(The following article by Michael Levenson was posted on the Boston Globe website on April 24.)
BOSTON — Who needs the Acela Express, anyway?
Nine days after brake problems caused the suspension of Amtrak’s popular high-speed rail service between Boston, New York, and Washington, the national railroad is running Metroliner service along the same route that Amtrak said is just as fast and costs less.
Passengers lined up yesterday at South Station in Boston to catch an 8:10 a.m. Metroliner making stops in Connecticut, New York, Maryland, and Washington. A one-way ticket to New York’s Penn Station cost them $83, compared with $109 usually charged to ride Acela.
Amtrak officials said their trip to Manhattan would take three and a half hours — the same as on an Acela. A trip to Washington, would take six and three-quarters hours, nearly as fast as Acela, they said. Metroliner service debuted on Friday.
The main difference for passengers would be the age of the cars and their level of amenities: The Metroliner is a 1980s holdover, a silver relic that resembles the standard regional service trains. The Acela, which was suspended from service April 15 after cracks were found in some of its brakes, is sleeker and more modern.
”Just as long as we get there, we don’t care,” said Mary Duggan, 66, a retired L. L. Bean employee from Portland, Maine. Duggan was headed to Disneyworld with three friends and waited yesterday at a South Station cafe table with a pile of luggage and her Metroliner ticket in hand.
”It would be nice if the Acela were running, but the Metroliner works for me,” said Andy Savitz, 51, a consultant from Cambridge who headed to Stamford, Conn., for Passover. ”It’s a pretty civilized way to travel,” he said. ”I get a lot of work done on the train, and I enjoy it if I’ve got the time.”
Yesterday’s Metroliner was the only one of the day to depart from South Station. Standard regional service trains occupied the rest of the schedule. Those trains take about four hours and 20 minutes to reach New York and cost $66.
Amtrak decided to resurrect the Metroliner in an effort to accommodate some of the roughly 10,000 passengers who usually ride Acela each weekday along the Northeast corridor between Boston and Washington. Once a mainstay of Amtrak’s high-speed rail service, the Metroliner has not been used north of New York since 1986, Amtrak officials say. This is the first time the trains have been operated with single-power, faster electric locomotives, Amtrak says.
For now, the railroad plans to run Metroliners each day between Boston and Washington. Southbound trains are scheduled to leave Boston today at 11:10 a.m. and 4:10 p.m. Beginning May 2, four daily weekday Metroliner trains will replace some Acela slots between Boston and New York, Amtrak officials say. Reservations are required as of tomorrow.
Before the brake problems were discovered, Amtrak ran 11 round-trip Acela trains on weekdays between Boston and New York.
”We are going to do everything we can to satisfy our passengers, running a reliable schedule that they can count on,” Amtrak’s senior vice president of operations, William Crosbie, said in a statement. ”We are going to provide as many trains on the schedule as we can to meet demand, but no train — Acela or otherwise — is going to be put into service unless it is safe.”
Amtrak officials say they plan to return Acela to service this summer after they repair or replace approximately 300 of the trains’ 1,440 brake sets, which were found to have cracks in their spokes during a routine inspection.
And none too soon, said James P. RePass, president and chief executive officer of the National Corridors Initiative, a Rhode Island-based nonprofit that advocates rail travel. Metroliners can only keep pace with Acela trains for so long, he said.
”The old equipment is 35 years old, for goodness’ sake,” RePass said. ”You do need to get good stuff. To not buy equipment for 30, 35 years is like telling a rail system customer, you’re a second-class citizen. You get worn and torn equipment.”
Eventually, RePass said, Metroliners will wear down and break, like a classic car used for regular commutes. ”You can’t run a system on ancient equipment,” RePass said. Still, he said, ”if Acela had never been built, this would be a great service.”
If the tracks between Boston and Washington, were straighter than they are, and in better physical condition, the Acela, which can reach a top speed of almost 200 miles per hour, would easily outpace the Metroliner, which tops out at about 130 miles per hour, RePass said. An Acela cruising on modern tracks could speed from Boston to New York in under three hours, RePass said.
Yesterday, several of the passengers at South Station seemed not to care which type of train they rode, so long as they made it to their destinations on time. ”Whichever one’s convenient,” said Lila Starbuck, 18, a freshmann at Brandeis University, as she hefted her bags toward a Metroliner, destined to visit her family in New Jersey.
”That’s the only reason I’m taking this one.”