ALBANY, N.Y. — New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo will announce a new effort to develop high speed rail service in his state as part of his Jan. 8 State of the State address, Cuomo announced Thursday.
In a statement, Cuomo said he will convene a panel of outside experts to “reexamine and rethink strategies to bring high speed rail to New York.” The panel of engineers will reexamine past studies and recommend a new plan for high speed service in the state.
“We’ve been told that bringing this technology to our state is too expensive, too difficult and would take too long,” Cuomo said in the statement. “That’s not an acceptable attitude for New York. When we developed our plan to repair the L Train Tunnel, the team of experts we assembled questioned every assumption and brought new creativity to a seemingly intractable problem. We not only found a way to repair the tunnel without shutting down service, we are doing it ahead of schedule. This kind of outside-the-box thinking will help us determine how we could deliver high speed rail for New York.”
Cuomo blocked original plans to stop service on New York City Transit’s L train between Brooklyn and Manhattan, after engineers recommended an alternative repair method to repair the tunnel damaged by Hurricane Sandy. [See “New York’s L Train construction project to begin April 26,” Trains News Wire, April 19, 2019]
The panel’s goal will be to find a workable way to build a high speed line along the Buffalo-Albany-New York City “Empire Corridor.” The statement notes that most of the state’s population lives near the corridor, but that current rail service averages just 51 mph, “meaning it is often the slowest method available for New Yorkers.”
