But PennDOT has gone in another direction, applying for hundreds of millions of federal dollars for further improvement of the existing Amtrak line from Harrisburg to Philadelphia, with a goal of 125 mph service and a travel time of 1 hour and 20 minutes between the cities.
Amtrak and the state already have invested $145 million to improve that connection, a project that boosted ridership by 74 percent, according to PennDOT. It got another $25.7 million for the corridor in January's high-speed rail allocations.
PennDOT also received $750,000 for a study into improving service from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh. The study will assess what improvements are needed to increase service from the current one daily round trip to eight, and to increase the speed to 110 mph, similar to service east of Harrisburg.
Right now the 300 mile trip takes 7.5 hours on Amtrak (I understand it's not the most reliable service) and there's one trip daily.