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Northeast Corridor’s Biggest Bottleneck Set To Receive Federal Fix Up

Colleen Grablick
https://twitter.com/colleengrablick



Patrick Semansky / AP Photo

The 149-year-old Baltimore & Potomac Tunnel — a major bottleneck for MARC and Amtrak trains along the Northeast Corridor — is set to finally receive a much-needed face-lift thanks to federal funding.

The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), a branch of the U.S. Department of Transportation, announced Thursday that nearly $9 billion in grants will be issued to upgrade and expand passenger rail, with a focus on rehabilitating century-old bridges and tunnels along the country’s busiest rail lines. The Baltimore & Potomac Tunnel in Maryland, a 1.4 mile single-track stretch that was first built when Ulysses S. Grant was president, has existed in a dilapidated state for years, creating delays for the thousands of riders that use the corridor every day. Most Amtrak trains travel at a speed somewhere between 110 mph to 145 mph, but in the tunnel, trains slow to a crawl at just 30 miles per hour.

“Today’s investments are a major step towards reversing a half-century of underinvestment in vital rail infrastructure and will result in fewer delays for millions of riders and travelers,” FRA Administrator Amit Bose said in a press release.

In November, the Baltimore & Potomac tunnel was identified in the FRA’s Northeast Corridor Project Inventory — essentially a to-do list of projects with cost and allocation estimates — as a focus area for the Northeast Corridor. (In a 2017 report, the FRA found that it was “critical” to replace the tunnel within the next 10 to 20 years, as it “is approaching the end of its useful life.”) Other major, century-old tunnels and bridges in need of repair include the Susquehanna River Bridge in Maryland, the Hudson Tunnel in New Jersey, and the Walk Bridge in Connecticut — all of which are listed a “backlog” projects by federal officials.

Amtrak, the federally chartered cooperation that will be project’s lead sponsor, plans to replace the current tunnel — deteriorating from age and water damage — with two twin single-tracking tunnels. Once complete, the new tunnel, renamed the Frederick Douglass Tunnel, should allow riders to get from Baltimore to D.C. in less than 30 minutes, and significantly cut down ride times for other routes up and down the corridor.

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TRANSPORTATION

Northeast’s century-old rail bridges, tunnels land $9 billion overhaul

They were built in the eras of Ulysses S. Grant, Grover Cleveland and Teddy Roosevelt. Now, Washington is backing a revamp.

By Michael Laris and Luz Lazo
December 22, 2022 at 6:30 a.m. EST



The Reconstruction-era Baltimore & Potomac Tunnel system, the biggest chokepoint between Washington and New Jersey, will be replaced by single-track twin tunnels. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

More than a dozen century-old bridges and tunnels, the creaky backbone of the nation’s most important railroad corridor, are set to receive nearly $9 billion in new infrastructure grants, U.S. Department of Transportation officials said this week, marking the biggest step yet to begin overhauling the busy-but-antiquated line running from Washington to Boston. ... The projects include the Baltimore & Potomac Tunnel, which opened in 1873, when Ulysses S. Grant was president. The 1.4-mile tunnel is now beset with crumbling brick and sinking floor slabs, leaving Amtrak trains creeping beneath West Baltimore at 30 mph on their way up and down the East Coast.

The list of “major backlog” projects federal officials say they are finally preparing to fund reads like a history of American infrastructure greatness frozen in amber, among them Connecticut’s Walk Bridge over the Norwalk River (Grover Cleveland), New Jersey’s Sawtooth Bridges between Newark Penn Station and Secaucus Junction (Theodore Roosevelt) and the North River Tunnel beneath the Hudson River (William Howard Taft). All are more than a hundred years old and in desperate need of overhauls.

“I know that may be hard to comprehend, but … that’s why we call it a backlog,” Amit Bose, administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration, said in an interview. “These projects have been waiting, waiting to get going — for the next hundred years.”

[The infrastructure package puts $66 billion into rail. It could power the biggest expansion in Amtrak’s history.]

Bose said the $66 billion in rail appropriations in last year’s infrastructure law is giving the nation a once-in-a-century chance to repair, rehab or replace the major bridges and tunnels along the Northeast Corridor, an economic and transportation link he calls “one of the country’s most significant publicly owned infrastructure assets,” while also expanding other routes nationally, as set out by Congress.

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By Michael Laris
Michael Laris writes about the transformation of the U.S. transportation system. He has covered government accountability and was a reporter in Beijing. Twitter https://twitter.com/mikelaris

By Luz Lazo
Luz Lazo is a transportation reporter at The Washington Post covering passenger and freight transportation, buses, taxis and ride-sharing services. She also writes about traffic, road infrastructure and air travel in the Washington region and beyond. She joined The Post in 2011. Twitter https://twitter.com/luzcita