Jim Cameron’s Transportation Column 2019

Headed South, Snowbird? Consider Packing Your Car on the Auto Train

We’re Not Doing a Great Job of Keeping Trucks Off the Merritt: Cameron on Transportation

With CT Tolls No Longer on the Table, Only Worse Funding Options Remain: Cameron on Transportation

Darien Woman, 23, Takes a 2,192-Mile Trip — on Two Feet: Cameron on Transportation

Gov Lamont’s Transportation Plan Hits CT’s Same Old Roadblocks to Reform: Cameron on Transportation

Historic Dreams of Big Trains: Supertrain, Superliners, Taggert Comet, Breitspurbahn — Cameron on Transportation

On Your Next Flight, Don’t Drink the Coffee, Tea or Unbottled Water: Cameron on Transportation

Ferries on Long Island Sound Just Don’t Work for Commuting : Cameron on Transportation

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

You Can Catch a Ride on a Helicopter: Technology First Flown in Connecticut: Cameron on Transportation

A New Acela This Way Comes — on Amtrak’s Outdated Northeast Tracks: Cameron on Transportation

Beware: Commuting Is Hazardous to Your Health — Cameron on Transportation

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

Let’s See Some Statesmanship on CT Transportation Policy and Financing: Cameron on Transportation

Make Flying More Tolerable — and Do It Cheaper: Cameron on Transportation

Opinion

By JIM CAMERON | December 19, 2019

Opinion

By JIM CAMERON | December 12, 2019

Opinion

By JIM CAMERON | December 5, 2019

Opinion

By JIM CAMERON | November 28, 2019

Opinion

By JIM CAMERON | November 21, 2019

Opinion

By JIM CAMERON | November 16, 2019

Opinion

By JIM CAMERON | November 9, 2019

Opinion

By JIM CAMERON | November 1, 2019

Opinion

By JIM CAMERON | October 24, 2019

Opinion

By JIM CAMERON | October 17, 2019

Opinion

By JIM CAMERON | October 10, 2019

Healthy Living

By JIM CAMERON | October 5, 2019

Opinion

By JIM CAMERON | September 28, 2019

Opinion

By DARIENITE.COM | September 17, 2019

Opinion

By JIM CAMERON | September 12, 2019

Since 1971, you’ve been able to travel by train to Florida with your car, avoiding the mayhem of Interstate 95. And although the service is now run by Amtrak, it actually started as a private enterprise. How It Got Started
Trains carrying passengers and their cars have been used in Europe for decades, but in the early 1970s, the U.S. Department of Transportation conducted a study of long distance rail travel to avoid the problems of the oil crisis. In 1971, Eugene Garfield took the idea and started the Auto-Train Corporation, buying his own fleet of locomotives, Pullman sleepers, dome car-coaches and dining cars. Most important, he acquired 62 bilevel autorack cars.

Hardly a week goes by that an over-height truck and a low-slung bridge on the Merritt Parkway have a close encounter of the worst kind: a collision. The King Street bridge in Greenwich has been hit 150 times in the last decade, 24 times last year alone. Despite $1.8 million in warning devices installed to prevent these strikes, they keep happening. All of the bridges on the Merritt Parkway, originally built to a minimum standard of eleven feet at the abutments, are too low for trucks. In some places the bridges are even lower due to roadbed re-grading. The road just wasn’t designed for anything but passenger cars. Trucks aren’t the only vehicles banned from the parkways. So too are RV’s, cars towing trailers, buses, hearses (in funeral processions) and all commercial vehicles.

Connecticut’s Senate Democrats are gutless weasels. There, I said it. They have put a stake through the heart of Gov. Ned Lamont’s CT2030 transportation plan, not because they didn’t understand its reasoned approach and necessity, but because they cannot support its funding through tolls. They are more interested in their re-elections than their constituents’ future. Never mind that, in a closed door caucus, they excoriated their governor in a 20-minute emotional attack that went on without a calming word by their leader, Sen. Martin Looney.

Diana Jackson just walked 2,192 miles. The 23-year-old Darien resident is among 3,300 people each year who try to walk the entire length of the Appalachian Trail, from Georgia to Maine. But she’s one of the 25 percent of them who complete the task. She learned to hike with her parents in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. When she was 7, announced her goal of making the entire trek.

As we review the details of Gov. Ned Lamont’s CT 2030 transportation plan, I have a strange sense of déjà vu. Haven’t we been through all this before? Journey back with me to 1999 when the famous Gallis Report warned that southwestern Connecticut’s transportation woes were strangling the entire state. If something wasn’t done, they warned, we would become “an economic cul de sac” in the burgeoning northeast. The solution?

What do Ayn Rand, Hollywood and Adolph Hitler have in common? They all dreamed of building super-trains. Maybe it was because their visions for giant, high-speed trains came before the era of cheap flights moving large numbers of people over great distances, but each of them had a grandiose vision of fast, luxurious rail travel. In her 1957 novel “Atlas Shrugged,” Rand made the construction of a coast-to-coast train, “The Taggart Comet,” central to the plot of her dystopian America set some time in the future. In an era of crumbling infrastructure, the construction of an 8-mile rail tunnel under the continental divide saw mismanagement lead to a fatal passage, killing all on board.

You should never drink coffee or tea prepared on an airplane: You may get very sick. That’s the bottom line, according to recent studies by Hunter College’s NYC Food Safety Center about the safety of airplanes’ water tanks, which, it turns out, can be harboring some nasty contaminants such as E. coli and coliform. Some suggest you shouldn’t even wash your hands in on-board water. Airlines are only required to flush and clean their on-board water tanks four times a year. But when they fly to exotic destinations and get serviced between flights, they take on local water, which may not meet U.S. standards.

Just when I thought Gov. Ned Lamont was getting it together to launch a thoughtful, considered “take two” on his transportation vision, bam — along comes another nonsensical idea. It wasn’t enough that he tried to sell us on the zany, physically/fiscally impossible 30-30-30 vision of faster train speeds, now he is (literally) refloating the idea of “high-speed” ferry service from Bridgeport and Stamford to New York City. Such ferry service wouldn’t take cars off of Interstate 95. Those drivers aren’t going where the ferry does. And if they haven’t already opted for the train, why would they ever take a ferry?

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.

Have you ever flown in a helicopter? They seem such a glamorous (if expensive) way to travel, bypassing the traffic en route to the airport or sightseeing over rugged terrain. But do you know the helicopter had its first flight ever right here in Connecticut. It was the creation of Russian immigrant and inventor Igor Sikorsky, 80 years ago. Sure, Leonardo da Vinci made early drawings of a vertical flying machine, but that was in the 1480s.

I’m a big fan of high-speed trains, which means I often ride Amtrak’s Acela to Boston or Washington. It’s the best train in North America, though it pales in comparison to true HSR (high-speed rail) in Europe or Asia. While Acela can hit a top speed of 150 mph, it does so on only 34 of the 457 miles between DC and Boston. Over the entire run, with congestion and station stops, it only averages about 70 mph. But its 20 daily runs are highly popular, especially with business travelers on expense accounts (the fares are roughly double usual coach fares).

It shouldn’t come as much surprise to learn that commuting, especially by car, is hazardous to your health. Research now shows the longer your drive, the greater the risk of obesity, heart attacks and even low birth-weight babies for moms-to-be. At fault are a number of factors. Your Enemies
Stress

Being stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic increases your cortisol and adrenaline levels, increasing your risk of a heart attack during your drive and for an hour after. Getting angry when someone cuts you off only makes things worse.

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.

How’s your commute going? Traffic getting worse? Trains still running late? As we all get back to work after the summer, commuters’ frustration level is rising as it seems nothing is being done to fix transportation. Lawmakers in Hartford couldn’t be persuaded to meet to debate tolling this summer, knowing full well the votes weren’t there, so they just kicked back. But it seems that some on the governor’s staff were busy this summer trying to “reboot” his transportation plans. It’s to be billed as “CT 2030”. May I be so bold as to offer a few suggestions to the Governor’s team? BE HONEST WITH US: Admit that Governor Lamont created this transportation crisis by reneging on a legislative plan to put $170 million in auto taxes into the Special Transportation Fund. By law, that didn’t violate the STF Lock Box rule but it sure did so in spirit.

« July 2020 »

I’ll admit it. I hate to fly. It’s not just the airports, the TSA, the mobs of people and the delays. It’s the seats, the crowding and the feel of being on a cattle car. I’m not claustrophobic, just uncomfortable.