In a showing of his administration’s commitment to public transportation, Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy was joined by Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman and state Commissioner of Transportation James P. Redeker for a media event at a new rail station in Wallingford on Monday. Malloy announced that the state had awarded a five-year $45 million contract to operate the new service to a joint venture of TransitAmerica and Alternate Concepts. Officials also showed off new station signs showing “CT rail.”
Initial weekday service is slated to include 17 New Haven-Hartford roundtrips. Twelve of those roundtrips will continue to Springfield, Mass., which is just 6 miles north of the state line. The new operators’ employees will run the trains, which will be provided by the Connecticut Department of Transportation. The equipment likely will come from the state’s current Shore Line East diesel and push-pull coach fleet currently used over Amtrak and Metro-North between New London and Stamford, Conn. Agency officials once said that they may lease other equipment for the Hartford Line as well.
Key to the new services has been a three-year project of restoring double track to 38 miles of the route that lost its second track during an Amtrak centralized traffic control project nearly three decades ago. Prior to the startup next year, the 33 miles between New Haven and West Hartford all will have double track. Completion of double-track north of Hartford will follow. Malloy said that the previously planned January 2018 startup was being pushed back to allow Amtrak to add four additional miles of double track north of Hartford prior to adding the trains.
“Why do that and frustrate a lot of people when you’re trying to build ridership?” Malloy said Monday.
For the foreseeable future, remaining single track over 3.8 miles through downtown Hartford will be a potential choke point for the added service. Redeker explained that an upcoming large Interstate 84 rebuilding project in the area likely will result in a relocation of the rail line, leading to the decision to postpone double-tracking at this time.
Line owner Amtrak continues to designate the route as its Springfield Line. The State of Connecticut is marketing it as the Hartford Line. Amtrak was an unsuccessful bidder for the new service. Company vice president of operations Michael J. Decataldo addressed the media on Monday, saying that Amtrak will work with the new service providers and will continue to operate its intercity trains on the line. That service consists of the St. Albans, Vt. to Washington, D.C. Vermonter, one Springfield-Washington through round trip (two on weekends), and five Springfield-New Haven shuttles.
Add freight trains from Connecticut Southern Railroad and Pan Am Southern, and the Hartford Line can be expected to be a busy corridor.
For now, maximum speed on the route will remain 80 mph, as it has been since CTC was installed in the 1980s. However, state officials anticipate that all of the track improvements made as part of this project will allow shorter running times over the route. And Redeker says that there will be segments over which trains will be able to operate at 110 mph.
Ticket and fare information was not available on Monday. The new Hartford Line commuter trains will connect with both Metro-North and Amtrak Northeast Corridor trains at New Haven.
50 years behind New Jersey but at least trying to make it work. Unlike New York which builds nothing for upstate.