Translation: What if… There was a high-speed rail link connecting New York to other cities, as exists in China?

New York City sits in the center of the Northeast Corridor, running from Washington D.C.-to-Boston. The Northeast Corridor is the busiest rail line in the U.S., with 12 million annual riders. While some limited sections allow for trains to go up to 150 mph, the aging infrastructure along the route does not accommodate true high-speed rail. Amtrak has proposed upgrading the entire corridor to allow for trains running up to 220 mph, which would cut the commute time from Washington D.C. to New York to a mere 1.5 hours. At an estimated cost of $150 billion, the funding for the upgrade has not been identified. The most pressing component of this upgrade is the Gateway Project, a plan to build a new tunnel under the Hudson from New Jersey to New York City, which is absolutely critical given that the existing tunnels allowing 200,000 commuters per day to access the city are very old and in poor shape.

What do you think – should we invest in creating a high-speed rail link along the Northeast Corridor?

Find out more at the “Improve transit across the Hudson River” strategy at the Getting Around table in the Future City Lab.