the 3rd largest city in Massachusetts by otherwise this is a very cool video!

[@LucidStew]

I will probably cover that in a follow-up

[@jeremymoon727]

What application do you use to measure curvatures? I am trying to do some of my own feasibility analysis of Cascadia High Speed Rail. But I am struggling to find software that allows me to reliably measure curvature. Plus my student ArcGIS subscription finally ran out.

[@LucidStew]

Google Earth Pro's circle tool and then fudge it on the lead-ins. It's fine for high level on singular curves. S-curves a little trickier. Sometimes I will freehand curves with Google Earth first. When I'm trying to be more precise I'll screenshot both and then overlay them with image editing software. It's not perfect, but close enough and I don't take cant into account, so general assumptions on my videos should be roughly +-10% on just about everything(time, speed, cost).

[@Da__goat]

Well it was definitely an attempt. I do appreciate the thought experiment Stew. Unfortunately, politics will get in the way of this one, and when you combine that with union contracts and under the table money the entire corridor will probably be had for close to $200 bn. I did get a good chuckle out of the Philadelphia bypass and I was cackling at the NYC bypass. Unfortunately, it would appear that everything spoken about the corridor, from its development to its aging infrastructure, to its ownership, is true. The Long Island connection was interesting, but it does miss out on Fairfield County in CT, which has some of the highest income in the country, not that LI doesn't. I'm not sure if the proposed plan would make it off the drawing board due to the bypass of NYC and Philly, but I can probably say with confidence that going up to Danbury would definitely have some opponents in southern CT for sure. I would also like to suggest a video topic. Not that long ago Governor Cuomo put for a proposal for a New York state intercity transit system but that project seemed to die somewhere. I would be very curious to see a potential video on that if you can accommodate that into your busy schedule.

[@LucidStew]

I actually like the Philly bypass idea. I just don't think it's worth the expense. NYC bypass I honestly have nothing, and I looked all the way from Staten Island to Albany. I think it probably would have needed to happen over 100 years ago. There is just no good way to avoid Manhattan for people that want to use the NEC that don't want to stop in Manhattan, for any reasonable cost. New Haven to Hartford strikes me as a good idea. There is a way to get from Hartford to Boston, although I don't know if actually going through Worcester is the way to do it. At the same time, I don't know if you can go through the Worcester area without going through Worcester. From a pure routing perspective, sticking to I-90 looks way more attractive, but the stop options suck. Even if nothing else happens, I think it's a good idea to electrify to Hartford and provide those options. I may be low-balling the cost there, but even at 50% more it's not expensive compared to some of the other infrastructure costs in the area.

[@Da__goat]

@@LucidStew The Philly bypass idea isn't a bad one, it opens the way for a super express service between NYC and DC, which, arguably, is a route with huge demand, the money capital and political capital. Connecting them by train in under two hours would have some VERY high demand. For the NYC bypass I would say that you might have a shot through Staten Island via Perth Amboy and then up the spine. Alternatively to that you can switch to the I-95 corridor on a viaduct directly above traffic until just past the buckeye port oil terminal, where you can hook a right and drop into a short tunnel to then emerge out in the median of 440 on Staten Island. From there it can be a straight shot through the parkland on the right all the way up to 278 at Deere Park, there's even some evidence to suggest there was a rail line turnout on Google Maps there. From there your best bet would be to make that the portal to a tunnel entrance under the Narrows, thankfully you can use prefabricated and pre-dredged segments in its construction to get costs down but once you're underneath the Narrows, you'd follow the BQE until Fort Hamilton Pkwy and then pop out to connect to the freight line used by the NY & Atlantic, very underutilized. NYC has plans to convert part of it into a service between Brooklyn and Queens but there is plenty of space for an additional track in the ROW. From there the rest of that line is just used for freight and connects directly to Amtrak's NEC. You can choose to also drop a station at the M terminus in Middle Village to connect directly with the subway or, because the line runs directly over the mainline and Port washington branch of the LIRR, you can drop one in between them to provide for that connection as well or choose to place it at Roosevelt Ave to allow for connection to the 7 train and build a pedestrian tunnel to the Woodside station to permit that connection to the LIRR to happen. New Haven to Hartford is really solid, and the fact that the line hasn't been electrified yet probably has more to do with the state's massive debt to the tune of $60k/person than anything else. If I also remember correctly, the state does own most of the NEC line running within and there's a lot of political capture from the residents would would miss out on service, especially flashy style service. That being said, I think it would be smart to make Hartford-Springfield a big connection and transfer point. In the region, Bradley int'l airport about halfway between the two cities is the busiest in the area without going to Boston. The airport is already served by both Amtrak and CTrail, and is the second busiest in New England at almost 7 mln passengers per year behind Boston. Greater Hartford and Springfield together have more than 2 million people, and outside of Springfield is the headquarters of Mass Mutual in Pine Point, a Fortune 500 company and right in the heart of the city is the MGM casino and the Basketball Hall of Fame. From there, you can use Union Station as a mass connection point but, more importantly, as a means to permit future service connections to points west. The Hudson Valley of NY is horrifically underserved in general, if someone from Albany wants to get to London, they either have to fly to Canada, Boston, Newark or JFK, an annoyance at best. But, airlines can use Bradley on flights to the European west coast, Aer Lingus already operates a service to Dublin, so all that would be required is a one seat ride to Springfield, and then a change to a service to the airport. And that would eventually develop Bradley Int'l more, it's surrounded by a whole lot of nothing so it would definitely have the room to grow. And Amtrak already operates the Vermonter service into Springfield as well, making a better case for it to be a major interchange station. From there I would then say to go along 90. Worcester has about 800,000 people living around it, while not insignificant, the only reason to go into Downtown and stop at Worcester station would be to connect tot he MBTA Framingham line, which terminates in Worcester. But, likely due to local politics, you'd have to branch off the 90 median right before it crosses 290 and head up the CSX line into downtown Worcester to make that connection, which basically has you stuck in that downtown slow and winding section of track until just past state road 20 where you can turn underneath the powerlines to get back onto the 90 median and then its straight to Boston. If the goal is to make the connection to the MBTA, then I would recommend doing it at Framingham by joining the ROW just after 495, its relatively straight and from Framingham its only a few miles before it comes next to 90 and you're in Boston. One note I want to mention about Hartford, which builds on what I was talking about in the Hudson Valley. From Hartford, one can make a branch line that runs down 85 all the way to Newburgh's Stewart Int'l airport, the intent being to link up with Amtrak services coming up and down the valley. This would leave open the possibility to go further west and connect up the towns along 84 from Port Jervis, the last stop on NJT, and link up Scranton, eventually turning that into a connection point to run services up 81 to Binghampton and South to Philadelphia via Allentown.

[@botmes4044]

Upon further review: The Wilmington Bypass doesn't have to use the highway alignment. Just upgrade the Shellpot Secondary with broader curves, and build flying junctions at either end.

[@LucidStew]

Probably. Same idea, different execution.

[@botmes4044]

@@LucidStew the result is the same, but the cost is wildly different.

[@LucidStew]

@@botmes4044 I don't think it would be very different in price. Along the existing rail right of way, you still need to get over the Christina River at navigational clearance and deal with the right of way crossings west of there. The freeway idea has maybe one or two more flyover ramps.

[@botmes4044]

@@LucidStew you're right about the clearance issue, but Shellpot still has many advantages over the highway alignment. 1) the ROW already aligns with the NEC, so the grading would be less challenging and require less lead distance than the taller and longer highway viaduct. 2) HSR tracks on Shellpot could be at grade or on an embankment within either end of the northern bank of the Christina River, then on a viaduct only through the southern bank, whereas the highway alignment would be viaduct all the way. 3) much of the Shellpot periphery is vacant land, whereas the highway alignment would require extensive modification to the roadway along the entire length to make way for the viaduct columns. 4) The two NEC/Shellpot junctions could be simple split-grade underpasses rather than ramping viaducts. I feel like these are the kinds of things that would be fleshed out during Scoping. Anything that brings down cost for the same benefit is worth assessment.

[@gumbyshrimp2606]

Impossible! How can perfection be improved??

[@LucidStew]

A 19 mile tunnel under the sea.

[@ronclark9724]

@@LucidStew It took nearly two decades for the US Congress to finance replacing and shoring up the tunnels under the Hudson River at enormous expense... That is all Uncle Sam will spend...

[@FreeJaffa92]

As a regular user of the croton falls MNR station I appreciate the call out, but the track around hear is all right against mountains, water shed for NYC, or protected wet land. Any construction will be really cumbersome. Plus we’ve got some fairly annoying conservative NIMBY’s. Also the lack of support for the Brewster Danbury line tells me you’re not going to have an easy time.

[@LucidStew]

Granted I'm not on the ground, but I'm not seeing any insurmountable geographical features. I could see local opposition, but you'll get that anywhere. That's where the freeway ROW helps, and it wouldn't be blowing through there at 200mph, it would be fairly slow and not very loud. I considered existing rail through Danbury, but didn't like the situation in Danbury itself or the transition to the I-84 ROW. This is all really just trying to figure out what the lines on map could mean, so if there is a viable local alternative, that's in the mix if anyone tried to actually execute.

[@NeoIvan17]

Great video on this topic. Thank you for the visuals! Those are amazing. I think the NYC to Boston route should be all about speed and frequency so under the Long Island sound it should go to avoid the NEC, Metro-North, and other commuter lines. Sure it's more expensive, but this is supposed to be high-speed and speed is key here. On the NYC-D.C. route I am sad Philly got by-passed which means it'll need to have much better inter-city service to go to a new station, but if it keeps the speed higher than 150mph I'm for it. One question for you Lucid Stew: what would the HSR look like IF cost wasn't an issue? It may not be practical, but I wonder what could be if no expenses were spared and eminent domain were used to its fullest extent to make a reak HSR network. In fact, that's what I would call this section: "spared no expense." Thanks agin for the video and reporting about rail news in the United States.

[@LucidStew]

I mean, if cost and local opposition aren't any issue, you can plow under entire neighborhoods to make things straight at ground level, but we don't really live in those times anymore.

[@kesschristopher]

RE Baltimore - The State of Maryland has shown a lot of interest lately in building the previously aborted Red Line. If they do get it done, it would probably unfortunately miss your Baltimore Union Station, since the tracks would be down near Baltimore Street. However, a single station for Metro, Light Rail, and Amtrak would be awesome.

[@JohnSmith-bk9iz]

FYI- the pinch point In Wilmington is no longer there. It was upgraded to 3 tracks from CP Reagan to CP Yard a few years ago. Part of ARRA funding.

[@LucidStew]

Thanks, good to know. I was a little short on research on this one and relied on the satellite imagery too much. I should have split it up into two videos, which I should have already known given the amount of time I've had to dedicate to CAHSR(~90 mins). I plan on making another NEC video to address the feedback on this one. I'll make sure to point this out.

[@KoruGo]

What do you think of a bypass for Connecticut by going through Long Island and building a bright at the end? At least with New York, you still have a cooperative state government for obtaining right of way.

[@LucidStew]

Look for a follow-up video to this one in the next month or two. This is be one of the ideas suggested in comments that I'll look into.

[@bibliotreka]

Will the Northern New England video also encompass the Boston to Albany route?

[@LucidStew]

That corridor is identified as its own corridor under the FRA Corridor ID, so we'll have to see how that pans out. As of now there isn't a plan to make that 'high speed'. FRA defines 'high speed' as 110mph. The usual m.o. in the HSR corridor videos is to try to get the actual corridor up to a more modern 140-150mph average. NEC I handled a little different since there is much more of a reality to it than most of the 'HSR' corridors. That said, the corridors in the Corridor ID program that are not part of the 10 FRA HSR corridors are going to be ways to extend the corridors series, and Boston-Albany is an intriguing connection, so I'll probably get around to eventually.

[@bibliotreka]

​@@LucidStew Thanks! I read that in 2004 some legislation ( uscode.house.gov/statutes/pl/108/447.pdf ) added that route to the NNE HSR corridor, but I'm not sure if it's still considered to be a part of the HSR corridor. Whether or not it is, the conventional rail now being studied is definitely much more likely to become a reality.. and a future video on the conventional BOS-ALB corridor would definitely be much more relevant than an equivalent HSR video.

[@LucidStew]

@@bibliotreka That's right. I've seen that before. I missed that and the Chicago Hub extension to KC in the list I made for the video. I feel like mainly a conduit for references and even those are hard to remember most of the time. :)

[@MikeWillSee]

Ok now I want a tutorial on how you make those visualisations in UE5 - they look spectacular!

[@LucidStew]

A lot of it is down to a prop and logic set available in the marketplace www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/railway-system-with-intercity-train but I have adapted some free assets to use in a similar way through a few KZbin tutorials. I still have a long way to go in mastering the idea.

[@MikeWillSee]

@@LucidStew well it looks spectacular already so I look forward to seeing your skills develop further!

[@LucidStew]

@@MikeWillSee Thanks, I appreciate it.

[@robertklose2140]

14:20: "No" to a Manhattan bypass. We recently completed the glorious Moynihan Train Hall as a home for Amtrak trains.

[@LucidStew]

So everyone must stop in Manhattan even if they have no interest in stopping in Manhattan?

[@robertklose2140]

@@LucidStew Yes, that's right. The train is designed to connect major population centers. Wouldn't it be silly for the train to bypass Manhattan and stop in a suburban town instead? If you don't want to get out in Manhattan, then the solution is simple: stay on the train.

[@ramanshah7627]

@@robertklose2140 Some of my NEC trips (PVD WIL comes most to mind) have gone through NYC, and I've done as you've recommended. It would be ok for passenger experience, but the NYC rail infrastructure is absolutely crumbling under the load. Would be good to relieve that pressure as much as possible, because large-scale infrastructure upgrades within NYC are untenably expensive (q.v. the Gateway Program). Also, in terms of today's operations, the stop in NYP is a drag both experientially and in terms of travel time. Often I'm sitting - in the dark! - for almost half an hour during a NYP crew change before we get rolling again. I'd love if they could tighten that up. As depicted well here, buying time with infrastructure costs hundreds of millions of dollars per minute. I bet managing one's way to a tight ~10 minute turnaround at NYP would cost...much less per minute on a lifecycle basis.

[@nickdueber2586]

The new graphics were cool. One piece of feedback, when you are talking about the measurable improvements like time, it would be good to remind people of how long it took before.

[@LucidStew]

Good point. I do, but I can be more consistent.

[@RVail623]

An option for a new North-South Amtrak long distance route: starting at downtown Phoenix, AZ to Las Vegas (needing 120 miles of greenway ROW to complete), continuing to Salt Lake City, Boise, Portland & Seattle. With connections at Needles, CA to the SW Chief, at Las Vegas to Brightline West, at SLC to the Zephyr, & at Portland to the Empire Builder.

[@scoreforgonzo]

He has a Phoenix - LV video if you haven't seen it already.

[@RVail623]

@@scoreforgonzo Yes, but a true "High Speed" route shown in that video would cost over $30 billion. Much less expensive to use mostly existing former AT&SF ROW between PHX & Parker, AZ & limited to "Higher Speed" (

[@burlingtonfan7492]

I’m glad I’m not the only one with this idea, the southwest is sorely lacking in trunk lines honestly. Phoenix and Las Vegas have exploded in population since the railroads stopped expanding. Wouldn’t even be hard to build either, the whole area is mainly dry, flat-ish basins

[@SirKenchalot]

Another great video Mr. Stew. How ar you still under 10K subscribers? The world is an unjust place. Have you tried doing colaborations with other content creators to get the word out as the algorithm doesn't seem to be favoring you yet which is a shame considering you have such great videos and put in so much effort.

[@LucidStew]

I think its the inconsistency on release. I was accelerating a little better when I was putting out one video a week. I was having some physical difficulties maintaining that, but I think I've just about gotten past those. I'm feeling pretty good on the nerve and circulation front after THIS video, so that's a good sign. Now its a matter of trying to work the level of production into the time frame, but I'm not feeling like something half this length once a week is an impossibility in a few months time, so maybe sub levels will increase at that point.

[@SirKenchalot]

@@LucidStew That's a good point. Or put out some shorts maybe; I don't watch them but KZbin loves them and although you can't monetize them I think it gets you promoted more.

[@shanemharris]

I think there would need to a major train stop at Ronkonkoma in Long island. Amtrak proposed a study to run NEC trains there already. Using the Huntington without any electrification, nor any double tracking already existing from Huntington to Port Jeff will be insane. Hicksville to Ronkonkoma will be way easier to keep triple and even quad track than Hicksville to Port Jeff. You could then run the train near the 495 express way, then up through Nicholls or other accessory roads with wide medians going north into Port Jeff via tunnel. There I think the trade off would be avoiding building a tunnel and instead making viaducts to go through Long Island. We already have raised trains running in many sections of the south shore so this wouldn't be a foreign concept to the residents of central Long Island.

[@LucidStew]

Yeah, maybe. The other option would be to continue to the west end of the island, go straight to Rhode Island

[@r.williams8349]

Great animations

[@LucidStew]

thank you!

[@simonduhamel7843]

From a French point of view (Albight one that has lived in the greater Boston erea 6 years and 3 years in NYC) I think that most of your proposals are exactly the way to do it. It takes into consideration two of the main advantages of high speed line technology: One) its capabilityof using existing lines to penetrate urban centers or highly expensive parts of right of way to make from scratch (IE: Philly, NYC and the NYC-New Haven shore line). And Two) The coupling of TGV lines with highways right of way to reduce nuisance to local residents along the way, in this highly populated erea. With very few reserves, such as those observed by other coments which I therefore will not repeat, I seriously think that the US governement should implement such a scheme as quickly as possible. It would also create jobs. But this is certainly close to what the French SNCF would have done if it had todeal with this issue. The main problem is that the existing line has too many obstacles : Sharp curves and too many junctions, yards and local traffic, to implement high speeds. Also as Brightline is now in the process of discovering TGV lines must be fenced in and need to eliminate grade crossings to work. Bravo!

[@LucidStew]

Thanks. I've taken a lot of feedback from European viewers to heart and have tried to work more European setups into my ways of thinking. Unfortunately for us, our metros are usually nowhere near as compact, which makes them a lot more difficult to bypass with any efficiency. Interstates hold a lot of promise, I think, and currently seem to be a better alternative than attempting to deal with the freight rail companies.

[@dmnddog7417]

Fascinating. These are some very insteresting ideas, but the price tags are eye-popping. I understand the reasons why, but a lot of people just can't get past that (see some other comments). It just highlights how decades of deferred maintenance and upgrades have skyrocketed the cost of performing these now. If they had been done incrementally all these decades, we wouldn't be in such bad shape. What a ot of people don't realize is how many jobs could've been created if we had taken care of this incrementally sooner. Also, how much it would have improved the economies of all the cities along the route.

[@LucidStew]

Rail capital investment is generally high. Some not so bad here, like electrifying New Haven-Hartford. I also don't think the track and systems improvements south of Wilmington are too bad from a cost standpoint. The thing that will drive this idea is that driving and air travel are pretty much built out in some places, so expanding those would be even more expensive for what you get. The key there being demand. If it something has to grow, rail is the logical choice to grow in that scenario.

[@hirampriggott1689]

Great visuals! I live near the corridor and use Amtrak all the time.

[@LucidStew]

I'm west coast. I'm hoping to visit some day and try out the corridor. Closest I've gotten was Washington Union on a trip to D.C.

[@hirampriggott1689]

@@LucidStew When you do visit, please experience Washington DC Union Station, Philadelphia 30th Station, and the brand new Moynihan Train Hall in NYC. These train stations are absolutely grand! And if you are ever in NY City, I highly recommend visiting Grand Central terminal even though Amtrak no longer uses it.

[@cameronbest]

Im a bit confused why the NYC to New Haven portion of the route isn't worth upgrading. Is it impossible to increase line speeds to 100-125 mph on portions of the route?

[@LucidStew]

yes. The geometry is poor and the route is surrounded by development with a handful of exceptions.

[@jasonreed7522]

That entire area is basically a continuous strech of suburbs, old money mansions/estates, and really big hills running north south. This means it is going to be a very expensive pain to really do anything to fix it. Also the parts that aren't developed are generally either a swamp (and therefore a protected wetland) or too steep to build on.

[@stevetalkstoomuch]

It's the most congested section of rail line in the country.

[@amanoso1541]

Developing a full-scale high-speed railway at the NEC will definitely bring enormous economic benefits to the United States. The Tokaido Shinkansen, which connects the Tokyo area (population 30 million), Nagoya area (population 10 million), and Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe area (population 20 million), runs 300 times a day. It has more than 400,000 users per day and annual revenue of more than $6.5 billion. Unlike airplanes, the Shinkansen has great economic benefits for all the towns along the line. From Tokyo to Osaka, it takes 3 hours by Shinkansen or 1 hour by plane. Most people choose the Shinkansen, which is a quick ride from the center of town. Tokyo and Nagoya are 220 miles apart, but only 90 minutes by Shinkansen. Many people travel to the Nagoya area, the home of Toyota Motor Corporation, for business, but many people take day trips. New York, the world's largest economy, Boston, the center of American culture, and Washington, D.C., the center of global politics, all have huge demand for travel, so they should develop a full-scale high-speed rail system.

[@LucidStew]

Yeah, amidst these discussions it tends to get lost that a high speed main line with sufficient capacity can also support regional traffic, not just express. NEC Regional carries more than 3X as many passengers as Acela.

[@amanoso1541]

That's exactly right. Another thing I would like to emphasize is that Boston, New York, Washington, Philadelphia and Baltimore are areas where subways and commuter trains are heavily used. Connecting to high-speed rail will create new economic benefits. If possible, the terminal station, where the high-speed rail and subway lines connect, will be redeveloped by combining a large shopping street, hotel, restaurant area, office buildings, and a large parking lot so that it will be crowded with citizens every day. Real estate profits improve the finances of railway companies, allowing them to actively develop new routes. Japan's large private railways such as Tokyu and the JR Group earn high profits this way.

[@douglasengle2704]

World class high speed rail status starts at 300 kph (186.4mph), but today if building world class, HSR 400 kph (248.548mph) is the target alignment speed. The preferred alignment of the CAHSR is 400 kph. The minimum for passenger train only HSR is 250 kph (155.343 mph). If mixed freight and passenger rail then 200 kph (124.274 mph) is the minimum to be classified as HSR passenger service. 110 mph is a fast passenger train, where the typical speed limit in the USA is 79 mph on good freight tracks. Amtrak calls 110 mph high speed rail because it a major control and signaling upgrade from 79 mph. Between 79 mph and 110 mph there are few tell tail signs of a railroad being qualified for the higher speed. Somewhere a bit above 90 mph road crossings have to have to have higher protection with quad gates being used. The rail corridor doesn't require any barrier or fencing up to 110 mph. Many railroads might only have two 110 mph trains a day. Such as the California Zephyr, Southwest Chief and Empire builder if the freight railroads where paid to upgrade to 110 mph. The shorter travel times might make rail travel more attractive and faster-than-passenger car driving speeds would certainly make it more interesting. After 110 mph some type of rail corridor barrier typically an open wired fence is required and road crossing have to have movable crash barriers. After 125 mph there can be no at-grade crossings. For dealing with the rules as applied in the USA 110 mph passenger trains running on well maintained freight rails can be done with little change to the physical environment. That is a good method to provide comfortable passenger travel that is at about the same travel times as driving times, but in a much nicer environment such as on the 2nd level of an Amtrak Superliner. When possible it would be desirable to have the railroad alignment on an earthen fill with no at-grade road crossing where higher speeds would be much easier to obtain. Since railroads typically only make money on freight it doesn't make economic sense to separate passenger trains service from freight railroads. Amtrak does a poor job with its freight common carrier requirements. The NEC handles common carrier freight. Amtrak has curtailed freight on the NEC where the region would benefit from greatly increased freight rail access. Any long term goals of the NEC includes both double stack freight and HSR. Viaducts are sometimes the only reasonable means to achieve cost achievable elevations, but they are problematic over earthen fills. There are sections of the NEC that area only two track, but any new multi-use rail infrastructure should be based on four tracks even if never fully implemented. As a side note: In June 1981 when returning on the Broadway Limited being pulled by at GG1 south of Wilmington DE on the NEC I timed a mile at between 22 and 23 seconds. At 22.5 seconds that is a 160 mph. My ears where popping as we'd pass under bridges. The GG1 looked of fresh paint and smelled of new transformers getting hot. It had a plaque on it that it had been restored by a railroad club. It was in classic Pennsy dark tuscan red with gold pin stripes. When we pulled into Washington Union Station two of the passenger cars had smoke coming from the area of the their axle generators. I believe it was special run. All other other trains, including Metroliner service appeared to be pulled out of our way and we were passing them with about 50 mph edge. It is much more interesting riding a train on a viaduct for seeing the area, but for getting through large already built urban areas the method to make extensive use of is likely long deep bore tunnels that get property rights through forced selling of the property rights 100 feet or more under surface. That appears to be what is taking place on the commuter train tunnels being built under Hutson River to NYC under the neighborhoods on the New Jersey side as part of the Gateway project. This appears to be the first large scale real estate taking where the effects to the fee property owners on surface is without past experience. I don't think I'd be bothered by a government paying me $100,000 for taking some of my property rights 100 feet below my lawn and basement, but I'm a rail fan. At issue is would the trains be noticeable when trying to sleep and rattle the house. Would 250 trains a day under the house cause the coffee in my cup to form ripples? When and if building a 400 kph NEC alignment with new freight rail ability the likely means would be for a deep bore tunnel system of four tracks starting in New Jersey and going roughly under the existing NYC alignment below river bottoms till coming up 70 miles or so later past the slow sections of track in Connecticut. This would place deep level passenger stations down over 150 feet. That is a long escalator or elevator ride, but for intercity train travel an extra 3-4 minutes of in station travel time provided it is easy and made for travelers carrying their bags it is acceptable. There are very good alignments made available by deep bore tunneling. It is not the preferred means of train travel. There is no scenery, it is noisy and the air quality is difficult. It would be better to go through these areas on elevated earthen fills from a passenger scenery perspective, service ability and emergency access. Long deep bore rail tunnels for passenger use may need an emergency accessible exit tunnel such as used between the two rail bore tunnels between Britain and France. A cheaper method is to use the parallel train tunnel as an emergency exit tunnel, but a service tunnel provides ready inspection access 24 hours a day with no impact on the busy rail tunnels. Amtrak is hoping to use those the commuter rail tunnels for detouring its intercity trains around its existing Hutson River tunnels, but once the Huston River tunnels are rebuild it will be returning to them because they are a higher speed alignment and more direct than the commuter train tunnels. These tunnels are aimed at accessing different passenger platforms. The commuter rail tunnels are aligned to meet the commuter rail passenger platforms. The Gateway project does very little or nothing for increasing Amtrak's long term goals for European type HSR rail and providing for double stack freight. The Portage Bridge replacement is the major benefit Amtrak is getting out of the Gateway project, with the possibility it may get a detour route in the distant future through the commuter tunnels to allow shutting down one of the two Hutson River tunnels for rebuilding at a time. The vertical and horizontal alignment of the existing Hutson River Amtrak tunnels appears nearly perfect. Their main structural issue is restrictive height. The reason for going 100 feet deeper is to get through NYC beyond Penn Central Station and continue until a HSR alignment can be had on the surface. A 100 feet deeper is a meant to mean "significantly deep" to avoid structural issues to surface buildings and being below most river bottoms. It maybe a higher elevation would work.

[@christopherscott2376]

Your proposed Long Island route passes right by SUNY Stony Brook. Might also be a good idea to add a stop there or somewhere else on LI. However I fear we will only dream about that tunnel.

[@LucidStew]

Sure, its about equidistant between Jamaica and New Haven.

[@christopherscott2376]

@@LucidStew I have to say I love this video, and as someone from LI WE NEED THE LUNNEL (Long Island Tunnel aka rip off the CHUNNEL name). I'm so happy the hairbrained idea of the cross sound tunnel is getting attention here! Long Island is geographically isolated, and getting off LI requires taking a ferry or driving through NYC. While the commuter rail is amazing, it is only good for getting to NYC, not through NYC. Need to combine agencies for throughputting. Realistically, the lower NYC area needs this tunnel AND the tunnel connecting Grand Central with Penn Station. NGL you have me looking up ways to create North South routes to connect the LIRR lines. You got me excited!

[@LucidStew]

@@christopherscott2376 I'm doing another one with some feedback on this one, and that will have TWO more LI options! Probably about a month away.

[@christopherscott2376]

@@LucidStew let me guess, you saw that juicy Ronkonkoma line... with three lines that are nice and straight! There are a few north/south corridors to connect. You have CR-97 aka Nichols Road (which could also become a corridor to connect the Patchogue/Ronkonkoma LIRR lines) OR you have William Floyd Pkwy and some powerline corridors (some running to the never opened Shoreham Nuclear Power plant?).

[@LucidStew]

@@christopherscott2376 No, I actually missed a few things and people let me hear it. So the goal is to take all the feedback and look into that as an addendum to clear my conscience. 😄

[@lorcan2541]

what did you use to make the graphic renderings?

[@LucidStew]

Unreal Engine 5

[@ramanshah7627]

As a Providentian who routinely uses the NEC to get to NYC, of course I hate the idea of bypassing Providence. I'd also note that the existing NEC route through Rhode Island is some of the fastest and best on the whole corridor (along with stretches of New Jersey). Connecticut by contrast is an absolute crawl. So I'm curious what the best routes/options are to significantly improve performance through Connecticut starting from Westerly RI and then landing in NYC. Is that entry point into CT just too constrained to contemplate significant improvements? It feels like there must be low-hanging fruit given how much of the CT ride runs at ~30 mph.

[@LucidStew]

I will be looking into more CT alternatives in a 2nd video(including a couple that involve Providence), but generally CT looks difficult, as far as I've seen. It seems like anything breaks out of the ROW between New London and Kenyon is in for a lot of local opposition.

[@ramanshah7627]

@@LucidStew Thank you!!!

[@Ben.DesRocher]

13:26 There’s no logical Philly bypass on NYC-Boston. Maybe south of NYC 🤨

[@LucidStew]

This one loops back around for fun. That's thing about baked in text...

[@carlmlavallierejr8367]

It may be better for HSR @ the Northeast Corridor by bypassing NYC, NY Port Authority Bus Terminal should be moved to New Jersey. There’s been talk about extending the # 7 train to cross over to Jersey. A straight rail line would be best & quickest for the NEC. Bus terminal, #7 trains & HSR all 3 in Jersey!!!!!!

[@alexisdespland4939]

also the under long island sound tinnel should be built in a way that let future building of a new atk bypass line.

[@redsoxfan713]

Interesting ideas presented. I'm not ready to defend the NEC as a high speed rail route though, when only about 10% of the route mileage actually qualifies.

[@LucidStew]

The international standard also includes 125mph travel on upgrades of existing rail.

[@einarrail]

Personally i dont understand the need to have three or four tracks everywhere. Building a new alignment, such as via Long Island, doesn't mean that the existing NEC vanishes. The new lines are ment for speed and fast journeys and therefore i don't really see the need for quadtrack everywhere. Very few high-speed railways in the rest of the world have more than two tracks.

[@LucidStew]

Traffic and throughput. When I'm talking about 4 tracks through Long Island, is it because the tracks already in place are heavily used.

[@exerosis5758]

Fascinating video, do you really think 4 tracks is that critical? I feel like non express can reuse existing NEC in most places, for pure high speed I think japan has shown that 3 tracks with 4 track passing and or 3 tracks would be more than enough with good scheduling and a switch to EMUs for good acceleration. (perhaps that brings the cost down fractionally on some of these proposals)

[@LucidStew]

Not in every place, no. My assumption on some of these areas is that traffic is already pretty heavy, so if you're adding NEC regional and express trains, then probably.

[@elijaha773]

What do you use for the renderings?

[@LucidStew]

Unreal Engine 5

[@matthewconstantine5015]

I may be full of crap, but I don't think skipping Manhattan and putting a station in The Bronx is a bad idea. It connects with a subway line, and isn't really any less convenient than JFK or LaGuardia. It's not like it's out in the countryside somewhere.

[@LucidStew]

I had considered the implications of this combined with continuing on to White Plains, which would also bypass southern Connecticut, but I wasn't thrilled by that route's speed potential. The main idea being trying to facilitate traffic that isn't particularly interesting in stopping in NYC without miring it in NYC traffic, but I don't know that there is a way to execute that in a way that makes any fiscal sense.

[@jasonreed7522]

I think a major consideration for the value of this bypass is what would the impacts of the Empire Corridor gaining acces to it be? Once you link Upstate, Canada, and Boston to the bypass amd NYC thats about the max travel demand you can expect. If all of that combined still won't make fiscal semse then it isn't a good idea for the region.

[@aidanpeck180]

I am going to disagree on the idea that connecting Hartford and Providence with a stop at UConn is not connecting dots on a map. Providence is the second largest metro in New England after Boston at 1.7 million people and is also a state capital with 4 Fortune 500 companies based in it (Hasbro, Textron, Citizen Financial, and United Natural Foods with CVS Health being based not too far away in Cumberland) with around 50,000 college students including Brown university. Also Providence is a major port and manufacturing hub for luxury products like jewelry (major jewelry companies and organizations are based there) marine equipment, shipbuilding, silverware, paper products and furniture with equally major military installations in the area south of the city and around Newport with is only about 20-30miles away. Hartford is equally a state capital and is part of the 3 largest metro area in New England along with New Haven and Springfield Mass and also hosts a lot of colleges, companies, and areas of interest in the region. Plus UConn is a college of 30k+ students with a lot of gravity in regard to sports and other things going on campus. The greater Worcester area is only about 800k people even though it is technically the second biggest city by urban population considerably smaller than Providence. Providence is a much more important city to connect to high speed rail and is even more important than Hartford and so isn’t New Haven for that matter. Thus no plan should be thinking about leaving that out as they are the 7th and 8 largest metros on the corridor respectively following the big four (NYC DC Philly and Boston) Newark and Baltimore, and are followed up my Wilmington and Trenton as the major 10 cities on the corridor.

[@LucidStew]

Well, if you can look at a map between Hartford and Providence and find an essentially straight line through UCONN without plowing through hundreds of homes and thousands of properties, I would encourage you to make a video about it, and I will dutifully watch every minute. I'll also point out that Providence is already connected to the NEC and creating a 2nd trunk elsewhere would not undo that.

[@aidanpeck180]

I see your point and yes I know it would be very expensive but this area is the least densely populated area within the entire northeast corridor. Using parts of existing highways routes 44 and 6 will reduce the headaches a bit even though there will definitely be some geography challenges there. But also I would like to clarify my point as I don’t think I did that too well is that this connection is a lot more important and in my opinion be more worth the cost. Although I don’t see this being a sub 10 billion dollar project with a fair bit of eminent domain (it would likely see a number in the 1000 property range if highway ROW is used) Also I will add I don’t really like either ideas of building a new trunk line for the NEC as opposed to simply modifying the existing one as the sections within Rhode Island is actually pretty good barring a few curves in the south west of the state to avoid the Narragansett tribal land Connecticut is ultimately the problem and I don’t really see Mass and Rhode Island wanted to construct new ROW or be left out as Mass already has commuter rail out there. My idea and granted this was very spur of the moment would be to start on 84 before jumping off and on to rout 44 all the way to Stors which is where the UConn station would be (I know the geography isn’t the prettiest here but if framed as a highway between Providence and Hartford with a higher speed rail line in the middle people would buy in (I’m from the area people have been clamoring for a proper highway between the 2 cities for decades and the will power is there) thus the geography can be cleaned up a bit here, possible alternative with 384 as it is elevated over a park and could be easier to not have speed restrictions or a tunnel under Manchester. From Stors (this going to be the most difficult part I realize that) new ROW until Route 6 and follow that too Providence with some cleaning up of those gross curve near the borders of the states as the rest of the area is rather tame the closer to Providence you get. Some examples would be to straighten the curve south of Godwin state forest as with my limited research I doesn’t seem that anyone would be overly affected. Other curves in the area could see a similar result. The only major issue here would be the town of Daniel’s which would have to be bypassed. That paired with the need brook crossings would be the biggest problem with the route. Also once 295 is reached it would most likely have to be a tunnel to central Providence which is about 4km so not terrible. I am not familiar to the exact angles of the curves but I can say that is my best suggestion given the current state of the area and I welcome any suggestions or criticism towards the route I planned and it should also be noted there there would likely be no tunnels if only at the terminus at Providence and potentially in the town next to Hartford with a potential tunnel if you wanted under UConn to better facilitate the transition between the road Right of ways. This also doesn’t factor in the hills in the area (having grown up in the area I can say the hills in this area are not big and could be trenched through as opposed to being a full tunnel)

[@aidanpeck180]

I will also add that I am most certainly not as good or knowledgeable on this topic to that level (only read the Amtrak proposal) and you mention challenges I definitely overlooked purely as I don’t have the knowledge to put all that together. More simply I saw that this alternative is equally being studied and feel it is a more worthwhile option given what it connects. There is a proposal with an article that shows a potential right of way between Providence and Hartford that doesn’t require too much eminent domain and not a lot of tunneling either following I95 or going inland without having too many problems

[@aidanpeck180]

www.google.com/maps/d/u/1/edit?mid=1Uutv2JjQOqlU32FsTp-JfbCY0P_wlds&usp=sharing This is a quick map I drew up that should loosely represent what the plan is. Definitely not perfect and isn't fully planned out just a general representation of the plan and I didn't include a bypass of the town of Daniels along with following the right of way too well given my abilities with the line tool. Assume the deviations from the roads are not intentional unless blatantly obvious and also note they might go through houses or more private property than necessary or intended, simply working with the best of my abilities. Any thoughts or criticism is encouraged

[@aidanpeck180]

www.google.com/maps/d/u/1/edit?mid=1Uutv2JjQOqlU32FsTp-JfbCY0P_wlds&usp=sharing This is my plan not perfect or drawn too well I hope this helps explain my idea better any comments, advice and criticism are welcome

[@nordisk1874]

I’m sorry, the LIRR expansion using the Port Jeff branch doesn’t make sense. Have you been on the island? Do you know the grades of not only that branch but to get from Port Jeff Station to Port Jeff? The north shore was often called the mountain division. I would use the main line till William Floyd Parkway and use Roberts Moses plan to connect to ct at wading river. Shorter but also that was a bridge. So tunnel would work as well.

[@LucidStew]

I've not been to Long Island. Grades are not so much a concern with HSR trains.

[@nordisk1874]

@@LucidStewit’s literally going down a hill with hundreds of 400 years old and under buildings in the path. That’s why Robert Moses option is the best! Plus it’s a closer transit I also think a bridge is better across the sound.

[@LucidStew]

@@nordisk1874 I believe that there are better routes. I'm planning on taking comments like this one and making a second video based on the incoming suggestions. Should be out within a month.

[@traina26]

There looks to be alot of curves from New Haven through Providence into Boston in relatively rural areas that can be straightened out to raise the speed in that section, cutting out providence in favor of Worcester seems like a waste to be honest its not a big enough city to generate enough demand to New York to construct an entirely new line verses speeding up travel times to Providence. Really Enjoyed the video but if you could look into changes on that route I think it would be very interesting to see how much time could be saved. It has alot of old bridges that needs to be replaced anyway and the route is rather winding at the moment updated route could really get alot of support instead of an entirely new one.

[@LucidStew]

Through Connecticut? I'm going to do another NEC video responding to comments on this one. I'll be covering the I95 alternative through CT that the NEC commission ultimately rejected due to local opposition.

[@dongshuowu3454]

How much I hope what you mentioned come true