CDOT sells out to developers

Written by Jim Cameron
Thursday, 19 July 2012 23:00

Sometimes, when you’re tight for cash, you think about hawking the family jewels. That’s what CDOT is doing, turning over to private developers a most precious piece of real estate and leaving 1,000+ daily rail commuters in the lurch.

After years of debate, CDOT has finally issued an RFP (request for proposal) for the demolition and replacement of the old parking garage at the Stamford train station. While the plan calls for a replacement garage with more parking spaces (1,000 vs. the current 727), it also allows the new garage to be built up to a quarter mile from the train station, not the 200 feet away as the current garage is now.

The “jewel” of this project is the state-owned land where the old garage now sits. And CDOT seems ready to entertain bids for its use for offices, condos, shopping … everything but parking.

Exploring state transit through free summer trips

Written by Jim Cameron
Friday, 13 July 2012 08:55

If you’re looking for family fun this summer, consider visiting one of Connecticut’s many living museums celebrating our rail heritage.

The Shore Line Trolley Museum in East Haven (www.shorelinetrolley.com) 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 through the car barns and watch volunteers painstakingly restoring the old cars. There’s also a small museum exhibit and gift shop.

If you see something ...

Written by Jim Cameron
Thursday, 21 June 2012 12:25

Ever since 9-11, commuters on Metro-North have been told, "If you see something, say something."

One commuter recently did that, taking a smart-phone video of a motorman reading a newspaper while running his train at high speed, then posting that video on YouTube.

Politicians and the price of gas

Written by Jim Cameron
Tuesday, 27 March 2012 23:00

Last weekend, I was honored to be a judge at the National History Day competition. Why is it that middle school kids understand what adults don’t — you can learn from history and, hopefully, not repeat the same mistakes? Case in point, the tax on gasoline.

As gas prices push toward the $5 per gallon mark, politicians are trying to give the impression of doing something they cannot do — get prices back down.

Politicians don’t set gas prices, the free market does. But sometimes, in their haste to appear engaged, the pols do more harm than good.

Obama speaks in Oklahoma, saying he’ll fast-track the southern portion of the Keystone pipeline, even though the White House has no say on the already approved project. It’s political grandstanding, but harmless enough.

But in Hartford when the D’s and R’s get together and agree to mess with gas taxes, watch out. This is no more than bipartisan pandering to motorists, which will end up hurting both drivers and the users of mass transit.

First Class — The only way to go

Written by Jim Cameron
Tuesday, 13 March 2012 23:00

For a guy who writes so much about transportation, trust me, I’m something of a homebody. I don’t like traveling anymore. Not that I don’t enjoy visiting different cities (and do so almost weekly for business), it’s just that the journey from here to there is not much fun. When Cunard used to say “getting there is half the fun,” they were talking about cruise ships, not flying.

Getting to and from the airport is a major hassle and expense. Airports (and planes) are jammed. Getting through security is like visit a proctologist. Flights are inevitably delayed. Meals enroute are but a memory.

Frequent flyer programs have whored themselves, passing out “elite” status to so many passengers that it’s impossible to get an upgrade, let alone a free ticket. (You should have heard the grumbles on a recent flight from Continental mileage mavens now vying with United road warriors for upgrades since the merger!)

Rethinking and replacing the Tappan Zee Bridge

Written by Jim Cameron
Wednesday, 29 February 2012 00:00

Why is a column that usually writes about Connecticut’s transportation problems suddenly interested in The Tappan Zee Bridge? Because the pending rebuilding of this bridge across the Hudson River will have a major impact on our lives, our economy and travel patterns.

The mighty Hudson River is what separates New England from the rest of the country. Sure, you can cross over or under the water by car on any number of bridges and tunnels in New York City, but north of the George Washington Bridge there are few options. And for freight trains, there are none, short of going all the way to Albany.

When it was originally envisioned in 1950, the new trans-Hudson bridge was going to be built by The Port Authority between Dobbs Ferry and Piermont, N.Y. Instead, the Thruway chose the wider but shallower section a few miles north between Nyack and Tarrytown.

Next stop Penn Station?

Written by Jim Cameron
Wednesday, 15 February 2012 00:00

There’s discussion again about bringing some Metro-North trains directly from Connecticut into New York City’s Penn Station. But will it happen?

As with many good ideas that seem so easy, this one also has been studied thoroughly and found to be problematic in a number of respects. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy floated the idea in 2007, but it went nowhere, aside from an experiment by N.J. Transit to run trains from New Haven to the Meadowlands.

Here are the reasons that daily commuter service isn’t yet possible:

Inadequate equipment

As any commuter on Metro-North can tell you, we don’t have enough seats for existing service to Grand Central, let alone expansion to new stations. It’s standing room only in rush hour and on weekends.

The five biggest lies about highway tolls

Written by Jim Cameron
Wednesday, 01 February 2012 00:00

Like it or not, get ready to pay tolls on our interstates and parkways. Transportation officials in Hartford say there’s just no other way to raise badly needed money for over-due infrastructure repairs. Tolls may not be popular, but neither are collapsing bridges.

In the last decade’s debate on highway tolling, here are the five biggest lies that opponents have used to stall the return of highway tolls:

• The federal government won’t let us: Also known as “We’ll have to return millions in federal funding.” Not true, as US DOT officials told us at a SWRPA-sponsored meeting in Westport years ago. The federal government regularly allows tolls to be used as traffic mitigation and revenue raising tools.

Congress Tells Commuters ... ‘Drop Dead’

Written by Jim Cameron
Wednesday, 18 January 2012 00:00

Back in 1975, when New York City was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, then- President Ford declined to offer help, and the NY Daily News headline screamed “Ford to City: Drop Dead.”

Last month, the U.S. Congress said about the same thing to us users of mass transit.

In their quagmire of inaction, bickering and partisanship, they let expire an important tax benefit to commuters: whether you drove or took mass transit, you used to be able to spend up to $230 a month in pre-tax dollars to fund your commute.

But by not acting to extend the law, that benefit dropped to $125 a month for riders of mass transit, but increased to $240 a month for drivers’ parking expenses.

‘The Passenger Pledge’

Written by Jim Cameron
Tuesday, 03 January 2012 17:23

Never let a crisis go to waste. With that philosophy, the CT Rail Commuter Council has turned last July’s stranding of a train full of desperate passengers into something which will benefit every rider of Metro-North: “The Passenger Pledge.”

That incident, on the hottest day of the year, showed several failures on the part of the railroad — poor communications, lack of coordination with first responders, and the need for better training of conductors. While the railroad has taken the first tentative steps to remedy those problems, The Commuter Council wanted to go further.

At the suggestion of State Sen. Toni Boucher, in August the Council drafted a “Passenger Bill of Rights,” enumerating what passengers should expect in exchange for a ticket. Some of those “rights” seemed pretty obvious — heat in the winter, AC in the summer, lighting and clean rest rooms.

We even dared to suggest that every passenger should get a seat, a concept quickly rejected by the railroad.