When former President Joe Biden unveiled his $1.9 trillion infrastructure plan in 2021, he found the perfect place to go public: Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station rail yard.
Over the din of crackling wires and grumbling engines, the president made his case for revitalizing the country’s roads, ports, airports and rail lines.
Behind Biden sat rows of gleaming Amtrak trains. Among them was a prototype of NextGen Acela, a sleek machine engineered to deliver the fastest passenger service in American history.
On Aug. 28, NextGen finally hit the rails, after years of delays.
I know this new train could not come soon enough for many riders of the Northeast Corridor, even though it launches at a time of diminished political will for passenger rail.
The French-designed, American-manufactured NextGen arrives years late due to mechanical defects and failed simulation tests mandated by the Federal Railroad Administration. Gone is Amtrak’s White House champion, railfan-in-chief Biden, replaced by Donald Trump, whose one-time adviser, Elon Musk, called Amtrak a “sad situation,” and who proposed replacing the government-owned carrier with private competitors.
Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner resigned in March, and, in May, Amtrak cut 450 employee positions.
NextGen Acela promises an American rail renaissance in a moment when federally sponsored trains are fighting for their lives, as Biden’s infrastructure ambitions fall to an administration bent on cutting government costs.
Now, NextGen Acela takes up the fraught legacy of American high-speed rail. What can we expect of the new train?
NextGen is faster than the original Acela but will not set any world speed records. Its top velocity of 160 mph falls short of global benchmarks set by China’s Fuxing, which hits 217 mph, and Japan’s newest Shinkansens, which reach 200 mph.
For now, NextGen will make do with an imperfect corridor. The train’s lightweight design means faster acceleration and lower energy consumption. An enhanced dynamic tilting system will let carriages lean into curves on the corridor’s twisting track, so they lose less speed on turns.
The upgraded onboard experience includes winged headrests, seat-side USB ports and 5G Wi-Fi. More importantly, each NextGen train can seat 82 more passengers than its predecessor. As Amtrak’s full fleet of 28 NextGens enters service, sending the first-generation trains into retirement, Acela service capacity will have increased by 4,728 seats.
This figure may be the train’s greatest achievement in a congested region at a time when Amtrak is posting record ridership.
America’s embattled but resilient high-speed rail tradition may never be the world’s best, but even incremental improvements, like NextGen, cannot help but transform the places they serve.
For Amtrak’s corridor region, the stakes have never been higher.
David Alff is an associate professor of English at the University of Buffalo and authored the book “The Northeast Corridor.” Distributed by The Conversation and The Associated Press.
