Article: Amtrak's NEC: healthy hybrid: the Western Hemisphere's busiest passenger rail route delivers a dazzling array of service unequalled by more glamorous global counterparts.(NORTHEAST CORRIDOR)

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For Amtrak's most severe critics--and even some of its most ardent backers--the Northeast Corridor serves as a convenient whipping boy for what's wrong with U.S. passenger rail policy. They fail to grasp that the NEC is a jack-of-all-trades. It may be champion of none, but it's a master at juggling complex and sometimes contradictory rail needs.

Even as Congress moved during July to bolster Amtrak's fiscal year 2009 funding, the Northeast Corridor was again maligned as too slow to merit the label "true high speed rail" by one of Amtrak's perennial critics, Pep. John Mica (R-Fla.). Not to be outdone, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), long ...

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