Getting up here without a car. Take Amtrak's Vermonter from New York to White River Junction VT. Amtrak departs NYC and 11 AM and arrives in White River at 6:45 PM, (sometimes). That's 263 miles in 7 3/4 hours or 34 mph. Speedy.
By contrast, the bus, with a change at Hartford, makes it in 7 hours, (37 mph) and you can drive it in 4 1/2 hours (58 mph).
Why so slow? Old and weary track. The rail line up the Connecticut River was laid in the 1830's and has been allowed to quietly rot since the 1970's. The ties are so rotten that spikes can be pulled out by hand, it's bumpy, the rail joiners are loose, and you can see the track flex under the weight of the train. So they don't run it very fast. The trainset is all modern stuff that could do 100 mph on good track.
It wouldn't take all that much to fix the track up enough to allow 60 mph schedules, even with stops at Stamford, Bridgeport, Hartford, and a few other places. Let's see, 263 miles by $500,000 a mile, is $130 million, a mere pittance compared to the $787 billion porkulus.
In short, it's not Euro style 200 mph rail service that we need, it's plain old 1920's style 60 mph rail service. The Vermonter runs pretty full, they demand reservations in advance. If it was faster, more people would ride it.
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