Assessing the Costs and Benefits of Alternative Approaches to High Speed Rail

With high-speed rail (HSR) on the national agenda in the United States for the first time in quite a few years, and with the support of the executive branch of the U.S. government, it is of value to study various alternatives in terms of how services might be provided with particular focus on the Northeast Corridor (NEC) of the U.S. Building high-speed rail in the international image of the Shinkansen in Japan and TGV in France is one possibility. This would involve new infrastructure and train sets. Another is to create so-called incremental high-speed rail (some call it “higher-speed rail”) in which existing services coupled with some infrastructure changes permit a superior level-of-service than exists now (say, with Acela) and at lower costs than the international quality mentioned above. There are many technical and market development issues inherent in the NEC but further, institutional issues abound in the corridor with nine states, various large city governments, freight movements and other issues to deal with to say nothing about the organizational structure that would support operations. In this research, we consider technological alternatives as well as institutional alternatives in the NEC.

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• Record URL:
  • https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/26604
• Supplemental Notes:
  • This document was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Transportation, University Transportation Centers Program.
• Corporate Authors:

  New England University Transportation Center

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  77 Massachusetts Avenue, Room 40-279
  Cambridge, MA  United States  01239

  Research and Innovative Technology Administration

  1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Authors:
  • Sussman, Joseph
• Publication Date: 2013

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Edition: Final Report
• Features: References;
• Pagination: 3p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Alternatives analysis; Benefit cost analysis; High speed rail
• Geographic Terms: Northeast Corridor; United States
• Subject Areas: Economics; Planning and Forecasting; Railroads; I10: Economics and Administration; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01502079
• Record Type: Publication
• Contract Numbers: MITR23-7
• Files: UTC, NTL, TRIS, RITA, ATRI, USDOT
• Created Date: Dec 23 2013 7:53AM