Promoting best practices for integrated mobility
Mass Transit magazine was invited to the launch of Amtrak’s NextGen Acela trains, where I got to experience the quieter, faster and more comfortable service that is debuting on the Northeast Corridor. With a 27% increase in passenger capacity and top speeds of 160 mph, the new trains can usher more people between Washington, D.C., and Boston in just over six hours.
These 28 Alstom-built trains are the first new premium high-speed trainsets to operate on the Northeast Corridor since Acela’s debut in 2000, highlighting just how much has changed in the 25-year span between their launch dates. Most substantially, I didn’t experience motion sickness on the new fleet thanks to the new Tiltronix active-tilt system that leveled out the carriages through significant turns. I was left feeling like I hadn’t  entered a vehicle, even riding backwards, after nearly five hours heading halfway up the Northeast Corridor.
Amtrak also prioritized the passenger experience in the interior of the vehicle, ensuring people can easily work from the train. Both the four person tables and the flip-down tray tables fit a 14-inch laptop with ease. The suspension also played a key role here as my laptop didn’t careen back and forth on the tray table. Powering up devices was easier in the NextGen cars as the outlets were located between the seats, meaning passengers didn’t have to hustle for the window seat or oddly drape a charger over a stranger.
The seating on the NextGen Acela was also much more comfortable. Moving the outlets also meant that there was more room between seats, ensuring I wasn’t rubbing elbows with my seatmate every time I went to use my trackpad. Another nice touch was the in-seat reading lights and the free 5G-enabled Wi-Fi.
A major standout of the new trains was how spaced out and accessible everything was, even with the almost 30% jump in passenger capacity. The wider walkways and doors, the more spacious, foyer-style car connectors, the wheelchair accessible seating areas and the redesigned, spacious bathrooms that allow people with disabilities to fit mobility aids in with them combine to make what works out to a few inches here and there feel like a world of difference. Besides being more comfortable for passing by fellow passengers on a walk through the cars, these upgrades could make travel less of a hassle for those passengers with disabilities.
These new cars were also quite the upgrade for passengers with visual impairments. The overhead lighting was both brighter and more diffused, the signage and iconography were larger and utilized a heavier font weight and the soft, headrest mounted reading light meant the end to reliance on an overly bright phone flashlight to use the space in the dark. Additionally, every button a passenger would have to interact with on the trains were outlined with bright LED lights, making them visible at any time of day.
Manufactured in Hornell, N.Y., with 800 employees at the project’s peak, the NextGen Acela united a country-wide chain of suppliers to deliver the 28 new trains.
The NextGen Acela manufacturing:
Passengers can locate the new NextGen Acela stock by looking for the NextGen badge when booking on the Amtrak app or website. These new trains will host business class and first-class services, though they aren’t much different in terms of the actual seats themselves with first class only gaining slightly more reclining pitch and more width due to the one-two layout of the seating. These trains will run from Washington, D.C.’s, Union Station to Boston’s South Station with stops in between and will offer similar features to the rest of the stock, like a quiet car and a café car.
Noah Kolenda is a recent graduate from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism with a master’s degree in health and science reporting. Kolenda also specialized in data journalism, harnessing the power of Open Data projects to cover green transportation in major U.S. cities. Currently, he is an associate editor for Mass Transit magazine, where he aims to fuse his skills in data reporting with his experience covering national policymaking and political money to deliver engaging, future-focused transit content.
Prior to his position with Mass Transit, Kolenda interned with multiple Washington, D.C.-based publications, where he delivered data-driven reporting on once-in-a-generation political moments, runaway corporate lobbying spending and unnoticed election records.

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