Even if yhe physical plant could support that speed, the freight railroads would still have 20mph drag freights in the way...
Railfans take caution! Holy cow, a train like that would be on you in a second if you had a moment's inattention walking across the track. That's quite a sight to see go by in the video.
I'm convinced that's why there are so many pedestrian and automobile strikes by Brightline in Florida. They put in great gates with obvious warning lights and sounds but people continue to think "freight train" and not 120 mph passenger trains that blink through.
At these speeds they definitely zip through, here in Italy (i can comfortably say Europe) there are no accessible high speed track to pedestrians. Passing stations have high fences to protect main line tracks as you can see below. And obviously NO RAILROAD CROSSINGS on high speed lines, also, ALL railroad crossings are being phased out even from branch lines.
Amtrak controls their own electrified territory and also does the dispatching for that territory. If there is a 20 MPH drag freight 'in the way' it will be Amtrak's fault.
Where there are road crossing on Brightline's routes - they are on FEC tracks and that is 79 MPH territory. Of course with most freights operating in the 40-50 MPH range there is a big difference from when it is seen to when it is HERE. A lot of S. Florida road crossings are in 'Quiet Zones', which to my way of thinking is the bigger part of the problem. People don't hear horns so they don't think about trains.
It is expensive, but grade separation is the only way to get rid of the problem. In Italy we closed something like 4000 level crossings on legacy rail lines (even old “high speed” lines built from the 1930s were built with grade separation all the way) in the last 30 years or so. Not all of these were grade separated, some were just closed, but in the end it is working, grade crossing incidents number in the single digits per year. If you do not start…..
The original Acela Express trains have been running at up to 150 mph through part of NJ for close to three years. The new Avela Liberty trains have been testing at up to 160 mph over the same tracks for about two years.
VERY impressive. It's been nearly 45 years since I last visited Princeton Jct.. I guess I shouldn't be surprised how much has changed (such as high level platforms), but I am.
Before Amtrak got control of the NEC and kicked ConRail off the railroad for through freights. Even some GG-1's.
