New Haven Independent

Posted by: David B. | May 11, 2009 9:45 AM

In the western suburbs of Chicago they built the trains right down the middle of the right of way on the Interstate. That way all the cars stuck in gridlocked car traffic get to watch the commuter trains whiz by at full speed and wonder why they didn't take the train.

It solves the problem of the environmental impact study, because the Interstate corridor is already a denuded lifeless wasteland, and mostly paved already. Let's run a train line right up the middle of I-91 from New Haven to Quebec. Winter traffic on I-91 would drop dramatically if there was a way to get from NYC to the Vermont resorts without driving.

I don't understand why we can build brand new roads, such as a parallel 95 Q bridge, to the tune of hundreds of millions, but we can't build a new rail line using the same corridor.

Posted by: harry David | May 11, 2009 10:00 AM

Nice story. Warms the cockles of our hearts. We will undoubtedly reading more such stories given that these proposals will be debated for decades before any service results.

In this entire story there was only one hard number -- a $300 million capital cost estimate from 2006!! How about some more information on potential passengers, costs relative to the personal car, other alternatives to a train such as minivans or buses to gauge the market potential, etc. How about a ferry service up the nearest river!!!

Perhaps some data on carbon footprints, emission differentials, some transit times, operating costs, levels of public funding required, etc., would be enlightening.

Posted by: nfjanette | May 11, 2009 10:12 AM

Unbelievable! This project has been "shovel-ready" for many years, long before the "study" was performed. The "study" proposed several options for increase service at different funding levels, involving partial to full restoration of the double tracking. Let's be clear: the maximum build option will merely restore the same level of track infrastructure that was in place 100 years ago. That's not much "progress". While the line would benefit from new, modern signaling, unless the many grade crossings are eliminated (e.g. downtown Wallingford), that line will never be "high speed".

Posted by: anon | May 11, 2009 10:38 AM

NFJ, we are living with the fallout of a decade of GOP rule.

In fact, Tom DeLay delayed all of these projects.

Posted by: THREEFIFTHS | May 11, 2009 11:28 AM

We need a 24HR.transit bus system like other states have.

Posted by: robn | May 11, 2009 11:39 AM

pictures say it all

1962 Passenger Rail Service

Current Passenger Rail Service

Posted by: The Count | May 11, 2009 12:09 PM

Pardon my April Capone Almon imitation, but this is a "Trojan Horse" to improve Bradley's lot. And it will join "Tommy's (Meskill) Trolley" as another failed rail project to God's airport in Windsor Locks. I can't picture ANYone getting up in the pre-dawn dark to get on a 7 a.m. train at New Haven, and then stop at North Haven, Wallingford, Meriden, Berlin and Hartford, then detrain at Windsor Locks station to catch a bus for the airport (unless all this is leading up to a "rail spur" right to Bradley, which I suspect it is), all for a 9 a.m. flight. And what happens when your flight arrives late at night when there's no rail service? And if all this isn't enough, New Yorks Airtrain lost $21 MILLION last year serving Kennedy Airport. You've got Tweed right in our own backyard, which can be improved for far less. Enough of "The Bradley Effect"!

Posted by: Alphonse Credenza | May 11, 2009 12:42 PM

Why doesn't an enterprising business provide this service, if it is a money maker?

Who would -- or could -- when government has taken over the rails? (Amtrak = federal government...Metro-North = state of New York) Now a timetable/route decision has become political lobbying. DOWN WITH STATE-SPONSORED BUSINESSES!

The State should have let the trains fail years ago and gotten out of the business entirely! (Shades of what GM will become...) It still can. One can hope!

(Let's maintain that Audacity of Hope...oops, that is wrong kind of hope!)

Posted by: robn | May 11, 2009 1:28 PM

ALPHONSE,

If we asked private business to (on their own...for profit) provide us with an efficient road system for automobiles, we wouldn't have one. Transportation is a public matter and the only problem with rail transportation is that auto industry lobby shrunk it to the size of a baby and then drowned it in the bathtub (to paraphrase Grover Norquist).

Posted by: P | May 11, 2009 2:01 PM

Alphonse, why don't we just privatize the all of the roads then? Surely some enterprising businesspeople could make money off I95. Think of what we'd be saving in taxes.

Quick history lesson- trains and streetcars were a thriving unsubsidized business, until the PUBLICLY SUBSIDIZED highway system was created. You seem to forget that the interstate highway system was one of the largest PUBLIC project ever undertaken in this country.

Good lord, a 100 mile train track pales in comparison to that!

To think that somehow rail is the only publically subsidized form of transport in the United States is ludicrous. News flash - they all are-

Posted by: nfjanette | May 11, 2009 2:51 PM

Remember, all transportation is subsidized by federal and state government. Airports don't sprout from ground and highway bridges don't rise from the waters they cross. Amtrak was designed to fail, and has been underfunded for capital (not operating) costs for decades by both political parties. We haven't really been given a choice of experiencing an excellent rail system.

Posted by: anon | May 11, 2009 3:06 PM

I agree with the Count. Improving Tweed should be a priority over every other single state transportation initiative. Having a viable airport in Southern CT, with energy-efficient business jet service to major air hubs like Chicago, is more important to CT's global economic competitiveness than expanding highways, and is much cheaper than adding more rail lines so a handful of people can get to Bradley in 20 years.

The $1 billion Asthma Memorial Q Bridge expansion should be put on immediate hold. That funding would be much better spent expanding Tweed and promoting transit oriented and pedestrian-centered development, which will actually be worth something in 20 years. You could do all those things for $1 billion. Instead all we're getting is an even wider bridge, which will just continue to destroy the city and region as a whole.

I-91 should be ripped out and replaced with an energy-efficient, high-speed rail line with service every 2 minutes, like the ones you can find in almost every other developed country. One of those would take you to Hartford in 15 minutes. It is way too expensive to maintain that highway over the long term, so it should be closed and re-used for scrap material.

Exurbanites can relocate to urban housing if they can't afford to continue to live the way they do without the current levels of government subsidy. We need to stop giving the equivalent of hundreds of billions of dollars in government bailouts to rich suburbanites each year. If you think that we can continue this way of life, you must dreaming that we have a national budget surplus rather than a $2,000,000,000,000 deficit.

Posted by: nutmeg | May 11, 2009 3:44 PM

the reason an enterprising business doesn't provide this service is because they would be undercut by a state-sponsored expressway. Let a private company operate I-91 and charge whatever rates the invisible hands wants.

Posted by: DingDong | May 11, 2009 4:21 PM

Anon,

I generally agree with your position on most thing, but where the hell do you come up with your "facts"?

"I-91 should be ripped out and replaced with an energy-efficient, high-speed rail line with service every 2 minutes, like the ones you can find in almost every other developed country. One of those would take you to Hartford in 15 minutes."

That would be a train that runs ON AVERAGE at 160mph, with 2 minute intervals in service between two fairly minor cities (Hartford and New Haven). And you think "almost every other developed country" has such a thing. I doubt there are any that do.

Posted by: anon | May 11, 2009 5:18 PM

Dingdong, the Shikansen averages 162 miles per hour between Hiroshima and Kokura. And how long ago was that built? At that rate, Hartford would be even closer than 15 minutes. There are many similar examples on other continents, like the Arlanda, which goes 26 miles from an airport to a city center, covering an area with a smaller population than Hartford-New Haven, in about 15-19 minutes.

Whether it's 15 minutes or 20 minutes, anyhow, the point is that a high speed train could get a business person there much faster and more economically than driving would, especially after you consider the additional time and expense it takes to park in a truly walkable downtown area (like what Hartford and New Haven are planning to be).

Posted by: DingDong | May 11, 2009 6:15 PM

Fine. I agree with your second paragraph.

I still think it's just false and misleading to say that "nearly every other developed country" has high speed rail service between minor cities running every two minutes at 160 mph. The Arlandabanan runs every fifteen minutes at the most (not two) and runs from the country's capital to the country's busiest airport - not Hartford and New Haven - and saying the number of people is lower at Arlanda airport is just misleading, since it's the largest airport in the country. I don't know about the Shikansen, nor did I bother to check up on your claims on how far those two cities are apart, but I am sure if I did, I would find that there is not 160mph average speed service every 2 minutes. Even if it did exist there (I am sure it doesn't), it would be one of the very few places in the world it did -- not the standard for developed countries.

Honestly, I really think you are hurting your cause (which is mine too) with the bogus facts and claims and it get really, really irritating. Cut the crap, man.

Posted by: TrueBlueCT | May 11, 2009 10:25 PM

Why shouldn't Connecticut be competing with NY and MA?

Given New Haven and Hartford, we've got a lot of great potential!

Too bad we have a vision-less idiot as Governor.

Posted by: NH2HFD Commuter | May 12, 2009 8:37 AM

I would take a train to Hartford every day, but until that day arrives what can you do for me tomorrow? Right now there is no commuter option from NH -- the "Express" bus from Union station takes 90 minutes plus. What happened to asking Amtrak to run more "commuter" trains for now or at least bring back a real express bus service -- even from North Haven to Hartford. I'm swilling gasoline while drowning in all this talk.

Posted by: Streever | May 12, 2009 11:14 AM

DingDong:
I find it frustrating too, the constant barrage of false facts! Thanks for also saying something. It's super frustrating because everyone recognizes the falsehoods instantly, and it makes our cause look nutty.

Posted by: The Count | May 12, 2009 11:51 AM

I recall a survey the Los Angeles city fathers did before they built the city's subway system. It was given overwhelming approval, but not for the reason you think: They found out only later that the average Angelino was in favor of the subway "so my neighbor can use it while it frees up the freeway for me to drive." And the same scenario will visit us here. Even the Fairfield County pols are nervous.They see the funding for the line being diverted from Metro-North's New Haven Line; "Robbing from the rich to give to the poor", said one official. (And remember, this was the same bunch that said Tweed didn't need to be improved because "after all, we spent all that money improving Bradley." As Johnny Carson used to say, "Ooooookaaaayyyy....")

Posted by: Alphonse Credenza | May 12, 2009 12:30 PM

"Transportation is a public matter."

Health care, too?

Where does it end?

Posted by: robn | May 12, 2009 12:59 PM

ALPHONSE,

Hmm? Good question. I guess where it might end is when everybody gets a ride to work and gets medical treatment when they're sick.

Posted by: Alphonse Credenza | May 12, 2009 4:20 PM

Much, much farther than that. If you don't see it, you are no longer free.

Posted by: anon | May 12, 2009 7:59 PM

Dingdong, nobody ever claimed that the 160 mph versions are the same ones that run every 2 minutes. There are many examples of high speed trains that could get you between two cities in 20 minutes or less, just as there are many examples of high speed regional trains that have headways of a few minutes during peak commuting times.

Imagine how many collective resources would be saved if train service (currently nonexistent) were preferred over highways? Sorry if you are frustrated, but getting all worked up about whether train headways and speeds are compatible, or whether the populations or potential market areas are larger in the one example someone posted (which you are wrong about) is missing the point entirely. Perhaps you all should think about the big picture next time!

Posted by: William Kurtz | May 13, 2009 12:26 PM

As much as I hate to play the grammer nerd twice in as many days, a careful reading of these sentences:

I-91 should be ripped out and replaced with an energy-efficient, high-speed rail line with service every 2 minutes, like the ones you can find in almost every other developed country. One of those would take you to Hartford in 15 minutes. It is way too expensive to maintain that highway over the long term, so it should be closed and re-used for scrap material.

leaves the reader thinking that a high-speed (more than 160 mph) with service every 120 seconds exists in "almost every other developed country." We could diagram the sentences and identify antecedents for pronouns until our hands fall off but I don't think anyone wants to do that.

I actually did take the time to look up the Shinkansen , which does in fact travel at very high speeds along many routes and does in fact boast of running six trains each hour between Tokyo and Shin-Osaka. That's pretty impressive, but I imagine (I didn't research that deeply) that figure includes both directions--or one every twenty minutes going each way. Still better than we have now between New Haven and Hartford. Can we get on that please? Talking to you, state legislators!

Posted by: robn | May 13, 2009 1:38 PM

ALPHONSE,

Since, for so long now, I've been a slave to reading you comments I guess you're right and I'm really not free. sigh

Posted by: robn | May 13, 2009 4:25 PM

http://www.templetons.com/brad/transit-myth.html

Posted by: Streever | May 14, 2009 9:02 AM

"I-91 should be ripped out and replaced with an energy-efficient, high-speed rail line with service every 2 minutes, like the ones you can find in almost every other developed country. One of those would take you to Hartford in 15 minutes."
I have a hard time believing "almost every other developed country" has trains this fast that run every 2 minutes. By "almost every" do you mean 95%? Or do you mean "3 countries in Europe, Japan". That's not really in striking distance to "every".