Cameron on Transportation 2022
Valentine Train flowers

Metro-North Does Some Important Things Right: Here’s What To Be Grateful For

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No, I don’t hate Metro-North. Yes, I do spend a lot of time criticizing them, but only to try to make them better. The railroad does have a lot of room for improvement: They botched the mask enforcement rules, have been slow to add more service and could really use some improvement in their on-board enforcement of the Quiet Car rules. But just so you know I’m not a complete grouch, let’s give the railroad credit for what they do right. Overall, especially compared to some other U.S. commuter railroads, Metro-North does a darned good job.

Talking Transportation 2022
Old Saybrook Railroad Station Old Saybrook Train Station

What If You Could Take a Train to Mystic and Make a Quick Connection to the Casinos?

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Imagine taking a train — a one-seat ride — all the way from Grand Central Terminal to the sandy shores of Mystic. Or connecting there for a quick run up to the Indian casinos. Such a thing should be possible and may yet happen — if Shore Line East gets its act together. Shore Line East is the state-owned commuter line from New Haven to Old Saybrook opened in 1990 in anticipation of heavy traffic delays on I-95 during reconstruction of the Q Bridge. Initially it was only rush-hour service, west to New Haven in the morning and back east in the evening.

Cameron on Railroads
Metro-North railroad train car New Haven Line

A Homeowner Describes the Noise Living Close to the Train Tracks

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A couple of weeks ago I wrote a column about NIMBYs, the “Not In My Backyard” crowd that moves to a home near the train, airport or highway and then complains about the noise. I received a very thoughtful reply from one reader which I’d like to share, in edited form, to give us all a different perspective on this issue of housing vs. transportation:

“I write this as someone who lives 500 feet from the Waterbury (train) branch, who gets regularly blasted by the train whistle. The situation is not as simple as someone moved next to the train and then complained about it. Sometimes people make decisions to live somewhere based on what they can afford.

Talking Transportation 2022
Anise Hyssop White Coneflower

Beautified Train Stations Make for a Better Train Trip — and Could Help Housing Sales a Bit

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Every train journey, whether a cross-country adventure on Amtrak or a mundane daily commute on Metro-North, starts with the same thing: a train station. Consider Grand Central (Terminal, not Station). The architecture is so rich, the spaces so varied, that any time spent in this cathedral to transportation is time well spent. You can have a sit-down meal or grab a beer and a sandwich, pick up a newspaper, or a new iPhone — it’s all there. GCT is clean (mostly), well patrolled and filled with people, each giving the others a shared sense of safety and community.

Talking Transportation 2022
Acela tunnel Amtrak

Decrepit, at Risk: No Way for Weakest Yet Most Crucial Northeast Transportation Link to Go Through Life

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It should have been done by now. 2018 was the expected completion date of the new railroad tunnels under the Hudson River, first proposed in 2009. At that time the $9 billion project was the biggest infrastructure project in the country. Now it may finally happen. Why do rail tunnels from New York’s Penn Station to New Jersey matter to us here in Connecticut?

Talking Transportation 2022
Metro-North New Haven Line MTA Metropolitan Transit Authority An M8 car on the tracks

Talking Transportation: Progress Around the Edges of Metro-North, Not Much at the Heart of It

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Yes, there are new trains on the Waterbury branch — and three new express trains from New Haven, but overall our rail service in Connecticut is still too slow. Why? Governor Lamont and CDOT Commissioner Guilietti ballyhooed their new train PR last week as if they’d solved the commuting problem. They have not. Still, kudos to Commuter Council Chair and Waterbury branch rider Jim Gildea for his tireless efforts to build up service on that branch line.

Cameron on Transportation
Amtrak train crash

It Can Happen on Trains: ‘We Were Crashing. The Sound of My Own Scream is the Last Thing I Remember’

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When we get on an airplane we buckle up, read the safety card and are given a demonstration on the oxygen masks and emergency exits. Those things can save lives should something go wrong. But when we get on a train, either Metro-North or Amtrak, we settle into our seat and zone out. We assume we’re safe. That’s what passengers on an Amtrak train in Missouri thought this past week… until their train’s locomotive hit a dump truck on an unguarded private grade crossing and derailed.

Talking Transportation 2022

Why Wi-Fi Finally Is Coming to a Train Near You, Right on Time to Be Obsolete

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Airplanes have Wi-Fi. Even Connecticut’s CTfastrak commuter bus system from New Britain to Hartford gives its passengers free Wi-Fi. Commuter railroads across the US offer Wi-Fi, including Boston’s MBTA. Wi-Fi is everywhere — but not on Metro-North. So the Connecticut legislature has just budgeted $23 million to install 5G technology on the railroad’s M8 cars.

Talking Transportation 2022
Jim Cameron

Metro-North’s Ongoing Failure to Enforce the Federal COVID-19 Mask Mandate

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I love getting email, especially from frustrated Metro-North commuters. Consider this thoughtful email I received a week ago from a six-day-a-week rider, Scott Mikita, who works on Broadway:

“I am actually on a train into work right now and Googled ‘Metro North conductor claims he can’t enforce mask mandate’ and your article from September 2021 popped up. I take 12 train rides per week and have seen ridership increase since coming back to work in September 2021. I have also noticed that trains are often shorter than before and some conductors reluctant to open empty cars, even on busy, crowded trains. “Just now, I asked the conductor if the mask mandate is still in effect (there is a couple sitting on the train, maskless) and he said yes, but that he ‘couldn’t enforce it.’

Cameron on Transportation 2022
Electric train at Wilton 1954

The Big, Six-Decade Mistake on the Danbury Line: They Took Down the Wires

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It was a huge mistake, one that commuters and planners have regretted for over 60 years. For it was in 1959 that the last electric locomotive pulled a train on the Danbury branch. Yes, that meandering 24 miles of single track railroad connecting South Norwalk and Danbury was once electrified. For 34 years, long before the invention of diesel locomotives, it saw electric trains running “under the wire.”. Why did that change?

Talking Transportation 2022
Crowded Metro-North Train

In Ukraine, Railroads Are a Flexible Tool, Quickly Flexed — If Only We Could Do That Here

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In the waning days of World War II, the Americans sent a special unit into Germany to find one man, not to bring him to justice but to eventually put him in charge of the U.S. space program. His name was Werner von Braun. Now I think, whatever the outcome of the Ukraine conflict, a similar effort should be made to rescue Oleksander Pertsovskyi. Not familiar with his work? Well, two million Ukrainians are benefiting from his skills.

Cameron on Transportation
Pullman Porter

The Historic Connection Between Railroads and Racial Justice

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As we celebrate Black History month, let’s remember that the path to civil rights began long before the march to Selma. It happened on city buses in 1955 in Montgomery Alabama and for decades before that on railroads across America. In the history of American transportation, there is one crucial intersection between railroads and civil rights: the formation in 1925 of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car porters by A. Phillip Randolph. This was the first predominantly African-American labor union in the US. Pullman Cars
It was in 1859 that George Pullman launched the first deluxe railroad sleeping cars bearing his name.

Cameron on Trains 2022
Maclean Sarr photo

Talking Transportation: Here’s How Hard It Can Be to Take a Train in a Wheelchair

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You think you have a bad commute? Try doing Maclean Sarr’s hour and a half trip each way — in a wheelchair. Unable to walk since contracting cerebral palsy as an infant, the 22-year-old Sarr is now a student at Gateway Community College in New Haven but lives in Westbrook. That means a 28-mile trip each way, in his motorized wheelchair, in a bus, a train and another bus. Sarr lives within “walking distance” of the Westbrook station serving Shore Line East trains, but there are no sidewalks and too much traffic, so the Nine Towns Transit bus is his best option.

Cameron on Transportation
The Canadian overnight train

Night Trains With Sleeping Cars Not Only Survive — They’re Increasing

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In an age of ever-faster trains connecting major cities globally, is there any future for anachronistic night trains with sleeping cars? Why, yes! In the old days you used to be able to travel long and relatively short distances on overnight trains, either in coach or a comfy sleeping compartment. On the New Haven Railroad you could board your train at Grand Central before midnight and awake the next morning in Boston, Cape Cod or Montreal. It was like combining the cost of travel and a hotel in one package.