Amtrak in gear for East Coast high-speed rail

Amtrak Tuesday unveiled a $117-billion, 30-year vision for a high-speed rail line on the East Coast that would drastically reduce travel times along the congested corridor using trains traveling up to 220 mph.

The Next-Gen High Speed Rail line would have hubs in New York City, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Washington and would cut travel times significantly. It would reduce the travel time between Washington and New York from 162 minutes to 96 minutes, according to Amtrak. The travel time between New York and Boston would go from 215 minutes to 84 minutes.

The proposal, which would require building a new set of tracks from Boston to Washington, D.C., is at the concept stage, and there's no funding plan in place, Amtrak president Joseph Boardman said at a news conference.

The project would likely use some combination of public and private investment and hopefully be phased in starting in 2015, he said.

About 12 million riders a year use Amtrak along the Northeast corridor.

Under the high-speed system envisioned, the trains would be able to accommodate about 33.7 million passengers by 2040. Amtrak officials estimated the high-speed system would generate about $900 million more a year with the added ridership.

The new system would support about 44,000 construction jobs annually over the anticipated 25- year process, as well as about 120,000 permanent jobs, Amtrak said.

But it would be expensive - averaging about $4 billion a year over three decades.