The renewed push for high-speed rail comes at the same time the region is struggling to fund subway repairs and a new rail tunnel between New Jersey and Penn Station. | Michael Dwyer/AP Photo Assembly to begin a new push for high-speed rail

A decades-old dream to bring high-speed rail to New York State lives on — in the heart of the state Assembly, at least.

Twenty-five years after Gov. Mario Cuomo proposed building high-speed rail between New York and Boston, a group of Assembly members will introduce legislation on Wednesday establishing an “exploratory commission” to “study and develop Hyperloop and High Speed Rail within New York State.”


Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Queens) the bill’s chief sponsor, sees high-speed rail, not casinos and "corporate giveways," as a way to revive the upstate economy. “We need to rethink our overall economic development vision for the entire state, and that starts with some version of high-speed rail," he said.

Kim’s bill, which so far has seven co-sponsors in the Assembly, would establish a 12-person commission charged with studying and plotting the path forward for faster trains in New York.

In addition to exploring the technology that sends bullet trains speeding across Europe and Asia at more than 150 miles an hour, the commission would also study the so-called hyperloop concept. That’s the still-unproven technology championed by futurists like Elon Musk that would, they say, move passengers, or cargo, at up to 760 miles per hour in pneumatic-like tubes. President Donald Trump has reportedly expressed interest in the concept, even as it has sparked derision among some infrastructure types, who question its viability and, relatedly, its potential impact on the human body.

“Why not?” said Assemblyman James Skoufis (D-Woodbury), the bill’s chief co-sponsor. “If we’re looking at the conceptual issue of trying to move people along faster, it makes sense to look at all the options.”

The bill represents the first movement on high-speed rail since Mario Cuomo's son, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, championed the idea early in his administration.

"High speed rail could be transformative for New York — with the potential to revitalize Upstate New York’s economy with construction jobs now and permanent jobs created by the new high speed rail links to New York City, Toronto and Montreal in the future," Cuomo wrote in 2010, a few days after he was elected, in a letter to then-Transportation secretary Ray LaHood. "That is why I made high speed rail a priority during my campaign, and that is why it will continue to be a top priority for me as Governor."

Since then, the Cuomo administration has slow-walked the release of a finalized environmental study on the options for high-speed rail in New York state. The draft report was released in January 2014.

A Cuomo administration spokesman said the department is still sifting through 1,650 comments from more than 900 individuals and organizations.

A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Transportation, which would publish the state’s much-delayed final report, said it was expected this spring.

All of which doesn’t strike Kim and his colleagues as particularly impressive.

“We are just so far behind the eight ball when it comes to mass transit and moving people,” Skoufis said. “It’s not improving, and there’s no horizon to look toward improvement.“

The renewed push for high-speed rail comes at the same time the region is struggling to fund subway repairs and a new rail tunnel between New Jersey and Penn Station. It also comes as other regions around the country are exploring high-speed rail, and, in the case of California, building it (at great expense).

Skoufis said it was important to learn from California's experience.

For his part, Kim said that there is money to be found for this sort of thing, were politicians to find the political will.

“We just gave away $7.6 billion to Exelon, an out-of-state energy company,” he said, referring to a debated estimate for the state’s plan to subsidize upstate nuclear plants. “The past three or four governors have campaigned on this promise, going back to Governor [Mario] Cuomo, and I think it’s about time we take it seriously.”

Asked for comment, Cuomo spokesman Peter Ajemian said, "We’ll look at the legislation when it becomes available."