(The following story by Tobin A. Coleman appeared on the Stamford Advocate website on March 2.)
HARTFORD, Conn. — A deal announced yesterday would assure funding of $60 million for up to 2,000 new commuter rail car seats and locomotives for Metro-North’s New Haven Line.
The agreement, struck by Democratic Speaker of the House Speaker Moira Lyons and Republican Gov. John Rowland, could speed up delivery of new rail cars by a year or more. They could arrive in 18 to 24 months, officials said.
The existing fleet is 30 years old — years past its normal life span — and as much as a third of the cars at a time this winter were sidelined by bad weather.
Republican and Democratic legislators hailed the move as a good but incremental first step toward filling the rail line’s need for 400 new cars. The deal would allow the state to buy 20 new rail cars and one or two locomotives.
“For the folks who are riding the rails, this is a major plus for them and not an easy thing to have succeeded in doing,” Lyons said in a telephone interview. “We needed new cars and . . . it would take four years to get them, which everyone realized is ridiculous. We had to find a way to do it ASAP and have a way to achieve that.”
The agreement includes $25 million in new state bonding to be backed by the state’s Transportation Fund, a separate part of the state budget paid for by the gasoline tax that this year is estimated to be $923 million.
A previously allocated $35 million would come from the special traffic mitigation fund authored and pushed through the Legislature by Lyons in August. That fund, paid for by increased Department of Motor Vehicle fees, set money aside to pay for specific Transportation Strategy Board projects to alleviate traffic congestion.
The No. 1 project slated for southwestern Connecticut under that special fund is the purchase of new rail cars for the New Haven Line.
The agreement includes an additional $14 million to pay for additional transportation projects around the state.
The Transportation Strategy Board had allocated $49 million in the special fund for new rail cars, but the actual price tag is at least $60 million. The $49 million was not to have been available for at least another year as revenues built the fund up. The agreement makes the money available as soon as legislation is passed, as early as this month.
“Before we were basically constrained in that we couldn’t start the process until we had the money in hand,” said Harry Harris, public transportation bureau chief of the state Department of Transportation, in an interview. “That would take at least two years. Now we can start the process immediately.”
The need for the cars became acutely apparent this winter when snowfall and record low temperatures put as many as 100 of the 300-car New Haven Line fleet out of commission for repairs. Trains were delayed, seats were few and many commuters were stranded waiting on platforms in the cold.
“Metro-North explained they were doing the best they could with a 30-year-old fleet that was expected to last 25 years, 18 service bays, and cars remaining out of commission for days, not hours,” James Cameron, co-chairman of the Connecticut Rail Commuter Council, told the state Transportation Committee yesterday. “Commuters are angry, they are overcharged, they are getting lousy service and I fear they are starting to abandon the trains and get back in their cars and contribute to the worst traffic conditions.”
In a statement, Rowland said: “The events of this winter have clearly demonstrated the need to accelerate the purchase of this equipment.”
The cars are just the first installment of replacing the entire fleet. Rowland yesterday also asked for a report by the DOT and Secretary of Policy and Management Marc Ryan within 60 days to outline a plan to buy the 400 cars that the Transportation Strategy Board estimates are needed over the next several years to meet ridership demand.
“We must replace the entire 300-car rail fleet and the governor has directed Marc Ryan to come up with a plan to do that,” said state Sen. William Nickerson, a Republican who represents Greenwich and parts of Stamford and New Canaan. “I’m very pleased that the governor has stepped in and recognized that the ancient, fragile fleet needs our immediate attention.”
State Sen. Andrew McDonald, D-Stamford, said the effort “needs to be sustained over an extended period of time if we’re going to improve our mass transit mess.”
Westport First Selectwoman Diane Farrell, who heads the lower Fairfield County regional agency of municipal chief elected officials that oversees transportation issues, said “this is the first piece of $1.5 billion” needed to replace the rail fleet and build the necessary facilities to maintain it.
Harris said the DOT is looking at three options to get the cars on line as soon as possible: Seeking out compatible surplus equipment from other U.S. commuter railroads; looking for other rail lines across the country that might have compatible equipment already on order or being manufactured and “piggybacking” on the contract; and designing and ordering the cars brand new.
Harris said the variables under all three scenarios vary so widely he could not give a cost per car, but expects the $60 million would cover the expense.