The Northeast Corridor, Explained

The Northeast Corridor (NEC) is the 457-mile railroad linking Boston, Providence, New Haven, New York, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore, and Washington. It carries roughly 800,000 weekday riders across Amtrak intercity, eight commuter rail systems, and limited freight, making it by every measure the busiest railroad corridor in the United States.

Ownership

Amtrak owns the corridor from Washington to New Haven and from a small section north of New York. The Connecticut Department of Transportation owns the New Haven Line under a joint-use agreement with Metro-North. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority owns the corridor north of Providence into Boston, and Amtrak operates as a tenant. Norfolk Southern and CSX have residual freight rights along the entire route.

Operators

Amtrak runs the Acela high-speed service every hour during peak hours and the Northeast Regional roughly every 30 minutes. Long-distance trains — Silver Meteor, Silver Star, Floridian, Crescent, Cardinal, and Lake Shore Limited — use the corridor for portions of their runs. Commuter rail operators on the NEC include MBTA (Providence/Stoughton), Metro-North (New Haven Line), Long Island Rail Road at Penn Station, NJ Transit (Northeast Corridor Line), SEPTA (Wilmington/Newark), MARC (Penn Line), and VRE at Washington Union.

Speed

The corridor is electrified throughout (12.5 kV / 60 Hz Boston–New Haven, 12.5 kV / 25 Hz New Haven–New York and Philadelphia–Washington, 25 kV / 60 Hz New York–Philadelphia). Maximum authorized speed is 150 mph for the Acela between New Brunswick and Princeton Junction (NJ) and on portions of the Boston–New York route through Rhode Island and Massachusetts; the new Acela II Avelia Liberty trainsets will lift this to 160 mph in coming years. Conventional Northeast Regional service tops out at 125 mph north of Wilmington.

The capital backlog

The NEC has roughly $40 billion in identified state-of-good-repair backlog, including the Hudson and East River tunnels (Gateway), the Sawtooth and Portal North bridges (NJ Transit), the Frederick Douglass Tunnel (Baltimore), and the Susquehanna and Bush River bridges (Maryland). The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law has unlocked the largest single capital tranche the corridor has ever seen, and these projects are now in active construction. Quarterly progress updates are available in the Passenger Rail Advocacy & Reform Quarterly.