4 days ago
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
How to Get to Near High-Speed Rail—on the Cheap
Forget flashy bullet trains and gazillion-dollar tunnels: Alon Levy, a fellow at the NYU Marron Institute of Urban Management, says America's railways could reduce travel times and transform intercity trips with simpler, far cheaper fixes.
In a new study, Levy and co-authors make the case that with a combination of smarter scheduling, new track switches that allow trains to approach stations at faster speeds and a fleet of modern electric trains, the Northeast Corridor connecting Boston to Washington, D.C., could be humming with near high-speed rail service. Imagine a Boston-to-New York City trip that takes about two hours—instead of the roughly 3.5 hours it can take today—for a fraction of the cost of prestige megaprojects.
