When former President Joe Biden unveiled his $1.9 trillion infrastructure plan in 2021, he found the perfect place to go public: Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station rail yard.
Over the din of crackling wires and grumbling engines, the president made his case for revitalizing the country’s roads, ports, airports and rail lines.
Behind Biden sat rows of gleaming Amtrak trains. Among them was a prototype of NextGen Acela, a sleek machine engineered to deliver the fastest passenger service in American history.
In August, NextGen finally hit the rails, after years of delays.
As the author of a book on the Northeast Corridor, the rail line that connects Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, I know this new train could not have come soon enough for many seaboard riders, even though it launched at a time of diminished political will for passenger rail.
The French-designed, American-manufactured NextGen arrives years late due to mechanical defec
