NORTH ATLANTIC RAIL Advancing a Passenger Rail-Based Economic Transformation for the New England - Downstate New York Region
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NORTH ATLANTIC RAIL Advancing a Passenger Rail-Based Economic Transformation for the New England - Downstate New York Region Overview: Creating the World’s Largest Innovation Network North Atlantic Rail (NAR) is a proposed 21st century high performance passenger rail network linking Boston and New York City and all of New England’s mid-sized cities. It proposes to secure federal funding for this initiative as a critical element of the $2 trillion-dollar emergency infrastructure program expected to be introduced in the Congress later in 2020. The seven-state New England - Downstate New York region is home to 11% of US population and 14% of US GDP, while by comparison this proposed $105 billion rail investment would represent only 5% of the proposed $2 trillion infrastructure package. This region already has more than two-thirds of US rail ridership and a strong rail culture—both of which will be further expanded by this investment program. This program includes an early action network of priority rail investments identified by each state. Collectively, these investments will create a network providing transformational mobility, economic development and climate resilience benefits for the entire seven-state region. Planning and preliminary engineering has been conducted on most of these projects, allowing them to be expedited through creation of a proposed new federal-state partnership—North Atlantic Rail, Inc. Major portions of this network could be designed and built on an expedited schedule, putting hundreds of thousands to work during and following the Covid-19 pandemic recession. This network will also decongest highways, promote sustainable mobility, reduce carbon production and economic inequality and underpin the competitiveness of the entire seven-state region for decades to come. How this High Performance Mobility System will Transform the New England - Downstate New York Region Our existing intercity rail services are slow, infrequent, unreliable and expensive. Our commuter rail services are geared to serving weekday journey-to-work trips to big-city central business districts and are slow, infrequent and unreliable for other travelers and at other times of day. Together, these systems are fragmented and limited in the travel markets that they serve. In contrast, high performance rail will be fast, frequent, reliable, networked and priced to attract a broad range of riders. This modern high performance network will unify currently separate housing and labor markets into the world’s largest innovation network. And it will put hundreds of thousands to work in the immediate aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic while also addressing the existential threats to the region’s continued success by: • Reducing congestion on the region’s gridlocked highways and congested passenger rail lines; offering a convenient rail modal choice as an alternative to driving for a large number of travelers within the region. • Expanding housing markets and commuter sheds to slow rapidly escalating housing prices that threaten to choke the growth of metro Boston and New York; • Creating resilience and redundancy in the region’s transportation system and economy by rapidly expanding ridership on a fully electrified rail network powered by renewable energy sources. It will also create a new inland passenger rail route between Boston and New York outside the existing coastal route threatened by climate induced sea level rise and more frequent and severe storm surges. North Atlantic Rail DRAFT: June 9. 2020 1 • Re-magnetizing the region’s network of mid-sized cities, raising their level of economic performance by tapping their enormous reservoirs of untapped labor, housing, infrastructure and other resources. • Significantly reducing carbon and air pollution that contribute to global climate change and public health hazards and promoting energy and land-efficient transit-oriented development across the region. Background The seven state New England - Downstate New York region already has a $3 trillion-plus economy— larger than that of California and all but five countries. The engines of this economy are metro Boston and New York City—two of the world’s most dynamic places. This region also contains the world’s largest concentration of top-rated research universities and teaching hospitals. Connecting these institutions and the region’s large and small cities into an integrated market for labor, capital and ideas will create a network effect where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, likely surpassing the United Kingdom in GDP to become the fourth largest economy in the world. Ironically, however, over the past generation the economies of these places —and in particular its gateway cities— have become increasingly disconnected as the region’s highways, commuter rail networks and airports have all become highly congested and unreliable. The North Atlantic Rail network will address the urgent needs facing the economy of New England’s and Downstate New York’s gateway cities, —mid-sized, former industrial cities that have been in decline for nearly half a century. Once the drivers of the national economy, cities like New Haven and Hartford, Waterbury, Bridgeport, New London, New Britain and Willimantic, CT; Springfield, Worcester, Lawrence, Lowell, Holyoke, Greenfield, New Bedford and Fall River, MA; Providence, Woonsocket and Pawtucket, RI; Rutland and Brattleboro, VT; Manchester and Nashua, NH; Bangor and Lewiston- Auburn, ME, and Hempstead and Farmingdale, NY have large populations of poor and working-class African-American and Latino residents. Nearly all of them have all lost a significant share of their population, employment and tax base since 1980. This initiative will also provide direct rail links to the airports serving these cities—Green, Bradley, Manchester, Portland and MacArthur airports, in addition to Logan and the NY-area airports—and all of the region’s leading research universities, tech centers and teaching hospitals. Achieving the rebirth of these cities will require construction of new passenger rail links designed to better connect these places with each other and with the region’s economic engines: metropolitan Boston and New York. It will also require a comprehensive set of job training, technology transfer and urban regeneration and housing strategies in cities across the region. Rather than simply a rail infrastructure project, North Atlantic Rail is more properly framed as a rail-enabled economic development strategy. Addressing the Region’s Broader Existential Threats In addition to providing needed short-term employment, the North Atlantic Rail network will also address the longer term needs of the region’s fast-growing economic engines: Metropolitan Boston and New York. It’s difficult to remember that only four decades ago both of these cities appeared to be in terminal decline but have since been revitalized on the back of their innovation economies. While the immediate challenge facing both places will be recovering from the economic impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, their longer-term success will require that they tackle four existential threats: • Climate change and the related issues of sea level rise and storm surges that threaten low lying urban areas and critical infrastructure systems; North Atlantic Rail DRAFT: June 9. 2020 2 • Choking traffic congestion, which has doubled travel times across metro Boston and New York City over the past decade; • Rapidly escalating housing prices, which threaten the region’s innovation economy and its ability to attract young talent and start-up companies; and • Growing spatial, economic, and social inequality, which is leaving dozens of communities and their residents —many of them minorities and immigrants— out of the economic mainstream. In addition to creating hundreds of thousands of jobs in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, North Atlantic Rail will address all four of these longer-term existential threats, by creating an alternative, inland rail corridor between New York and Boston outside of its increasingly flood-prone coastal alignment. It will create a network of alternative inland growth poles for the region’s economy and population. The project will also alleviate highway congestion and provide commuters with alternatives to highly congested roads. And it will expand housing and labor markets across the whole region, providing young and low- and moderate-income workers with access to lower priced housing. Finally, this high- performance rail network will enable carbon-free inter-city travel across the entire region. Catalyzing Growth The greatly improved mobility and access to housing and employment that the high-performance rail network will enable also will allow the region to grow its population and employment base significantly – which is the key to continuing regional economic growth and prosperity. As opposed to concentrating more and more people in ever-densifying center cities, we will have the opportunity to spread that growth over a wider geographic area at more reasonable densities, which is likely to be preferred by many people as we gradually emerge from the current lockdown and social-distancing period. The region served by the North Atlantic Rail network has enormous potential capacity for growth, as well as the basic infrastructure and institutional framework to support it. The high-performance rail system will significantly increase the capacity of existing rail trunk lines that are congested and over-utilized today, with little