How trains connected rival port cities along the US East Coast right into a cultural and economic megalopolis

The Northeast Corridor is America's busiest railroad. Every day has its own features Carrying 800,000 passengers to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington and points in between.

The Northeast Corridor can also be a reputation for the place these trains serve: the coastal plain, which stretches from Virginia to Massachusetts, where over 17% of the country's population lives lives on lower than 2% of its land. People from the Northeast travel through the corridor and live there too.

Like “Rust Belt,” “Deep South,” “Silicon Valley,” and “Appalachia,” “Corridor” has change into shorthand for what many individuals consider the Northeast's defining characteristics: its energetic pace of life, its high average income, and its… liberal politics. In 1961, Republican Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona wished that somebody “sawed off the east coast and let it float out to sea.” In 2016, the conservative FH Buckley denigrated “lawyers, academics, trust fund babies and high-tech workers, bundled in the Acela corridor.”

As a Linguistics and literature scholarI'm excited about what words can teach us about places. My recent book “The Northeast Corridor“shows how America's most important railroad has shaped the cultural identity and national reputation of the Northeast for nearly 200 years. In my opinion, this connection between transit and territory will only strengthen new federal investments in passenger transport, more people from the northeast are interested in the trains.

Makes a terrific chain

The first American railroads were stubs—iron-clad curiosities that carried marble, granite, and coal in the course of the winter months when the canals froze over. It wasn't until 1830 that the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad opened the country's first public passenger line.

A railway craze ensued. Within a number of years, trains crisscrossed the East Coast. A brand new magazine, The Railway Journalpredicted that the railroads would at some point form a “great chain, which in our time will extend along the Atlantic coast, bringing its capitals into a rapid, constant, and mutually beneficial relationship.”

The Boston & Providence Railroad forged a link on this chain in New England. The Philadelphia & Trenton threw one other in Pennsylvania, and the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore scored a 3rd through Delaware and Maryland. Named after the cities they connected, these helped transform a set of competing ports right into a cohesive economic entity.

Despite their rapid growth, each railroad company remained its own fiefdom, burdened with its own government mandates, financial constraints, and technological limitations. A prewar train ride from Baltimore to New York would have required several transfers and two ferry rides and would have taken many of the day.

The “great chain” took modern form within the late nineteenth century, when corporate consolidations created two resourceful supertransportation corporations: the New Haven and Pennsylvania Railroads. Technological advances made it possible to construct recent bridges, dams and terminals. With the opening of 1 Tunnel under the Hudson River from New Jersey to Manhattan in New York City in 1910 and a Bridge over Hell Gate Strait Between the New York boroughs of Queens and the Bronx in 1917, trains were in a position to run uninterrupted between New England and the Chesapeake region.

Connecting an enormous city

For the people of the Northeast, the railway became a lifestyle. During his time on the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, within the Nineteen Thirties and Forties, physicist Albert Einstein enjoyed watching trains clatter through Princeton Junction.

Composer George Gershwin, traveling by train from New York to Boston, claimed: “On the train, with its steely rhythms and rattling bangs, I suddenly heard the complete structure of 'Rhapsody' – and even saw it on paper.” [in Blue]' From start to complete.”

Her fellow travelers included luminaries corresponding to Poet Marianne Moore, Jazz composer and pianist Duke Ellington And Orchestra conductor Leopold Stokowskitogether with countless peculiar drivers whose lives spanned the complete region.

In 1961 French-Ukrainian geographer Jean Gottmann called the Northeast a “recent order within the organization of inhabited space.” Gottmann noted that, unlike European nations that developed around dominant capitals such as London and Rome, the United States emerged from a “polynuclear” fusion of cities and suburbs, which he called a “megalopolis.”

The relative proximity of major cities created a “tidal flow of commuting” between them, which Gottman experienced firsthand as he rode the train between academic appointments in Baltimore, Princeton, and Manhattan.

One of Gottman's supporters, Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell, envisioned the Northeast in 1962 as “an extended metropolitan industrial complex.” A frequent traveler, Pell believed that trains played a necessary role within the region's interconnected economy.

Amtrak takes over

As railroads lost passengers to cars, buses and airplanes within the Sixties, Pell called on President John F. Kennedy to create a government agency to operate passenger trains for the general public good. He called the tracks between Boston and Washington a “passage for gigantic waves of movement along our northeast coast“ – or “corridor” for brief.

The name stuck. If Amtrak took over US intercity passenger rail transport In 1971, the preferred trains were on the Northeast Corridor – including the fashionable, if breakdown-prone Metrolinerswhich carried business class passengers between New York and Washington at speeds of over 100 miles per hour.

By 1978, the Northeast accounted for greater than half of Amtrak's ridership. The region's railroad revival convinced Congress to spend money $1.75 billion within the Eighties as a part of the Northeast Corridor Improvement Project, a multi-year project to modernize the road, renovate stations and reduce schedules.

In 2000, Amtrak introduced the Acela Express, a sleek and expensive train dubbed the first U.S. high-speed passenger rail service. Acela became synonymous with its well-heeled customers, but rarely reached its top speed of 150 miles per hour on the corridors Curvy and congested tracks.

The train still became an emblem of the Northeast. Experts called the presidential nomination contests held on the identical day in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland the “This elementary school“Conservatives railed against it.”Acela Corridor” mindsets.

Today, President Joe Biden — a longtime corridor commuter — is proposing a “second great railway revolution,” with Billions of dollars in funding to strengthen and expand the Amtrak network.

High-speed rail projects in California, Nevada And Texas, meanwhile, promise to bring world-class service to the West and South. Construction has begun on Brightline West High-speed connection from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. What these ventures will do with their regions stays unclear. But if the Northeast Corridor is any indication, recent passenger trains will redefine each working lives and the cultural perceptions of those that use them.

This article has been updated to reflect that the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey will not be affiliated with Princeton University.