(The following story by Martin J. Waters appeared on the Record-Journal website on December 28.)
MERIDEN, Conn. — Amtrak is on a roll in central Connecticut — with twice as many passengers as a year ago riding the rails that go through Wallingford and Meriden. At the state level, planners are getting ready to release a proposal for an all-out commuter train system that could cost several hundred million dollars to build.
Ridership on Amtrak along the line between Springfield, Mass., and New Haven was up 107 percent, to 31,000, in the seven months from May through November, according to Dan Stessel, an Amtrak spokesman in Washington, D.C.
Fares were reduced by up to 30 percent and five daily trains added to the schedule in late April.
The increase is credited almost completely to the local incentives. The total of Amtrak passengers traveling through New Haven for all of the railroad’s destinations was up 8 percent.
In Connecticut, the Amtrak initiative coincides with a state-level proposal to start a separate commuter rail service that would add as many as 30 weekday trains in each direction. The legislature would have to approve funding for the project in the midst of the state’s continuing budget squeeze.
The Amtrak changes are part of its national initiative to fill more seats by gaining commuting passengers to augment long-distance travelers. The railroad reported that nationwide ridership was up 12 percent in November compared to the previous year, totaling 2.1 million passengers.
Regional service with standard trains in the Washington-Boston corridor was up 15 percent. The region’s Metroliner and high-speed premium Acela services carried 10 percent more riders. The two-year-old Boston-Portland, Maine, service was up 9 percent.
For Wallingford, the increased number of Amtrak trains had a downside — two trains each day began skipping the Wallingford stop, trimming three minutes off their running times. Amtrak’s schedulers encountered a tight squeeze in fitting together the timetables for each train on the busy line, which also carries heavy freight traffic. Amtrak increased its one-way runs on the 62-mile line from 11 to 16 per day, eight in each direction.
On Nov. 24, however, Amtrak restored the Wallingford stop for one of the trains, a northbound afternoon rush-hour run from New Haven that reaches Wallingford at 5:28 p.m.
“It worked out in the end. The Amtrak people were really pretty good to deal with,” said Betsy Dyer, a Wallingford resident who commutes by Amtrak to her job in Bridgeport. She organized an informal group of passengers in a campaign to get the stop restored.
Any plan to add a new commuter service to the line will encounter the same issue, exacerbated because Amtrak tore up the second track in 1990 to save on maintenance costs. About 40 percent of the line still has the second track in several separate sections for trains to wait and pass.
Commuter proposal due soon
Meanwhile, January is the target date for release of a consultant’s report with the first detailed outline of the central Connecticut commuter rail proposal.
It’s expected to be a middle-of-the-road compromise between a $484 million maximum-build plan and an $80 million minimum-build plan. The consultant, Wilbur Smith Associates of New Haven, released those descriptions in October.
Wallingford would be the busiest suburban station on the line, with about 350 to 400 people per day boarding trains, according to estimates in the October report. An estimated 170 to 240 passengers would board in Meriden, depending on the level of service provided.
The maximum-build option was developed as a statement of an ideal rail service, but its costs are unreasonably high, according to Kari Watson, a transportation analyst with Wilbur Smith Associates.
“There are not enough people on the line to justify trains every 15 minutes. We were trying to push it to give a starting point for looking at what we could do without,” she said.
State Rep. James W. Abrams, D-Meriden, anticipates that many major parts of the maximum-build scenario will be included in the plan due for release in January.
“It won’t have all the bells and whistles, but I’m hoping it has real substance. The minimum-build type of service really isn’t worth doing. It just won’t attract the ridership,” he said. Abrams is a leading proponent of the commuter service.
Even the maximum-build option omitted an earlier proposal to provide train service to Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks by upgrading a little-used freight spur. That was dismissed as too expensive and was replaced by a proposal for shuttle buses from the Windsor Locks station.
Does the state need to spend money to make money?
A central question is whether or not to restore a double track on the entire Amtrak-owned line, estimated to cost $62 million. Commuter rail planners say the single-track line makes it impossible to run a heavy schedule of commuter trains at competitive speeds.
If a state project is approved, officials will face the issue of possible cost sharing among agencies. Amtrak, owner of the line, and the freight railroads that pay fees to it would benefit from the improvements. The national passenger service also would use other improvements from the maximum-build proposal, such as rehabilitated and new stations and high-level passenger platforms.
“As the deal is struck, we’ll look at what improvements are required . . . and then a source of funding will be identified and the roles of the partners will be identified,” Stessel said. But he stayed far away from suggesting that Amtrak is ready to contribute.
“There is precedent for there being projects that are funded by non-Amtrak sources that mainly benefit the commuter carrier,” including a recent project in New Jersey, he said.
The maximum-build option would attract about 5,000 one-way riders per day, according to the consultants. The minimum service would carry about 1,800 per day.
Ticket sales would cover about 7.5 percent of the $48 million annual operating costs of the maximum-build option, requiring a state subsidy of $45 million per year, according to the consultants. Fares would pay 12 percent of the operating costs for the minimum-build option, leaving the state to subsidize $6 million of the $7 million annual operating cost.
Key local elements of the maximum-build proposal include:
— Construction of a 300-car parking garage at the downtown Wallingford station at a cost of $4.5 million and a 250-car garage at the Meriden station, costing $3.75 million. Stations all along the line would be improved and high-level platforms installed to shorten the length of each stop, at a cost of $26.8 million.
— Addition of six new stations to the eight existing stops from New Haven to Springfield, including a “Wharton Brook” station on U.S. Route 5 in North Haven, at the site of the closed Pratt & Whitney factory, about one mile south of the Wallingford town line. It would have a 150-car parking lot. Planners discarded an alternate site, at the intersection of Route 5, Toelles Road and the Interstate 91 connector ramp in Wallingford.
— Rehabilitation or replacement of three bridges in Meriden and one in Wallingford. A new bridge would replace a substandard span that forces narrowing of South Colony Street in Meriden where it passes beneath the railroad. The architecturally significant 19th-century skewed arch bridge that carries the railroad over Route 71 in Yalesville would not be altered.