NEC Future: HSR "High Line", FRA, Amtrak Infrastructure Plan

bostontrainguy wrote:I just recently rode Amtrak from NYP to Boston and observed the right of way just with this idea in mind. Although there is the NIMBY problem here, it certainly would also be on any new high speed route, maybe even more so since the residents would have been there first and not the other way around.

Anyway, watching the train travel by GPS on my laptop was very interesting. There seemed to be many areas where the line could be straightened in unpopulated areas. In fact I was surprised at how much open land actually still exists along the route.

Our Amfleet train moved along pretty well the entire distance. We actually moved much faster than I expected most of the time (like over 100 mph over the Canton Viaduct). We hit 127 mph through Mansfield, Massachuetts.

Now since the route is only about 238 (?) miles long (I don't remember the exact mileage), but figure if you averaged 79 mph you could do it in three hours nonstop. That doesn't seem that impossible especially with some improvements to the infrastructure (and maybe new tilting Talgo trains???). It's all the stops that kill you. Anyway, straightening where possible wouldn't hurt any.

There are a number of stretches in eastern CT where you may think sitting in the train are un or lightly populated because of the trees. But if you look at the Shore Line East route on Google Earth, you will see there are often homes or communities on the other side of the trees or in the woods. Or there is a golf course on the other side of the trees and good luck in taking a piece of the course to straighten the ROW. The more prominent members of the golf course country club set may have law firms on speed dial. There are marsh or waterway areas and some open areas adjacent to, but outside the current ROW, that could possibly be taken to selectively straighten out pieces of the route. But doing so could be an expensive proposition for each 20 or 30 seconds saved. It may be worthwhile, but each project to straighten out one piece can be a tough sell.

I still think it would be useful if Amtrak and the NEC planning committee were to release a specific plan on what it would take to get NYP-BOS Acela trip times to a) 3:15 in 6-7 years and then in 10 years, to 3 hours or less and NE Regional trip times solidly under 4 hours. Not the current vague master plan to get to 3:08 by 2030, but what specific projects could be done, by when, and how much it would cost. They could also lay out an aggressive ROW re-alignment proposal with several options for various bypass segments along I-95 in eastern CT for 2:50 or less trip times. Of course, the proposals would require the cooperation of CT DOT and Metro-North, but if CT would get enough funding to fix up the New Haven Line for MN operations, they could cooperate. But I suspect planning for incremental improvements for NYP-BOS will be the approach they will stick to.

A running time of 3:15 between Boston and New York can be achieved right now. train 2164 leaves New York at 3:03 PM and has arrived at Rte 128 at 6:00 PM. the running time between Rte 128 and South Statin is 14 minutes but it usually follows a Regional train which is following a commuter train into Boston. Adding passing tracks at the right locations could easily achieve 3 hour service. That means that true upgrades at stategic locations could/ would result in major trip time reductions, using the existing route as the core. Amtrak has chosen to promote an entire new corridor. Is that the solution? I don't know.

2164 is a "superexpress", nonstop between NYP and Providence.

R36 Combine Coach wrote:2164 is a "superexpress", nonstop between NYP and Providence.

Which takes 3:37 from NYP to BOS. Long way from 3 hours. Although, the time reflects roughly 10 minutes added to the NYP-BOS schedules because of the 2 tracking for the bridge replacement project on the New Haven Line - which will be finished in a year (or 2?).

When I say that that Amtrak should list what it would take to get to the 3 hour NYP-BOS Acela trip times, I mean for the Acelas that make the normal stops (Stamford, New Haven, even New London).

Forget about 3:37. That is the schedule with pad time. The original schedule for the Express service was 3:18. It could not be met because of all the work being done on Metro North west of Stamford. They added the pad time and have not reduced it since. There are times when we make the westbound trip in 3:15; Fact! They could reliably run on that schedule now, with added capacity at stategic locations; or by improving the performance of the commuter trains that share the tracks. More substantial trip time reductions could be realized by building tracks exclusive to the Acela and its successor that by-pass whole sections of the railroad. Building a track from Westerly to Old Saybrook for High speed rail could: Eliminate the last public crossings on the NE Corridor, bypass three movable bridges, and eliminate the slowest sections of railroad on the Shoreline, in one fell swoop, while increasing capacity on the existing route for commuter and regional trains. That is the strategy that successfully built the interstae highway system.
The next step could be to build a line on Interstate 95 in Metro North territory. That may be more difficult I am SURE, BUT IF THE FIRST BUILD IS SUCCESSFUL, IT COULD BE POSSIBLE. I WOULD PITCH THE" METRO NORTH BYPASS" as a route that could be shared by Amtrak and Metro North as they rebuild their movable bridges. Their four movable bridges ( less Peck ) all need work. the high speed bypass tracks could be utilized by all trains while those bridges are re built. Does this make any sense to anyone else?

Make a three-way deal: Stonington deals with the NIMBYs to let Amtrak eliminate grade crossings. CDOT starts service to Stonington. Amtrak builds a new CT River bridge to free up slots for SLE. Three birds, one stone.

The EGE wrote:Make a three-way deal: Stonington deals with the NIMBYs to let Amtrak eliminate grade crossings. CDOT starts service to Stonington. Amtrak builds a new CT River bridge to free up slots for SLE. Three birds, one stone.

Or save Stonington for last and knock out Miner Ln. and School St. to cross Waterford and Groton off the list. Waterford dearly wants to get rid of Miner and proposed 2 solutions way back in the original '94 crossing elimination study: bridge it, or cut it altogether with an access driveway west from Laurel Crest Dr. to the businesses there. Both priced out pretty much even. What's the holdup, CDOT? That's the one that carries the most high-speed train traffic with SLE crossing it too well between stops.

Groton wants School St. gone, but their only objection was a RR overpass because that would prevent transporting boats on the road from the yacht club. Legit concern. So cut School St. and realign West Mystic Rd. around the Mystic Post Office onto a bridge dumping to Casino Rd. over open property. Never got a follow-up after the '94 study. Why, CDOT?

New London's not that big a deal. Everything stops there; it's a terminal stop for SLE. It's ferry parking lot access and pedestrians crossing, so train frequencies are not slowing downtown traffic. Leave those...there's no easy solution for solving it with the cramped quarters and likely need for vertical clearance to the docks.

That simplifies it. Go to war with Stonington. I don't think they'll be motivated at all by lack of SLE service because of Mystic Amtrak, and Westerly being as much their station as Rhode Island's and getting RIDOT commuter rail within 10 years. Plus I don't think they have any issue slamming I-95 to get to New London, then bitching about widening 95. They have their cake and can eat it too, so there's no convincing the NIMBY's hellbent on limiting train service through town. But checking off the Waterford and Groton crossings to settle up those towns puts the screws square on Stonington to cooperate or else. I think that's the only way it gets done...if they settle up elsewhere and put withering pressure on the town over the holdup on those crossings. There is not a peep out of CDOT about revisiting these crossings, which is bizarre especially in the Miner Ln. case with its substantial SLE impacts. It's on them to shake out the cobwebs and get back to the table with Amtrak and the towns to at least talk about this substantially for the first time in 18 years. It's becoming an elephant in the room with the Shoreline bottlenecks such a hot-button issue and the billion-dollar 95 widening not coming in this lifetime.

Building a track from Westerly to Old Saybrook for High speed rail could: Eliminate the last public crossings on the NE Corridor, bypass three movable bridges, and eliminate the slowest sections of railroad on the Shoreline, in one fell swoop, while increasing capacity on the existing route for commuter and regional trains. That is the strategy that successfully built the interstae highway system.
The next step could be to build a line on Interstate 95 in Metro North territory. That may be more difficult I am SURE, BUT IF THE FIRST BUILD IS SUCCESSFUL, IT COULD BE POSSIBLE. I WOULD PITCH THE" METRO NORTH BYPASS" as a route that could be shared by Amtrak and Metro North as they rebuild their movable bridges. Their four movable bridges ( less Peck ) all need work. the high speed bypass tracks could be utilized by all trains while those bridges are re built. Does this make any sense to anyone else?

Makes sense to me. PBJ has it exactly right. Forget 3:37, and forget Stonington -- leave it to the Regionals.

What I don't understand: why isn't Metro-North 100% for a HSR line between New Rochelle and New Haven? Wouldn't a straight track with new catenary, allowing faster speeds for Amtrak, also benefit Metro-North? With all of the high-powered people who have to endure slow commutes from Fairfield County, I am just surprised that the New Haven Line wasn't upgraded a while back.

pbj123 wrote:Forget about 3:37. That is the schedule with pad time. The original schedule for the Express service was 3:18. It could not be met because of all the work being done on Metro North west of Stamford. They added the pad time and have not reduced it since. There are times when we make the westbound trip in 3:15; Fact! They could reliably run on that schedule now, with added capacity at stategic locations; or by improving the performance of the commuter trains that share the tracks. More substantial trip time reductions could be realized by building tracks exclusive to the Acela and its successor that by-pass whole sections of the railroad. Building a track from Westerly to Old Saybrook for High speed rail could: Eliminate the last public crossings on the NE Corridor, bypass three movable bridges, and eliminate the slowest sections of railroad on the Shoreline, in one fell swoop, while increasing capacity on the existing route for commuter and regional trains. That is the strategy that successfully built the interstae highway system.

A bypass from the CT River to Westerly would bypass 4 movable bridges, not just 3. Any such project would include a replacement higher level CT River bridge which would speed that part up. No doubt that such a bypass would save considerable time. I-95 in that part of CT is not that straight, so the Acelas would likely be limited in the top speeds, but it would be faster than the current twisty route. The bypass would be around 28 miles long by my measurements following I-95. Could cut BOS-NYP trip times by 15-20 minutes, maybe more?

Checking the Old Saybrooke to Westerly area route with Google Earth, the western end ROW lacks a real median strip, so the bypass would likely have to go on the south side of I-95 , ducking under or going over roads crossing I-95 and on-off ramps. Might have to be an elevated 2 tracks over much of the route. There are also places where the I-95 ROW looks severely pinched, especially at East Lyme, so running a 2 track rail line through there would be a considerable challenge which might require moving or rebuilding I-95 in some spots. The eastern end starting pass the I-395 split looks to have more space and a median strip that could better accommodate a bypass rail line.

A 28 mile long bypass would be pretty expensive, in the multiple billion dollar range. I could see the price tag hitting $3 to $5 billion easy by the time the engineering got done with modifying or rebuilding bridges, shifting I-95, lots of elevated track, eminent domain to get back to the NEC route prior to the Westerly station. There may be options for a shorter bypass or bypasses for parts of the segment from Old Saybrooke to Westerly. The critical part is from Miner Lane west of New London to east of Mystic CT. If that segment could somehow be bypassed, it would bypass all 11 grade crossings and 3 movable bridges.

I think if a bypass is built, it should not be for just the Acelas, but also for the Regionals to justify the cost and provide the benefits to everyone taking Amtrak from NHV to BOS. The current tracks would be left for SLE to use. A new station for Mystic could be built near or at I-95. New London is the problem for a bypass in a number of ways. A second station at I-95 would not be accepted because it is too far away from the current station and ferries.

One crazy and expensive approach would be to build a tunnel under New London, starting around the Miner Lane, going under the current New London station with a new underground station, under the river and emerging in the median strip of I-95 west of the river. Then the new NEC route runs in the I-95 median strip pass Mystic and then cuts south to connect to the current NEC. Odds of this concept ever happening are very remote. Odds of any bypass segment being built that utilizes the I-95 ROW are probably pretty long as well.

As for improvements of the current tracks, CT is upgrading the Shore Line route by electrifying the pullover/bypass tracks at the stations and other station upgrades to allow the M-8s to be used for SLE service. Don't know when the switch to M-8s is going to happen, but is the switch to electrified M-8s in place of slower acceleration diesels expected to help reduce congestion for the Amtrak trains coming through?

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:New London's not that big a deal. Everything stops there; it's a terminal stop for SLE. It's ferry parking lot access and pedestrians crossing, so train frequencies are not slowing downtown traffic. Leave those...there's no easy solution for solving it with the cramped quarters and likely need for vertical clearance to the docks.

That simplifies it. Go to war with Stonington. I don't think they'll be motivated at all by lack of SLE service because of Mystic Amtrak, and Westerly being as much their station as Rhode Island's and getting RIDOT commuter rail within 10 years. Plus I don't think they have any issue slamming I-95 to get to New London, then bitching about widening 95. They have their cake and can eat it too, so there's no convincing the NIMBY's hellbent on limiting train service through town. But checking off the Waterford and Groton crossings to settle up those towns puts the screws square on Stonington to cooperate or else. I think that's the only way it gets done...if they settle up elsewhere and put withering pressure on the town over the holdup on those crossings. There is not a peep out of CDOT about revisiting these crossings, which is bizarre especially in the Miner Ln. case with its substantial SLE impacts. It's on them to shake out the cobwebs and get back to the table with Amtrak and the towns to at least talk about this substantially for the first time in 18 years. It's becoming an elephant in the room with the Shoreline bottlenecks such a hot-button issue and the billion-dollar 95 widening not coming in this lifetime.

My guess is that CT DOT and Amtrak ran into so much flak and heat with the proposed grade crossing closures back in the 1990s, that they are reluctant to try again. They put up quad gate crossings and are living with it. I would think Amtrak would want to resume the efforts and close as many of the 11 remaining crossings as they can in the interest of safety (and lowering recurring maintenance costs) for their most heavily traveled corridor. The Keystone East corridor will be completely sealed and free of public road grade crossings by end of 2013. Maybe that should motivate Amtrak to try to close some of the 11 remaining NEC grade crossings.

Miner Lane is the odd one, because looking at the site on Google Earth, there is room for a bridge or bypass access road. it is also the location of a fatal car collision in September, 2005 that killed a grandmother and her 2 grandchildren. Why CT DOT and Amtrak did not undertake efforts to close that crossing in the aftermath or to have engineering plans in place to do so when funding was available is a mystery.

No way you're ever running rail through the 95-395-(future-route-11) junction. Tight curve, lots of roads around, and some nasty hills: I measure 64 foot elevation gain on a half-mile hill heading west between exits 74 and 75 which works out to a whopping 2.4% grade; another 2% grade going down from that hill, 2.7% heading up the hill west of exit 74, and a 4.3% grade just west of exit 81. You can even those out a little bit on the median but you've still got enough slope between New London and the CT River that it's not really worth a highway median run.

A median run between East Haven and Old Saybrook would address capacity and maybe some speed issues; you could hop on the highway at East Haven and off at exit 66 in Old Saybrook without anything more than a nice pair of flyover ramps. That's not that much of a straightening, though.

Where the median is much straighter is the shoreline area between New London and Westerly. Easy underpass at the east bank of the Thames, but the east end would be a problem. Pawcatuck would not appreciate the instrusion into residential areas - that's a lot of eminent domain - but going through Alton, RI would be possible.

So just going through on Google Maps, the grade crossings (south to north) are:

Waterford
Miner Ln

New London
Bank St
State St
Ferry St

Groton
School St (West Mystic)

Stonington:
Broadway Ave (Mystic)
Latimer Point Rd
Wamphassuc Rd
Unlabeled Road?
Elihue Island Rd
Palmer St (Pawcatuck)

Three of these seem like they should be a piece of cake: Miner Ln, Latimer Point Rd, and Wamphassuc Rd all appear to have few if any constraints that would prevent a bridge from being built.

Next is Palmer St which should probably just be closed since it's too dense there to do anything else. Maybe Pawcatuck Ave could be extended to Greenhaven Rd to give the neighborhood alternate access.

Next, School St can probably be done as Mr. F-Line suggests. Broadway Ave might benefit from a similar approach, extending Denison Ave up and over and connecting to Stafford St. Both are clearly tractable, but probably complicated/expensive.

Elihue Island Rd and the unlabeled road are relatively remote and so close together that they should probably be solved with a single bridge, but given the proximity of the water it's not immediately clear what configuration makes the most sense The causeway to Elihue Island will probably have to be rebuilt and/or replaced with a bridge as well, so this will be expensive.

New London, who knows. That's way above my pay grade.

Regarding all of the Northeast Corridor crossings:

I noted our train's speed through all of the crossings back when I did my recent GPS trip mentioned earlier. To my surprise, our Amfleet train never exceeded 79 MPH over any crossing! I know the FRA allows 110 - 125 mph through at-grade crossings and we were nowhere near allowable speeds. So there seems to be lots of room for speed improvement way before any crossing is tunneled, bridged or bypassed and millions of dollars spent. A couple of the crossings near Stonington are actually very lightly used dead-end roads with little auto traffic.

The FRA rules follows:

High-Speed Grade Crossings

The FRA’s goal for high-speed grade crossings is to achieve an acceptable level of grade crossing risk. Regulatory requirements for high-speed grade crossings are:

For 110 mph or less: Grade crossings are permitted. States and railroads cooperate to determine the needed warning devices, including passive crossbucks, flashing lights, two quadrant gates (close only 'entering' lanes of road), long gate arms, median barriers, and various combinations. Lights and/or gates are activated by circuits wired to the track (track circuits).
For 110-125 mph: FRA permits crossings only if an "impenetrable barrier" blocks highway traffic when train approaches.
Above 125 mph, no crossings will be permitted.

The EGE wrote: A median run between East Haven and Old Saybrook would address capacity and maybe some speed issues; you could hop on the highway at East Haven and off at exit 66 in Old Saybrook without anything more than a nice pair of flyover ramps. That's not that much of a straightening, though.

The segment from East Haven to Old Saybrook has the fastest speeds and best trip times in CT. Not much benefit for the cost to build a bypass route on that portion.

The EGE wrote: Where the median is much straighter is the shoreline area between New London and Westerly. Easy underpass at the east bank of the Thames, but the east end would be a problem. Pawcatuck would not appreciate the instrusion into residential areas - that's a lot of eminent domain - but going through Alton, RI would be possible.

This section may be the best chance for a manageable re-route of the NEC in CT that would provide trip time improvements. Would bypass 7 grade crossings and one movable bridge in favor of an approximately 12-13 mile long straighter ROW with higher speeds.

Start with a new higher level bridge crossing the river from New London, not a fixed span bridge because it can't be that high with the tracks and route through New London, but a bridge with a higher and wider clearance so it would not have to open as often. Very tight fit, however, on how the new bridge and route would get to the I-95 median strip and through the ramps, connections, and bridges on the east side to the state roads. Have the tracks run in the I-95 median strip or ROW to east of Mystic and then cut across back to the NEC route west of Westerly. That section would be the hard part because eminent domain and a lot of engineering study would be necessary to acquire a ROW that would minimize the amount of property taken. At Alton, RI you would still have to cut across a lot of private residential land from the looks of it. Could tunnel under Westerly to get to the current station, I guess, but that would be seriously expensive.

I think this would work best as a re-route of the NEC, not a bypass - which could make it more sellable. Build a new station at Mystic. Tear up the tracks from east of the river through Stonington and Mystic. Amtrak can sell the ROW to the state for use as a bike trail or ROW preservation. Stonington and Mystic would no longer have trains running through the towns and grade crossings which could be popular in those communities.

Say this could save 8-10 minutes on the trip times between NHV and BOS, cut a few miles off the trip, and cost, pulling a number out of thin air, $1.6 to $1.8 billion, including a new bridge across the Thames River and station at Mystic. Would that be a project that could be sold to the public and politicians as a worthwhile re-route of the NEC? If it could reduce NYP-BOS trip times, along with other projects such as a CT river bridge replacement and other improvements, to solidly under 3 hours for the Acela, say 2:55 on a standard Acela run, that would be a key sales pitch.

This still would not fix the low swing bridge at Shaw's Cove in New London. Don't know how often that bridge has to open to let the boats through from the modest sized marina area. Have to wonder if it would just be cheaper to buy out the marina in Shaw's Cove and re-locate the docks, the boats, and marina elsewhere along the Thames River. Although I expect it would be met with substantial resistance and protests.