(The Associated Press circulated the following article by Marc Levy on September 12.)
HARRISBURG, Pa. — High-speed electric trains will begin running between Philadelphia and Harrisburg next month, Gov. Ed Rendell and Amtrak officials announced Tuesday.
Traveling at peak speeds of 110 miles per hour, the trains will be Amtrak’s swiftest outside of the Acela service between Washington, D.C., and Boston.
Service begins Oct. 30, the officials said.
Amtrak said travel time for express trips between Harrisburg and Philadelphia on the trains will shorten to 90 minutes from approximately two hours.
For trains that make local stops on the line, travel times will be cut to 105 minutes.
The upgrade comes after Amtrak experienced a 14 percent increase in ridership along its Keystone Corridor, which runs from New York to Philadelphia to Harrisburg.
The higher-speed trains will make three daily round trips Monday through Friday, plus one each on Saturday and Sunday.
Those trips will be added to the slower diesel trains that currently make 67 round trips a week.
The trains also will travel between Philadelphia and New York, but that part of the Keystone Corridor already has the Acela trains, which travel at speeds up to 125 mph.
The upgrade follows a two-year, $145 million project to refurbish rails, track beds, signals and rail cars on the line. Pennsylvania, Amtrak and the Federal Transit Administration split the cost.
The improvements replaced 70-year-old equipment on the line, which once was part of the Pennsylvania Railroad and has had passenger trains running on it since 1834.