Northeast Train Service, Moving Toward A Bolder Vision

By Yoav Hagler, Associate Planner, RPA

In the last issue of Spotlight, we wrote about an exciting proposal, developed by a University of Pennsylvania graduate planning studio, for dedicated high-speed rail in the Northeast Corridor between Boston and Washington DC that would reduce travel time by 45%. Part of the motivation for this study was the frustration with official planning efforts over the past four decades. Driven more by the realities of funding and less by bold visions, plans for speeding up rail service in the corridor have not promised much, and yet still managed to underdeliver.

But lack of funding and vision are not the only problems that have plagued rail service in the Northeast corridor. Governance is also one of the key difficulties. Although Amtrak owns most of the corridor on which it and eight commuter rail service providers operate, it has not always been clear with whom the responsibility for planning lies: Amtrak? The FRA? The states?

These challenges have made progress more difficult even as heavy use of these systems has lead to infrastructure that is in a state of disrepair and lacks needed capacity. This in turn has forced all the actors into a zero sum game. For example, one additional intercity train on the corridor means one less commuter train, and with ridership on both growing, someone has to lose.

So given these stresses, it's not surprising that the northeastern states have "not always played nice together," as the Penn studio points out. And this status quo may have continued on into the future if not for eight billion reasons. With a single stroke of a pen, President Obama in 2009 fundamentally altered the scale at which we view rail investments in this country.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act spread eight billion dollars across the country on intercity and high-speed rail projects, much of this funding going to corridors in Florida, California, and the Midwest. The Northeast Corridor mainline, despite its unquestioned potential for high speed rail, received only about two percent of that money. Why? Lack of cooperation? Lack of vision? Lack of a plan? Yes.

But with the promise of additional money down the line and a more receptive political climate, the many actors in the Northeast have more motivation to work out the tangled lines of authority. Indeed, they've already begun.

Two years ago, the stakeholders in the Northeast took one significant step forward to address at least one of these issues in coming together for a two-year planning process to produce the Northeast Corridor Master Plan, published earlier this year. The Master Plan is an excellent document, and provides a road map to bring the corridor to a state of good repair and incremental capacity expansion over the next twenty years. If this plan moves toward addressing the issue of cooperation, it does little in the way of a providing a grand, bold vision for high-speed rail in the Northeast. And in this new world of heightened federal interest in high-speed rail, a grand bold vision is precisely what we need.

The states of the Northeast are now poised to take that next step. Last month, eleven northeastern states and Amtrak submitted a multi-state planning proposal to the Federal Railroad Administration. The proposal seeks $18.8 million dollars for a three-year, four-phased planning study. The proposal, which was prepared after Obama's high speed rail investment act had passed, can be seen as a more ambitious document that seeks to take advantage a better political climate for better rail service. The document outlines four phases, which to some extent can run concurrently.

The first phase will identify projects on the corridor that can progress in the short and medium term. These projects will posses "independent utility," will result in no significant environmental impact, and are necessary regardless of the ultimate vision for the corridor. This phase is important because it will detail a set of federally fundable projects that will allow the Northeast to compete in the next round of federal grants. The lack of this type of list was one reason the Northeast missed out on major funding in the first round.

This phase is necessary, yes, but exciting -- not really.

The bold vision comes in phases two and three. In these phases, the study will look at travel demand forecasts beyond those assumed in the Master Plan -- including unconstrained travel demand for all modes, not just rail, out to 2050. Given the severe capacity constraints on the region's highways and airports, the likely conclusion of this process will be that the megaregion needs the kind of increased capacity in our rail network that only dedicated high-speed rail can deliver, something akin to what the Penn Studio came up with. Then, multiple options will be explored to meet this anticipated demand.

If all goes well, phase four will take care of more mundane but necessary stuff. The process will conclude with the completion of a programmatic environmental impact statement for the corridor, the first in thirty years, and will clear the way for implementation of dedicated world-class high-speed rail in the Northeast.

This proposal strikes a needed balance between short-term necessity and ambitious long-term planning, and is worthy of support by anyone who cares about rail service in the Northeast. A decision by the FRA about whether to fund this three-year planning process is expected by the middle of July.

While the states are now working together better, still at issue though is whether the states, Amtrak, the freight and commuter railroads, the Federal Railroad Administration, and all the other actors can work out who is in charge and who gets the credit or the blame. What's at stake is the long-term future of rail in the Northeast. The carrot of more funding and the stick of executive authority will almost certainly come into play.

Stay tuned.