Major Cities: New York City, Albany, Buffalo

Overview: As designated in 1998, the Empire Corridor extends 462 miles from New York City through the Hudson Valley to Albany/Rensselaer and west across the spine of New York to Buffalo. Since its 1998 designation, the FHWA and FRA have jointly allocated $3.4 million for grade crossing improvements on this corridor, primarily on the Hudson Line between New York and Albany. In addition, the State has funded infrastructure improvements on the Hudson Line, enabling passenger trains to operate at speeds up to 110 mph over portions of this 141-mile segment of the corridor.

Status: More recently, in 2005, the New York State Senate established a High-Speed Rail Task Force to make recommendations to continue the development of HSR throughout the State. Specifically, a major study of the Hudson Line between New York City and Albany recently analyzed the freight and passenger operations on this corridor through 2020. This study identified necessary infrastructure improvements and estimated the cost of those improvements, including those required to increase passenger train speeds up to 125 mph. The State has conducted discussions with Metro North, CSX, and others regarding implementation of this work. An update to the State’s five year multi-modal program is under review, which will define a set of capital needs to complete these improvements. As a follow-on effort, the State extended this analysis from Albany to Buffalo with a study to develop an Empire Corridor West Railroad Transportation plan.

Empire Corridor Contacts
Organization	Personal Contact	Topics
New York State Dept of Transportation 1220 Washington Avenue  Albany, NY 12232-0506 www.dot.state.ny.us/ fedd/passrail.html	Raymond F. Hessinger Acting Bureau Directro Office of Engineering Design Division  50 Wolf Road, POD 32 Albany, NY 12232 Tel: 518-457-7331 Fax: 518-485-5257	High speed rail implementation