Train service along this corridor consists of Metro-North to Poughkeepsie; with all electric territory ending in Croton-Harmon, multiple Amtrak trains including the Empire Service which runs just to Albany or in some cases Niagara Falls, my personal favorite, The Lake Shore Limited which runs from New York Penn Station to Chicago Union Station, The Ethan Allen Express which also runs from Penn to Rutland, Vermont, The Adirondack which runs from NY to Montreal, and The Maple Leaf which runs from New York to Toronto, Canada. All of the routes along this corridor are funded by the NYS Department of Transportation except for The Lake Shore Limited. I’d definitely have to say that this corridor is definitely not the biggest of our problems, especially on the Metro-North side and this corridor does host some of Amtrak’s most popular non-NEC routes, but the poorly-timed and sometimes limited service hinders usability for many people.
Over the years, they’re have been many studies about upgrading The Empire Corridor to high-speed rail since even the 1990s, however, none of these attempts have proven successful and have just gone back on the bookshelf to collect dust. While decades of officials have been shooting for the stars and missing to fund & plan Empire Corridor HSR, the low hanging fruit options such as adjusting train times, adding trains, and better managing connections have been more or less ignored.
I’ve decided to come up with a small plan for a starting point for better regional-rail in New York State.
Empire Clocker
The New York- Albany portion of The Empire Corridor has the most potential for increased ridership, and NYS should make this portion the primary focus of increasing & speeding service. Interestingly, despite being a smaller area, Albany is Amtrak’s 9th busiest station, and easily the biggest improvement that could be done could be increasing service to a minimum of hourly and moving to a clockface schedule which would make things a lot easier on this portion of the corridor. Currently, Albany has a hodgepodge of different trains from terminating Empire Service trains to the occasional (I mean daily) Maple Leaf to Toronto. At the time of this writing (I’m sitting on an Delta airplane to Detroit to visit family), Amtrak’s service to Albany is somewhat inconsistent with this station sometimes getting hourly, sometimes getting bi-hourly, sometimes even worse then that, it just depends on the day and time. The other problem is travel time, most trains can make the trip in an average of 2 hours & 30 minutes or less….. which is close to the best you can get on the thruway with no traffic. I think that they should try their best to bring that down to 2 hrs, at least down to 2 hours and 15 minutes at a minimum as this would make taking the train a lot more attractive. In order to do this they have to raise speed limits, which I think can be best done in Metro-North’s territory.
I’ve decided to introduce a new name for the Empire Service train; The Empire Clocker.
Empire Extension
A couple of years ago as part of an agreement between the Metropolitan Transit Authority & Amtrak for Penn Station Access, both parties agreed that they would jointly study possible introduction of Amtrak rail service to go through to Long Island. Unlike what many people said, it seams that they meant what they said and Amtrak might actually be looking into it. As a Long Islander myself, I have entirely mixed feelings about the idea. As much as I’d love to see Amtrak P42s and Viewliners charging down the Mainline towards Ronkonkoma, one of my closest stops, I also don’t see many people choosing Amtrak over the LIRR since it would cost more and the LIRR has been running trains on the island for a lot longer. Now, I’m desperately hoping that if Amtrak further continues with this idea that they’ll decide to join in on the hype and offer some of their own express trains down the Montauk Branch to intermediate points in Suffolk County for beach service to Fire Island, along with additional trains to The Hamptons & Montauk. Now, I highly doubt Amtrak will run trains from just New York to Long Island, so, I’m guessing they’ll extend certain trains to LI.
I think the best & most likely candidate for this (outside of the NER) will be certain of The Empire Clocker trains. Extending these hourly trains to Long Island (likely to Ronkonkoma) would provide us Long Islanders a one-seat ride to upstate New York, while additionally providing never- seen before one seat rides from Ronkonkoma Branch express stops and Queens to major stops along The Hudson Line. This would also test the waters for through running, which would provide outstanding benefits to rail in the Tri-State Area.
Unreserved Seats
In addition to increasing the frequency of service, I think that they should slightly change The Empire Clocker to operate in a more hybrid way, and to have and to have unreserved seats as this will make this train’s operation a lot more efficient. Currently, this line operates with reserved seats, but considering how close the line is (it’s faster to take the train or drive to Albany then Montauk!) and a reservation system really limits flexibility.
Unreserved seats tend to be a common theme on Amtrak’s shorter corridors e.g The Keystone from Philadelphia to Harrisburg, PA. Therefore, I think it would make total sense to implement it on The Empire Corridor.
The Empire Fleet
Such a considerable increase in service would additional equipment, and luckily, this article is being written at a time when Amtrak has already received a couple of their Siemens SC-44 Chargers for their state-supported routes, along with a couple of ALC42’s for The National Network. Now, Amtrak is soon to be arriving on the first of their new locomotives for use on this corridor, The Siemens SC-42DM Charger. Not only this, but the LIRR, MNR, & NYS DOT have also ordered them which makes them perfect for being able to run on LIRR & MNR trackage.
Amtrak is also looking to replace it’s single level fleet (specifically the Amfleets),as many of them are either approaching or even older then 40 years old with the new Airo train sets. Amtrak has also stated that they will be used on most of the Empire Corridor routes including: The Empire Service, Ethan Allen Express, & Adirondack.
Another thing I’d like to briefly touch on is electrification, I don’t think Amtrak should try the tedious task of electrifying to Albany, as it would cost way too much and would be very difficult to accomplish not to mention it would take forever. But, I do think Amtrak should electrify the Empire Connection, similar to what the LIRR is planning on doing to the Central Branch, which is used by all of the Amtrak Empire Corridor routes, and branches off from the Hudson Line at around Spuyten Duyvil and allows trains to go into Penn Station. By doing this, it will allow Amtrak to operate their trains for slightly longer, which is a very good thing for the environment, and will make use of the Chargers’ increased DM capacity. Not only that, but this will also allow Metro-North to finally provide direct one-seat rides on The Hudson Line into New York’s West Side, which Penn Station Access can’t help with.
Another option that may be worth considering is adding a couple of Viewliner 2’s to the overnight Maple Leaf trains, as this would be a very attractive option to be able to sleep overnight instead of sleeping in a Coach seat — ewww, that stinks.
This decade is turning out to be a big-one for Amtrak, with them beginning to the replace the famous P40DC and P42DCs with the newer Siemens Chargers, which have mixed opinions, and their huge fleet of single-level passenger cars, known as Amfleet, with newer Siemens Venture equipment. I think that all that equipment will work perfectly for the Empire Clocker, and the other state-supported routes!
As far as the consists go, I think demand would warrant 7-car trains on the Empire Clocker and Lake Shore Limited services, while I believe they should use 5-car sets on the other 3 remaining trains. I think that these consists should be able to be hauled by one dual-mode locomotive, as Amtrak normally practices this on the Lake Shore Limited and Metro-North also hauls 7 cars with one DM.
While I’ve spent months on this article- I started it on my flight to visit family in Michigan on August 5, and now it’s October 17, I’m not going to do the crew & equipment assignments, but, I think that the current orders should be sufficient and they could always order a couple of additional sets should need be.
Schedules & Connections
A key attribute to the success of The Empire Corridor is well…… scheduling! It’s in all ways imperative for this corridor to have well-timed connections to LIRR & MNR on the NYC-portion, along with better-managed connections to the cross-Hudson ferries. Currently, Metro-North has two ferry connections: one between Newburgh & Beacon, and a second one between Haverstraw & Ossining, and while this is good, I wish there were more connections and more of them since most of them just meet up with certain rush hour trains. This would give communities along the west-bank of the Hudson River way easier access to Albany & NYC.
A couple of the most viable cross-Hudson ferry connections could be:
Ownership & Operation
Like many Amtrak corridors, ownership of this corridor is somewhat complicated; with the only advantage being that the whole line is owned by passenger railroads, so, expanding service wouldn’t require the burden/drama that typically comes with adding passenger trains on freight railroads. The LIRR owns the portion of the line between Ronkonkoma & Harold Interlocking, along with the portion between Montauk & Harold Interlocking, then Amtrak takes charge of the line their and through NY-Penn Station and up to the junction at Spuyten Duyvil, where Metro-North owns it up to Poughkeepsie, and CSX (though under a long-term lease since 2011, which allows under the terms of the lease for Amtrak to maintain, improve, and dispatch the line) owns it between Poughkeepsie & Schenectady.
As far as operation goes for the Empire Clocker in particular, it could be done by anyone, but I imagine it being done by the Amtrak crew as it currently is as the only expansion of service is to Ronkonkoma on LI. Yes, it could change mid-route (e.g. have an LIRR crew operate the train between Ronkonkoma and NY-Penn Station, before having an Amtrak crew operate it the rest of the way to Albany, however, due to the relatively short-distance of the route this is very impractical and makes way more sense to have a single-entity do it. Now, if Amtrak doesn’t want to do it, they can have NYS DOT literally just bid it out the operating rights and award them to the lowest bidder (for example, Brightline which is in Florida could do it since there looking to expand!) Important to note is so-called ‘issues’ with foreign crews operating over MTA tracks shouldn’t matter since Amtrak crews already operate over these tracks.
Empire & Beyond
In this article, we’ve mainly focused on the portion of the corridor from New York to Albany, barely touching on the Albany-Niagara Falls portion. I believe that Amtrak should put 3 quarters of their current resources into the western portion, while putting all the new equipment into the NYP-ALB portion. The federally-designated Empire HSR Corridor actually extends westward to Niagara Falls, however, current ridership west of Albany does not warrant infrastructure for HSR.
While the main focus is elsewhere, Albany-west service should definitely be improved to be able to way more efficiently link New York’s “Canal cities”. Currently, it really isn’t all that compelling as it takes an hour longer to take the train then driving from Albany to Buffalo, and if you’re traveling between New York City and Syracuse, Rochester, or Buffalo, there’s more direct road options.
Maple Leaf
New York City & Toronto are two major cities that are fairly close to one another, but aren’t two closely tied in terms of rail transportation. They do well with air travel, with upwards of hourly flights for most of the day and cheap fares of typically below $200.
However, Amtrak, hasn’t made this route one of their priorities as there’s only one round-trip between these cities and it’s a daytime train that takes over 12 hours, meaning you lose an entire day, making it a non-starter for many….
I think it would make loads of sense for the Maple Leaf to get a second daily round-trip (extending a Empire Service run to Niagara Falls north to Canada). This train would be timed to run over night, leaving NY-Penn Station around 7:30p and arrive in time for the next day. Because the route is a little short for overnight services, it’s not a perfect idea, but perhaps they could let people sleep on the train for a bit so they can get a full night’s sleep.
The Great Lakes Express
I think the Ethan Allen Express, Lake Shore Limited, and Adirondack trains should remain pretty much the same. However, I would personally like to create a new train, named The Great Lakes Express! This train would be similar to the Lake Shore Limited train, however, it would continue up to Detroit, MI and terminate there. Not only would it provide an additional round-trip for that line which I definitely think is underserved, but it would provide a direct train from Long Island to Detroit, MI. I know it’s a very ambitious idea, but I really think it would be very beneficial for many people, and I have a lot of family in Michigan and right now my family always just always flys or drives, and I think while that tradition may definitely continue, it would be great for their to be another option of getting there, and I think many people would make use of this train.
While I understand these are some pretty big changes, I think that this is a very well-traveled portion in New York, and we strongly believe this has a lot of potential! I worked hard on this article so if you enjoyed I’d appreciate it if you could comment.
