America’s fastest rail lines

How many places in the United States can a railroad passenger travel more than 70 miles in one hour? This map spotlights those locations, based on the schedules in Amtrak’s Fall/Winter 2007 system timetable and its Spring 2008 Northeast Corridor timetable. (Where precise information was not available, the speeds factor in 1 minute of dwell time at stations for short-haul trains and 2 minutes of dwell for long-distance trains.)

In July 1973, when Donald Steffee published one of his last speed surveys in Trains, most of the trackage where U.S. passenger trains achieved point-to-point runs averaging 70 mph or more occurred on freight railroads in the Southeast and Midwest. Today, the lion’s share of 70-plus average speeds happens on the Amtrak-operated portions of the Northeast Corridor between Boston and Washington. (The MTA Metro-North Railroad limits speeds on the segment it controls between New Haven, Conn., and New Rochelle, N.Y.)

The enabling factor in many of the 70-plus speeds achieved today has been public funding that has paid for bridge and signal upgrades, new rail and ties, straightened curves, reconfigured interlockings, and new or lengthened passing sidings. The Northeast Corridor’s success in moving passengers quickly is a direct result of more than $4 billion in public investments made since Amtrak’s inception. The funding helped electrify the line between Boston and New Haven and rebuild trackage that had deteriorated under the previous owners — freight railroads unable to risk private money on passenger trains against the enormous public investments being made in parallel highways and regional airports.

Elsewhere, state partnerships in places like Illinois and California have boosted frequencies and running times for passenger trains, aided by agreements with freight railroads to help ensure schedules are met. Half of the $10.5 billion announced in 2010 for federal high speed rail funding will go to upgrades and additions to the conventional passenger rail network, enabling more passenger trains to average 70 mph and up in more places.

Railroads included in this map:
Amtrak; BNSF Railway; Canadian National; Canadian Pacific; CSX Transportation; Metrolink; MTA Metro-North; Norfolk Southern; Union Pacific

This article originally appeared in the April 2011 issue of Trains.