High Speed Rail in the United States Jan. 2014 | Page 14

In New York we met with a group of planners and other professionals working on the NEC Future project. Lead by a partnership between AECOM and Parsons Brinckerhoff, two project planning and management organizations, NEC Future was launched by the Federal Rail Administration in 2012 to “define, evaluate, and prioritize future investments in the Northeast Corridor”(www.necfuture.com). NEC future is essentially creating a vision for the future of the NEC, imagining what it will look like in 2040, outlining an incremental path for how to get there, and estimating the environmental and social effects of the projected development. The project’s overall goal is to improve the passenger experience along the NEC. As it is a project of early, conceptual ideas and plans, NEC Future relies heavily on surveys, research, literature reviews, and input from the public and the project’s stakeholders to help define the best possible solutions..

13 Aecom & NEC Future