Boston to New York in Under 2 Hours 

The newly formed Northeast High-Speed Rail Coalition launched this week with a conference focused on promoting a high-speed line from Boston to New York City via Springfield, Hartford, and Long Island. The trip would take about 1 hour and 50 minutes. The Acela Express currently offers the fastest rail trip on that route at 3 and a half hours.

Visions and proposals for Boston-New York HSR have been on the drawing boards for years. The current push for the line is gaining new energy and momentum from multiple sources. 

Notably, it has the strong backing of labor unions as well as business groups. For example, more than a dozen unions and union locals sponsored elements of Thursday’s conference. Bob Yaro, whose North Atlantic Rail organization is part of the coalition, told The Gothamist in July that organized labor’s support is key. They’re “saying, ‘Hey, if there’s high-speed rail projects getting off the ground everywhere in the country except the Northeast . . . Are we chopped liver? Why are we being left out?” Yaro said.

Meantime, business groups support the line because it will slash travel times between Boston and New York by half while linking both metro areas tightly to Western Massachusetts and Central Connect. New York is already a global hub of finance, and metro Boston is a hub of education and tech. High-speed rail will pull these strengths together and create a world-leading innovation corridor with a $3+ trillion economy. 

In addition to this labor and business support, the coalition has momentum from the recent push in Congress by Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) for a program to fund a national HSR network. Moulton, whose district encompasses the suburbs north of Boston, introduced a bill in March to invest $41 billion annually in high-speed trains over five years. “We have the chance to think big and think differently,” Moulton said at the time. (Register for the Alliance’s Sept. 18 webinar with Rep. Moulton here. Watch the 2020 webinar with him here.) 

The Federal Railroad Administration, Amtrak, and MassDOT are currently working on plans for conventional, 60-mph service train service between Boston and Albany, NY. Moulton and the Northeast High-Speed Rail Coalition are calling for those plans to be much more ambitious on multiple levels. 

For example, in addition to calling for true high-speed rail (i.e., ~200 mph), they believe the line should be the catalyst for transforming Boston’s commuter-rail system into a regional-rail network; and that it should be planned as the foundation for a network of high-speed trains across New England.

Along those lines: The growing momentum for a true high-speed line between New York and Boston is especially exciting—and potentially pivotal—because it could be the foundation for a high-speed line extending from Boston/New York to Chicago via Buffalo, Cleveland, and Toledo. 

The Alliance has called for Amtrak to vastly upgrade its current service in that corridor in terms of speed, frequency, and quality. Planning for a Boston-Chicago high-speed line will simultaneously create momentum for better Amtrak service in the near term—and for true high-speed trains in the corridor over the longer run.