That Rutland to WRJ line would be one of the biggest developments for the state and (likely) would be a massive boon to both those cities and surrounding areas. That would be one of the few rail lines bridging either sides of the Hudson based lines (and their respective giant communities on either side of the river.)

Otherwise you have to pick your train line down in the city because they diverge from there with only bus service connecting across the Hudson. That tiny piece of track would effectively create a loop with NYC, open E<>W train travel mid way through the state + give the ability to go further into New England or Canada

I'd be ok diverting some of that Fed grant money that Burlington sops up to the Rutland area.

This is awesome, VT is surprisingly well suited for train commuting. Would be funny to see people in Brandon reactions to trains station being built 😂

After living in Japan for a period of time I would be thrilled to see Vermont enter the 21st century before the majority of the US. It's really astounding how much quality of life improves with walkable cities and public transport everywhere.

This is my proposal for where Vermont could look toward expanding its passenger rail system within the next couple decades. With a few notable exceptions, it largely utilizes existing track and right-of-ways, which could reduce costs associated with building up the network. I tried to both include connections to major cities not served by Vermont's existing network (Montreal and Boston) as well as new stations for regions poorly served by existing rail and Vermont's interstate highway system. I marked existing stations in black and new stations in color, and used OpenStreetMap!

As someone who is proponent of more passenger rail, I really want to like this idea.

There are a few issues that will need to be overcome. Unfortunately they will be very hard.

To start I actually work in the rail industry in the state. The biggest hurdle would be getting freight companies to actually go along with such a proposal. The NECR for example hosts The Vermonter from St. Albans to East Northfield. Currently the NECR does not need to implement PTC or positive train control in its locomotives. If you were to increase the frequency of passenger trains from the current two per day, PTC would need to be installed. Freight railroads are not going to want to pay to install PTC, it's expensive and can take years to implement properly.

This leads into the next point. When you add more train frequencies you have to have places to put freight trains in order to make train meets. Typically a passenger train holds the main while a freight train takes the siding. For larger freight trains this can be time consuming and actually limits where a train can go. So you can expand current railroad sidings , add new ones , or implement controlled switch sidings. All of the above cost lots of money. Which again a short line railroad like the NECR does not have the money to implement nor do I think they would want to.

I think continuing to support the expansion of The Vermonter into Montreal is still our best bet for now.

is there existing track on the Stowe line? I'm not sure the residents there are going to appreciate train noise, and they have the money to do something about it.

Good luck making this happen. This is impossible (not physically but politically and cost wise). I appreciate your enthusiasm tho.

Yes please! Going west to east in Vermont takes forever

Your Rutland to Bellows Falls line already exists - the Green Mountain Flyer. What it needs is regular, scheduled service.

Besides the other drawbacks that have already been mentioned, most notably the phenomenal cost, once you arrive at your destination, there's no usable public transportation anywhere except in Burlington and Montpelier. How are people who live more than a mile or two from the train stations in Lyndonville, Newport, Hillsboro and all the other dots on your map going to get from their houses to the train and back, especially with everything they bought in their shopping trip to Burlington? There's no buses, Uber or Lyft where I live. There is an unreliable local taxi company, which is an old geezer and his minivan, but I can drive all the way to Burlington for way less than the taxi fare between my house and the nearest train station on your map. Sorry, but if this extensive of a passenger train network to serve a state with this low of a population density was a good idea, someone would already be making a profit doing it.

Would it be feasible to connect WRJ and STJ?

NYC to Albany, Albany to Wilmington, then Moover to West Dover. I could dream.

The only way this could even be practical would be if the population went up 10 fold. Even if everyone in the state used this daily it wouldn't work, too rural and population too small.

This would cost an insane amount of money that Vermont quite literally does not have, and would in many cases be incredibly slow.

You keep using the Ethan Allen Express extension as an example of something cheap. It only achieves it's "cheap" status, by being slow, extremely infrequent, and on track that already exists, was fairly straight, and was already in fairly tolerable shape.

VT estimates it'll be another $250m just to upgrade the two existing services to FRA Class 4 track (79mph). Which does not mean the average speed of travel will be 79mph, to be clear - because that doesn't mean the many, many curves limiting speeds are all going away.

Building rail lines that have never existed through valuable property in topographically difficult terrain, will be billions of dollars. VT could vote for the highest taxes in the country and somehow acquire the highest % of federal spending in the country, it's still never going to have the money to build it, and certainly won't have the $ to maintain it.

Rebuilding lines that once existed but haven't in a long time is only very slightly more plausible (and will also piss off a lot of people who enjoy the rail trails they've often become)....and doesn't change that even in the peak of rail many of those lines were very slow.

As reminder, the historic criteria for getting people to ride a train was "is this service better than walking or riding a horse". Because that was the competition. That is not the competition today for getting people to ride a train.

Many of these routes can't even generate enough public transit demand to make a bus pencil out very well on ridership - and that's with the bus going a lot quicker than the train likely would.

I would pretty much throw the whole idea away and replace with investing every dollar VT has or can acquire into:

• Continued speed improvements on the two existing services + extension to Montreal.

• Attempt to partner with other states on extending more trains into VT for more frequencies on those lines. Extending Springfield/Valley Flyer runs to WRJ (or Burlington/MTL) or Empire Service runs Rutland/Burlington is the most obvious.

If we ever manage to hit 5x+ a day and/or actually decent travel times, maybe then you can re-examine something new. The state's plans are for Albany-Bennington-Rutland(or Burlington) as the most likely future expansion beyond MTL.

(And the state rail plan basically agrees with me, as this is more or less their listed priorities).

Transit ridership is: speed, frequency, convenience. I don't see the scatterbrained approach as going to achieve any of them.

Train station in a town of 2000? Then you… catch the city bus?

Honestly this would be so brilliant. How friggin convenient would it be to just hop on a train between towns.

Vermont retirees: "That would make a lovely bike path, it runs right past my AirBnB properties"

Got my vote!

What do you see as the most likely upgrade in local resources , to make getting around w/out one's personal vehicle feasible once at your destination?

I can see the ski slopes and major hotels/upscale bnb's/breweries running shuttles, but what about "normal" towns?

Good train platform - to residence - to attractions - to trailheads options don't exist yet on any meaningful, dependable scale - what's being discussed at the planning level?

Vermont has nowhere near the population density for any of this.

This would be great if it could compete with driving in terms of cost and time. Not sure it could do that though, but I'd be pleasantly surprised if it did.

Thank you for including Newport! <3

Yea screw you Eden you can walk. /s

It’s just missing rail lines from White River Junction to St Johnsbury, and from Brattleboro to Manchester. Both of which are feasible because of the Connecticut River valley and the West River Valley respectively.

I see you've chosen to avoid resurrecting the Thirty Six Miles Of Trouble. :)

Any reason to believe either the BF/Rut or Rut/WRJ won't also be a bit of a PITA?

And holy cats, that yellow line from Albany to Concord - we thinking tunnels outside of Wilmington?

Monorail. Monorail. Monorail.

200 billion later...

I am as pro-rail as they get, but some of these lines are just not feasible. Bennington to Brattleboro includes two very substantial mountains. I lived on VT 9 in Woodford for a while, and I can tell you trains aren't going over that mountain. And tunneling would dwarf the nearby Hoosac Tunnel which is less that five miles long and took 135 lives during construction. Getting a line through Killington would be similarly challenging.

A more practical line which is absent from your map would run from WRJ through Keene and Winchendon using an abandoned right of way (push that rail-trail to the side) where it could connect to existing MBTA rail in Fitchburg. That gets you the Montreal to Boston connection along with Rutland to Boston. (Sorry, Cape Air.)

Living in Dorset, I'd love to see passenger trains come through Manchester, but some serious infrastructure work would be needed. For example, the line runs through the middle of the r k Miles lumber yard with trucks and fork lifts crossing the line all day. Unless you want passenger trains running at 10mph you're going to need some new grade-separated crossings along the line.

I'd love to see an East-West train across NH and into Maine. Maybe Burlington-Montpelier and then following RT 302 to Portland?

Hey folks, KITTYONFYRE is absolutely right—this scheme is well intended but utterly delusional! Do you know the north-south glacial terrain in this region? Have you been around here long enuf to remember the impact on this area and the Keene Valley of New York by Tropical Storm Irene (late Aug 2011)? Do you know what happens during heavy rains along rtes 302, 25, & 2–Barre to St Jay)? RR lines along what you propose would need to be rebuilt every few years, and serviced every year, just to stay functional! It would cost the state billions to launch, and trillions over time! You are incredibly sweet & well meant to put forth a document like this, but perhaps you ought to live here for a handful of tough decades (long enuf to study VT’s history, geology, terrain, climate, weather patterns, etc., and re-think the entire plan. Did you know that VT is the only state with no billionaire residents? I love your altruistic vision. But live here for a few decades and then revise, or develop a more realistic plan. Do we have anything even close to the engineering capacity of Switzerland, Germany, Japan, or China? Probably, but they’re onto more chic & lucrative projects, not wrestling with Vermont’s issues. Do we have the workforce, and the funding to compensate them? Not now…(my dh disagrees with me adamantly, and we’re having a great debate over this tonite.) C’mon, guys…tell me that Kittyfyre & I are wrong! But only after you have tons of study & investigation on your resume.

Please bring the rail to VT. It would be a gift to so many.

Is there a petition I can sign? What kind of support do you need my dude this is absolutely incredible. Ive seen your posts before and it keeps getting better

Beyond the thoughtful ideas about rail travel in our state I am just geeking out at the beauty of a VT rail map.

I have a process that I use to draw maps with pens, if you were willing to send me some of your map data I would love to render it in multicolor pen ink. Send me a DM if your interested

If there was a state that would spearhead a passenger rail system focused on the needs of the state, it would be Vermont. If there was a state whose citizenry would be viciously opposed the development of a passenger rail system focused on the needs of the state, it would be Vermont.

The most practical you’ll see is St Albans to Montreal.

However, the East Alburg bridge stands in the way. Freight crawls over it. A new bridge is easily 15 years-out. Current steel work and the volume of wood on this years plan isn’t even keeping up with its state.

New York wouldn’t want to stop Amtrak into Whitehall, state of vermont is pitching in funds for cwr in the fair haven area to replaced some badly warn jointed (105 I think) rail.

Ok think the main thing to overcome here in terms of making such a plan viable is the private nature of most of Americas train lines. Private train lanes are never going to expand into rural vermont on their own, and the government giving them money to do it is a sure fire way to waste millions.

I could see this being viable through the public sector though. I have daydreamed about similar ideas for years; vermont is honestly just begging to have some good train lines to turn the state into a economic power punching far beyond its weight!

love from rail city Lmao ❤️

While we’re dreaming, can we add a stop in Wallingford on the way down to Manchester?

These will make great rail trails in 30 years.

Are there even enough people in Vermont to make this worth the investment…

I mean, it is a nice idea, but let's be real VT fails to keep its roads in good condition, and when it comes to development nothing of consequence ever happens or at least never completes in a reasonable amount of time. Not high enough investment in the future, too much pushback from those who just want to maintain the VT they know.

And this? This would be billions in development costs, require thousands of rights of way agreements from as many people, and require the cooperation of dozens if not 100+ town governments. The largest city in the state can't even incentivize the completion of a commercial development project on prime real estate downtown after the demolition was already completed in... going on 6 years? A municipal project of this scale would never fly, VT is beautiful and I love so much about it, but it is a bit stagnant development-wise.

This would cost an incredible amount of money to serve a small population. Not a good use of tax dollars for a state that isn’t exactly swimming in revenue

Looks more like a Ski Tram than one that functions for work commuters.

A mix of passenger & freight…

Don’t tease me :(

I would love to see the nightmare this would be in modern times if it was sim'd out in like Cities Skylines or something like it. VT looks perfect for rail for a reason, It built this state when it was the best option. My father and grandparents rode the rails for the last few decades of their use up here.

Others have pointed out some issues so i wont do more than touch on them in passing. It would def. take Elon or Bezo's kind of FU money to revitalize light/passenger rail in any effective way. It would also take a huge increase in population OR migration to make it viable $-wise. The infrastructure to move all those people doesnt stop at the railstation, they need last mile transport, hospitality services for a few hours or longer sometimes, and run-times that work for both white and blue collar workers.

TBH if starting from scratch id go underground straight from Newport to a split just north of Ben. and Brat. Id split off from that to the county seats and build out the second string infrastructure from there. Yeah.. prob looking..30B? and a whole lot of court actions,lol.

This keeps getting posted with different iterations. It’s dumb. We don’t have the population density needed to have trains. There is a reason the current amtrac trains struggle to expand service. No one uses them.

Trains need people. We don’t have that, there isn’t a viable business model where we build out a network at a cost of billions, to provide 40 people commuting from Burlington to montpelier or vice versa a rail line alternative to the FREE and often empty bus service.

I get that your grand theory is that you can reduce emissions by using a means of transit that can be fully electrified, and take cars off the road. But you would put out far more emissions building this than you would save with it.

All that said, rail is a cool way to travel. It’s just not practical

Regardless of the merits of expanding comuter rail throughout VT, and regardless of the costs of building even a portion of this network, I think such an endeavor will fail by pure virtue of the BANANA NIMBYs across VT that will, no doubt, object to and try to prevent this project in a myriad of ways.

• Noise concerns
• Safety concerns
• Environmental concerns
• Impacts on local vehicle traffic
• Taking/buying/using public or private property for creating/enlarging right-of-way
• Impacts on local wildlife

There would be no end to the opposition. It's the VT way.

Why?

I lived in Randolph for a year and would have stayed much longer if I could have reliably commuted to WRJ via train. It's such a nice little town.

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All the haters on this sub saying it won't work for whatever reason are 100% wrong. They don't know jackshit about public transportation, railroads, or the whole century plus where train travel was the main way to get around the state. Admittedly, that puts them in with around 80 or 90 percent of North American transit planners, for whom acknowledging that Asia or Europe exist, or that rail doesn't have to cost $500 million or more a mile is absolute heresy.

Middlebury to Randolph would suck. Almost as bad as driving currently

I'd label your dark blue line Springfield/Hartford/New Haven instead of NYC.

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please no on light rail...