Western Mass. Amtrak Expansions Are Flush With Funding, But New Routes Won’t Debut ‘Til 2030s

Years of work remain before new Amtrak routes start rolling through Springfield to connect Boston, Albany, and New Haven.

By Christian MilNeil

7:48 AM EDT on May 14, 2025

An Amtrak Lake Shore Limited train passes through Chester, Mass. Photo by Benjamin Turon, licensed under the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license.

In the past two years, Massachusetts has won a string of large federal infrastructure and planning grants to finance its "compass rail" vision for new Amtrak routes and faster trains through western Massachusetts.

But years of work still remain to be done before new trains start rolling through Springfield to connect Boston, Albany, and New Haven.

A map of Massachusetts with a cross of rail lines representing north-south Amtrak routes through the CT River Valley and east-west routes from Albany to Boston. The cross meets in Springfield. An icon in the lower right describes the vision as "Compass Rail: passenger rail for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts" — A schematic map of existing and proposed Amtrak services in western Massachusetts. New proposed services include the red line, an inland route from New Haven, CT to Boston, via Springfield, and the blue line, a new Boston-Albany route. Courtesy of MassDOT.

Last week, MassDOT officials confirmed that most of the necessary infrastructure projects for increased passenger rail service are still very early in their planning and design phases.

And that means that new Amtrak routes won't start running until the early 2030s.

"Just because you announce a grant doesn't mean they immediately go out and get to work," says Ben Heckscher, co-founder of the Trains In the Valley passenger rail advocacy group. "What was a lot of excitement turned into sort of a slog of planning, and design, and lots of work to get this stuff going."

There's also been some concern that Washington's newly hostile attitude toward Biden-era infrastructure projects could slow the timeline even further.

But last week, Trump's Department of Transportation allayed those concerns by awarding another $3.6 million grant to MassDOT to advance its planning for a new Boston-to-Albany Amtrak route.

Also of note: Trump's nominee to run the Federal Railroad Administration, David Fink, used to run the defunct Pan Am Railroad, which operated freight trains in northern New England and owned the "northern tier" rail route in Massachusetts until the company's 2022 sale to CSX.

Planning to plan the Boston and Albany route

The east-west spine of the state's "compass rail" plan would be a new Amtrak route between Albany (a metropolitan area of 1.2 million people whose downtown is just 22 miles away from the Massachusetts border), Springfield, Worcester, and Boston.

Currently, Amtrak connects these cities with a single daily round trip on the Lake Shore Limited route, which runs between Boston and Chicago.

The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, established a new Corridor ID program to help states and Amtrak plan new intercity passenger rail connections, like the proposed Boston-Albany corridor.

In December 2023, MassDOT won a $500,000 Federal Railroad Administration grant to begin that Corridor ID process for a new Boston-Albany train.

The key product from the Corridor ID program will be a "service development plan," a business plan that outlines proposed service frequencies, necessary infrastructure improvements, and an implementation schedule.

But that $500,000 grant MassDOT received in 2023 isn't paying for the service development plan; it's for planning the plan, by "establishing a scope, schedule, and budget."

The next step – writing the actual service development plan – hasn't started yet, and it will take two more years, a MassDOT official told StreetsblogMASS.

There is some good news on that front: last week, Sec. of Transportation Sean Duffy announced that the Trump administration would award another $3.6 million grant to MassDOT to begin that two-year process.

MassDOT officials told StreetsblogMASS that "there will be public engagement when the Service Development Plan is underway."

Faster tracks for the Inland Route

A second component of the state's Compass Rail plan is a new "Inland Route" from Boston to New Haven, via Worcester and Springfield.

MassDOT officials told StreetsblogMASS that "the first new passenger rail trips between Springfield and Boston will be Inland Route trips," in the early 2030s.

Before that happens, MassDOT and CSX, the privately-owned railroad that owns the tracks, need to upgrade the tracks and remove bottlenecks between Worcester and Springfield.

In 2023, the Biden administration awarded a $108 million grant for track upgrades to support increased service on the inland route.

Currently, roughly 10 freight trains and two daily Lake Shore Limited Amtrak trains (one in each direction) share a single track on 44 of the 54 miles of railroad between Worcester and Springfield.

A map of the rail line from Springfield (lower left) to Worcester (middle right) highlighting various segments targeted for upgrades labelled "project components". — A map of proposed track improvements between Springfield and Worcester from MassDOT's 2023 grant application. Courtesy of MassDOT.

According to the agency's 2022 grant application, the proposed project would add new passing tracks so that more trains can use the route at the same time, and also upgrade tracks and signals to allow passenger trains to run at speeds up to 80 mph.

That grant was formally "obligated" in January – meaning that MassDOT has a reached a formal agreement with Washington to receive the funds and begin work.

But a MassDOT spokesperson told StreetsblogMASS that the first stage, for the project's design, is still not yet under contract.

Springfield station upgrades

A final key component for Compass Rail is a proposed track reconfiguration project for the area around Springfield Union Station, which would become a considerable new hub at the junction of several existing and proposed new Amtrak routes.

Springfield Union Station already serves 12 daily round trips on the CTRail Hartford Line to New Haven, two round trips on the Northeast Regional to Washington D.C., plus one daily stop in each direction for both the Lake Shore Limited and the Amtrak Vermonter.

Several people walk by the entrance to an old stone building with a broad stone arch and a cantilevered metal canopy over the doors. In the foreground a middle-aged man rides a bike on the street. — Springfield Union Station. Photo courtesy of the Springfield Redevelopment Authority.

MassDOT's proposed Springfield Area Track Reconfiguration Project would upgrade station platforms and build new crossovers and layover tracks to accommodate up up to eight additional daily round-trips through Springfield on the proposed Inland and Boston-Albany routes.

This project has won two significant federal grants: a $1.75 million award for preliminary engineering and environmental permitting, from 2023, and an additional $36.8 million grant awarded in 2024, to finish the final design.

But a MassDOT spokesperson confirmed that "currently, there are no dedicated construction funds" to actually build the proposed track and station upgrades.