jt
2008-06-24 13:35:00
I’ve been taking trains from Boston to NY, on and off, for more than 30 years. In that time, there’s been a huge investment in technology, the roadbed, the cars, etc. But the net savings in time (and this is only for the higher-priced express trains) is maybe half an hour. It turns out that the route is so twisty that even the fastest trains can only run fast on a few stretches of track. To get serious speed, Amtrack would have to buy hundreds of miles of new right-of-way–mostly prime shoreline real estate in Connecticut. Never happen.
