page_title: Higher-speed rail
section_title: New York
hierarchical_section_title: Higher-speed rail / Earlier attempts / United States / New York
caption_attribution_description: English: An RTL Turboliner trainset near the Baird Road crossing in East Rochester, New York. In the early 1970s New York State put up money for high speed rail service between New York City and Buffalo. Some of those funds went to purchase these turbine trainsets, some to upgrade sections of track for 110MPH operation. These trains were built by California's Rohr Industries, based on a French design already in use on some Midwest routes.
context_page_description: Higher-speed rail, also known as high-performance rail, higher-performance rail, or almost-high-speed rail, is the jargon used to describe inter-city passenger rail services that have top speeds of more than conventional rail but are not high enough to be called high-speed rail services. The term is also used by planners to identify the incremental rail improvements to increase train speeds and reduce travel time as alternatives to larger efforts to create or expand the high-speed rail networks. Some countries use the term medium-speed rail, or semi-high speed rail instead.
  Though the definition of high speed rail varies from country to country, but usually refers to rail services operating at speeds around 200 km/h. Such services would include the Acela Express in the United States and the fastest express trains in India.
  The concept is usually views as stemming from efforts to upgrade a legacy railway line to high speed railway standards, but usually falling short on the intended speeds.
context_section_description: In 1998, New York State initiated a $185 million program in partnership with Amtrak to increase the speeds of the Empire Service to 125 mph (200 km/h) by reconstructing all seven gas-turbine Turboliner trainsets, originally built in 1976–1977, to the new RTL-III specification. The reconstructed trains, coupled with track improvements, would cut the travel time between New York City and Albany by 20 minutes. However, the project ran into many problems including issues with the trains and the unsuccessful implementation of required track improvements. New York ended the rehabilitation program in 2005 after spending $70.3 million. Fallout over the program led to litigation between New York and Amtrak; Amtrak would eventually pay New York $20 million and commit to funding $10 million in track improvements. New York auctioned off its surplus Turboliners in 2012 for $420,000.
caption: An un-rebuilt RTL Turboliner in New York in 1983.
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