Railroad Forums 

  • Massachusetts Bond Bill Provides 50 Million for East-West Rail Project

  • General discussion of passenger rail systems not otherwise covered in the specific forums in this category, including high speed rail.
General discussion of passenger rail systems not otherwise covered in the specific forums in this category, including high speed rail.

Moderators: mtuandrew, gprimr1

 #1548164  by Rockingham Racer
 
Good news from my home state. We have not read about or heard from CSX on this whole proposal, have we? It's been a long-stated goal to put back a second main track between Springfield and Worcester where there isn't one now. I don't see how the railroad could be opposed to that, especially given the low amount of traffic running on the B&A these days.

Interesting to note that money has been approved for the project, but none of the alternatives proposed has been chosen. Also, a repeat of federal funding needed in big amounts to make this happen. I think that that is a function of which alternative is chosen.
 #1549796  by electricron
 
Earlier this year, MassDOT presented the capital costs associated with six different alternatives to connecting Western Massachusetts , the cost of the six options range from $2 billion to $25 billion, the travel times of each option varies too, and improves relative to the increase in cost.

The $50 Million allocated will do little to build the rail service. Some math follows:
50 /2000 = 2.5%
50 /25000 = 0.2%
So where is the remaining 99.8% (worse case) or 97.5% (best case) of the money coming from?