Trevor Hughes

USA TODAY

RATON, N.M. – Amtrak plans to run new, faster trains on the busy Northeast Corridor with locomotives pulling passengers at up to 160 mph in sections.

The $2.5 billion project to be announced later this month will replace the now-20-year-old Acela Express trains with new locomotives and passenger coaches. The trains, which can run at higher speeds, will travel the busy route between Boston and Washington, D.C., and will decrease travel times slightly, Amtrak CEO Joe Boardman told USA TODAY.

The new trains will come on line three years from now, said Boardman, who is retiring next month.

“You’re going to see a well-improved Northeast Corridor service,” Boardman said Friday while aboard a train in New Mexico.

The exact locations where the trains will reach their new top speeds are undetermined; Amtrak is working with federal officials to identify those sections which can be safely upgraded, Boardman said. Portions of the electrified train route already permit speeds of up to 150 mph.

One bonus: The overhead compartments on the old trains, the subject of much grousing from riders who complain that they squeak incessantly, won't squeak on the new trains, Amtrak promises.

Amtrak has not yet signed a deal for the trains, but New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, said the trains will be built in Hornell, N.Y. by Alstom. Amtrak officials declined to comment on the specifics of the deal because it hasn’t yet been formally approved.

Amtrak had considered trying to boost the speeds above 200 mph, but concluded that would require significant track improvements and be too expensive. At high speed, passing trains can suck the windows out of one another, and the ballast rocks between the ties starts to spray like gravel. That would mean moving tracks apart and replacing traditional ties with concrete panels.

Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor is the busiest of the nation’s passenger rail network, carrying an estimated 11.7 million passengers last year. The system as a whole carried about 30.8 million passengers last year, but it’s the Northeast Corridor that’s most financially successful for the congressionally created service.

That split between the popular Northeast Corridor and Amtrak’s far-less-profitable long-haul routes in the West continues to vex Boardman as he prepares to leave after about eight years at the agency’s helm. A Republican, Boardman decries the culture of gridlock in Washington, D.C., where he said politicians seem more interested in scoring political points than actually conducting business in the national interest.

“That’s not how we built this nation,” he said. “Our nation is the United States, not a bunch of separate states.”

Amtrak plays a role in helping knit the nation together, in a way you might not expect: Every summer, thousands of Boy Scouts ride the Southwest Chief route from the Midwest and California to the tiny town of Raton, N.M., the closest stop to the historic Philmont Scout Ranch. Generations of boys and their troop leaders have made that trip, keeping cars, buses and vans off the interstates.

“Amtrak connects the nation together,” Boardman said. “It is America’s railroad.”