Cameron on Rail Transportation 2019

Jim Cameron Loves Reading Timetables. This Column Is More Interesting Than Doing That. — Cameron on Transportation

U-Pass Program Provides Big Traveling Discount to Public College Students in CT: Cameron on Transportation

Hell Without the Brimstone on an Amtrak Train Without Air Conditioning: Cameron on Transportation

Is It Worth Building a Monorail Along the Merritt? — Cameron on Transportation

Metro-North Timetable Showing It’s Age: You’d Be Slower Too If You Dated Back to the Woodrow Wilson Presidency

Finding Parking for Your Train Commute — Now There’s an App for That: Cameron on Transportation

Elon Musk’s Idea of ‘Hyperloop’ Trains a Bit Too Loopy: Cameron on Transportation

Wi-Fi on Trains Should Wait — Coming 5G Will Make Current Wi-Fi Obsolete: Cameron on Transportation

Genesee & Wyoming Inc. — A $5B Railroad Conglomerate with HQ in Darien: Cameron on Transportation

There Is No Cheap, Quick Fix for Speeding Up Metro-North Trains Cameron on Transportation

More Coastal Flooding Expected for Train Tracks — But No Plans in Place: Cameron on Transportation

Predictions on Getting Around in Connecticut for 2019: Cameron on Transportation

In Three Months, This Commuter’s Train Was On Time Just Once: Cameron on Transportation

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I love reading timetables. Not the new ones on smartphone apps, but the old printed ones. Reading about a train or plane’s journey on paper is almost like taking the ride itself. Growing up in Canada, I was fascinated with the two major passenger railroads, the quasi-government owned “crown corporation” Canadian National Railroad (CNR) and the private Canadian Pacific Railroad (CPR). Both ran transcontinental trains from Montreal and Toronto to Vancouver, a journey of 70-plus hours — if they were on time.

Imagine having an unlimited-rides pass on all public transit in Connecticut, including Metro-North. Then imagine this pass only costs $20 a year. Such is the reality of U-Pass, the transit pass given to almost 15,000 community college and state university students in Connecticut. Not only does U-Pass give them affordable access to mass transit, in some cases the pass is a life changer. “If I didn’t have U-Pass, I wouldn’t be able to go to school,” says Sabrina Morales, a 21-year-old part-time college student from Stratford.

It was the railroad trip from hell: the hottest day of the year, stuck for five hours on a sold-out Amtrak train where only half the cars had air conditioning. The ride to Washington days earlier had been uneventful, almost on time and pleasantly cool, even though I’d made the mistake of taking a Northeast Corridor train, not Acela. Its older Amfleet cars, though recently refurbished on the inside, are still 50 years old. But coming back from Washington on a torrid Sunday, by going cheap for the slower, less expensive train, I got what I paid for. Put another way, I didn’t get what I paid for.

What is this fascination people have with monorails? I can’t tell you how often people suggest them as “the answer” to our state’s clogged roads and rails. “Why don’t we build a monorail down the middle of The Merritt Parkway?” asked an architect at a recent meeting. To my astonishment, such an idea was once studied. As lore has it, the state Department of Transportation in the mid-1980s asked local tech giant Sikorsky if a monorail could be built and a plan was submitted.

Metro-North rail commuters received a recent spring surprise: a new timetable with slower running times. Rush-hour trains now leave earlier and arrive later, adding anywhere from 1 to 10 minutes to published running times, depending on the length of the trip. But what happened to that 30-30-30 plan for faster trains? Why are the trains running slower, not faster? In one word: repairs.

How can you get people to commute by train if they can’t get to the train station? Those two-wheeled, buff millennials would have us believe we should all bike our way from home to the train. But not all of us are that athletic or inclined to take our lives in our hands wheeling through traffic and bad weather. No, the real solution (at least for now) is car-parking. But with a parking permit wait list of up to seven years in many communities, shouldn’t towns be thinking of building new expensive, decked parking lots?

Is Elon Musk a brilliant innovator, or is he just smoking dope? Well, we know the answer to the second question as a viral video has shown him puffing (legal) weed on a talk show. The man is under a lot of stress, right? There’s no doubt that Musk’s privately funded ventures in space travel and electric cars are prescient, maybe even profitable someday. But his transportation vision for the Hyperloop has yet to be proven viable.

Will Haskell is 22 years old, and he’s about two months into his first full-time paying job as a state senator representing the 26th District that covers most of interior Fairfield County. His election victory was astonishing in November over Sen. Toni Boucher, who’d been in office since he was born. He has certainly hit the ground running as the sponsor or co-sponsor of 68 proposed bills. Of course, submitting a bill is the easy part. A senator can submit a bill ordering anything, but it may never make it out of the committee stage for a vote.

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You might not realize it, but Connecticut is home to the world headquarters of a $5 billion international railroad company and you’ll never be able to ride on its trains. In a small office building across from the Darien railroad station sits the offices of Genesee & Wyoming Inc., a “short line” and regional freight railroad conglomerate. The railroad, founded in 1899, still hauls salt on its original 14-mile track in upstate New York. G&W owns 120 railroads on three continents, serving 3,000 customers with more than 16,000 miles of track. A “short-line” railroad, as its name implies, only operates over short distances, sometimes thought of as rail freight’s first and last mile.

Would you like a faster ride on Metro-North? Who wouldn’t? How about a 30-minute ride from Hartford to New Haven, from New Haven to Stamford or from Stamford to Grand Central? That’s the vision announced by Gov. Ned Lamont in his inaugural address. It’s known as the 30-30-30 plan and sounds good compared to current running times (52 minutes, 55 minutes and 48 minutes, respectively).

What follows is a public apology. Not to you, dear reader, but to future generations. “To my grandchildren: I’m sorry we left you with this mess. We should have done more, when we still had time.”

What am I referring to? Not the national debt.

Each year, I share my predictions for the coming months — and grade myself on last year’s crystal-ball gazing. Upon reflection, I was way too pessimistic last year, predicting fare hikes, service cuts and delays in new M8 car orders for Metro-North. I must have had some bad eggnog when I said the Special Transportation Fund lock box would be defeated. Bah, humbug. I’ll admit it: I was wrong.

« August 2022 »

How bad has service been on Metro-North? Ask Chris Golier, a Fairfield family man in his 40s who rides the train daily from Southport to Grand Central. “Commuting is a soul-sucking exercise,” he says. What used to be a 60-minute ride to and from New York, now takes 75 minutes. His trains are rarely on time.