homeWelcome, sign in or click here to subscribe.login
     


 

 

Environment


Subscriber content preview

May 19, 2015

U.S. rail superhighway is falling apart

  • Half of the Northeast Corridor's 1,000 bridges are a century old. In Baltimore, trains must slow down to 30 mph to pass through a narrow, leaky tunnel built in 1873.
    • By DAVID B. CARUSO and JUSTIN PRITCHARD
    Associated Press

    AP Photo/Julio Cortez [enlarge]
    A train crosses a century-old portal bridge in Kearny, New Jersey, that needs to be replaced at a cost of about $940 million. Trains carry between 150,000 and 200,000 people across the bridge each day.

    NEW YORK — The trains that link global centers of learning, finance and power on the East Coast lumber through tunnels dug just after the Civil War, and cross century-old bridges that sometimes jam when they swing open to let tugboats pass. Hundreds of miles of overhead wires that deliver power to locomotives were hung during the Great Depression.


     
    . . .


    To read this story in full login or purchase a subscription.



    
    Email or user name:
    Password:
     
    Forgot password? Click here.