Where Are The New M8 Cars?

Almost daily, on train platforms and in town, a commuter stops me to ask, “So, where are the new M8 rail cars?”  I wish I knew!

It has been six years since then-Governor Jodi Rell announced that the state would finally be replacing its broken-down rail fleet… six years!  It’s taken that long for their design, bidding, construction and delivery.  The first car arrived Christmas Eve 2009, already a year late due to builder Kawasaki’s construction problems.

For 13 months those cars have undergone testing. But today we seem no closer to riding the M8s despite promises that they would be in service by now, and the testing process has been cloaked in mystery. (Ironically, there are dozens of videos of the M8s undergoing testing on YouTube, but that’s the closest I’ve been to seeing them running.)

Throughout 2010, we were told that prototype testing was going well.  But by November, we wondered why a date hadn’t been announced for the trains to go into service.  After all, even Governor Rell had been promised that the M8s would run before she left office at the end of December 2010.

So, in November the Commuter Council asked CDOT to bring us someone from Kawasaki to talk about the testing.  They refused.

Then, six weeks ago, there was a glitch:  an electromagnetic pulse from the cars was affecting the signal system.  This was a deal-breaker.  Testing was stopped.

But rather than advise legislators or the Commuter Council about this problem, CDOT and Metro-North gave the bad news “exclusive” to two reporters, who had to pledge they would not speak with any stakeholders with oversight. 

Those are questionable journalistic ethics and hardly “transparent”.  Since when do government agencies get away with spin-control on such bad news?

This past week, the Commuter Council asked CDOT for updates on the testing.  We received the same vague generalities as we’d been given for a year: “The testing is going along as planned.”  But this time, something new and disconcerting was added.

A senior CDOT official told us “We take out the M8s every night and run them, and every night a new issue comes up.”  A new issue?

Yup… every night of testing a new problem is found.  Among them, problems with the auxiliary power system, the automatic train control and the diagnostic computer monitoring.  And until they are all fixed, the final crucial test, 4,000 error-free miles, can’t begin.

And testing of the M8s on Shore Line East, under Amtrak’s power system and signaling, hasn’t even begun.  Until the M8s can run on Shore Line East there will be no equipment to run on the long-promised New Haven to Springfield commuter rail line.

But wait… there’s more.  It seems that Metro-North itself hasn’t been overseeing Kawasaki’s testing of the M8’s, but a consultant.  LTK Assoc. of Pennsylvania has been paid $15 million to monitor the tests.  And this week their contract will be extended seven months for another $12 million.

None of these details were shared with the legislature’s Transportation Committee or Commuter Council, despite our interest in this crucial testing stage.  It came out in a newspaper article.

If Metro-North feels it needs multi-million dollar consultants for another seven months after we’ve already had a year of testing, that sure sounds like they don’t believe the M8s will be in service anytime soon.

Nobody wants to rush these cars onto the tracks, however badly they are needed.  But given the $866 million cost of the project and the six years we’ve already waited, why can’t Metro-North and CDOT be open and honest about what’s going on?

The Commuter Council has been asking the questions but the answers have been curt and condescending.   Perhaps it’s time for the legislature’s Transportation Committee to get to the bottom of this story.  Commuters (and taxpayers) deserve an answer.

A Report Card for CDOT

You probably missed it in the run-up to Christmas, but a new legislative report has again given poor grades to the CDOT.  This report from the General Assembly’s chief investigative panel was released, strangely, on December 23^rd, a date that all but guaranteed it would get no news coverage.  Do you think this was by chance?  Hardly.

But credit should go to the excellent online newspaper CT Mirror, which broke the story, and to a few print dailies across the state which picked it up.

In summary, the report said the CDOT is late in finishing its work, especially its most expensive undertakings.  On average, the agency took 5.3 years to finish big projects, with only 37% of work finished on time (think I-95).  That compares with others states’ 57% on-time completions.

Not only were the projects late, 74% of them were over budget with an average added cost of 23%.  Over the decade of work studied, that added up to an additional half-billion of your tax dollars.

Part of the problem is that CDOT has no automated project management system to track these multi-million dollar projects.  In other words, nobody is keeping score.  Nor, in my view, does there seem to be any accountability for mistakes.  In the private sector a batting record this dismal would cause heads to roll.

Of course, there are fewer “heads” at CDOT to roll: the agency today has 20% less staff than in 1990.  Past budget cuts have seen the most experienced engineers accept buy-outs, taking their expertise with them as they exited the agency.  And it’s only going to get worse:  29% of CDOT engineers are over age 50 and are edging toward the door.

Out-sourcing work to consultants doesn’t seem the answer, as their work was slower and more expensive than jobs done in-house by the civil servants.

On the plus side, progress has been made in highway safety.  Connecticut’s annual highway fatality rate of 0.83 deaths for every 100 million vehicle miles traveled ranks well below the US average of 1.25 deaths.

Among possible explanations for this good news are that 8.8% of all Connecticut roads are “over capacity” and only 41% of our highways are ranked as giving a “good” ride.  Those factors could slow you down and keep roads safer.

Even federal stimulus money hasn’t been spent all that well.  The long over-due work repairing our rail stations has been uncoordinated and, in my view, inept.  In April the overhead canopies at several rail stations were removed, leaving passengers still standing unprotected from rain and snow seven months later. 

CDOT says the canopies can’t be replaced until overhead caternary wires are replaced on an opposite track.  But they don’t hesitate to plaster these and other ARRA job sites with hundreds of thousands of dollars in signs proclaiming their good works.  At least the sign makers got jobs if not the roof-installers.

While the legislative report does give CDOT points for increased “transparency” in its dealings with the public, the recently announced delay (again) in the delivery and testing of the new M8 rail cars stands in contradiction to that claim.

More candor and communication by the agency on this crucial infrastructure investment could have gone a long way to lessening the cynicism and distrust most have of this agency.

And we still have no idea who our next Governor will chose as Commissioner of the DOT.  Who could possibly want the job?

To Florida, By Train

Any regular reader of this column knows my long-held disdain of flying.  The recently added insult of irradiation or proctological examination by the TSA made it a no-brainer when I had to travel this week to Miami on business:  Amtrak all the way.

The Silver Star departs NYC’s Penn Station each day at 11 am.  Its sister train, The Silver Meteor, leaves at 3:15 pm.  Both trains end up in Miami within minutes of each other, but take different routes south of Richmond.  I’m on The Star, which actually goes to Tampa, then on to Miami.

Secure in my roomy bedroom compartment (complete with sink, shower and bathroom), I fire up my radio scanner to hear the conductor call an on-time departure from New York.

Even though our ten-car train (engine, baggage car, two sleepers, dining car, lounge and four coaches) has a mixture of old “heritage fleet” and newer Amfleet equipment, my Blackberry GPS says we’re doing more than 105 mph as we careen thru central New Jersey.

On this Wednesday departure the train is only half-full, though the attendant assures me “she’ll fill up along the way.”  Fares are not cheap. Coach fare NY-Miami is $125, but adding a ”sleeper” on top of that adds $509 for a single-person roomette or $769 for my commodious bedroom.  However, sleeper pricing includes all meals.  And believe me, though the china in the dining car is plastic, the food is freshly cooked and delicious.

Mind you, my own roundtrip is free -- thanks to points accumulated in Amtrak’s excellent Guest Rewards program.  All those Acela and Northeast Corridor trips in recent months really paid off.

On this journey, unlike my “land cruises” out West, the scenery is far from spectacular.  But as the terrain moves from the urban squalor of the Northeast Corridor to the scrub pine of the Carolinas to the palmetto plains of Florida, I can tell I’m transitioning southward.

Our train is on time the entire way, thanks to heavy padding of the schedule at stops where the crew changes and many passengers disembark for a fast smoke.  It’s amazing how fast I can consume a cigar when I know I have limited time (and hours till the next opportunity.)

A couple of Tylenol PM’s and I sleep well through the night, missing stops in Columbia, SC and Savannah, GA.  The CSX track is well maintained, welded rail with none of the “clickety-clack” of olden times.  I awaken just after sunrise and well past Jacksonville, as our zigzag tour of the Sunshine State begins in earnest.

This is the Florida you don’t see from the Interstates:  miles of orange groves filled with fruit… the cattle farms… wild birds taking flight from countless swamps at the sound of the loco’s blasts… and trailer homes tucked into the brush everywhere.  The occasional Christmas trees in small towns just don’t seem to fit.

Instead of heading due south to Miami, we turn inland to Orlando, then west to Tampa.  High speed rail is planned here, but we’re cranking along at 75 mph before we turn on the wye and ignominiously back into Tampa Union Station in Ybor City.  Alas, no time for a tour of the local cigar factories as we board maybe a hundred intra-state riders heading to the east coast.  Our inter-city train from the northeast is now a Florida local serving such hot spots as Lakeland, Winter Haven and Okeechobee before arriving on the Gold Coast (West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Miami).

At West Palm Beach we start sharing the track with Tri-Rail, Florida’s answer to Metro-North, also paralleling I-95.  Except these trains are newer double-deckers and painted for full effect.  Their gaudy colors are designed to be visible as they zoom past the congested highways, almost taunting the motorists.

It’s raining lightly but about 40 degrees warmer than when we left NYC 30 hours ago.  Hardly tropical.  But the billboards are in Spanish and the city lights of Miami glow in the distance as we arrive five minutes ahead of schedule.

I think it was the folks at Cunard who said “getting there is half the fun.”  Certainly true for cruising, and equally so on Amtrak. 

“Saving Your Transit Benefits… and Your Trains”

Don’t look now, but Congress is about to give motoring commuters a big tax break and take one away from riders of mass transit.

Under current federal law, commuters can deduct up to $230 a month from their pre-tax paychecks to pay for the trips to and from work.  That deduction can cover bus / rail tickets via programs like TransitChek or pay their parking expenses.  But unless Congress acts by the end of the year, the mass transit commuter’s benefit will be cut to $120 per month while the motoring commuter keeps the full benefit. Huh?

Cutting this pre-tax benefit would hurt low income workers the most because they often have no car and must rely on bus and train.  At a time when we’re trying to reduce highway congestion and improve air quality, penalizing mass transit riders and rewarding users of autos makes no sense.

But these tax benefits are for more than commuters.  Employers can save 10% on payroll taxes if they sign up employees for the program.  According to MetroPool, over 100 businesses in Fairfield County hiring over 34,000 workers participate in the commuter pre-tax program.

Here’s an example of the savings:  Let’s say you ride from Fairfield to NYC, and then take the subway.  With a monthly rail pass at $308 and monthly MetroCard at $45, you’d spend $4,200 a year just to get to and from work.  The current commuter benefit defrays 68% of this cost, saving you $1,355 a year in taxes.

But again, this tax break will be cut in half if Congress doesn’t act quickly.

Connecticut’s Senators Dodd and Lieberman are con-sponsors of The Commuter Benefits Equity Act (S 322 / HR 891) which would keep benefits equal for drivers and mass transit users at $230 per month.  Strangely, in the House, none of the co-sponsors are from our state.

If this bill doesn’t come out of Committee and get approved by December 31^st 2010, reduced tax benefits for rail and bus riders may incentivize some commuters to get back in their cars.  According to TransitCenter Inc., a drop in the transit benefit will reduce ridership by as much as 9% among commuter benefit users. And you know what that means for traffic.

What can you do?  You need to contact your Congressman and ask him or her to support the bill.  Also, ask your employer’s Human Resources office why they don’t offer these pre-tax benefits, reminding them it’s in their interest as well as yours.

Finally, get in touch with the TSTC (Tri-State Transportation Campaign) at www.tstc.org and support their strong advocacy on this and so many other transportation issues.  They are among commuters’ greatest allies.

And while you’re in a mood to contact your elected officials, don’t forget to call or e-mail your State Rep and Senator.  We need their help to defeat Governor Rell’s recent senseless call to shut down trains on the New Canaan, Waterbury and Danbury branch lines.

Just weeks ago I was hailing Governor Rell for her leadership and support of mass transit.  Then she turns around and tries to save $5 million a year by stranding 4,300 daily riders of those lines.  And this, after spending $60 million in federal funds to put signals on the Danbury branch, only to suggest it be shut down? 

Days after her call to close down the trains, she literally “back-tracked”.  Her office called me to say she didn’t mean it, that she was trying to get attention of lawmakers and blaming her budget folks at OPM for putting rail cuts on the list of possible cost savings.

Shame on her for frightening commuters and using them as a political lever.  By admitting she was “crying wolf”, who will take her seriously on the next crisis?

Thank You Governor Rell

Anyone who follows this column knows I’m bipartisan in my criticism.  Whoever is in power, Democrat or Republican, I’ve got “suggestions” on how they could improve our transportation mess.

Since she came to office in the midst of a scandal, no other politician has been the target of my commentary more often than Governor M. Jodi Rell.  Today, however, I want to give her the credit she’s due for all she’s done on the transportation front.

Watching the Governor ride the first of the new M8 rail cars this week, I was struck by how she had come full circle in only six years.  The irony is it took her entire tenure in office to order, design, build, test and finally deliver these new cars.

In Governor Rell’s first budget address to lawmakers in February 2005 she started to undo years of her predecessors’ neglect of our trains.  She told lawmakers we must order 300 new rail cars, and they did.  Mind you, she told us then the cars would be in service by 2008.  I predicted, accurately it turned out, that 2010 was a better guess.

The Governor said riders should pay a small part of their cost with a modest fare hike, and that too was passed by lawmakers.

But Governor Rell also said that commuters shouldn’t pay more until they were actually riding in the new cars… a promise she kept.  As manufacturing delays by Kawasaki slowed delivery of the M8’s, that planned 1.25% fare hike was deferred.   A politician who keeps a promise.  Imagine that.

More recently, Governor Rell also told the New York MTA, parent of Metro-North, there was no way she was going to raise fares in Connecticut to pay for the budget problems of New York’s own making.  That was a first in the troubled history of Connecticut / New York relations, but again the Governor deserves credit for doing the right thing.

But not every dream came true during the Rell administration. 

Grumblings about a lack of a voting seat on the MTA or Metro-North boards never amounted to more than that… grumbling.

And yes, Governor Rell did change Commissioners in the Dept. of Transportation at a pace that left many people wondering who was in charge:  five Commissioners in six years.  One was a former State Trooper, another had run Bradley airport.  The two most recent of them actually had experience in rail transportation.

Wracked by scandals, Governor Rell was embarrassed on several occasions by her DOT, eventually asking local businessman Michael Critelli to study the agency and issue recommendations for reform.  Of course, few of the group’s suggestions were ever embraced.

Long promised repairs to our dilapidated train stations took four years to happen, thanks mainly to Federal stimulus money.  If this work wasn’t “shovel ready”, nothing was.

We’re still not certain if the much-needed New Haven Rail facility will ever be fully built, as its price yo-yoed from $300 million in 2005 to $1.2 billion in 2008.  The Governor’s solution… pay consultants $630,000 for an audit.  Their report found only $11 million in potential cuts.

Still, Governor Rell was a big rail fan, realizing the importance not only of fixing Metro-North, but planning for the future.  Together with fellow lame-duck Senator Chris Dodd, she secured a serious down-payment on high-speed rail between New Haven and Springfield.  Well, maybe not true “high-speed”, but certainly higher speed than Amtrak currently offers.

I’m not sure how Governor-elect Malloy will do on transportation, though he clearly understands the problems from his years as mayor of Stamford.  His dreams for better mass transit will be most tempered by our economic crisis.

But to outgoing Governor Rell all commuters should give a loud “thank you” for all that she accomplished.  She’ll be a hard act to follow.

Trolleys: Riding Back in Time

What was commuting like back in the “good old days”? Well, cheaper, slower and with fewer options. Still, we have nostalgia for our grandparents’ travel methods long before families owned cars. Back then, it was all about trolleys!


It’s been 200 years since trolleys first plied city streets. Initially pulled by horses they were eventually electrified, adding speed and dependability. While we think of streetcars mostly for in-city service, trolleys criss-crossed our state, supplementing the railroads for longer distance travel.


It is true that you could travel all the way from New York to Boston by connecting trolley lines, a nickel a ride. (Click here for a fabulous 1916 timetable showing four routes from NY to Boston complete with descriptions of the towns).


The trolley companies were often owned by power utilities, giving themselves a steady client for their electricity. To generate even more weekend business, trolley lines would often run to amusement parks which they also owned, like Roton Point in Norwalk.


The expansion of the trolley lines had a profound effect on housing, allowing city dwellers to live further than walking distance from their factories. Nowhere was this better illustrated than in Boston as detailed in “Streetcar Suburbs”, a classic sociology text. This was truly the first “Transit Oriented Development”.


But the story of New England’s trolleys is not limited to the history books. Fortunately, we are blessed with two excellent trolley museums just a short drive away.


The Shoreline Trolley Museum in East Haven was founded in 1945 and now boasts more than one hundred trolley cars in its collection. It still runs excursion trolleys for a short run on tracks once used by The Connecticut Company for its “F Line” from New Haven to Branford. You can walk thru the car barns and watch volunteers painstakingly restoring the old cars. There’s also a small museum exhibit and gift shop.


The Connecticut Trolley Museum in East Windsor began in 1940, making it the oldest trolley museum in the US. It too was started on an existing right-of-way, the Rockville branch of the Hartford & Springfield Street Railway Company. You can ride a couple of different trolleys a few miles into the woods and back, perhaps disembarking to tour the collection of streetcars, elevated and inter-urbans in the museum’s sheds and barns.


Both museums also offer you the chance to “drive” a streetcar… under supervision and after a little training. Passengers are not allowed, but your friends can join you if they are brave. If you’re looking for a day-trip, especially for kids, I can highly recommend either museum. But check ahead for hours, especially off-season.


Being born and raised in Toronto, streetcars were always a part of my life. Long before Toronto had a subway or commuter rail service, citizens would go shopping, go to church or an evening at the movies by streetcar. Even today that city of 2.5 million is served by new, Canadian-built streetcars. You can still ride trolleys, both old and new, in New Orleans, Philadelphia, Boston and Newark NJ. There’s even talk of returning streetcars to Stamford.


When it comes to getting around by means other than the auto, everything old is new again.

CT Trolley Museum

New Orleans trolley on St Charles Ave

PCC Car - CT Trolley Museum

A Victory for Commuters

Who says you can’t fight City Hall… or Metro-North?

Back in August I wrote in this column about Metro-North’s latest proposals to gouge commuters. Today I can report they have been soundly defeated.

To close its $800 million budget deficit, the MTA (Metro-North’s parent), has in past months come forward with a series of fare hikes and service cuts, all of them soundly rejected by Governor Rell. Because, although that NY State agency has never heeded our Governor’s requests for a voting seat on its board, Connecticut does have veto power over fare hikes in our state.

I’ve got to hand it to Governor Rell. She’s kept her word since February of 2005 when, in her first budget address, she told the legislature we were long overdue in ordering new rail cars and promised no fare hikes until the cars arrived and went into service. She’s also funneled millions in stimulus funds into fixing up our rail stations.

But this time the MTA was proposing something different… what I called a “stealth” fare hike.

The rail agency proposed cutting the discount on monthly “Mail & Ride” tickets as well as rail tickets bought on the web. They also wanted to reduce the validity of ten-trip tickets from one year to 90 days. And single trip tickets, now valid for six months, would expire in a week.

What were they thinking? Short of having conductors spit at passengers, these changes were almost like yelling “screw you” to their customers?

Once again, the CT Rail Commuter Council had its work to do. First, in publicizing the proposal through the media. Then, in demanding public hearings (though none were originally planned in Connecticut). And finally, in rallying commuters to attend and speak out against these proposals.

For the record, I should note that the Council has, in the past, supported small fare hikes… when they were tied to the cost of living and matched against improvements in service. But these proposals were neither.

The MTA’s budget deficit is of its own creation, not Connecticut’s. So New York taxpayers and commuters should pay for it, not us. Connecticut has never been asked for input on the multi-billion dollar mega-projects undertaken by the MTA, like the $6 billion to build tunnels bringing the Long Island Railroad into Grand Central, so why stick us with the bill?

Isn’t reducing a discount equivalent to a fare increase? You betcha!

And what possible reason could Metro-North offer for shortening the validity of ten-trip tickets? Incredibly, they said it was to deal with the “problem of uncollected tickets.”

Amazing. For about a decade the Commuter Council has been beating on Metro-North about conductors not doing their jobs, leaving tickets uncollected on crowded trains. By its own calculations, Metro-North loses $2 million a year on uncollected tickets. And their solution is to screw customers by selling them ten-trips but letting them only use two or three rides, then declare their ticket invalid?

And the icing on the cake, the final proposal from the MTA? A $15 fee to cash in an unexpired ticket!

The Commuter Council was curious just how much money would be raised if these plans were approved, so we filed a formal written request for that data. The answer: about a half-million dollars a year in Connecticut. That’s nothing… a rounding error… bupkis! An $800 million budget deficit, and all these proposed changes will bring in $500,000?

Governor Rell heard our argument and agreed. She quickly ordered the CDOT to reject the MTA / Metro-North proposal, a directive read aloud at the public hearings in Stamford and New Haven.

Commuters have won… for now.