Not long ago, a Columbia University grad student studying architecture and urban planning by the name of Adam Susaneck submitted The Greater Northeast Corridor train route as an academic exercise for one of his classes. Fortunately for us, his proposed train route was recently unearthed after internet users came across his hypothetical train and it’s taken the internet by storm.
What is The Greater Northeast Corridor?
The Greater Northeast Corridor is a proposed train route that would stop at seven major travel hubs circulating the Northeastern region of North America, spanning across both the U.S. and Canada.
Naturally, given that the Detroit metropolitan area houses around 4.4 million people, the D would serve as one of the core seven stops along the proposed route’s express tracks, where the remaining six of those seven core stops would include: Washington D.C., Philadelphia, New York City, Boston, Montreal, and Toronto.
These major travel hubs would serve as the core stops on the route and be part of the “express” track, whereas there would be an additional 22 stops in smaller cities along the path that would be considered smaller travel hubs along the way for the “local” track.
How fast would The Greater Northeast Corridor be?
This hypothetical train line would run on what is called “maglev” technology, which means that uses magnets to travel at immense speeds that can exceed over 350 mph! Assuming the use of this cutting-edge transportation technology, this hypothetical train route projects that you could complete the full loop, visiting all seven of those core cities listed above, in less than 5 hours!
Here’s how the travel would break down if you went south from Detroit:
- Detroit to Washington D.C. – 72 minutes
- Detroit to Philadelphia – 91 minutes
- Detroit to New York City – 111 minutes
Here’s how the travel would break down if you went North from Detroit:
- Detroit to Toronto – 34 minutes
- Detroit to Montreal – 85 minutes
- Detroit to Boston – 141 minutes
Why would the Greater Northeast Corridor train be better than flying?
For starters, traveling by plane is a much more environmentally impactful form of transportation. Planes simply pollute a lot of carbon emissions whereas these magnetically powers trains would have practically zero emissions once it’s up and running. Second, it would cut down drastically on congestion at the local airports of the Northeast Corridor, according to Adam’s projections there are over 600 daily flights between the cities that would be accessible via this proposed train route.
Now, knowing that you could get from Detroit to New York City in less than two hours on a comfy train, would you still rather have to deal with lines at the airport and deal with all of the fuss of getting to and from the airport? Exactly, you wouldn’t!
Is the Greater Northeast Corridor going to be built?
Sadly, it is highly improbable that this train route will constructed at all let alone any time soon, but that’s not going to stop us from dreaming about hopping on a quick train to Philidelphia just to get authentic cheesesteaks for lunch! For now, this is simply a very exciting idea that was brought to the world by Adam Susaneck, who gifted us the ability to wonder just how cool this train route would be.