Amtrak, the U.S. long-distance passenger railroad, estimated that building a high-speed train link between Washington and Boston to cut the travel time in half will cost $118 billion over 25 years.
Chief Executive Officer Joseph Boardman released a report in Philadelphia today on the proposed service, a three-hour trip from Boston to Washington. The Acela, Amtrak’s fastest train, travels between the cities in six hours.
“What we get for this investment is a system that can move 80 million people per year,” Al Engel, named last week as Amtrak’s first vice president for high-speed rail, said on a conference call with reporters. “We also free up some capacity on the existing corridor for growth in commuter rail.”
The trains, operating up to 220 miles (354 kilometers) per hour, would run on new, dedicated tracks, while Amtrak would keep its existing tracks for slower passenger trains and freight. Amtrak would build tracks parallel to the ones it has between Washington and New York, and would need to acquire right-of-way to reroute its corridor between New York and Boston, Boardman told reporters.
Amtrak has asked Congress for $2.5 billion for the 2011 fiscal year that starts Oct. 1 to cover operations and buy new rail cars and locomotives. Funding for high-speed service would include private investment, Boardman said, saying where the money would come from is “one of the major questions.”
“Nothing gets financed without a vision,” he said. “If you don’t know what you want to do, you can’t go ask for money publicly or privately.”
President Barack Obama awarded $8 billion earlier this year from the 2009 economic stimulus package to states to develop high-speed rail service.
To contact the reporter on this story: Angela Greiling Keane in Washington at agreilingkea@bloomberg.net
source: www.bloomberg.com
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