(The following article by Joshua L. Weinstein was posted on the Portland Press Herald website on June 2.)
PORTLAND, Me. — The Downeaster passenger train will get a little faster in August, Gov. John Baldacci will announce today.
The Portland-to-Boston train will increase its top speed from 60 to 79 mph, which eventually could make the trip 15 minutes shorter. Beginning Aug. 1, according to the governor’s office, the train will be allowed to zip along at 79 mph for at least part of its journey.
Chop Hardenbergh, the editor of Atlantic Northeast Rails & Ports, said Tuesday that the higher speed is important, but said questions remain.
“Who knows over what stretch we’re going to get 79? Maybe the governor will fill that out,” he said. “Are we going to see it for 10 miles or 30 miles?”
What is certain, he said, is that bumping the speed limit will add to the train’s cachet.
“If you’re going at 60 and people are going past you at 65 on the turnpike, that doesn’t really make you think taking the train is a thrill, but if you’re going to go 79, that’s much different,” he said.
The governor’s office said “full implementation” of the higher speed is expected by the 2005 construction season. The state Department of Transportation requested permission last month to upgrade some tracks.
Rail officials have long wanted to raise the speed limit, which will cut travel time from 2 hours 45 minutes to 2 1/2 hours, but have been prevented from doing so by Guilford Transportation, which owns 78 miles of tracks from Plaistow, N.H., to Portland.
Amtrak and Guilford have been wrangling over track standards and higher speeds since the early 1990s. Guilford has maintained that it needs sturdier tracks and firmer rail beds for trains to run safely at the higher speed. Amtrak paid Guilford $50 million to overhaul the tracks in 2000 and 2001.
A federal transportation board ruled in 2003 that the train can operate safely at speeds up to 79 mph, and a federal appellate court upheld that ruling in April.
The governor’s office and Guilford will announce today that they have reached an agreement on the higher speed.
Commuters and others who use the train expressed delight Tuesday with the prospect of a quicker ride.
“Well, we’re going to be a grown-up railroad starting in August,” said Bill Lord, who lives in Cape Porpoise and uses the train to commute to Boston University, where he is a professor. “That is good news.”
Wayne Davis, who runs TrainRiders Northeast, a rail advocacy group, also was thrilled.
“That’s wonderful,” he said. “I have contemporaries . . . who say the train is lovely, but they run the other way when they see me because the perception is, it doesn’t go fast enough for them. ‘Call me when it goes 80,’ is what I get from old schoolmates.”
Seventy-nine, he said, is close enough.
“I’ll be making phone calls,” he said.
Patricia Douglas, the marketing and development manager for the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority, which runs the train, said the authority has two important goals for the Downeaster. One is to bring the travel time to 2 1/2 hours; the other is to increase the number of daily round trips from four to five.
The faster speed could help with both.
Davis, of TrainRiders, said he does not yet know where the train will speed up, but he said that the stretch through Scarborough is a good bet.
“That whole area is straight as an arrow – that was built to be a raceway,” he said.