The Northeast Corridor from Boston to Washington DC is Amtrak’s flagship rail route. It’s where America currently has the closest thing to high speed rail. Stretching 450 miles, it carries 800,000 people and 2,000 trains a day. 20% of GDP and 30% of the nation’s jobs come out of the region it serves. While the Acela train shown above is what many people think of in the corridor, it also hosts commuter rail, inter-city trains, freight, and long distance passenger service.
If it went down, it would cripple our economy. It depends on infrastructure that is over 100 years old. It has serious deterioration in critical sections and long-standing bottle necks. There are only a few places where the train shown above can actually run at top speed.
After decades of neglect construction projects are finally underway — but will they get the years of funding they need to be completed, or will the current administration of vandals and looters bring them all to a halt? Elon Musk recently made the claim that Amtrak needs to be privatized. Trump is vindictive enough to go after it simply because it would be one more way of trashing Joe Biden’s legacy.
The B1M has put together a 38 minute video taking a deep look at the Northeast Corridor. It gets into the history of the corridor, takes a look at Amtrak, and looks at where the problems are and what’s being done to fix them. Along the way, it gives an idea of just how big this is, how much investment is needed, and how long it will take to get things done. Here’s what the video looks at. Clicking on the links below will take you to each section. (The entire video is below.)
00:00 Intro
03:19 The Northeast Corridor (NEC)
06:55 B+P Tunnel
12:36 The Frederick Douglass Tunnel Programme
16:01 Susquehanna River Rail Bridge
23:08 Philadelphia's 30th Street Station
25:20 The Portal North Bridge
29:28 New York's Hudson Tunnel
33:49 What it All Means
35:15 Staying On Track
One of the three arches of the new Portal North Bridge being put into place. They were assembled just a few miles from my home before being barged down to New Jersey.
The narrator, Fred Mills, is astounded that such a vital railway has been allowed to fall into neglect and asks what happened that America no longer seems capable of making the infrastructure investments it once did. (He’s English, and has seen what the rest of the world is doing.)
He is able to get into places normally off limits to the public, and provides a look at the massive construction projects now underway, thanks to the Biden administration and the Inflation Reduction Act.
There’s more information about the video and the projects it discusses at Amtrak:
Highlighted projects include:
America deserves world-class infrastructure, and here at Amtrak we are doing our part. We’re leading a strong American workforce and private-sector partners in building new bridges, tunnels, and trains to help meet the historic demand for intercity passenger rail and improve connections for millions of people in more than 500 cities, towns, and rural areas around the country.
Learn more at AmtrakNewEra.com
Here’s the 38 minute video — make time to watch it. Even if you don’t live in the Northeast Corridor, what happens here is vital for the entire country.
Investing in rail is long overdue in America. There’s a real need for better transportation alternatives that could also reduce carbon emissions by vast amounts and make clean energy available across the country. (See Solutionary Rail for details.) You can help fight for better passenger rail at the national level by signing up with the Rail Passengers Association, and stay on top of rail news. You can also fight for it at the state and local level by seeking groups that support passenger rail, like the Empire State Passengers Association. Don’t forget to let your Congress critters know you want them to fight for better rail too.
If you’d like to support the people who operate the freight and passenger trains we depend on, and all those who work in the rail industry, consider joining Railroad Workers United. You don’t have to work in the rail industry to sign up — consider a Solidarity membership or another way to support them. Something you won’t see in the regular media is the toll of lives lost and the anti-labor efforts railroaders have to put up with.
Having the railroads America needs is — sorry Elon — not rocket science.
