Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor (NEC), the busiest passenger rail line in America, is set to receive a massive upgrade over the next 15 years. The planned historic investment of $16.4 billion in funding for 25 projects from the Federal Railroad Administration, plus additional funding from the bipartisan infrastructure law, is intended to shore up a vital link in America’s economic chain while bringing faster, more reliable and timely service to the hundreds of thousands of commuters it serves daily.
Carrying a little over 2,000 trains every day, the Northeast Corridor is the rail line running from Washington, D.C., to Boston, with stops in major cities including Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York along the way, as well as smaller burgs such as Trenton, N.J., and New Haven and Stamford, Conn. It’s also the same line Joe Biden used over the years as a Senator for his daily commutes to and from Washington.
Overseen by the Northeast Corridor Commission, the plan—Connect NEC 2037—will, according to NEC Commission co-chair Kevin S. Corbett, address “decades of woefully insufficient investment.” And the investment is coming at the perfect time, as ridership has been steadily on the rise following a pandemic-induced decline. The plan estimates the upgrades will cost $176 billion.
Amtrak expects commuter numbers to return to or exceed prepandemic levels in the new year. Accordingly, improvements in the plan call for the NEC to handle 50% more Amtrak trains between Boston and New York and double the number between Washington, D.C., and New York. MARC train service between Washington and Baltimore will also increase from 27 to 37 round trips per day.
The project will be a job creator, supporting an expected 900,000 jobs and career opportunities over the next 15 years, including direct on-site electrical construction jobs and off-site support of construction work.
The improvements will also be environmentally friendly, shifting approximately 38 million annual car trips and nearly 600,000 short-haul plane trips to the electrified rail lines, eliminating up to 750,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions. Upgrades will also leave the electrical power systems less vulnerable to weather outages. And it will all be done with minimal disruption to riders.
As Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner stated, “A modern, reliable Northeast Corridor is essential to the region’s economic future.”
