Amtrak's Northeast Corridor: train crash occurred on America's busiest network

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/13/amtrak-northeast-corridor-train-crash-philadelphia

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The deadly derailment of an Amtrak train in Philadelphia brought the entire Northeast Corridor train network to a halt between New York and Philadelphia.

About 11.6 million passengers traveled through the Northeast Corridor in 2014, up 3.3% from 2013, and the train that crashed, the Northeastern Regional service, is the most popular in the US, running about 22 hourly departures every day. The Northeast Corridor, which is America’s busiest railroad, has more than 2,200 trains operating on the Washington-Boston route each day.

Among the many passengers are business people, politicians and Capitol Hill press correspondents commuting back and forth between Washington DC and New York.

One notably loyal passenger on Capitol Hill has been Joe Biden, the vice-president. The Northeastern line stops at Wilmington, Delaware, a frequent destination of Biden while he was serving as US senator and needed to travel between Washington and home.

“There are a lot of rumors about how many trips I’ve taken on Amtrak,” Biden said in 2014. “It’s estimated that I’ve made roughly over 8,000 round trips: 250 miles a day, average 210 days a year, for 36 years. And the last six years since being vice-president, not nearly as much.”

Biden’s frequent train rides came to an end shortly after Barack Obama chose him as his running mate in 2008. Riding the train while campaigning back in 2008, Biden told one of the passengers: “If we get elected it will be the most train-friendly administration ever.”

The mix of passengers can be bad news for top brass, as the former NSA director Michael Hayden found out in October 2013. Tom Mattzie, a former Washington director of the political group MoveOn.org, eavesdropped on a cellphone conversation Hayden was having about national security and proceeded to live tweet it. The tweetstorm later inspired an episode on Aaron Sorkin’s Newsroom.

Amtrak remains one of the quickest ways to travel between Washington and New York. Amtrak advertises its trains as “a quicker alternative to Washington DC – New York City buses”.

Ridership has increased by roughly 50% in the past 15 years, and ridership in the Northeast Corridor stood at an all-time high in 2014, reported the National Journal, with Amtrak accounting for 77% of all rail and air travel between Washington and New York, up from 37% when it launched the Acela (high-speed service) in 2000.