Do we dare to dream of quick trips up and down the Northeast corridor? Maybe.
Imagine a superconducting Maglev train connecting East Coast cities from Baltimore up to Boston, and potentially Montreal, Canada. It might be a possibility if the proposals from Northeast Maglev come to fruition. Right now, different routes are under discussion from investors and contractors, with an initial leg connecting NYC and Washington D.C.
The Baltimore Banner reports that the initial proposal for developing the levitating, lightning-speed rail dates back to 2010, but that development got started in 2022. Right now the project is in phase one of development, but if the project goes as planned, rides connecting D.C. and Baltimore could start as early as 2025.
At this time, the big push is to connect D.C. and Baltimore, and from there, adding stops in Philadelphia, the Philadelphia airport, the Newark airport in New Jersey and finally New York City. There are no official plans yet to add stops into New England, and it’s important to note that these plans are outside of the Amtrak Northeast corridor and, at this time, would require massive changes to infrastructure such as building new tunnels. However, based on the speed of the trains in Japan, Boston to NYC is 40 minutes is a reasonable estimate on how quickly a bullet train could travel.
There’s a “dream proposal” making its way around the internet of a high speed train corridor that connects Montreal to Boston to NYC to DC to Detroit to Toronto and back to Montreal that has high speed rail enthusiasts excited, and many would love to see the energy efficient Maglev take up this challenge.
The rail line uses superconducting, energy-efficient magnets to reach speeds up to 311 mph. The push-pull effect of the opposing magnetic forces both propel the train forward and keep it hovering about 1/2 an inch above the railway. Maglev trains are in use in Japan, and are often referred to as bullet trains, so this is not new technology.
Will it happen in the near future? Probably not, but in the meantime let’s hope something gets fixed on the red line.