New York Is More Than Just NYC: The Empire Corridor Plan

New York dominates rail conversations in the country, yet the most realistic statewide upgrade might be hiding in plain sight. We’re talking about the Empire Corridor and a plan that could make intercity passenger rail in upstate New York faster, more frequent, and far more reliable without needing a full greenfield high-speed rail build.

We start with what’s already running: Amtrak’s Empire Service, Maple Leaf, Lake Shore Limited, Adirondack, and Ethan Allen Express, plus the surprisingly strong frequency between New York City and Albany. Then we look at what ridership says about demand today, why schedule changes and reliability problems hit numbers hard, and why the Albany to Niagara Falls corridor has a much bigger audience than most people assume. Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany, and the Niagara Falls tourism draw add up to a corridor where highway traffic is constant and winter driving can be punishing.

If you care about Amtrak, rail infrastructure, or making upstate New York feel closer to New York City, you’ll come away with a clear picture of what’s possible and what would need to happen next. Subscribe, share this with a friend who drives the Thruway, and leave a review with your take on whether this is the right rail bet for New York.

Transcript

Why New York Rail Gets Ignored

SPEAKER_00 0:18

We so often hear and talk about really exciting rail projects like California High Speed Rail or Bright Line West, or so many of the different proposals we've seen over the years for the Texas Triangle and even potential expansion of Bright Line in Florida down to Tampa. But for some reason, I feel like New York State always flies under the radar.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Yeah, and a big reason for that's probably because New York City takes all of the headlines, but there are at least three other metros outside of New York City with around one million people and several others in between. Why don't we ever hear about really ambitious rail projects to connect the rest of these population centers in the Empire State?

SPEAKER_00 1:01

So this week we're gonna dive exactly into that. Uh, this plan I feel like has seemingly snuck under the radar, at least for me. I grew up in upstate New York in Rochester, and this was kind of my first time looking into this. This isn't a brand new plan, but I'm sure it will be new to a lot of you. So uh excited to dive into this plan, which could, in my opinion, realistically bring fast, frequent rail service connecting New York City all the way up to Buffalo, uh, connecting Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, uh, and other places in between. So uh without

What Amtrak Runs Today

SPEAKER_00 1:35

further ado, let's dive into first what already exists for current rail service in New York State.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

As all of you know, there is a lot of rail service connecting New York City to many other places. So we are gonna focus on some existing service that exists in New York State that is really separate from the Northeast Corridor. And we're gonna start with New York City to Buffalo and beyond. The first route that we're gonna highlight here is the Empire service. This service runs from New York City, Albany, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, and Niagara Falls with two daily full round trips across that entire line. There are also eight round trips between New York City and Albany, so in total, 10 round trips, which is a lot for US standards. There's also the Maple Leaf service, which is similar to the Empire service but extends all the way to Toronto with one daily round trip. And then there's also the Lakeshore Limited, uh, again, similar as the Empire Corridor, but goes from Buffalo to Cleveland, Toledo, and on to Chicago. This also has an interesting spur from Albany where the train can sort of split in half, and one half continues on to Boston while the other half continues to New York City. That service includes one full daily round trip, which brings the total number of daily round trips between Buffalo to Albany to New York to about four per day when you combine all of those routes together.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

And in addition to those, we also kind of in the the second section here of just routes that cover the New York City to Albany section. Um, these trains generally continue on elsewhere as well. You've got the Adirondack, uh, which goes from New York City through Albany to Saratoga, Plattsburgh and ultimately ending up in Montreal, which sees one daily round trip, as well as the Ethan Allen Express, which goes from New York City to Albany, Saratoga, Rutland, and ultimately ends in Burlington, Vermont. Um, and that also has one daily round trip, which means the total number of trains, when you kind of add the ones that Chris mentioned and the ones that I mentioned, that cover the section between Albany and New York City is actually 14 round trips per day, which uh by US standards is not half bad.

East River Tunnel Service Drama

SPEAKER_00 4:05

Makes a lot of sense when we're talking about connecting uh to New York City here. There was a bit of drama last year into the beginning of this year as well. Uh, there is some construction work going on in the East River Tunnel for trains that are entering into New York City. And Amtrak, in response to that construction work, uh was lowering the amount of trains per week that would make this journey between Albany and New York City. Uh commuters were very upset uh seeing that their options were going to be limited. Um, Kathy Hokel was upset. Uh Zaren Mamdani was upset. People were like, okay, we need to figure out a way to do this. Uh briefly, there was a plan for Metro North to run trains from New York City all the way up to Albany, which I'm not sure that that's ever happened before. If it has, it's it was a long time ago uh to try to bridge the gap for commuters. Um, and once that proposal was put out there, Amtrak kind of said, you know what, never mind, we can we can make it happen, uh, and brought their service levels back up. So uh there was a brief period recently where they were not seeing 14

Ridership Numbers And What They Mean

SPEAKER_00 5:10

trains a day. Uh, they should now be seeing that again.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

So, how is ridership on these existing corridors? The Empire South service currently has about 1.35 million annual riders, and that ridership has remained a little flat despite adjusted schedules and less trains. We also have the Maple Leaf Empire West route with 464,000 annual riders. There has been an 8% decline in that ridership, largely due to uh adjusted schedules. We also have the Lakeshore Limited with around 383,000 annual riders, also in a slight decline, about 4%. Uh, there was a major sinkhole which disrupted train service for quite a while, so that definitely did not help the numbers. We also have the Ethan Allen at around 85,000 annual riders and the Adirondack with 84,000 riders. And this one is actually a good story to tell. It has gone up by about 20% since 2024. And if you are interested in Amtrak ridership in general, we have done a couple episodes where we have talked about rising Amtrak numbers. You can go back and look at some of our recent episodes on YouTube to find that. In total, with all of these routes together, it's around 2.5 million annual riders.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

Yeah, which I mean, 2.5 million annual riders is significant for sure. Uh I as we were getting ready to record this, I just asked Chris, it was like, oh, just for thinking through some of it. I mean, in the the Bright Line corridor in Florida, uh, they're seeing uh roughly three million riders annually right now. So uh happy to see two and a half million

Upstate Demand And Winter Driving Reality

SPEAKER_00 6:55

here, especially considering Brightline is running way more trains, it it seems like way more consistently uh throughout the corridors, or at least it's close. Um but but it feels like uh those trains are running uh at a at a faster clip. So um good to compare those a little bit. But taking a look at the whole region though, to me it makes sense. Again, I grew up in upstate New York, and I I feel like people forget that there are big population centers in upstate New York outside of New York City. It's just like it totally over. Anytime I like meet someone, like, oh, where are you from? It's like New York, but no, like I don't live in New York City. Like, I'm not I'm not from New York City. I grew up like five hours, six hours away from New York City.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

Um so you were closer to being a resident of Canada than you were to New York. Yeah, basically. For the New York.

SPEAKER_00 7:43

I mean, uh a story for another day, but my dad lived in Toronto for a couple years, so I did go back and forth uh around Lake Ontario quite a bit. But um starting at the the end of the line here, uh we've got Niagara Falls, which population-wise not huge, only 50,000 people. However, you have over 20 million annual visitors to Niagara Falls. Uh, that is a huge draw for folks to go check that out. Um, you've got the city of Buffalo, uh 1.16 million metro population, Rochester with 1.05 metro population, Syracuse at 660,000, Utica at 286,000, and lastly, Albany, just shy of a million uh metro area population. When you add all those together, you get roughly 4.1 million people just in this stretch from Niagara Falls to Albany. Um, you've also got major universities in Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse. I mentioned the huge tourism draws in Niagara Falls. Um, all of these places could not only be so much better connected to New York City, but also better connected to each other. Because right now, I mean, just anecdotally from growing up in Rochester, the amount of people who went to school in Buffalo or in Syracuse or in Albany or have family in the different cities going back and forth, or are going back and forth to Bill's games or whatever it may be. I mean, there is a ton of traffic connecting between these cities. The New York State throughway is always jammed going between these areas, and having more options makes so much sense. Especially, I think, too, in the wintertime. I mean, driving in this area in the wintertime is almost always a nightmare. You've got constant lake effect snow. The roads are always just a little bit slick. I always used to joke that like in Rochester, it would always snow enough that every single time that I got into my car in the wintertime, I had to like wipe my my like clean my car off again. Just just enough that it's like gotta pull out the snow brush again, gotta scrape the windshield, which is so frustrating and dangerous, and providing alternatives like rail for this four plus million people would be much deserved for the area.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

Yeah, I absolutely agree with you. Uh, I have not been I was not raised in a place with a lot of snow, uh having grown up on the Gulf Coast, so I cannot relate to having to brush off my car every time, but I can understand that being annoyance that you could avoid with a train.

The Empire Corridor Upgrade Plan

SPEAKER_01 10:18

So, what is being proposed to improve the connectivity between all of these population centers? This comes in the form of the Empire Corridor Service Development Plan. Currently, rail service in much of the state is operated on tracks that are owned by the freight operator CSX. CSX trains are long, they're slow, and they travel on unreliable schedules, which is something that we see pretty often when we're talking about expanded rail service in the US. Freight operators can be difficult to get around. And Amtrak is at the mercy of these freight trains. Several proposals were put out there, but ultimately the one that went out would essentially create an express track which runs along the freight corridor.

SPEAKER_00 11:05

Yeah, and the corridor is already double tracked for the vast majority of the line. Uh, and this would add a third track and sometimes a fourth track along the existing corridor in that exact same right-of-way, running right alongside the CSX tracks. And the idea there is that it could be done more affordably than trying to acquire new right-of-way to do something entirely different along the whole thing, uh, such as we've seen in California with the California High Speed Rail Project. Um, and for the same reason, it would also be able to be built faster. Um, you'd have scenarios where the trains could still mix in on the freight lines when necessary. Um, but once the scheduling and everything gets sorted out, they could run going much faster at higher speeds uh on the express tracks because they're not needing to worry about the freight traffic uh and all of the issues that come with it. Um, and it would also really improve the reliability because right now, uh on-time performance in this area uh can be a struggle with Amtrak relying on CSX uh to stay on schedule.

SPEAKER_01 12:11

Yeah. So how much development are we talking about that would be needed to run along this corridor? Well, right now they're estimating 283 miles of third track to be built on the Empire West segment, as well as 39 miles of fourth track also on the Empire West segment. So again, we mentioned third and fourth tracking here. The Niagara branch would require some double track work as well. Uh, there would need to be a maintenance facility to be built in Niagara, and additional track and signaling would work along the Hudson line. So quite a bit of development, but really not, I guess, as much as you would think would be needed to improve this uh service.

SPEAKER_00 12:55

Totally. And what a lot of people I think forget, and I I didn't know this until I I rode, I I forget exactly which, well, it must have been the Empire service, I guess, uh, down to to New York City. But the stretch between Albany and New York City, there are already stretches where Amtrak can get up to 110 miles per hour. Uh, they have tracks in that section that uh I don't think that they own them, but they like lease them from CSX and they have like they're they're not running freight trains on them. So they're able to run the Amtrak trains up to 110 miles an hour. Um with this proposal, these express tracks uh that they would be building, the third and fourth track, uh, they'd be aiming for between 90 and 110 miles per hour uh to be an option. Obviously, like where feasible, right? Different sections of the right-of-way get a little bit windier, but there would be quite a few sections here where 90 miles an hour or even 110 miles per hour uh would be feasible, which would really have an impact uh on the travel times. Um and and the travel time impact too doesn't just come from the increased speed. It really does come from the the reliability and the ability for the passenger trains to get off of those freight tracks and be less reliant on if CSX is is in

Faster Trips And A Germany Comparison

SPEAKER_00 14:10

the area or not.

SPEAKER_01 14:11

So with these extra tracks and the development work that'll go into this, we will expect to see travel times improve. Some examples here uh New York City to Albany. The current service is about two hours and 25 minutes. The future express service should be at about two hours. So a nice 25 minute improvement there.

SPEAKER_00 14:31

Uh moving a little bit further, not quite the full thing yet, but New York City to Rochester, where I grew up. Uh, the existing service today is six hours and fifty-five minutes, uh, but a future express service could be five hours and forty minutes. So saving uh about an hour and fifteen minutes there.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

And a very impressive number from New York City to Niagara Falls. The current uh time is about nine hours and ten minutes, and with these improvements, it could get as fast as seven hours and fifteen minutes. So that is a huge improvement for anybody who's trying to go the full length of the state.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

Yeah, and I mean I just I I think about you know who who would be riding this sort of thing. And I think if I was someone visiting the United States from another country and I'm going to New York City, and I learn that Niagara Falls, which is this like iconic thing that like as someone in the United States, I'm not thinking about like going to Niagara Falls all the time, right? But like if you're coming to visit, it's like, oh, Niagara Falls is like a train ride away, and it's like, sure, it's it's gonna be like a whole day, you're gonna have to go and spend a night or something. But I really do think that you would get some people doing that entire journey up there. I think this opens up the opportunity too for so much like business travel back and forth between these places with more reliable schedules than existed before. And this isn't even taking into account the the ability for folks to commute between Buffalo and Syracuse or Albany and Rochester going back and forth uh along the corridors as well. So um, yeah, love to see that it's like, I mean, you're shaving two hours off uh the full journey. Um, and even, you know, in the in the middle points there for for cities like Rochester and Syracuse, uh, still seeing over an hour of travel time improvement is a big deal. Uh, for those of you who don't know this, I'm living in Germany at the moment, and I wanted to get a grasp of how this would compare to the rail network here for the distance. So I did one of those uh like comparing the size geographically of New York State and I dragged it over Germany, and this would be like the equivalent of traveling by train from Cologne uh to Munich. Um I will say that the Cologne to Munich route, the the the train line is a bit more direct. It doesn't have to do quite as much of like an L shape as you have in the the New York uh situation here. And right now that journey is about four hours and 25 minutes on Deutsche Bahn, so uh moves a bit faster if everything is running on time. Um but the reason I wanted to bring that up as well is Germany, I feel like, has developed their rail network in a similar way that is kind of being proposed in this New York situation. Not exactly, but in Germany, the high-speed trains, the the ICE trains, don't always operate on their own tracks. It is not like in Japan where it's like you've got the Shinkansen trains that like there are not other trains on those tracks. In Germany, you can be on an ICE train and you can get stuck behind a regional train in some areas. So you could get stuck behind a freight train in certain areas, although the freight trains are much smaller here. Um, what Germany has done as is where they can, they have been building dedicated high-speed sections. So you'll be on an ICE train, you might be in mixed train traffic, and then you'll veer off onto the high-speed tracks, you'll go fast for a while. So that four-hour and 25-minute number almost definitely has gone down over the years as Germany has added more and more of these high-speed sections. So you could imagine in New York, sure, right now it's gonna be roughly seven hours to get from Niagara Falls to New York City, but in time, they could slowly acquire section by section by section and slowly chip away at that time if the political will and the

Cost, Funding Path, And Tradeoffs

SPEAKER_00 18:15

ridership is there to be able to make it happen. So um, with that though, I think it's time to talk a bit about price tag.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

Yeah, I was just thinking we wouldn't be transit tangents if we weren't also talking about the cost of transit because we spend a lot of time on this channel talking about finances of projects. Right now, the price tag for this is estimated to be between ten and eleven billion dollars. So for grand projects in the US, that 10 to 11 billion, especially for the distance this would be going, to me doesn't seem outrageous, especially when you compare it to projects within cities like Austin, which are seven billion dollars for just a transit system, eight billion dollars for a transit system.

SPEAKER_00 18:56

I knew that was coming, but yeah, I I it is um yeah, it feels it feels reasonable, and I'm gonna go a little out of order here, but uh just to give some context. I mean, this is big enough that like New York State likely would not be able to do this on their own. They would require federal funding to make this happen, and the the steps to be able to make that happen is New York State DOT would need to get organized behind this. There already has been uh an environmental impact statement done on this, so like that is a huge hurdle already complete. Um, this basically just needs uh the DOT to get organized, and the state needs to commit to spending roughly 20% uh put put to putting 20% down on this to be able to go out and try to get that federal money to make it happen. So we'll we'll ultimately see. Uh, I I hope something like this happens. I mean, uh it would be amazing that they're they're talking right now about aiming for roughly seven to ten daily round trips for cities west of Albany. You'd have even more than the current 14 uh for Albany down.

SPEAKER_01 20:00

With these extra round trips, we're also looking at adding roughly 1 million annual riders to the corridor. Uh, so definitely worth the investment here. There were also additional alternatives that were considered for this, including a 125 mile per hour consistent speed route for the vast majority of the alignment. However, it would have required a lot of eminent domain and extra costs, uh, which really just weren't going to be feasible, and we would have seen a price tag much, much higher than this 10 to 11 billion. It was the highest projected ridership though, uh, with nearly 4.5 million annual riders projected by 2035. So we would have loved to have seen that happen, but obviously there are definitely financial constraints.

SPEAKER_00 20:47

Like in this case, I'm glad to see that they have proposed doing this kind of express track option. And again, I think in the future you can start to chip away at making it faster when the the when the money is there, basically. Um, and if it's not, you at least already have a better service that has shaved travel times down by upwards of two hours for folks along the corridor, which again, that's huge. Like that that's a huge amount of money. So um ultimately we will see what happens. I mean, it it really would require, like, like Kathy Hokel, who was our former transit villain, who has has really come around on a lot of things. Uh it would need someone like Kathy Hokel to decide, hey, I want to make this a priority um and start to push this uh forward and and get it across the finish line. So we'll see. Um, you know, her and and Zoran mom Donnie have been playing nice lately. So maybe Zoran and Kathy can get together and decide that they also want to uh to let upstate New York in on some of the fun that's happening in New York City right now uh and get them all connected up together uh uh on on this uh new higher speed empire corridor. So we'll see.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

If anybody has connections to the governor's office in New York, we would love to tell the story about Kathy Holkel's

What We Want From Listeners

SPEAKER_01 22:10

uh arc going from being the transit villain to the transit hero. So get us get us in touch if you have those connections.

SPEAKER_00 22:19

And for the context, the transit villain was when she was when she was anti-congestion pricing after being for congestion pricing, but she has since come around to be for congestion pricing yet again. So the the yeah, the Kathy Hochle arc are arc is uh is strong.

SPEAKER_01 22:33

So if you are from New York State, whether it is New York City or upstate, we don't want to forget about any of the other cities outside of New York City, uh, please let us know what you think about this episode, about this plan. Uh if we miss something, please call it out. If you think that high speed rail really should have been the option, we would also love to see your opinions about that.

SPEAKER_00 22:56

Yeah, and if you want to support the show, the best ways to do so are via our Patreon. You can also join as a member right on YouTube. Uh check out our merch store down below, uh, or even just subscribe and share an episode with a friend. That helps us all out quite a bit. Um, but with all that being said, thank you all so much for watching and enjoy the rest of your Transit 10 engine.

SPEAKER_02 23:18

Public transit verse, watch me go.