State, Amtrak need to get on same page

Ed Stannard, Register Metro Editor

Getting a high-speed commuter rail line going between New Haven and Springfield, Mass., is the hottest transportation topic in Connecticut right now.

On Friday, House Speaker Christopher G. Donovan, D-Meriden, saying Connecticut “has a rare opportunity to make this long-anticipated project a reality,” called on Gov. M. Jodi Rell to put $30 million for planning and design work on next month’s Bond Commission agenda.

He also said he will convene a working group to plan how best to use money Connecticut can apply for from an $8 billion federal stimulus pot. President Barack Obama on Thursday designated that amount to develop a high-speed rail network centered on population centers across the country.

The competition will be intense for the money. New Haven-Springfield may have an advantage because it’s a two-state project, and Donovan wants Connecticut and Massachusetts to work together on the application.

Rell is already behind the project, and U.S. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., said at a hearing held in New Haven on Thursday that he’ll do all he can to move it along. As chairman of the committee that oversees mass transit financing, he has some clout.

Donovan said he wants the state departments of Transportation and Environmental Protection and Amtrak around the table for his working group. Of course those state offices are already on the governor’s working group, which oversees how to use federal stimulus money coming to the state, including transit money. State Sen. Donald G. DeFronzo, D-New Britain, co-chairman of the Transportation Committee, also sits at that table.

“It is absurd that one of the major transportation corridors in the Northeast is without high-speed commuter rail,” Donovan said. “We simply have to make the most of the opportunity now before us.”

Whether a second “working group” is the best way to go is open to debate, but getting Amtrak at the table is important. The quasi-public, federally subsidized rail line owns the tracks between New Haven and Springfield and runs six daily trains each way between those points.

In an interview last week after Obama’s announcement, Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black was less than an enthusiastic endorser of the plan.

“It’s a topic that Amtrak is willing to discuss at any time,” he said. “We’re receptive to suggestions from the state but there are priorities on both sides and there are costs associated with it.”

Those priorities have to do with Amtrak not wanting commuter trains to interfere with its Vermonter and Northeast Corridor service.

Last month, state DOT Commissioner Joseph F. Marie handed a letter to Amtrak President Joseph Boardman from Rell and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick asking for support. An environmental assessment has been under way for months and the state’s consultants presented a plan for two levels of service back in December, but Black said “we haven’t been given a detailed proposal.”

If high-speed trains are ever going to bring people to Hartford, Bradley International Airport, New Haven’s Union Station, the Basketball Hall of Fame and points in between, Amtrak needs to be involved in the talks. That’s more important than competing “working groups” set up by the Republican governor’s office and the General Assembly’s Democratic leadership.