| Top Commercial Speed: | 150mph, 240km/h |
| To be introduced: | 1999 |
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The American Flyer is to become the fastest train in North America in 1999. It is to serve the North East Corridor, which stretches from Washington, DC at the southern end, through a tight string of cities including Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, New York City, the Connecticut coast and Providence, to Boston at the northern end. Modifications have had to been made, notably electrifying railway line north of New York and upgrading a large amount of track sections to handle 150mph running. This corridor is the busiest rail corridor in the USA, although not as busy as European ones.
The Trains are tilting trains, the current railway is extremely curved, completing some 11 full circles between New York and Boston. They are electric of course (no diesel has ever achieved 150mph), and are to be built by GEC-Alsthom (makers of TGVs) and Bombardier (who will supply the tilting equipment). It is therefore likely these trains may incorporate some TGV technology, although TGVs do not tilt so it will certainly not be exclusively TGV technology. With a top speed of 150mph (240km/h) these trains are mid-range high speed trains, there are faster and slower high speed trains. However at the moment there are no trains at all in North America operating at 150mph, the fastest are Metroliners at 125mph, which will be replaced by this train. So for the USA this new train will be quite a step foreword.
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| Above: The 125mph
Washington to New York metroliner trains will be replaced by the flyer |
At the moment the section from New York to Washington DC is currently served by metroliner trains with a top speed of 125mph (200km/h). The journey takes 3 hours. When the flyer is introduced the journey time will be cut to 2 hours 45 minutes. (A 25mph (40km/h) increase in speed will not have a great impact on journey time, however sections of track previously cleared for 100mph (160km/h) have been upgraded which also helped reduce journey times.)
The Boston to New York will see a significant change. Currently this takes 4 hours 30 minutes by train. When the flyer is introduced this will be down to only 3 hours.
Time will tell of course, but when speculating it seems logical that it should be. The North East corridor is the most densely populated area of the united states, so if there is to be a high speed train service it should be there. Amtrak seems to have remained fairly sensible with the project, keeping to a fairly conservative 150mph top speed by European standards. This seems a good idea because there is less risk of something going really wrong in financial terms. (Capital costs rise very sharply with top speeds of trains). If this venture proves to be a success then Amtrak may start going for more adventurous high speed rail projects, possibly involving speeds of over 200 mph (320km/h). However the USA suffers from automobile-dependence syndrome, people in the USA may well not be prepared to give up their cars in favour of fast trains as quickly as people in Europe. In the USA many people do not perceive the car as a major environmental threat, nor do they wish to reduce car usage as such a large proportion of the US economy is based on the auto-motive industry. These such things have inhibited high speed rail in the past, and may do now. However the very fact that a rail link has been initialised with the Flyer represents a breakthrough for transit in America and may finnally start to change opinions and attitudes in the United States.
Its still not really high speed rail. 223mile in 2 hours 45 minutes is an average speed of only 80mph (130km/h), which doesn't really sound like a high speed service. This implies there are many sections which the train is forced to travel at slow speeds, ie considerably less than 80mph. 223 miles should really be capable of being done in only 2 hours. That would seem a better target for amtrak. However apparently one of the reasons for the low average speed is trains stop at stations for considerably longer than the European standards of 30 seconds to 2 minutes (7 minutes for major city stations).
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