The description of the Northeast Corridor bill you link to is very uninspiring. It includes not just high-speed rail, but also miscellaneous pork projects, like Moynihan Station and private control of the right-of-way.

Moynihan Station is a complete waste of money: if the New Jersey Transit and LIRR unify their operations and use Penn Station as a through station instead of as a terminal, Penn Station will have a large surplus of tracks, making a new station unnecessary. That way, the ARC tunnel could be parallel to the existing tunnels, which would allow for even more LIRR-NJT combined operation. In contrast, the deep-level tunnel proposed now is more expensive, and can't be combined with anything, because it's at the same depth as one of New York's water tunnels passing under 5th Avenue.

Private control is a bad idea. One of the reasons the Northeast Corridor has relatively good rail operations is that Amtrak controls everything. Elsewhere, private railroads routinely shaft Amtrak in favor of their own freight operations. The Union Pacific is the worst offender; its disregard for passenger rail has made the Coastal Starlight one of the tardiest routes in the Amtrak system.

Alon, what do you meant by "unify their operations"? Do you mean closer coordination, or actually unifying the two railroads?

Very interesting points on Penn and Mynihan, though the bill doesn't mention these projects specifically. I would be interested in any material that you have that illustrates the points you're making.

The freight companies owning the tracks and not putting "people before property" is a real problem for passenger rail in the US generally-- makes trains perennially late. For high-speed rail, Amtrak ownership of track is essential. With the increase in the cost of oil, freight rail traffic has exploded. We need new tracks, and we need fiscal stimulus. Lay rail!

Moynihan Station is not pork. If you have ever been in Penn Station, you know a) it just sucks, b) it's way too crowded, c) new jersey, amtrak and metro north will be more trains there within ten years. The whole penn station redevelopment was so messed up when the original was torn down. I think 40 or so years is more than enough of a wait for a reasonable alternative.

Alex, I've used all three railroads that operate out of Penn Station, multiple times. It looks very much like a train station that people are using. It's not an overbuilt piece of art, unlike Grand Central, but it works.

Penn Station seems to be overused right now, because it's used badly. It's a bad idea to have every train terminate at one place. That's not how the subway works: trains go from Upper Manhattan to Midtown, and continue downtown and into Brooklyn. If Penn Station worked like that - that is, if NJT trains only stopped briefly and continued eastward as LIRR trains - it would never have station capacity issues again. Paris's central commuter rail station, Chatlet-Les Halles, has six tracks and about twice the ridership of Penn Station. The reason is works is that Paris joined its commuter lines together and through-ran them. New York doesn't even have to build new stations, as Paris did, since two of its three commuter rail systems terminate at the same station.

The one real capacity problem is that the North River Tunnels only have two tracks. The problem is that the current project will not do much good if the new tunnel converges to an entirely different station. If through-running the NJT and LIRR clears up the space at the main station, the project will be reduced to merely constructing an additional two-track tunnel, close to the surface, which will cost much less than ARC as currently proposed.

(John: I don't really have material there. I can send you links about the Moynihan Station constructions that show how the people running it are more interested in a memorial than in transport, but I don't think there's any organization in the area that's committed to unifying the commuter rail system.)