(The following story by Hillary Chabot appeared on the Boston Herald website on July 16.)
BOSTON — Hub business leaders are embracing U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry’s plan to improve infrastructure along the high-speed Acela train’s northeast route allowing the bullet train to run full throttle.
“The rail service is very valuable to our members,” said Jim Klocke, executive vice president of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. “In European quarters, they have extremely fast trains, and the prospect of that here is very appealing.”
Kerry said he’ll file a $1 billion bill in two weeks that will target out-of-date bridges, tunnels and tracks that keep the train from hitting its 150-mile-per-hour maximum and getting commuters to their destinations faster.
The train only runs at top speed for about 18 miles, an incredulous Kerry pointed out during a Mondaymeeting with Herald editors and reporters.
“Are you kidding? That train can go 150 miles an hour, (but) it goes that for, what, a couple of miles?” Kerry said. “I want America to have a first-rate high-speed rail system. A high-speed rail that really lives up to the name and gets people there in the time that we ought to be aiming for.”
The Acela train takes about three hours to get from Boston to New York, while a bus ride takes about four hours. The train then continues on to Washington, D.C.
The ease of rail travel, coupled with the high price of gas, means heavy train use by businesses across Greater Boston, said Brian Gilmore, executive vice president at Associated Industries of Massachusetts.
“Rail service is very important to us, and it only becomes more so as time goes on,” Gilmore said. “Anything we can do to make travel between New York and Boston more timely would be great.”
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