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 and 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 or no room for future growth. This new capacity can be used to improve existing commuter rail routes, turning them into high-performing metropolitan rail lines that provide frequent and reliable bi-directional service throughout the day. The North Atlantic high- performance rail spine between Boston and New York City also becomes the backbone of a high- performance rail network that ultimately can extend beyond the region to encompass the entire Northeast mega-region to Washington, DC and beyond to Virginia and North Carolina, with connecting corridors providing high-performance service to Upstate New York, the Lehigh Valley and Upper Susquehanna Valley of Pennsylvania and the to Harrisburg, PA.

Program Leadership Founded in 2017, the North Atlantic Rail initiative emerged from Reboot New England, an ad hoc effort led by a group of prominent business, civic, government and academic leaders from across New England. Over the past three years the project’s leaders have convened a series of roundtable discussions on this proposal across Southern New England with participants including municipal, state and federal officials and business, civic, academic and philanthropic leaders. Three key concepts have emerged from these discussions: 1) there is strong support for both the problem statement and proposed solutions; 2) each sub-region has identified a priority rail investment, for which it does not currently have funding, or the critical mass of benefits to justify its cost. By combining these elements into what would become the first phase of a comprehensive high performance rail network, all of these projects would add value to each other and have an increased likelihood of gaining state and federal financial support; and 3) a

North Atlantic Rail DRAFT: June 9. 2020 3 number of roundtable participants have volunteered to participate in upcoming North Atlantic Rail advocacy and planning efforts.

Inspired by Successful Projects in the UK and Other Countries Most of our European and Asian competitors already have strong and effective national strategies to rebuild the economic prospects of similar legacy cities and regions. One such strategy is the United Kingdom’s Northern Powerhouse (NP) initiative, through which the British government is investing upwards of $160 billion to revitalize the economy of several older industrial cities across the North of England. This region initiated the industrial revolution and went through the same de-industrialization that our legacy cities did in the post-World War II era. It also has strong historic ties to New England and its legacy cities.

The NP project is being underpinned by construction of two high-speed rail lines —HS2, which will provide fast and frequent connections between London and the North, and HS3, which will connect all of these cities to each other. These will form the core of a network of improved rail and road connections throughout the North, unifying housing and labor markets across the whole region. A new agency, Transport for the North, has been established to plan, build and operate these transportation improvements. This major rail investment program has remained a high priority for both major UK political parties through multiple changes in government and through the entire process of the UK’s exiting of the European Union. A new non-governmental group, the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, is coordinating these investments with a broad array of job training, technology transfer, urban amenity and local transport needed to rebuild the economy of the region’s cities.

The North Atlantic Rail Action Strategy North Atlantic Rail will advance a similar set of initiatives for New England’s and Downstate New York’s legacy cities, that will also provide important benefits to the region’s economic engines—metro Boston and New York City. In the short term this will put hundreds of thousands of New Englanders and New Yorkers to work designing and building this system. Over the longer-term 20-30-year period, this program will provide tens of thousands of sustainable careers in the design, construction, operation, management and support of the system as it is built out and expanded over time. This new high- performance rail network will provide frequent and reliable 100-minute service between these dynamic global cities. A network of improved branch lines will connect all of the region’s legacy cities to each other and to this high-speed spine, reducing travel times and transforming the region’s economic geography. A set of high priority “early action” rail projects has already been identified by the three Southern New England states. These projects, along with their counterparts in the three northern New England states will generate early benefits and will be key elements of the region’s new high-performance rail network.

Three-Phase High Performance Rail Network Development Strategy The NAR initiative has broken this initiative into three phases. It should be noted, however, that components of all three phases can be initiated simultaneously to expedite economic and employment benefits. In particular, early action should include the planning and design of the full system, with full public consultation and review, leading to the reservation of rail rights-of-way where needed and confirming the strategic value of early-phase investments.

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PHASE I: EARLY ACTION PROJECTS As noted above, each southern New England state has identified one or more high priority early action projects, which will create a foundation for the ultimate seven-state New England - Downstate New York high performance rail network. This phase includes the following projects:

Connecticut (estimated construction cost: $5 billion) The stretching from to New Haven, CT is currently the most intensively used commuter rail line in the country. But in recent years, travel times have increased and reliability has declined as a result of decades of deferred maintenance, including the need to replace several century-old movable bridges. A set of strategic investments, including bridge replacement, modernization of interlocking and signal and power systems and additional tracks in key locations will improve reliability and reduce travel times between New Haven to Manhattan from the current 120 minutes to 66 minutes.

In addition, new stations with high-level platforms and multi-modal connections will be built in the Bronx, and a new intermodal station will be constructed in Port Chester, NY to connect Westchester BRT Service, linking White Plans and the I-287 office corridor to New Haven Line rail. Additional improvements will be made in the to permit expanded service between Hartford and Springfield. These investments will permit a range of new services and development opportunities, including: • frequent, bi-directional local high-performance rail service within ; • creation of a new Hartford Hub Transit Center and related downtown redevelopment which could be paired with I-84 reconstruction and achieve better integration of rail and bus service for the Hartford metro area, including BRT service to Manchester, Vernon and Storrs (UConn) and to Hartford’s western suburbs; • synchronized rail-transit connections to Bradley Airport; • electrification of the Hartford Line and upgraded Hartford Line and SLE rolling stock; • “ clock-face” schedules (30 minute peak, 60 minute off-peak) on all of these routes; • creation of a New Haven “pulse hub” permitting easy transfers from trains on the coastal and inland routes;

North Atlantic Rail DRAFT: June 9. 2020 5 • Waterbury rail and bus connections to Bridgeport and New Britain / Hartford, integrated with New Haven and Hartford Line rail schedules with synchronized “clock-face” schedule patterns; • and finally, faster and more frequent rail service to Stamford, New Rochelle and both Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan.

Rhode Island (estimated Construction Cost: $5 billion) Rhode Island’s early action project will upgrade the existing alignment to provide frequent, reliable 45-minute regional rail service from several places in the Ocean State to Boston’s South Station. Included in this project will be additional track capacity and high-level platforms in several RI and Massachusetts stations, including Providence, Green Airport, and Attleboro, improved power systems and a major expansion of tracks and platforms at Boston South Station. A new rail service would be introduced on the Northeast Corridor, providing limited-stop express service within Massachusetts between Boston South Station and Providence, and continuing onward to serve multiple stations within Rhode Island between Providence and Westerly, including TF Green Airport.

Massachusetts: Greater Boston (estimated construction cost: $10 billion) The Bay State’s early action projects will focus on the first phase of the transformation of the MBTA commuter rail network into a modern metropolitan rail system. The MBTA Fiscal and Management Control Board has adopted a plan envisioning electrification, high-level platforms, and frequent, transit- like service throughout the system. The Fairmont Line, the Providence Line, and the Newburyport- Rockport Line from North Station to Lynn have been identified as a first phase. North Atlantic Rail funds will enable these investments, as well as other parts of the overall plan, to proceed. Other projects will include: • selective realignment for speed and capacity needs for express services and building on planned capacity expansion at Boston South Station; • expanded capacity at Rte 128 Station; • increased capacity at Canton Junction; • potential additional track capacity between Readville and Boston; • potential metropolitan rail / rapid transit integration with new interchanges on the Worcester Line/Green Line interchange at Riverside and other locations; • planning for future integration of north and south side regional rail services with the North-South Rail Link or other measures.

Western Massachusetts (estimated Cost: $5 billion) The top priority for Western Massachusetts is creating a high-performance rail connection from Springfield to Worcester and improving the existing Worcester-Boston rail line with the goal of providing 80-minute travel times from Springfield to Boston. Springfield’s restored station will become a pulse hub for both east-west and north-south rail service in the region. In addition, a new Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) network will connect several cities (including Northampton, Amherst, Westfield, Chicopee, and Holyoke) to Springfield Station, to ensure that all of the region’s major population and employment centers are well connected to this new rail hub. Palmer’s historic train station will become an intermediate stop on the Springfield-Boston route creating a focal point for the downtown revitalization.

In addition, the existing of Metro-North will be upgraded between South Norwalk and Danbury, CT, including speed improvements, electrification and selective double-tracking to allow more frequent bi-directional service. This will set the stage for and improve the value of future restoration of Berkshire Rail service between Danbury and Pittsfield. Similar upgrades should be made on the .

North Atlantic Rail DRAFT: June 9. 2020 6 Northern New England: Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine (estimated cost: $10 billion) The North South Rail Link (NSRL) between Boston’s North and South Stations will be essential to incorporating Northern New England into New England’s rail network. Construction of the NSRL will transform North and South stations from their current role as highly congested stub end terminals into efficient through-running stations. This will enable major growth in rail service on the entire metropolitan Boston network while reducing necessary terminal expansion at North and South Stations. With this new rail link, Downeaster service and regional rail trains from Maine and New Hampshire, as well as MBTA trains from the North Shore and northern suburbs will be able to run through to all of the major employment centers in Boston, including the Financial District, Seaport, Back Bay and Longwood Medical Area. It will also eliminate difficult transfers for passengers who currently need to walk or take two-seat transit or taxi rides to get between these stations.

Construction of NSRL will also improve the performance and increase the value of the proposed extension of Downeaster service to Lewiston - Auburn, ME and extension of the current commuter service to Nashua and Manchester, NH – projects which could be undertaken in this phase of the NAR construction program. In addition, ’s Valley Flyer service will be extended from Greenfield, MA to Brattleboro, VT, servicing Southeastern Vermont and Southwestern New Hampshire.

Intercity rail service on the Northeast Corridor will be expanded and improved in this phase of the program. Capacity on the existing corridor will be increased to enable hourly service as well as regular hourly service north of New York City. Timed connections with these hourly services will exist at New Haven for trains following the upgraded Inland route between New Haven and Boston via Hartford, Springfield and Worcester, or via the extended Valley Flyer route. Selected Regional trains could operate direct from New York via the Inland Route. Trip times for all trains between New York and Boston will be reduced compared with existing Amtrak service, and service reliability will improve.

Other essential engineering and right-of-way acquisition projects should include studies of alternative solutions for providing high-performance rail service between New York and New Haven, and between New Haven and Boston. This will be necessary to inform good investment decisions for Metro-North, Rail Road, Hartford Line, Worcester Line, Western Mass, South Coast and Greater Boston services. A second immediate priority, emerging from the results of these studies, will be region-wide right-of-way preservation and selective acquisition and rail banking in Phase I. These studies should also include identification of requirements for yard and shop facilities, and identification and acquisition of property for these activities.

TOTAL PHASE I CONSTRUCTION COST: $35 BILLION

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PHASE II: COMPLETE HIGH-SPEED RAIL STEM As noted above, portions of this phase could be initiated simultaneously with construction of the Phase I investments outlined above. Phase II NAR investments will build the high-speed rail (160-225 mph) spine from Manhattan to Boston.

Two possible routes exist between the East River in New York City and New Haven. One option would generally follow the route of the existing Amtrak Hell Gate Line between Long Island City, Queens and New Rochelle, NY, with 4-tracking of the line and upgrading it in places for higher-speed and to provide separate tracks for local and non-stopping trains. A grade-separated junction and expanded hub station would be built at New Rochelle, and new high-speed tracks would be built approximately parallel to the New Haven Line between New Rochelle and a point to be determined in western Fairfield County, CT. The remainder of the New Haven Line would be upgraded to increase speed on the express tracks and eliminate capacity bottleneck points, including a potential bypass of the slow-speed curves at Bridgeport.

The second route would run east on Long Island, via a new right-of-way between Long Island City and Jamaica, Queens, and then on new high-speed tracks approximately parallel to the LIRR Main Line between Jamaica and Ronkonkoma. At Ronkonkoma, the route would turn north and follow a utility right-of-way to Port Jefferson, where a 17-mile long tunnel would connect to the existing NEC corridor in Milford, CT. This tunnel and its rail service would bring Long Island into the heart of the Northeast Rail corridor, eliminating the Island’s isolation from New England’s employment centers, and strengthening connections to Manhattan.

Both routes would have considerable challenges, in terms of right-of-way acquisition and potential community and environmental impact, but either route would deliver major mobility and access benefits for travelers in the respective corridors. Further detailed technical analysis, coupled with extensive public review and consultation, will be required to select the preferred route between New York City and New Haven.

North Atlantic Rail DRAFT: June 9. 2020 8 From New Haven, this route will utilize both existing and new rail rights of way to connect to Hartford and a new high-speed alignment from there to Providence. A new rail tunnel under Downtown Hartford could be combined with the proposed realignment and undergrounding of I-84. From Providence the route will utilize the existing NEC ROW to get to Boston. Estimated travel time between Boston and New York will be approximately 100 minutes via the Long Island Route and 140 minutes via the New Haven Line. Using the Long Island route, every place in the region would be brought within an hour’s travel time of either Manhattan or Downtown Boston, or in the case of Hartford, both of these global centers.

A related project will be modernization and expansion of New York’s Penn Station, completion of Amtrak’s Gateway Tunnels under the Hudson River, and the construction of a new set of tunnels under the East River to provide the capacity needed in the New York area for the NAR high-performance network. This will enable significant increases in the frequency of high-performance service east of New York and also support more productive metropolitan rail services through New York.

TOTAL PHASE II CONSTRUCTION COST: $50 BILLION

PHASE III: CONNECTING THE DOTS—COMPLETING THE NETWORK The third and final phase of NAR high performance rail will connect all of New England’s mid-sized cities with each other and with the HSR Corridor, creating a seamless network that will expand housing and labor markets across all of New England and Long Island. Elements of this phase could also be initiated simultaneously with Phase I and II investments. Under Phase III, Downeaster service could be extended to Bangor and Rockland, ME, and metropolitan rail service extended from Boston to Nashua, Manchester and potentially on to Concord, NH. Future rail services could extend to Burlington, VT and eventually, on to Montreal and Quebec. Eventually all of these lines will be electrified to ensure fast, reliable and carbon neutral travel across the region powered by alternative energy sources. With the completion of the North Atlantic Rail network, all of New England and Downstate New York will be

North Atlantic Rail DRAFT: June 9. 2020 9 connected into a single housing and labor market. Inter-city travel will become carbon neutral, highways de-congested and housing costs reduced across the entire region.

ESTIMATED PHASE III CONSTRUCTION COST: $20 Billion

Building on the High Performance Rail Network to Revitalize Mid-sized Cities This rail investment needs to be leveraged with a three-pronged economic development strategy in mid- sized cities and their firms, talent and place to build the prime capabilities of each city. • Firms: Launching initiatives to foster creative disruption through a partnership between existing firms and new start-ups. • Talent: Identify skill needs of growing firms at all levels of job ladders and create programs to develop and recruit talent needed to fulfill them. • Place: Build creative habitat in each city to enhance their distinctive character and assets.

The things that make each city distinctive now will make them even more distinctive in the future. Reversing the decline experienced by most of the region’s cities will enable them to become stronger, more livable places in the future, with expanded networks of public spaces. It could create new urban form, built by entrepreneurs and innovators for entrepreneurs and innovators, by Millennials for Millennials.

Local partnerships representing municipal governments and business, civic and academic leaders will coordinate these efforts in each city, in partnership with the new North Atlantic Partnership, as described below.

Financing and Administration This initiative is estimated to cost $105 billion over a 20-year period. Innovative permitting, procurement, labor practices and project delivery will ensure that the key investments will be delivered on time and budget. While this is an enormous investment, it pales in comparison with the combined economy of New England and the New York City Metro region of more than $3 trillion —larger than that of California and all but five countries.

These funds should be provided by the federal government. as part of a multi-trillion dollar infrastructure expected to be enacted by the Congress in 2020 or 2021. This program should be financed through sale of 20 or 30-year US Treasury bonds. Most of these bonds will be purchased by sovereign wealth funds and overseas investors with interest rates currently well under 1%. Debt service would be financed from increased federal tax revenues as the region’s economy grows. In effect, the rest of the world would rebuild New England’s and Downstate New York’s infrastructure and productive capacity. And the federal contribution would represent but a tiny fraction of the $47 billion more this region sends to Washington every year than it gets back in federal expenditures.

Twenty-six (26) countries —representing all of our global competitors— already have high-performance inter-city rail services, and virtually all of these have been fully financed by national governments or sovereign wealth funds. International experience also strongly suggests that, once completed, the intercity and regional rail services on this network will become self-sufficient on an operating basis, requiring little or no ongoing public subsidies. Metropolitan services may still require subsidy, but they will become much more productive and will be able to capture a higher share of metropolitan area travel than today’s commuter railroads are able to achieve.

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Program Delivery and Governance It is proposed that two new institutions be established to sponsor, implement and be responsible for this program: The North Atlantic Rail, Inc. and the North Atlantic Partnership: • To act as the Sponsor of this multi-state network it is proposed that a new North Atlantic Rail, Inc. (NARI) be established as a joint venture between federal and state governments to manage the financing, building and operation of these transportation assets. The British government has established an analogous entity—Transport for the North—to deliver major rail investments in the North of England, as part of its Northern Powerhouse Initiative. This initiative is one of many international precedents for the North Atlantic Rail project. • Creation of this new entity would expedite the process of designing and building proposed rail projects, reduce overall project costs and increase accountability to the Congress, White House, and participating states. Whenever possible NARI will utilize public-private partnerships to deliver and manage elements of this system. • North Atlantic Rail, Inc. would be responsible for designing and building components of the region’s rail network. It would also collaborate with existing agencies, such as New York’s MTA, Massachusetts’ MBTA, Amtrak and state DOTs to design, build and operate key components of this network. • NARI would be analogous to the Tennessee Valley Authority or Bonneville Power Administration, both established during the New Deal to advance infrastructure and economic development projects in multi-state regions. Members of the Corporation’s 15-member Board would be appointed by the President and the Congress, although seven of these members —one per state— would be appointed on recommendation of governors to ensure that the organization is directly accountable to elected officials at the state and federal level. NARI’s specific authorities and responsibilities would include: • Planning and Design. The Corporation’s Board would appoint a chief executive to oversee all of the operations of NARI. The Corporation would hire its own staff to oversee the entire planning, design, permitting and procurement process. A small, highly skilled professional staff would be hired to oversee the entire process, with the bulk of engineering, design and construction supervision conducted by outside, independent consultants in close collaboration with the affected states. • Permitting. NARI’s accelerated permitting would be enabled by provisions adopted by the Congress in the 2017 Tax Act to expedite permitting. These provisions include strict time limits on National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews and also authorize categorical exemptions for projects being developed within existing rights-of-way. • Procurement. Design and construction contracts should be conducted as public-private partnerships utilizing design-build and related procedures to expedite the procurement and design and construction process, with the goal of completing design and procurement in a 12 to 18- month process. NARI and its selected construction firms should also be authorized to enter into project labor agreements in accordance with federal and state laws. • Right-of-way (ROW) acquisition. Many of the rail rights-of-way needed for the program are already in existence, some already owned by the states but much of them owned by private freight railroads. NARI would negotiate access to the routes, acquiring long-term leases, use agreements or when appropriate, outright purchase of needed ROWs.

North Atlantic Rail DRAFT: June 9. 2020 11 • Construction and Construction Supervision. Construction will be conducted by selected design- build consortia, with construction supervision to be overseen by NARI staff and consultants. • Operations. Completed rail routes could be owned and operated by North Atlantic Rail, Inc. or continue to be owned and operated by Amtrak, state authorities or private concessionaires. Train services could be operated by Amtrak, state authorities, or private concessionaires under contract with NARI. Each route is expected to have capacity for 10-12 trains in each direction, creating the opportunity for multiple operators to run trains on each route —as is generally the practice on European railroads.

North Atlantic Partnership A new non-profit organization called the North Atlantic Partnership will also be established to coordinate economic development initiatives for each city and the whole region, with board members representing government, business, civic and academic sectors from across the seven-state region. The Partnership will be modeled after its successful UK counterpart, the not-for-profit Northern Powerhouse Partnership. As a nongovernmental entity, the Partnership will provide long-term leadership across state boundaries and through election and business cycles.

A Note on North Atlantic Rail Construction Cost Estimates and Expedited Project Delivery The estimated cost of this proposed rail network is $105 billion with proposed construction completion by 2040. This estimate was developed by a research team at the University of Pennsylvania with input from rail industry experts at international engineering and planning firms. These estimates are predicated on the assumption that innovative permitting, procurement, construction supervision and labor practices will be used, so that unit costs will total three times those of comparable European and Asian railroad projects. This compares with recent Northeast Corridor and California HSR projects, where unit costs exceeded five times those of comparable European and Asian rail projects. These high costs were due to onerous and dilatory permitting, procurement, construction management and conventional labor practices that add enormously to the cost and time and required to deliver major rail projects.

For this reason, the Congress should provide authorization and appropriation for the entire program at the outset to avoid the costly start-and-stop phasing that leads to excessive cost overruns and delays. This will allow the entire program to proceed on this low-cost, expedited schedule without delays due to the legislative process.

New Tappan Zee Bridge Provides An Important Precedent An important recent precedent for the procedures being proposed here is New York’s new Tappan Zee (Governor Mario Cuomo) Bridge. This project was managed with accelerated permitting conducted by the Federal Highway Administration, and design-build, best-value procurement being conducted by an independent state authority, the New York State Thruway Authority. This allowed the project to advance from Governor Andrew Cuomo’s decision to proceed with the project to a construction start in 15 months. Further, this procurement and construction management process allowed the whole project to be completed for $3.98 billion, a fraction of the originally projected cost and a fraction of the time required under traditional permitting, procurement and project delivery procedures.

Questions? For additional information contact: • Bob Yaro at [email protected] or • Kip Bergstrom at [email protected] This draft: June 9, 2020

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