President Joe Biden’s promise to improve the nation’s infrastructure has renewed interest in the decades-old idea of a high-speed railroad connecting New York and Boston, possibly through a 16-mile tunnel under Long Island Sound, the tidal estuary between Long Island and Connecticut.

The new North Atlantic Rail plan was developed at University of Pennsylvania planning studios. It calls for improving existing lines and building new infrastructure, including boring that tunnel, to create an electric high-speed line that would allow travel at well over 200 mph and cut the current train trip of about 3 1/2 hours between the two cities to just over 1 1/2 hours, officials said.

Amtrak’s current trains can go as fast as 150 mph but travel much slower than that on much of the current aging track.

The estimated cost of the 20-year project is over $100 billion, a figure proponents say is not outrageous, given Biden’s promise to invest $2 trillion on clean energy infrastructure. 

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