"Solving the RR Station Parking Mess"

Before we can get cars off the roads by persuading drivers to become passengers on the trains, we first have to give them a place to park their cars at the train stations. As all commuters know, station parking is a nightmare.

Many stations have a four or five year wait for annual permits, which can cost up to $600, and day-parking is expensive, if you can find it.

As I’ve explained before, parking at most rail stations is owned by the Connecticut Dept. of Transportation, but administered by the local towns. That’s why we’ve ended up with a crazy quilt of rules and pricing.

Take Rowayton for example. Every year annual permits are handed out on a first-come, first served basis one hectic Saturday morning in May. Nobody is “grandfathered-in”. Everyone literally waits in line, often all night, every year. This may seem fair, especially to newcomers, but it’s hardly an efficient way to manage a scarce resource.

I have a better idea: an auction. Spaces would start selling online on a certain date and time with the first permit going to the highest bidder in a 24 hour period. The second permit would go to the next highest bidder, etc. There’d be no preference to those who already have permits nor by town of residency. The scarce supply of spaces would moderate the demand by price.

As it is, most towns oversell their available spaces. In Westport they sell twice as many permits as there are spaces. Why? Because the permits are too cheap and there’s never a time when everybody who has one tries to park on the same day.

People hoard their annual permits, renewing them even if they don’t use them regularly.
True confession: I have an annual parking permit in Darien that costs me $288. Having waited four years to get it, I’m not likely to give it up, even though I use it only one or two days a week.

Is that fair to the daily commuter who needs that space but hasn’t risen to the top of the waiting list because guys like me won’t let go? Probably not. But unless my town raises parking permit prices and squeezes my greed out of the equation, I’ll keep hanging onto my permit. An auction would change that. My space would go to the highest bidder, not the weasel like me who thinks he “paid his dues” by waiting on some list for a few years and deserves tenure.

I’m all for keeping parking “affordable”. The problem is, it’s too affordable. We should let the marketplace define the price of affordability, and that’s what an auction would do most efficiently.

Of course, the other solution is to add more parking spaces. When CDOT tried adding a few spaces in Rowayton a few years back, they were pilloried. When they came to Darien and proposed more parking at Noroton Heights, they were booed out of town.

I guess the NIMBYs won because they’ve never had to wait in line all night for a parking permit.
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JIM CAMERON has been a Darien resident for 14 years. He is Vice Chairman of the CT Metro-North / Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council, and a member of the Coastal Corridor TIA and the Darien RTM. You can reach him at jim@camcomm.com or www.trainweb.org/ct

Why We Need Higher Gasoline Prices

President Bush was right. America is addicted to oil. So why are all us junkies complaining that our oily “fix” is too expensive? We chose our addiction, and either we pay up or go to rehab.
I’m so tired of watching news stories about drivers moaning about the price of fuel as they fill their SUV’s. You want to drive a tank? Pay for it!

Let’s put gas pricing in the proper perspective. A gallon of gas costs less than a latte grande at Starbucks, yet nobody complains about the caffeine cartel. It costs you less to go 20 or 25 miles in your car than you pay for a gallon of milk. Yet nobody’s moaning about rising price of moo-juice.

Think gas is pricey here? Travel abroad and see what the rest of the world pays for fuel. In Canada it’s US$ 5 per gallon, in Europe it’s US$ 6 per gallon. Admittedly, much of those prices is additional taxes (used to subsidize cheaper mass transit), but the result of those prices and taxes is greater fuel efficiency and less traffic.

According to the EPA, Fairfield County’s air is as dirty as LA’s, thanks in part to car and truck exhausts. Moms obsess about protecting their kids’ health by buying expensive organic milk, then drive to the supermarket in pollution machines.

Face it. Americans have been spoiled for years with cheap gas prices. So why are prices increasing now. Greed? Maybe. Or maybe it’s just a matter of (limited) supply and (insatiable) demand.

Depending on whom you believe, we have maybe 50 years of oil left in the planet. And yet, nobody’s really doing anything to plan for our post-gasoline transportation needs. Even the few higher-mileage hybrid cars that are available still rely on gas.

Where’s the equivalent “put a man on the moon” R&D effort to produce a hydrogen-powered car, let alone an all-electric vehicle? Nowhere. Even motorists who’d buy such a car can’t find one to purchase.

Instead, we drive prestige autos worth more than a college tuition payment… and pay annual town taxes on those status symbols that are greater than the annual income of workers in the third world. And yet we have the nerve to complain about gas prices going up a few pennies at the pump?

Do you really believe we’ve sacrificed thousands of American lives in Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq in the cause of democracy? In your heart of hearts, you know these wars are over oil; and our despot allies in Saudi Arabia know it, too.

As oil becomes scarcer, the Chinese demand becomes greater and drilling gets more precarious (as in Alaska’s ANWR), the only solution is to let gas prices move higher to encourage conservation. That should mean smaller cars, better use of fuel-efficient mass transit and, yes, less driving.

I’m neither a tree-hugger nor a Communist. I’m just trying to be realistic. Because I know that, in the long run, our grandchildren will curse us if the legacy we leave them is a gasoline-based transportation system we should have weaned ourselves from years ago.

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JIM CAMERON has been a commuter out of Darien for 14 years. He is Vice Chairman of the CT Metro-North / Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council, and a member of the Coastal Corridor TIA and the Darien RTM. You can reach him at jim@camcomm.com or www.trainweb.org/ct

The Plan to Widen I-95

Among the wackiest solutions to our never-ending traffic problems on I-95 was the one floated by then-Commissioner of Public Safety (the CT State Police), Art Spada. He suggested double-decking the highway. Although Spada is gone, his idea lives on. The Stamford Chamber of Commerce keeps talking up the plan as did a state lawmaker in the current session.

Just imagine: a ten-year construction project costing billions of dollars… huge fly-over bridges… construction tie-ups… pollution… and on day one when it opened, traffic would swell to fill the new lanes and we’d be back to square one. We complain enough that I-95 always seems under construction, but this “double-decking” idea is patently absurd.

The answer isn’t double-decking or, that other non-starter idea offered by Governor Rowland, allowing traffic to drive in the break-down (emergency rescue) lane.

Ask any engineer and they’ll tell you that I-95 is an out-of-date disaster. Nearing it’s 50th anniversary, the ramps are too short and the lanes too narrow, especially around the bottle-necks we know so well… northbound coming into Stamford and approaching Exits 13 and 14 in Norwalk.

So, if we’re not going to double-deck it, why not at least widen I-95? Well, that’s not going to happen for any number of reasons… not enough land, it’s too expensive, and environmental opposition will drag it out in the courts for years.

Several years ago, a fourth lane southbound was added from Exit 10 (Darien) to Exit 8 (Stamford). The construction took over three years and it cost almost $50 million, or about $15 million a mile. And did all that asphalt do anything to improve driving times? Not really.

But our friends at CDOT are trying again. They have plans to add a pseudo fourth lane from Greenwich to Westport. But rather than calling it a “widening” of the highway, these new lanes are being given a new euphemism, “operational lanes.”

Running from each on-ramp to the next off-ramp, these new lanes would allow vehicles to enter the highway, build up speed and merge without the Indy-500 style acceleration required with our short on-ramps of today. Exiting traffic would have a chance to move right long before the Exit, allowing through-traffic to pass on the left.

Some of this might help, especially around the Stamford and Norwalk bottlenecks that back up traffic for miles. The first project in this “operational lane” scheme is set for Darien and will be in the less-than one mile stretch between Exits 10 and 11. The cost will be $3.5 million. (A public hearing will be held on the plan on Thursday April 20th, 7 pm at Darien Town Hall.)

I never expect to see I-95 finished in my lifetime. I just wish we’d stop pouring money into concrete and steel and invest it instead in better mass transit. That’s the way to improve traffic… get cars off the roads by putting passengers on the trains.

But as I testified recently before a legislative hearing in Hartford: “This building is crawling with lobbyists for highway construction interests, but who’s here speaking for the interests of commuters and mass transit?”

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JIM CAMERON has been a commuter out of Darien for 15 years. He is Vice Chairman of the CT Metro-North / Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council, and a member of the Coastal Corridor TIA and the Darien RTM. You can reach him at jim@camcomm.com or www.trainweb.org/ct . For a full collection of “Talking Transportation” columns, see www.talkingtransportation.blogspot.com

The MTA's "Big Dig"

We all know what happened when Boston decided to bury its downtown elevated interstate highway, known as the central artery. What was intended to be a seven year, $2.5 billion project became a ten year, $14.6 billion engineering nightmare.

Well, heads up fellow commuters and taxpayers! The MTA has similar designs on our beloved Grand Central. Nicknamed the “East Side Access” project, the goal is to bring the Long Island Railroad into Grand Central.

The plan would see use of the lower level of the 63rd Street subway tunnel, allowing some LIRR trains from Queens to enter Manhattan and then follow a new, very deep tunnel under existing Metro-North tracks beneath Park Avenue. Trains would terminate fourteen stories under Grand Central on eight tracks with up to 24 trains per hour. Exiting passengers… an estimated 162,000 per day… would be whisked upward on high speed escalators, to the west side of GCT, with an underground concourse complex stretching from 43rd to 48th streets.

Estimated cost for the project… $8 billion… about the same as rebuilding the entire World Trade Center complex. Actual cost, factoring in inevitable delays, cost over-runs and typical under-estimation by politically sensitive designers… who knows, maybe double that? And for what gain?

The only reason for the East Side Access project is to give LIRR riders better access to midtown. Is the subway ride from Penn Station to GCT really all that bad? Imagine what we could do with $8 billion to improve commuter rail service in the tri-state region.

What would an almost doubling of passengers in GCT (by adding LIRR to existing Metro-North riders) mean for Connecticut commuters? Well, if you think the station’s crowded now, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet. And just imagine the already jam-packed Lexington Avenue subway station with even more riders!

The currently under-utilized GCT would quickly be maxed out for trains and platforms, making much-needed expansion of service to Connecticut a real problem.

True, diverting some LIRR trains into GCT might free-up “slots” in Penn Station for Metro-North trains (which would travel there by way of the Hell Gate bridge), but don’t count on it, what with New Jersey Transit, Amtrak and LIRR also vying for more trains in Penn Station.
And speaking of NJ Transit, their plans for a new tunnel under the Hudson River also dream of extending trackage from Penn Station north to Grand Central as well, adding to the fray. But that’s another story.

If all of this concerns you, don’t get your knickers in a knot. There’s nothing you can do to stop it. The money’s already been appropriated and the project should be finished in 2012.
What role did Connecticut play in this boondoggle? Zero… nada… zilch. The MTA didn’t ask our opinion or seek our approval. Though Connecticut Dept. of Transportation is Metro-North’s biggest customer, we still have no seat, no vote and no say on the MTA Board.

For more info on the East Side Access project, see http://www.mta.nyc.ny.us/capconstr/esas/index.html

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JIM CAMERON has been a commuter out of Darien for 15 years. He is Vice Chairman of the CT Metro-North / Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council, and a member of the Coastal Corridor TIA and the Darien RTM. You can reach him at jim@camcomm.com or www.trainweb.org/ct . For a full collection of “Talking Transportation” columns, see www.talkingtransportation.blogspot.com

"Highway Service Areas"

Most of us don’t think twice about the decrepit service areas on I-95 and the Merritt Parkway. Their nasty fast food and over-priced gas are best avoided by knowing locals. But a major study is underway by CDOT to rehabilitate these service and rest areas, and they want your views.

I recently attended a focus group which examined the shortcomings of the 31 facilities, most of them in southwest Connecticut. The complaints I heard echo commuters’ gripes about Metro-North: facilities are too old, the bathrooms are dirty and there’s not enough parking.

And what kind of first impression of our fair state do these 1950’s eyesores (built to double as bomb-shelters) give to tourists, now the fastest growing sector of the state’s economy? Even the NY Thruway seems more inviting.

And what about the truckers who ply our interstates and need to take a break? A 2001 CDOT study showed there are 1,200 truckers who must park roadside at night, even on I-95, because there’s no place else … and do so with the complicity of the State Police.

What’s the impact of these service areas on the towns that “host” them?

Darien, which hosts the two busiest rest areas in the Northeast (and the most profitable McDonald’s franchise in the US!) on I-95, and two smaller service areas on the Merritt Parkway, is a case in point.

Police say the Darien I-95 service areas are the town’s crime hot-spots. When the volunteer EMS unit “Post 53” answers a nighttime call at the service areas, they must have a police escort. Neighbors report prostitution and drug needles along the small fence surrounding the rest area… not to mention the environmental impact of run-off into neighboring streams or the air pollution from idling trucks’ refrigeration units (again made possible because State troopers look the other way).

There’s gotta be a better way. And a few ideas that came out of this CDOT sponsored study might give us all some hope.

Like the idea to use I-95 air rights to build a mall-style service area above the highway with parking on either side. Newly designed service areas would have better food, trained greeters to guide tourists to the local sights, maybe even WiFi access, weather and traffic information. Some even suggested farmers markets and solar-powered plug-ins for parked trucks. Or on the Merritt, where service areas are in the National Register of Historic Places and cannot be changed, how about picnic tables and dog-walks?

There will be public meetings on all these plans in the coming months. But you can review what’s being discussed and chime in with your ideas now at www.ctrestareas.org . While CDOT admits it only has funding for the study and may never implement its suggestions, maybe we should err on the side of optimism and give them a few ideas.
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JIM CAMERON has been a commuter out of Darien for 15 years. He is Vice Chairman of the CT Metro-North / Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council, and a member of the Coastal Corridor TIA and the Darien RTM. You can reach him at jim@camcomm.com or www.trainweb.org/ct . For a full collection of “Talking Transportation” columns, see www.talkingtransportation.blogspot.com

"The Secrets of Grand Central"

There is possibly no more beautiful railroad station in the world than New York City’s Grand Central Terminal. As the destination of over 50,000 daily commuters from Connecticut, it’s a place we spend a fair amount of time. But rather than rush to or from your train, next time you’re in GCT, look around and enjoy some of its hidden secrets.

Based on 40+ years of commuting experience, here are some of the nooks and crannies within the station that I find most fascinating… and useful.

Underground Access: Sure, you can enter Grand Central from street level, but in bad weather you can find your way underground from blocks away. The new north-end access afforded at Madison and 47th St., Park Ave. and 48th Street and the Helmsley Building walk-ways are dandy. But did you know you can also access from 43rd or 45th Street, west of Vanderbilt, or via the shuttle station, on the south side of 42nd Street, just west of Park?

Fastest Way from the Lower Level: If your train dumps you on the lower level, forget about the ramps or stairs for the long climb to street level. Walk to the forward end of the train and look for the elevator near Track 112. It’ll take you to the upper level or, better yet, to within steps of Vanderbilt Avenue (see below).

Best View of the Main Concourse: Ever notice the elevated glass walkways at the east and west ends of the station? They’re accessible (though public access is discouraged). Just go to the entrance to Michael Jordan’s Steakhouse on the mezzanine and take the elevator up two or three floors. When you get off, go left and through the non-descript door on your left. Walk out and you’ll have a panoramic view of the station from almost roof-level.

Washrooms with No Wait: The new washrooms at the west end of the lower level have helped a lot, but still there’s often a line. Take the nearby escalator up one level, turn around, and on your left is the Stationmaster’s Office complete with a waiting room and lav’s. Or, go right and just before the ramp up to 42nd St. and Vanderbilt, look on your left for the sign for the Oyster Bar. Go down the steps into the bar and you’ll find ornate bathrooms known only to a few.

Best Place To Get A Cab: Forget about the long line at the taxi stand on 42nd St east of Vanderbilt. Instead, go out the west end of the Main Concourse, up the stairs and out onto Vanderbilt Avenue. Cross the street and wait at the corner of 43rd. Taxis flow through here, leaving off passengers every few seconds. Heading west you’ll avoid the traffic on 42nd Street.

These are a few of my favorite “secrets” of Grand Central. Drop me an e-mail with yours and I’ll include them in a future column.
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JIM CAMERON has been a commuter out of Darien for 15 years. He is Vice Chairman of the CT Metro-North / Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council, and a member of the Coastal Corridor TIA and the Darien RTM. You can reach him at jim@camcomm.com or www.trainweb.org/ct . For a full collection of “Talking Transportation” columns, see www.talkingtransportation.blogspot.com

Transportation Spending and CT Jobs

Oh happy day! Hartford finally seems ready to spend billions, investing in our transportation system and the state’s economic future.

Last year, Governor Rell pushed the legislature to long overdue action, allocating $1.3 billion for new rail cars on Metro-North. This year she wants to spend another $600 million on mass transit in the I-91 corridor, including commuter rail from New Haven to Springfield and a busway from New Britain to Hartford.

Not to be outdone, the Democrats are going the Governor one better. House Speaker Jim Amann says its time the state spent $6.2 billion to fund all of the recommendations of the Transportation Strategy Board.

That’s amazingly good news. But where were our lawmakers when the TSB issued its recommendations three years ago? Why have the Democrats finally embraced this issue, which they ignored for decades? Answer… because unlike her predecessor, John Rowland, who said the TSB plan was d.o.a., Governor Rell embraced it and started moving it toward implementation. Thank heavens for party politics in an election year!

But both the Governor and the legislature are missing an important opportunity right now to improve another issue facing our state… jobs and the economy.
We are about to spend $1 billion on new rail cars for Metro-North, but as it stands, none of that money will benefit our state’s economy.

The Metro-North Commuter Council has reviewed the specifications for the new M8 cars as drawn up by the consulting firm LTK (under a no-bid contract to Metro-North). While the specs look great from an engineering viewpoint, it is clear they were drawn up with little involvement or influence from Connecticut DOT, as they favor Metro-North and New York state, not us.

The M8 project will mean jobs… for New York State, but not Connecticut. Though our taxpayers will pay two-thirds of the cost of the new cars, no provision has been made in the contract to see a dime of those funds earmarked for Connecticut.
The three qualified bidders on the M8 project… Bombardier, Kawasaki and Siemens… all have plants in NY State, but not in Connecticut. But shouldn’t Connecticut firms like United Technologies get a piece of the action, and support local jobs in the process?

The minority and women-owned business “set asides” in the M8 contract will total $50 million apiece. But read the spec’s drawn up for Metro-North, and you’ll only see mention of that spending in New York state, not Connecticut.

Metro-North is a vendor to CDOT. They’re hired to run “our” trains and are paid well for doing so. They do that job well. But we are turning over to our vendor the responsibility for the design and construction of a billion dollars worth of rail cars that we’re paying two-thirds of the cost for.

How could CDOT miss the chance to see our taxpayers’ money be spent for jobs and construction in our state? That’s a good question… and one which I hope those in legislative oversight will ask of CDOT staff.

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JIM CAMERON has been a commuter out of Darien for 15 years. He is Vice Chairman of the CT Metro-North / Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council, and a member of the Coastal Corridor TIA and the Darien RTM. You can reach him at jim@camcomm.com or www.trainweb.org/ct . For a full collection of “Talking Transportation” columns, see www.talkingtransportation.blogspot.com