Friday, August 13, 2010

Now This Would Be Good Train Service

The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote Penn students create ambitious plan for rail service "The Penn students proposed a $98 billion project, with two dedicated high-speed tracks on a reconfigured route and a number of new stations, including a main Philadelphia stop at the Market East station in Center City.

'We wanted to be bold, to actually make an impact,' said Lisa Jacobson, 28, one of the student authors of the plan. 'Instead of 'let's straighten a curve here or replace a bridge there,' we wanted to think big.'

The Penn plan would cut travel times in half. A trip between Philadelphia and New York would take 37 minutes instead of the Acela's current one hour, 12 minutes. A trip between Washington and New York would take 1 1/2 hours instead of the current two hours, 45 minutes, and a trip between New York and Boston would be one hour, 45 minutes, instead of the current 3 1/2 hours.

The Penn plan proposes an average of 12 trains per peak hour, instead of the current three to five.

The Penn students envisioned about 100 miles of tunnels, including beneath downtown Philadelphia and Baltimore to provide fast, direct routes to new downtown stations. And they suggested a new route from New York to Boston - beneath Long Island Sound and inland through Connecticut and Massachusetts."

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