President Joe Biden announced on Monday $16.4 billion in new funding that will go toward 25 passenger rail projects between Boston and Washington.
His remarks were held at the Amtrak Bear Maintenance Shops, a train maintenance and repair hub, at an event in Bear, about 12 miles from Biden’s home in Wilmington.
The investments, the White House said, will help trains run faster and more reliably, and create more than 100,000 union jobs in construction in the area.
“It’s good to be home,” President Biden said. “There’s no better place to make this announcement than in my home state.”
The funding is part of the roughly $1 trillion bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act signed in November 2021, one of several legislative achievements that the president is touting as he gears up for his reelection bid. A White House statement called the investment an effort to move “the United States closer to his vision for world-class passenger rail.”
Trains also emit up to 83 percent less greenhouse gases compared to car travel, the White House noted.
The investments announced on Monday serve to rebuild tunnels and bridges, some of which are over 100 years old, and to upgrade existing tracks, power systems, signals, stations, and other infrastructure, the White House said.
In December 2022, Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor landed a $9 billion dollar grant to repair more than a dozen bridges and tunnels, including the 1.4-mile Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel, which opened in 1873.
According to the White House, the bipartisan Infrastructure Act allocates the largest investment in passenger rail since the creation of Amtrak, with a $66 billion total investment in rail across the whole of the United States.
The Northeast Corridor, running from Boston, Massachusetts, to Washington, is the most heavily traveled rail corridor in the United States. Pre-COVID-19 pandemic, the corridor carried over 800,000 passengers a day on over 2,000 trains operated by nine different railroads.
According to the Transportation Department, more than 200 million trips are taken each year by commuters and intercity passengers along the corridor.
One of the major projects is the rehabilitation and expansion of the Frederick Douglass Tunnel in Maryland. The $4.7 billion new tunnel will allow train speeds of 110 mph, up from the current 30 mph.
Meanwhile, the Gateway Hudson River Tunnel in New York and New Jersey, which suffered severe damage from Superstorm Sandy in 2012, will receive $3.8 billion.
Among the bridges replaced are the Maryland Susquehanna River Bridge, and the Connecticut River Bridge, which will be replaced by a modern, resilient, movable bridge.
A 2021 report released by the Northeast Corridor Commission called for $117 billion in investment over the next 15 years to repair and upgrade just the Northeast area.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
