"Why Hartford Hates The Gold Coast"

I was watching CT-N the other night (my favorite reality TV channel) as the members of the CPTC (Citizens Public Transportation Commission) were meeting for an incredibly boring discussion the state’s transit woes. But toward the end of the meeting, my ears perked up as one of the 80+ year old members started on a rant.

“Our next Governor is going to be ‘gold plated,’” he said. “He’ll come from Fairfield County, the Gold Coast, so heaven help us!”

Not even the lone member of the Commission from Fairfield County dared challenge this crazy assumption that a Governor from the ultra-affluent downstate region would do anything but spend to help Fairfield County while ignoring the rest of the state.

Which got me thinking: Why does everyone upstate mistrust us, we who live on the Gold Coast?

Years ago, when I used to journey to Hartford for my annual appeal to the legislature’s Transportation Committee to invest in new rail cars for Metro-North, I could feel and hear the resentment. Then-Committee Chairman, Senator Billy Ciotto ( D – Wethersfield) would excoriate my testimony, once saying “You people on the Gold Coast can buy your own damn trains!”

Even the CT Rail Commuter Council’s long-time member from Guilford (Shore Line East territory), an otherwise learned and reasonable man, says that Fairfield County isn’t the “real Connecticut.” Oh, really?

Consider the facts:

WE PAY THE TAXES: Forty-plus percent of all the taxes collected in this state come from Fairfield County. Something like 15% of the state’s total collections come from Greenwich, New Canaan and Darien alone. Without Fairfield County taxes, upstate residents’ tax rates would soar.

BUT WE DON’T GET THE BENEFITS: Though we pay most of the taxes, we get almost nothing back in return. Towns like Darien get back 1 cent for every dollar sent to Hartford. One cent! Who’s gold plating the roads in Wethersfield? We are.

WE’RE NOT ALL MILLIONAIRES: Sure, there are some affluent families living along the Gold Coast? But our state’s most populous and poorest city, Bridgeport, is here too. I’d guess there are far more people living in poverty in Norwalk, Stamford and Greenwich than in West Hartford or Farmington.

WE’RE THE VICTIMS OF TRANSIT NEGLECT: Who suffers more from traffic congestion than those who drive I-95 through Fairfield County? And who pays the highest commuter rail fares in the US, but Metro-North riders? Our rail cars are older than most passengers and our highways show the scars of decades of neglect.

So for those people who live north of the Merritt Parkway (the Mason – Dixon line of state politics), get over yourselves and stop portraying us as free-spending fat cats living not in Connecticut but some annex of New York City.

Connecticut’s next Governor will come from Fairfield County. And that’s a good thing. Who knows more about what happens when you don’t invest in your highways and trains?

Maybe the shiny new commuter rail from New Haven to Springfield (which we’ll all be heavily subsidizing) can learn from Metro-North’s mistakes. Maybe a new Governor can extend Shore Line East from Old Saybrook beyond New London to Mystic, Stonington and even Rhode Island, turning local rail critics into passengers.

To her credit, Brookfield’s Jodi Rell has served our entire state’s interests as Governor, especially in funding improved mass transit state-wide, not just in her own home town. And I have every confidence that Dan Malloy or Tom Foley will be Governor of all of Connecticut, upstate and down, from the Quiet Corner to, yes, even the Gold Coast.

"How To Complain About The Trains"

All that is necessary for the success of evil is that good men do nothing.

Now, this is no way to imply that the folks who run Metro-North are in any way evil. For the most party, I think they do an admirable job running our trains, given the decrepit equipment allocated them by the state. But when things do go wrong, if human error is at fault, it’s important that you complain. Otherwise, bad service is perpetuated.

Each week I get dozens of such complaints by phone and e-mail. Folks must think I’m the Michael Clayton of the commuting world… “the fixer”. Far from it, though I usually know where to send the aggrieved party for real help.

Here are six simple rules to follow to get your complaint heard:

RULE #1: Be sure you have all the facts. To fix a problem you need the date, time, location and name of employees involved (or a good description if they refuse to show you their badge). Gather the names and contact info from other eye-witnesses to corroborate your story.

RULE #2: Be sure to complain to the right party. If it’s a problem involving station parking, you probably have to talk to Town Hall. Same with the stations. But if it’s something that happened on the trains, take it to Metro-North.

RULE #3: Use the www.mta.info website complaint form to officially file your complaint. (Look under FAQ / Contact Us, then E-Mail). Fill out the template and print or make a copy for yourself.

RULE #4: Be patient. You will get a response. The folks in Customer Service have a truly thankless job, but they do it well. Your complaint can bring about real change including disciplinary hearings, changes in schedules and even refunds.

RULE #5: Be ready to follow-through. If a hearing is scheduled and you can’t or won’t appear, you’ve wasted everyone’s time. If the written response you get from Customer Service seems unresponsive or patronizing, fire back!

RULE #6: If all else fails, turn to the Commuter Council. Our job is to be your advocate. By raising an issue at our meetings, the potential media coverage alone often prompts the agencies to action.

Mind you, some complaints we get seem misplaced.

Like the rider last week who “complained” to me about new Naugahyde seats recently installed in an old rail-car. She thought this was a cosmetic tweak to lousy service and a warning sign that the new M8 cars would be delayed. Both her fears proved wrong.

Or my favorite complaint ever was from a woman who screamed at me on the phone that the railroad wouldn’t reimburse her. Seems that she had caught the last, late-night train from 125th Street to New Rochelle, but had mistakenly boarded the express that ran non-stop to Stamford… a unfortunately common occurrence which should be solved by better signage and PA announcements. (The local and express are only minutes apart).

So I assumed that, on arriving at Stamford, she had caught a cab back to New Rochelle and was asking the railroad to reimburse her for cab fare… a plausible and perhaps reasonable request given that she’d missed the last southbound local.

No, she said, when she got to Stamford she decided she was so far from home (in fact, just 16 miles) that she walked across the street and checked into a hotel for the night and wanted the railroad to pay for her $200 hotel room.

See what I mean when I say working in Customer Service is a thankless job?

The New Haven Rail Yard Budget Mess

Once again, our elected officials in Hartford have outdone themselves. At a time when mass transit seems the only alternative to high gas prices (ridership is soaring and trains are jammed), they are nickel and dime’ing our state’s transportation future.

The issue: the over-due rail yard maintenance facility in New Haven.

In 2005, lawmakers approved $300 million for these vital shops and repair facilities for our soon-to-be-delivered M8 rail cars. Now, everyone in Hartford seems shocked, stunned or amazed that the project has grown to $1.2 billion.

Mind you… the cost quadrupled partly because the project more than doubled in size, so let’s keep our apples and oranges straight.

At recent hearings, legislators have suggested that CDOT slash its plan, and indeed, the agency itself came up with $11 million in cost cuts. “That’s no more than a ‘rounding error’”, grumbled one lame-duck Senator.

At first, Governor Rell denied that she knew anything of these rising costs, sending her stalwart budget czar, Robert Genuario to fall on his sword by admitting that he had been told about the cost increase but neglected to tell the Governor. Good solider, bad boy.

Then a newspaper FOI suit found out that the Governor’s Chief of Staff, Lisa Moody (remember her… disciplined for soliciting campaign donations for Rell from state workers on ‘company time’?) knew about the price increase all along. And a CT-N videotape of a ribbon-cutting (which I personally attended), showed the Governor 10 feet away from CDOT officials when the media asked, and the agency disclosed, hard numbers about the necessary cost increases. Somebody wasn’t paying attention.
So, what is the Governor’s answer to the soaring cost increase? Why, hire more consultants and spend more money, of course! That’s right… Governor Rell wants to pay $630,000 for another audit of the CDOT plan.

Mind you, CDOT itself just finished paying other consultants to “value engineer” their design, and they’re the ones who found only $11 million in potential cuts.
What’s going on here? Who’s to blame? Or is this just “business as usual in Hartford”?

In my view… Let’s not blame CDOT for designing the kind of rail facility we really do need. Instead, blame our elected officials for not having designed and built it a decade or two ago when we should have and could have done so for much less.
Playing catch-up in the expensive transportation business is, well, expensive.
Lawmakers were shocked to hear that the MBTA built a similar locomotive shop for $258 million. But that was in the 1990’s when Hartford was ignoring transportation under the Rowland administration. Rome was burning and we all danced a jig to Rowland’s fiddling with taxes.

More recently, George Bush’s $3 trillion war in Iraq is also costing us dearly. The US dollar has plummeted in value, oil is soaring and construction materials are doing likewise because of Pentagon demand.

Engineers told lawmakers they now must factor in 10% annual inflation, not 3% as in years past. And because the New Haven rail yard project continues to 2017, well, you do the math.

I have seen the CDOT plans for the New Haven shops and, while neither our lawmakers nor I am engineers, they seem to make sense to me. We need these facilities! They are not a Lexus… just a Chevy as outside consultants have confirmed.

CDOT was wrong to low-ball the costs at $300 million without having finished the necessary design work. And maybe $1.2 billion is a bit high. But CDOT has explained the added costs and the longer we dicker, or waste more money on more consultants (the only people making money on transportation these days), the higher the cost will ultimately be.

We should have made these investments in transportation decades ago. Now we are paying the price. Let’s not compound these problems with further delays and political posturing. Get on with it!