Fast track effort stalls

Little progress made on high-speed rail service from Albany to Buffalo

More than 125 years ago, the Empire State Express set a land speed record on a stretch of track in western New York of 112.5 mph, a record that lasted for a decade.

Today, Amtrak trains travel no faster than 79 mph along the same route, and an effort to develop a near high-speed service along New York’s Empire Corridor appears to be stalled.

Just days after President Donald Trump called California’s high-speed rail project a “disaster” and demanded the state return any federal funds for the project, New York’s final version of the Environmental Impact Statement accompanying its high-speed rail initiative between Albany and Buffalo is overdue, rail advocates say. The Federal Railroad Administration and the state Department of Transportation completed the draft EIS in January 2014.

“I made some phone calls yesterday and I couldn’t find out anything,” said Gary Prophet, president of the Empire State Passengers Association, in an interview Thursday. “The only thing I heard was that it was imminent.”

The FRA’S website said the final EIS would be published sometime in 2019. The agency didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Sources said that the state DOT and CSX Transportation, which owns the rail line Amtrak trains use between the Capital

Region and western New York, bumped heads early over a plan to build a short stretch of high-speed demonstration track in western New York.

ESPA, the advocacy organization, had settled for a plan that would boost top speeds to 90 mph from 79 mph, but the state pushed for 110, by some accounts, and CSX balked.

CSX and the state DOT didn’t respond to a request for comment by deadline for this story.

Travel from Albany to Buffalo takes about 41/2 hours by car, and a little over five hours by train. Nonstop air travel between the two upstate cities is nonexistent, even though they’re home to the two busiest airports, by passenger volume, in upstate New York.

A short-lived service by Onejet ended with the airline’s financial collapse.

An Albany airport official said Thursday it continues to seek a new carrier to provide flights to Buffalo. Meanwhile, Engine 999, the Albany-built locomotive that set the land speed record in 1893, sits in the Museum of Science and Industry on Chicago’s South Side.