Talking Transportation 2023

Lawmakers: Have You Taken a Train or a Bus Lately?

Readers Comment on the Woes of Interstate 95

What’s Wrong With I-95? Let’s Count the Ways

Even Walking Can Be Dangerous

Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Everywhere Else — But They Dropped the Ball at Metro-North

Appreciate the Wonders of Engineering Around Us

How’s Connecticut Gonna Rock Down to Electric Avenue? An Electric Car Mandate Would Need More Electricity

Comparing a Shiny Florida Railroad to the Gritty Metro-North: Prepare To Be (Mostly) Envious

Four Hiking Boots and 40 Lost Pounds Later, Darien Native Walks the Entire Appalachian Trail

Service Cuts and Higher Ticket Prices on Connecticut Trains — It’s a Done Deal

Higher Prices, Longer Delays for Americans With Panama Canal’s Shortage of Water

Where You Can Find Out About Connecticut’s Railroad Heritage — and Have a Fun Trip with the Kids

Elon Musk’s Other Transportation Project

When Metro-North Let Riders Get Beaten by the Heat

What It’s Like When Your Life, Your Love and Your Lady are At Sea in the U.S. Merchant Marine

Events Calendar

Cameron on Transportation

By JIM CAMERON | December 17, 2023

Talking Transportation 2023

By JIM CAMERON | December 11, 2023

Talking Transportation 2023

By JIM CAMERON | December 3, 2023

Talking Transportation

By JIM CAMERON | November 29, 2023

Cameron on Transportation

By JIM CAMERON | November 16, 2023

Cameron on Transportation

By JIM CAMERON | November 6, 2023

Cameron on Transportation

By JIM CAMERON | October 14, 2023

Cameron on Transportation

By JIM CAMERON | October 4, 2023

Talking Transportation 2023

By JIM CAMERON | September 26, 2023

Cameron on Railroads 2023

By JIM CAMERON | September 24, 2023

Talking Transportation 2023

By JIM CAMERON | August 29, 2023

Talking Transportation 2023

By JIM CAMERON | July 23, 2023

Cameron on Railroads 2023

By JIM CAMERON | July 18, 2023

Cameron on Railroads 2023

By JIM CAMERON | July 5, 2023

Cameron on Transportation

By JIM CAMERON | June 21, 2023

Do the folks in state government know what it’s like to be a commuter? When’s the last time that Gov. Ned Lamont took a train — not for a photo op, but for real? He does have a home in Greenwich so he could be enjoying the great service on the Hartford Line and Metro-North. But it seems he’s always driving around in that big (chauffeured) SUV which, by the way, is not electric (despite his calls for Connecticut to “go green” and all-electric by 2035!)

C’mon Governor: walk the talk! Or how about our lawmakers?

Last week’s column (“Why We Love To Hate I-95”) apparently struck a nerve, generating a lot of comments, some of which I thought I’d share here. Carolanne wrote “I-95 needs to be re-paved. Ever notice how uneven the interstate is? It’s very unsafe. As for (lack of State) police, thank you Democrats (for defunding law enforcement.)”

Commenting on the highway’s condition, Pam from Darien said “I need to follow up with CDOT about the claim I put in for $350 for repairs to my car after driving on freshly laid pavement this summer.

Highway traffic congestion Stamford Interstate 95 I95

Someone recently described me as “the Lewis Black of transportation” — angry, cynical and sarcastic. That’s high praise, in my view. So imagine my surprise that when Lewis performed recently in Waterbury and New London he riffed on the highway we love to hate: I-95. “I lived in Connecticut for five years,” attending the Yale School of Drama he told the crowd. “There’s nothing more joyous than driving up I-95.

Over Thanksgiving I’ve been musing on some recent developments. TRAINS:
Are you heading into NYC to go shopping? Veteran riders will remember when Metro-North would offer “Shopper Specials” trains to handle the crowds, but no more. The trains may be seeing more passengers but the railroad tells me only that they are “monitoring ridership carefully and (are) prepared to quickly add trains to any of (the) lines if demand calls for it.” Tell that to the standees on many rush-hour trains. PLANES:
If you’re one of the 3 million Americans who flew on Sunday, congratulations.

Why is Metro-North the only major commuter railroad in the U.S. that doesn’t offer its riders Wi-Fi? That’s a question I’ve been asking for many years and I still can’t get a straight answer. Four years ago the Connecticut legislature gave the Connecticut Department of Transportation $23 million to get Wi-Fi onboard, but it is still not there. Gov. Lamont promised us 5G Wi-Fi, but there’s still zilch. Why?

CDOT I-95 Westport bridge replacement 2023

As a young man I wanted to become a civil engineer and design the railroads of the future. So I went to one of the nation’s best engineering schools, Lehigh University, only to find out in my freshman year that I’d need calculus, physics and chemistry. So I ran quickly to the Arts College and studied sociology. Still, my admiration of the work of engineers in designing and running our transportation network has never diminished. Here are a few recent examples:
CDOT & ABCs
As we rebuild our crumbling interstate highways, the CDOT deserves credit for learning its ABCs — “accelerated bridge construction.” Over two recent weekends they demolished and replaced two three-lane bridges at Exit 17 in Westport with, considering the enormity of the tasks, minimal impact on traffic.

There’s way too much news. I’m a like thirsty man trying to drink from a firehose. Every day I read three daily Connecticut newspapers, several Connecticut news sites, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and then catch the evening news on BBC, France24, Deutsche Welle and PBS. (I don’t even bother with the commercial networks or the ‘terror-tainment’ on the cable channels). But while drowning in content, I sometimes find disparate news items that present a pattern, often disturbing.

The railroad world is abuzz with the opening of the new Brightline high speed rail service to Orlando, an extension of that private railroad’s existing train service down Florida’s east coast to Miami. This is really big news. The $5 billion expansion to Orlando was privately financed but with generous tax exempt bonds the railroad will have to pay back. Still, this is the first for-profit passenger railroad in the U.S. in forty years. How does Brightline compare with Metro-North?

Diana Jackson Appalachian Trail end mountain

This Darien native is one of over 3,300 people each year who try to walk the entire length of the Appalachian Trail (the AT), from Georgia to Maine. But she’s one of the 25% of them that actually completed the task. She learned to hike with her parents in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and at age seven announced her goal of making the entire trek. Her parents humored her, but on graduation from Wellesley College she got serious and spent six months in preparation. “I thought of this as my gap year,” she said.

Commuters Riders at GCT Grand Central Terminal

How’s this for a double-whammy? The Connecticut Department of Transportation is proposing a cut in train and bus service while also raising fares — just as I predicted months ago. Blame both plans on Covid and what it did to ridership, still down about 30% on Metro-North compared with 2019 — but climbing, day by day. On Shore Line East, CDOT’s railroad from New Haven to New London, the ridership is down 68% from pre-Covid numbers. Low ridership like that, says CDOT, is unsustainable.

Global warming is affecting shipping through the Panama Canal, delaying U.S. imports of everything from new cars to fuel. Every ship traversing the canal between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans requires 50 million gallons of fresh water, drawn from two man-made lakes in the middle of the isthmus. But reduced rainfall there this year has made water levels in the lakes drop precipitously, meaning less water to feed the canal, let alone fresh water to the locals. That’s led to a 200-ship wait on both sides of the canal, delaying passage of goods. And the ships that are being allowed through, some booked a year in advance, can carry less cargo because their draught (how deep the ships ride in the water) has been reduced from a 50-foot depth to just 44 feet.

If you’re looking for family fun this summer, consider visiting one of Connecticut’s many living museums celebrating our state’s rail heritage. The Shore Line Trolley Museum in East Haven was founded in 1945 and now boasts more than one hundred trolley cars in its collection. It’s on the National Registry of Historic Places and is the oldest continuously operating trolley line in the U.S., still running excursion trolleys for a three-mile run on tracks once used by The Connecticut Company for its “F Line” from New Haven to Branford. You can also walk through the car barns and watch volunteers painstakingly restoring the old cars. There’s also a small museum exhibit and gift shop.

IEEE.org old illustration vacuum transportation

Whatever happened to Elon Musk’s hyperloop? It’s hard to believe but this summer marks 10 years since the billionaire inventor first unveiled the idea for passenger pods riding like maglev trains inside giant tubes in a near vacuum. So it’s time to see how his vision of this super-fast transportation system is coming along. Spoiler alert: it’s not doing so great. History
First off, Musk was not the first person to suggest tube-like trains running in a vacuum.

As summer arrives I’m reminded of one of Metro-North’s greatest “fails” of all time, recounted in this column I wrote days after it happened …

Friday July 22, 2011 was the hottest day I can ever remember. The pavement in Manhattan was 147 degrees, and I could tell that my commute home was going to be awful. Luckily, I wasn’t on the 1:34 p.m. train to New Haven. Three cars on that train lacked good air conditioning, so the remaining cars were standing room only. Just past the Westport station, an aging pantograph snared the overhead catenary (power) line, sagging in the heat, and the train lost power.

Looking for a career in transportation with good pay, incredible job security, free room and board and a chance to “sea” the world? Check out the U.S. Merchant Marine. Though the U.S. is heavily dependent on overseas imports, most of the big container ships and tankers serving our ports are not American. But under federal law, any shipping between U.S. ports must be on vessels owned, built, flagged and staffed with U.S. crews. Although there are only about 200 U.S. vessels that meet those “Jones Act” criteria, they all need crews.

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