Finnegan Schick Photo
People passing through the State Street train station are, for the most part, on their daily commute in and out of New Haven.
“We’re very, very limited,” Duane Mellor (pictured), who has been riding the Shoreline East into the city since train since 1991, said of the connecting stations around New Haven.
An ambitious new project from the State Department of Transportation (DOT) will connect more New Haven trains to Hartford and Springfield. As part of this new Hartford Line, a new proposed platform at the State Street station will allow CTrail trains to pick up commuters like Mellor there, not just at Union Station, more often as they travel between New Haven and Springfield.
At a public hearing in the Ives Memorial Libary on Wednesday, DOT project manager Bruce Olmstead said four of the six stops between New Haven and Springfield are being replaced and upgraded. The project will modernize stations, lay 27 miles of new track, and fix 35 bridges.
“Fast, convenient, regional transportation is the wave of the future and the way to go,” said Olmstead (pictured). The State Street stations serves the MertoNorth and Shoreline East lines.
The two platforms now at State Street will be joined by a third, connecting commuters like Mellor to the rest of Connecticut by train. When the Hartford Line opens in 2017 it will run 12 to 17 times per day between New Haven and Springfield. Olmstead said the state hopes to ultimately increase to 25 round trip trains.
The design for the station improvements
The final design of the improved station includes a second entrance and bridge to access the proposed platform and handicap accessible “vertical circulation”— a combination staircase and elevator to bring pedestrians to the platform 20 feet below. The new platform will be 365 feet long and 15 feet wide at its widest. The final design of the station, made by the development group Michael Baker International, is complete.
The state will acquire the property by November, said the Rights of Way Project Coordinator Michelle Miller. The State Street project is estimated to cost $17.5 million and is funded through a federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant.
Apartment buildings and parking lots have also been proposed near several of the stations along the Hartford Line route as part of an approach called “Transit Oriented Development.” The DOT broke ground on the station at Meriden two weeks ago.
As part of the construction, fiber optic cables will provide commuters with schedule changes electronic message boards on the platform. The cables will not be added to the existent track, which customers say displays incorrect information about train arrivals.
“It tells you the train is loading when the train isn’t even there,” said Eliza Cleveland, who travels daily into New Haven from Branford.
The station’s improvement also includes heated pipes to melt snow on the platform, bicycle storage, parking space for buses, and a slew of security measures like blue-light police phones, LED lighting, and CCTV cameras.
“Security is one of the paramount priorities for the DOT,” Project Engineer David Tudryn said.
Several commuters interviewed said the station can feel unsafe.
“It’s really scary after dark,” said Cleveland, who feels unsafe because there are no security guards or public phones on the platform.
Public speakers at the hearing said that the State Street station, which opened in 2001 to relieve the traffic at Union Station, should also get a cosmetic upgrade. Brad Collins described the station as “dirty.”
“[The station] is a gateway to this city,” said Collins (pictured). “There’s nothing that promotes what’s available in this city. We could so easily put in advertising or marketing about New Haven.”
More information about the construction can be found here.
Apartment buildings and parking lots have also been proposed near several of the stations along the Hartford Line route as part of an approach called "Transit Oriented Development." The DOT broke ground on the station at Meriden two weeks ago.
I wonder what the rents will start at?