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High Speed Rail In The Northeast: Connecting D.C., Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston!
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Mar 31, 2025
High speed rail makes the most sense, when it's able to connect major population centers in a more convenient way than either personal vehicles or airplanes. It's because of this that the Northeast Corridor makes for the absolute best place for high speed rail in the United States today. And while Amtrak's current Acela line gets close to reaching that goal, more could be done to make this corridor even better, including an up and coming potential magnetic levitation train line.
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The Northeast Corridor is currently the only profitable passenger rail line that Amtrak runs
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And it makes sense too. Washington DC, Philadelphia, New York City, Boston, and many more cities make for a tightly
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connected and compact region of tens of millions of people. But while Amtrak has plans to enhance its rail to higher speeds, there are also very
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real plans for a high-speed magnetic levitation train. Let's check them out
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Welcome to Geography by Jeff. Today we're going to do a bit of a combination episode
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wherein we'll look at Amtrak's current Acela service with plans to make it a higher speed rail line
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but also a magnetic levitation train service that's being planned for the corridor
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Normally, I wouldn't spend so much time on something that seems so relatively far-fetched
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but this project is undergoing an environmental impact statement, which is basically the last step before construction begins
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Regardless of what happens, This project seems to have some momentum. But as usual, before we begin the episode
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if you like my content, be sure to check out the What If Geography podcast that I co-host with my colleague Hunter Shobi
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Together, we come up with wild what-if scenarios and talk about them using geography
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Each episode is a lot of fun for us to make, and I think you'll enjoy them as well, especially since we'll have a couple
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high-speed rail episodes coming up. New episodes of the podcast premiere right here on YouTube
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Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The history of rail in this particular region is quite long
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To save time, I won't bother diving into the early history of rail in the Northeast
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aside from to say that, for as long as rail has been around, there's been a strong desire to connect this region in particular
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So with that, let's go ahead and jump to 1965, when the High Speed Ground Transportation Act was signed
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This piece of legislation, it's worth pointing out, was a direct response to Japan's Shinkansen High Speed Rail
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which began service in 1964. The High Speed Ground Transportation Act was the very first
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attempt by the US Congress to foster the growth of high speed rail in the US. But unfortunately
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it ultimately wouldn do much That said it did have one major impact on the region we talking about today This act directly led to the creation of the Metroliner service that connected Washington D to New York City by way of Baltimore Wilmington and Philadelphia
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The Metroliner at the time was scheduled at around two and a half hours from one endpoint to the other, with a top speed of 125 miles per hour
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And while high-speed rail today is often much faster, the Metroliner came pretty close to the top speeds of the Shinkansen at the time
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It's worth pointing out that the Metroliner also took less time to get from Washington, D.C. to New York City
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than today's current Acela Amtrak service, though admittedly it had far fewer stops in between
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While the Metroliner would service the Northeast Corridor for the next 35 years, Amtrak had bigger plans for the region
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Announced on March 9, 1999, Amtrak revealed the first look at its upcoming Acela Express train service
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The goal was to fully replace the Metroliner while also adding a new endpoint in Boston
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The Acela service would officially begin revenue service on December 11th, where it would run at a top speed of 150 miles per hour
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an average speed of 70 miles per hour, and with 13 stops between Washington, D.C. and Boston
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It's worth noting here that Acela trains can technically run at speeds up to 220 miles per hour
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but are prevented from doing so due to a number of constraints along the corridor. One big issue is that while Amtrak owns the majority of the 457 miles of rail
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in the Northeast Corridor, 94 of those miles are owned by freight companies
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which can largely slow things down. Additional pinch points often occur along urban routes
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which are narrow and winding. It's for this reason that the Acela, as good as it might be today
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is not often thought of as being comparable to modern high-speed rail lines. At least not yet
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At the same time as Acela has been running, there's been a continued effort to not only
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bring high-speed rail to the Northeast Corridor, but to bring a true high-speed maglev train
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This effort began in 2003 when the Federal Railroad Administration and the Maryland Department of Transportation
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conducted an environmental study to build a maglev train between Baltimore and Washington, D.C
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That study was ultimately canceled back in 2003, but it has since been started up again
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Kind of. We'll get to that in a little bit. If the United States were to build out a true high rail line there honestly no better place for it than the Northeast Corridor The density of major cities and an established history of competitive and competent passenger rail service
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make it so that any high-speed rail service would be a massive success
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But before we get into what true high-speed rail might look like for this region, if you're enjoying this video
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now would be a great time to subscribe. More fun geography videos are just a single click away
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We've already established that the current Acela is not really considered to be a high-speed rail
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Maybe it would have been back in the 1960s, but today it's not up to the standard
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Modern nation constant trains operate at speeds between 200 and 275 miles per hour
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And while the actual trains are important, much of this increase in speed is due to a combination of prioritizing passenger rail transportation
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and optimal distancing between stops, both of which Amtrak's Acela currently struggles with
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but Amtrak has been diligently working on solutions to some of these problems
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As of late 2022, the Acela has managed to steadily increase its speed due to some key improvements
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The biggest improvement comes from a 16-mile stretch in New Jersey that actually lets the train hit its top speed of 160 miles per hour
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When it's fully complete in 2024, a distance will extend an additional 8 miles
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This, combined with some other train improvements, such as new train cars that enable leaning into turns to increase the speed of turning
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has seen improvements cascade throughout the entire corridor. All of this has come at a cost of 11 years of planning and $450 million
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And therein lies the problem. At this rate of build-out, there's simply no hope for the Acela
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to ever truly become a global competitor in the high-speed rail game. It's simply not enough for far too much
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But this isn't the case with every high-speed rail project in the Western world. In 2011, the same year that Amtrak began this track improvement
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France began construction on the Sud Europe Atlantique, A 210 mile high speed rail line with 188 miles of new construction between Tours and Bordeaux
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with a travel speed of 200 miles per hour. This route began its very first revenue service in 2017
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seven years before the 24 mile Acelo rail improvement will be fully operational
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If Amtrak wants to stay competitive it needs to find ways to improve its service and speed or another service might take its place Magnetic levitation train seems like one of those things that entirely science fiction
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but I assure you it's not, though it's also not very widespread either. As of today, the only
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high-speed maglev train that's operational is in Shanghai, China. But while this is technologically
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feasible, and according to reports is commercially successful, this one and only high-speed maglev
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train only runs for a total of 19 miles. So while it does work, a long-distance maglev train has yet
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to be fully realized. But that hasn't stopped the Federal Railroad Administration and the Maryland
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Department of Transportation from picking up the baton and running with it. Beginning once again in
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2015, an environmental impact study was undertaken to determine the impacts of building out the first
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phase of high-speed maglev between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. According to the project's
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website, the route can run at speeds up to 300 miles per hour, or more than twice the Acela's
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current maximum speed. When fully complete, the project promises it will take only a single hour
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to travel between Washington, D.C. and New York City. At this speed, the Maglev train would be
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directly competitive with flying, but without all the hassle of airports. Unfortunately for this
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project, while the draft environmental impact statement was released in early 2021, the project
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has, once again, been paused pending further decisions by the Federal Railroad Administration
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So while a true high-speed maglev train would be exciting, and would absolutely put the United
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States back on the map in terms of passenger rail service, it appears increasingly unlikely that this
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project will ever see the light of day, though stranger things have happened. I would love for
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true high-speed rail to come to the Northeast Corridor in whatever mode or method that might be
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Acela is already a wonderful service that just needs some key upgrades on a shorter time frame
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Meanwhile, Maglev is an exciting prospect that is marred by constant delays and pauses
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One or the other or both would suffice. They just actually need to get done
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And who knows when that will be. I hope you enjoyed learning more about the Northeast Rail Corridor
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and the potential for high-speed rail. If you did, please subscribe to my channel
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And if you wanna watch more of my videos, you can do so here. Thanks for watching
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See you next time
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