Jim Cameron’s Transportation Column 2020

This Could Help the State With Transportation, Economic, Jobs Woes: Cameron on Transportation

We’ll Need to Finance the CT Transportation Fund, It’ll Be Painful, But Candidates Avoid Discussing It

By 2025 a Quarter of All Drivers Will Be Older Than 65 (Hey, They’re Still Safer Than Teens): Cameron on Transportation

The Engineering Marvel Beneath Your Car: Cameron on Transportation

How Red, Yellow and Green Became the Colors of Traffic Lights: Cameron on Transportation

What Can You Do With an Empty Parking Lot? — Cameron on Transportation

The Problem With CT’s Preparation for Massive Storms Goes Way Beyond Eversource: Cameron on Transportation

How Connecticut Officials Look at Fare Prices for Trains vs Buses: Cameron on Transportation

In Praise of Oz Griebel, Who Successfully Pushed the State to Get M8 Rail Cars: Cameron on Transportation

China Moving Ahead of U.S. on Roads, Rails, Shipping: Cameron on Transportation

CT Legislature — Not Doing Their Lawmaking Job, But Beware When They Do: Cameron on Transportation

We’ll Still Need Metro-North, and We’ll Need It To Be Safe: Cameron on Transportation

‘I’m Desperate for a Reason To Be Bullish on Mass Transit … I Don’t See Any’: Cameron on Transportation

One Longtime CT Telecommuter Who Misses the City: Cameron on Transportation

Is Regular Commuting Into Manhattan Dead? The Governor Thinks So: Cameron on Transportation

Cameron on Transportation

By JIM CAMERON | October 19, 2020

Cameron on Transportation

By JIM CAMERON | October 13, 2020

Cameron on Roads 2020

By JIM CAMERON | September 28, 2020

Cameron on Transportation

By JIM CAMERON | September 21, 2020

Cameron on Transportation

By JIM CAMERON | September 14, 2020

Cameron on Transportation

By JIM CAMERON | September 7, 2020

Cameron on Transportation

By JIM CAMERON | August 31, 2020

Cameron on Transportation

By JIM CAMERON | August 26, 2020

Cameron on Transportation

By JIM CAMERON | August 17, 2020

Cameron on Transportation

By JIM CAMERON | July 27, 2020

Cameron on Transportation

By JIM CAMERON | July 13, 2020

Cameron on Transportation

By JIM CAMERON | June 25, 2020

Opinion

By JIM CAMERON | June 15, 2020

Education

By JIM CAMERON | June 7, 2020

Opinion

By JIM CAMERON | May 31, 2020

Here’s a possible solution to Connecticut’s transportation and infrastructure problems and the state’s current unemployment woes: a WPA-style building project. You’ve heard of the Works Progress Administration, right? It was FDR’s plan that put millions of unemployed Americans to work building public projects like roads, water mains, firehouses and dams. Look around you and you’ll still see us benefiting from that investment. But fast-forward 80 years …

Any reader of this column is all too familiar with the need for transportation investment in our state: our 7,000 miles of roads and bridges in “poor condition”, the $4.6 billion needed for wastewater treatment not to mention our rusting railroads. And everyone in Connecticut is aware of the unemployment crisis brought on by COVID-19 — 8.2% of the state’s labor force is out of work, translating to 153,000 people without jobs, most of them now drawing benefits from our rapidly depleting Unemployment Trust Fund.

When it comes to COVID’s impact on transportation in our state, we are in the eye of the hurricane. That’s been the theme of my recent virtual talk to various Connecticut’s libraries and civic groups, comparing the calm eye of an intense storm to how we’ve become complacent about our transportation future. We kid ourselves if we think the winds have passed. The worst is yet to come. Commuters who’ve returned to the rails tell me ridership is slowly coming back but many still fear for their safety on mass transit, and with good reason.

When you think of the AARP (formerly the American Association of Retired Persons) you probably conjure up thoughts of senior discounts, health insurance and retirement, so it might surprise you to learn that they’re also actively engaged in driver safety and promoting access to mass transit. The statistics on these issues they shared with me are quite interesting. By 2025 a quarter of all drivers in the U.S. will be over age 65. And while they are involved in more accidents per capita than younger adults, they are far safer than teens. But over age 70, traffic fatalities increase with age; by age 85, drivers have probably outlived their ability to drive safely.

The 47,000 miles of highways that comprise America’s interstate highway system are nothing short of an engineering marvel, perhaps surpassed only in mileage and design by what China has built in the last few years. We take them for granted, but when they were designed almost 60 years ago these superhighways presented both great opportunity and vast challenges. Mind you, the U.S. wasn’t the first with superhighways. Those bragging rights go to the Germans, whose Reichsautobahn saw cars zooming along at 100+ mph in the 1930s. Most credit President Dwight Eisenhower, whose troops rode the Autobahn in World War II, for seeing the military value of an American equivalent, though engineering such a complex across the U.S. was far more difficult.

Of course by 1940 the US already had the Pennsylvania Turnpike and by 1954 the New York State Thruway, but those private toll roads were just the beginning.

Do you ever wonder why our stoplights designate red as stop and green as go? Me too! In fact, it was my daughter’s question on this very matter that inspired me to do some historic research. In the 1840s the British railroads adopted a flag, lamp and semaphore signal system where red meant danger, white meant safety and green indicated proceed with caution. They took their inspiration from early industrialization where factory machines used red to indicate the equipment was off and green when turned on.

There’s another part of our transportation network being seriously affected by COVID-19 beyond our roads and rails: parking lots. Parking is something we take for granted, giving us access to rail stations, shopping and offices. It’s hardly glamorous, but the parking industry represents an $11 billion business nationwide, one third of it privately owned. In Connecticut most rail station parking is owned by the Connecticut DOT but administered by the local towns, each of which sets its own rates and terms. The money collected from commuters is supposed to be spent on station upkeep and amenities while the state takes its share. Pre-COVID, the demand for rail station parking was so high that some Fairfield County towns had five-year waiting lists for annual permits.

Welcome to Connecticut, the home of third world infrastructure. Tropical storm Isaias has shown, once again, that we don’t want to invest in our state’s physical plant and we don’t learn from our mistakes. But we are all so ready to blame somebody else when stuff goes wrong. Every time a Metro-North train pulls down old catenary (overhead power lines), commuters scream, “Where are the replacement buses?” as if a fleet of buses is kept on permanent standby waiting for such strandings. If we did better maintenance on the trains and wires, such accidents might not happen.

Ridership on Metro-North is still down 85% from pre-pandemic levels, but in-state bus ridership is coming back — up to 70% of normal from a March low of 40%. Why the difference? Because bus riders and rail riders are very different. Surveys by CDOT and Metro-North showed the average income of a Metro-North rider was about $150,000, given that many were living in affluent Fairfield County towns and commuting to good paying jobs in New York City. Bus riders are predominantly working class, urban dwellers who make less money and, in many cases don’t own cars.

Every commuter on Metro-North owes a tremendous debt of gratitude to one man: Oz Griebel. He is the reason we can ride the new M8 rail cars. Much has been written since Oz’s passing (at age 71) recently from an auto accident while jogging, especially about his two unsuccessful runs for governor. I remember distinctly in the debates with Bob Stefanowski and Ned Lamont how Griebel would take off his suit jacket, roll up his sleeves and jump into the fray. His energy and passion were electrifying.

Which is the number one country in the world for transportation? Certainly not the United States. Not even countries in the E.U. No, you have to look farther east, as Marco Polo did in 1271, to find the future — in China. I’m so tired of ignorant Americans chanting “We’re Number 1,” when we are not. Not in healthcare, education and clearly not when it comes to using transportation to bolster our world trade.

Where the heck has the Connecticut legislature been for the past few months? With so many pressing issues, why haven’t they met? Oh, they’ll tell you it’s because of safety that they couldn’t convene. But we know better. Plenty of state legislatures — even the U.S. House of Representatives — have carried on the people’s business virtually or well-masked while our pols went AWOL.

Metro-North train railroad cleaning COVID-19 2020 Coronavirus 2020

As New York City businesses reopens it’s expected that one million people will get back to work, some of them from Connecticut. But how they get to those jobs is the big question. While I’ve written for weeks that I expect many Nutmeggers will opt first for their personal automobiles, the resulting traffic mess will soon have them reconsidering a return to Metro-North and the city’s subways. The big issue, of course, is keeping everyone safe by maintaining social distancing and requiring face masks for all riders. More Trains and Subways

Metro-North has already expanded rush hour service by 26% over their scaled-back “essential service” levels.

When coronavirus hit us this spring, more than just our normal rail commuting patterns were disrupted. One young entrepreneur’s business simply imploded, but now he’s coming back, stronger than before. Joe Colangelo is founder and CEO of Boxcar, the New Jersey-based company that bills itself as the “Airbnb of parking,” matching commuters with empty parking spots near train stations in Stamford, Darien, New Canaan and Stratford. Before COVID-19, his business was red hot. But by early March he knew it was doomed as people stopped commuting and demand for parking evaporated.

Joe Connolly has been a telecommuter for 20 years. You probably know him from his award-winning business reports on WCBS Newsradio 880 or his Small Business Breakfasts held annually in Stamford. But you might not realize that Connolly lives not in New York City, but in eastern Connecticut. He’s up and working weekdays by 4:30 a.m., driving first to pick up a print copy of the Wall Street Journal before heading to his office/broadcast studio near his home, where he seldom opens the window blinds. “I’m here to work,” he says, “not for the view.”
In his broadcast booth he has a big painting of the New York City skyline to keep him connected with his radio audience.

« August 2022 »

Post-coronavirus, Gov. Ned Lamont predicts the end of daily commuting as we know it. Lamont told Bloomberg that his New York business buddies tell him they’re saving so much money by having people work from their homes they may cut office space in the city by 30 percent. “The old idea of the commuter going into New York City five days a week may be an idea that’s behind us,” Lamont said. “Maybe you have a great job that seems to be geographically located in New York City, you can do it two-thirds of the time from your home in Stamford.”
Or maybe you don’t need to ever go into the city. Twitter has told its tech workers they can work from home forever, assuming they can stand it. That means more time with the family and a lot less time and money spent on the train.