NEW YORK TIMES: …While Republican opposition and community protests have slowed the projects here, transportation policy experts and members of both parties also place blame for the failures on missteps by the Obama administration — which in July asked Congress for nearly $10 billion more for high-speed initiatives…
Instead of putting the $11 billion directly into those projects, critics say, the administration made the mistake of parceling out the money to upgrade existing Amtrak service, which will allow trains to go no faster than 110 miles per hour. None of the money originally went to service in the Northeast Corridor, the most likely place for high-speed rail…
The Acela, introduced by Amtrak in 2000, was America’s first successful high-speed train, and most days its cars are full. The train has reduced the time it takes to travel between Washington, New York and Boston, but aging tracks and bridges — including Baltimore’s 100-year-old tunnel where trains come to a crawl — have slowed it down. It takes two hours and 45 minutes to travel from New York to Washington on the Acela. If the Acela were a bullet train traveling on new tracks, it would take 90 minutes… (more)
