THE GOOD, BAD & UNFINISHED

 

How many promises have we been given about fixing our state’s transportation woes?  How many press conferences have been held, initiatives launched and million dollar studies conducted… and for what benefit?

I engaged the services of AI to do this research and generate a complete scorecard which you can access here.

THE GOOD NEWS:

There is a new train station in Windsor Locks  and another one is being built for Enfield (only 26 years after first being recommended).  Naugatuck too will get a new station as the Waterbury line remains closed (until May of ’27) for major upgrades.  Enjoy those bustitutes.

Renovations are underway for the interior of the beautiful Union Station in New Haven (complete with a new bar!).  A massive roof-like train shed for the track area is still just an unfunded drawing, but a pretty one at that.

Proposed, but not funded, train shed.

$340 million is to be spent over nine years upgrading three miles of track between Bridgeport and Stratford.  Do the math:  that’s $113 million a mile.  Total budget for the New Haven line speed enhancements, $1.6 billion over nine years.

The Special Transportation Fund is projected to end FY2027 with a $209 million surplus… in the same year as two fare hikes.

Sixty new railcars from Alstom should start arriving for testing late this year.

Ridership on Metro-North is back to about 90% of pre-COVID levels, with weekends well above those numbers.  And on-time performance is running close to 98%, helped by padded schedules.

THE BAD NEWS:

Service (and ridership) on Shore Line East has still not been revived to pre-2020 numbers.  Unwilling to pay Amtrak to use its overhead wires and power, CDOT returns to diesel locomotives on what had been all-electric service.  Shoreline commuters can enjoy the nostalgia.  And the fumes.

Commuter rail fares in Connecticut went up 10% in just 10 months. The state didn’t fully fund the trains, so now you can.

Amtrak and Metro-North are still at war.

Seven highway workers have been killed in six years, fixing our highways.  Tragic and avoidable. Slow down!

Work continues on the $1 billion Walk rail bridge replacement in Norwalk. The promised completion of 2029 is now stretched out to 2031.

And “Shapiro’s Folly” continues to metastasize, as its housing developer-turned-visionary is now adding a tunnel to his proposed $50 billion bridge crossing Long Island Sound.  Why talk about building one thing we can’t afford, when you can build two?

THE UNFINISHED:

This list is the longest as our memories are too short to keep up with all we’ve been promised over the years.

How many of us remember the 20-year plan to rebuild the Hartford viaduct on I-84, since shelved and rolled into yet another study?  Or the 20+ year effort to build an interchange between the Merritt Parkway and Route 7 in Norwalk, soon to be restarted in late ‘27?

Whatever happened to the study to electrify the Hartford, Waterbury and Danbury rail lines which was due in 2025?

Or the long-promised West Hartford train station on the Hartford line, now 30% designed and 0% funded?

And yes, who can ever forget Governor Lamont’s 2019 pledge known as “30-30-30”, promising a 30 minute ride from Hartford to New Haven (now 45 minutes, at best), 30 minutes from New Haven to Stamford (now 65 minutes on average) and 30 minutes from Stamford to NYC (now 58 minutes in peak hours)?

Our state loves to solve problems by “studying” them… over and over.  Studies, though costly, are cheaper than real solutions.    Real fixes cost money which our lawmakers seem reluctant to find.

As one wag pointed out on social media “Goals are sold as accomplishments”, and so are more studies.