Delayed: High-speed rail for upstate pushed back to 2021
Other state railroad projects face federal funding challenges
It’s the first sign of movement since Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced plans last winter to name a blue-ribbon panel to “reexamine and rethink strategies to bring high-speed rail to New York.” And rail supporters say it’s heading in the wrong direction.
The Federal Railroad Administration last month quietly added another year to the timetable for the arrival of the final environmental impact statement, a document required before the project can advance, pushing it back to the end of
June 2021.
“Yes, IF this target date is met, the entire Tier One EIS process will have ONLY taken 11 years & 281 days!” the Empire State Passengers Association, an advocacy group, said on its Facebook page. “Simply Unbelievable!”
The EIS would evaluate alternatives for upgrading the tracks west of Schenectady, where Amtrak passenger trains share the rails with dozens of daily freight trains operated by CSX, which owns the tracks.
CSX has balked at mixing high-speed passenger trains with its slower-moving freights, calling them a hazard to its employees. South of Albany,
CSX uses a separate set of tracks on the west side of the Hudson River, while it leased the tracks on the east side several years ago to Amtrak, which operates trains as fast as 110 mph along portions of the route.
West of Schenectady, trains travel no faster than 79 mph. The average speed is 51 mph.
There aren’t many alternatives to Buffalo. No airline flies nonstop between Albany and Buffalo, the two largest airports in upstate New York. Driving takes about 4 1/2 hours, while the train takes a little more than five hours.
A range of alternatives would boost top train speeds to anywhere from 90 mph (the least expensive upgrade) to 125 mph (most expensive). The latter would include a new corridor, possibly elevated, dedicated to passenger trains. There’s one other choice: to do nothing. So far, that appears to be the frontrunner, passenger advocates fear.
One thing is clear: Information is hard to get.
“I’m going to defer you to NYSDOT contacts (copied here) who may be able to answer questions about state priorities and movement,” wrote Brandon Bratcher, who was listed as the contact person at the Federal Railroad Administration website.
The state Department of Transportation’s response? “Questions about the timing of the completion of the Environmental Impact Statement should be directed to the Federal Railroad Administration as they are the lead agency in this process,” a spokesman emailed.
The high-speed rail project isn’t the only rail improvement that’s stalled. And given the costs of the pandemic and the deep recession that has followed, funding is only going to get more challenging.
The Trump administration, which proposed a $1 trillion nationwide infrastructure program when it entered office, declined to fund two new tunnels under the Hudson River connecting Manhattan and New Jersey along Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor even before the pandemic. The tunnels completed in 1910 under the supervision of Pennsylvania
Rail Road CEO Alexander Cassatt, a Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute civil engineering graduate, were heavily damaged during Superstorm Sandy.
A failure would sever the heavily traveled corridor linking Boston to Washington and the Northeast to the rest of the nation.
Gary Prophet, president of the Empire State Passengers Association, suspects the federal government may be in no hurry to finance what could be billions of dollars in transportation spending in New York.
“I’m not sure the executive branch favors New York state,” Prophet said.
Relations between Trump and the Cuomo administration have been strained, as Gov. Andrew Cuomo has undertaken numerous airport, rail and bridge infrastructure projects with little federal support.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration even barred New Yorkers from enrolling in the federal Trusted Traveler program over a dispute on federal access to motor vehicle license data. The program, intended to improve security clearance procedures at airports and other ports of entry, now is off-limits to New Yorkers.
State-funded initiatives are rebuilding Penn Station and have added new terminals and parking garages at airports from Albany and Plattsburgh to Elmira and Laguardia. New rail stations have gone up along the Empire Corridor from Schenectady to Niagara Falls.
But the top speeds trains will reach between those stations remains 79 mph, including a stretch of track in western New York where the Albany-built steam locomotive 999 reportedly reached what was then a land speed record of 112.5 mph, hauling the Empire State Express in 1893.
eanderson@timesunion.com 518454-5323