AMTRAK NEC: Springfield Shuttle/Regional/Valley Flyer/Inland Routing

I don't have timetables in front of me at this computer but I am pretty certain that the fastest rail route between Boston and Hartford was the old inland route through Putnam. Most of it had no signals except for manual block but it was in decent shape and most of it was 55 MPH or so. It was generally somewhat shorter than via Springfield and certainly more direct as well. IF this line was still intact today and available then and only then with a decent signal system it could have done just as well or probably even better than the bus but it is gone, gone, gone.
Noel Weaver

Adirondacker wrote:

Jeff Smith wrote:

Adirondacker wrote:The reason Hartford has lousy ridership is that Hartford has lousy service.

Hartford doesn't have lousy ridership.

It has lousy ridership compared to Albany, a similarly sized metro area that is farther away from New York.

http://www.amtrak.com/pdf/factsheets/CONNECTICUT14.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Hudson NY has more passengers.

http://www.amtrak.com/pdf/factsheets/NEWYORK14.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Itty bitty little Hudson.

Jeff Smith wrote:There's no flyover at Shell/New Rochelle.

No there isn't. Just because they did something a few years ago doesn't mean they will never ever do anything ever again. Just like they didn't leave it the way the New Haven left it when Penn Central got it. Or the way Conrail left it.
If they want to turn the two SLE trains that terminate in Stamford into two trains that go to Penn Station and two trains from Springfield that terminate in Stamford into two trains that go to Penn Station and have two originate in Stamford that go to Penn Station and four trains from Boston and still run as many trains to Grand Central that they run now they are going to have to do some thing with New Rochelle and access to the Hell Gate Line.

It's like talking to a wall. And again, poorly researched and taken out of context in partial quotes. That's getting really annoying. The interlocking at Shell was the same since the days of the NYNH&HRR until MNRR updated the operational alignments so that Shell was basically "halved" as far as I know; Noel can verify. And you don't need to update the alignment just because MNRR or SLE might run trains to Penn, although not in the convoluted way that you described. No one's going to build a flyover there; it was looked at and too expensive if even possible for the benefits gained. The current alignment works pretty well in my non-railroader opinion.

And I think everyone else has debunked the Albany/Hartford comparison. The idea of this project is to GET Hartford more service, both commuter and intercity. Ridership there is NOT lousy; I lived there. It's pretty good considering the poor scheduling and frequencies, both of which I noted in my COMPLETE post you truncated.

Ridership there is NOT lousy; I lived there. It's pretty good considering the poor scheduling and frequencies

...and when the scheduling and frequency do not suit, people drive to New Haven (or Waterbury or Saybrook) and catch a train there, either Amtrak or Metro North, or take the bus. The Shuttles' deficient schedule will hopefully be solved by the Hartford Line:

1. Service is clustered in the morning and evening. Mid-day service is sparse. Want to do a half day trip to attend a meeting? You're out of luck.

2. Awkward connection with Metro North. There are numerous intermediate stations not served by Amtrak where you must use MNR.

3. Awkward connection with Acela. Why pay for speed when you lose time on the layover?

4. Awkward connection with trains toward Boston. The layover turns a long but maybe acceptable 3 hour trip into a ridiculously inefficient 4 hour trip.

^Agree.

1. There is barely any service northbound to Hartford from New Haven in the morning, and it's all post rush-hour. The first two trains are a Regional, and then a Shuttle, southbound.

2. Amtrak's not really worried about MNRR connections. That's why when I headed to either Stamford or New York, I just booked a through ticket on Amtrak. It was much easier and faster than an MNRR train making multiple stops. The fare advantage was just not worth the lost time.

3. Agree. If you're heading for Boston or DC, they need better Acela connections.

4. Yeah, Boston connections are bad. I don't think they're going for that anyway with as noted earlier the Peter Pan bus service. If they get some inland frequencies, that would help.

I can't for the life of me figure why anybody other than a railfan would want to go from Hartford to New Haven in order to get on a train to Boston. By the time you finally get out of New Haven enroute to Boston you would be at least half way there on a bus from Hartford. You would actually be farther from Boston in New Haven than you were in Hartford in the first place. YES, I would prefer a train but they are very unlikely to return to this route, the bus is both faster and cheaper and there are multiple trips on a daily basis as well. Some places buses are a better fit than trains are and Hartford - Boston at least in 2015 is an example of this.
Noel Weaver

I can't for the life of me figure why anybody other than a railfan would want to go from Hartford to New Haven in order to get on a train to Boston. By the time you finally get out of New Haven enroute to Boston you would be at least half way there on a bus from Hartford. You would actually be farther from Boston in New Haven than you were in Hartford in the first place. YES, I would prefer a train but they are very unlikely to return to this route, the bus is both faster and cheaper and there are multiple trips on a daily basis as well. Some places buses are a better fit than trains are and Hartford - Boston at least in 2015 is an example of this.
Noel Weaver

Let's say I have several clients to visit in Boston, New York and Washington. The trick is to get to the NEC by car or by Shuttle, hit all the meetings and return to wherever I parked the car. In that situation I might drive to New Haven and take the Acelas.

If just going to Boston I drive to OSB. It's closer and has free parking. Route 9 is pleasant drive with no traffic, unlike the Mass Pike. Have you ever gotten up at 6am, driven to Boston from Hartford in morning traffic, had a stressful meeting and the tried to drive home at 5pm? It's absolutely miserable and a safety risk. I'd rather have a shorter drive, no traffic and the chance to nap or catch up on emails. Buses aren't suited to business travelers and they get stuck in traffic same as driving yourself.

Adirondacker wrote:

Ridgefielder wrote: .... Google pegs it at 43 minutes, but that presumably assumes you're going the speed limit: I know I've made it from my former in-laws' place in West Hartford in closer to 35. And from New Haven you have basically half-hourly Metro-North service to New York from 4 a.m. until Midnight on weekdays, in addition to 20x/day Amtrak.

.... so you are saying they have lousy service north of New Haven and they drive to New Haven instead? ..... In very round numbers metro Newark NJ has as many people as Hartford or Albany. Or rounder ones, New Haven. It has great connections to New York and really slow ones to Philadelphia. It has ridership numbers like Albany's. Wilmington...

No. I'm saying they have choices that Albany doesn't have.

Take the station count by county. Hartford County, CT has 4: Berlin, Hartford, Windsor, and Windsor Locks. Albany County, NY has... zero. Rensselaer County, NY has 1. Or look at count by distance. Within 25 miles of downtown Hartford there are 7 Amtrak stations- the 4 mentioned above, plus Meriden and Wallingford, CT and Springfield, MA. Within 25 miles of downtown Albany there are 2- Albany-Rensselaer and Schenectady. And throwing Newark into the mix is a completely false equivalency. You can't compare a major junction in the middle of one of the most densely-populated suburban areas in the entire United States, which serves every single train to and from the busiest station in North America, to a station that is not in territory like that. That's like comparing Harlem-125th Street to Harrisburg.

Some pictures from the NHHS Facebook page:

Jeff Smith wrote:The interlocking at Shell was the same since the days of the NYNH&HRR until MNRR updated the operational alignments so that Shell was basically "halved" as far as I know; Noel can verify. And you don't need to update the alignment just because MNRR or SLE might run trains to Penn, although not in the convoluted way that you described. No one's going to build a flyover there; it was looked at and too expensive if even possible for the benefits gained. The current alignment works pretty well in my non-railroader opinion.

I have ridden through the area many times this summer. From my non-engineer perspective, the area east of Shell and west of New Rochelle station seems pretty constrained. A flyover starting west of New Rochelle station would need a stiff grade to rise high enough before reaching the I-95 overpass. Furthermore, any flyover in that area would involve replacement of the local road overpasses with much taller structures. These rebuilt road bridges likely wouldn't touch down where they presently do in order for their vertical profiles to stay within acceptable limits.

In contrast, the ROW east of the station seems much roomier. From my armchair, this invites an interesting possibility for a reconfigured Shell interlocking and New Rochelle station leading to a flyover in the area between today's New Rochelle and Larchmont stations. In this vision, the New Haven line would narrow to three tracks east of Pelham station. This would open up space for the Hell Gate line to remain at grade parallel with with the New Haven line tracks until New Rochelle station. At New Rochelle station, platforms and tracks would be arranged as follows from north to south:

Westbound side platform
Local track to GCT
Express track to/from GCT
Local track from GCT
Island platform
Hell Gate westward track
Hell Gate eastward track
Side platform

East of New Rochelle station, the Hell Gate tracks would fly over the eastward New Haven line mains then tie in to the New Haven line.

Granted, some ROW widening work in the station area is probably unavoidable no matter where the flyover goes. To that end, the road bridges around the area would have to be redone, and some retaining wall work would be needed around the station area. However, even if rebuilt to widen the rail ROW, the road bridges would probably be able to have not-so-dissimilar vertical profiles, which would save a lot of headache and cost. Obviously, the track curvature in the area would not be much improved. However, this plan would eliminate the crossing moves at the present at-grade junction. Since the diamonds would be eliminated, the New Haven line to/from GCT would now have 3 tracks good for 50 mph, as opposed to 2 today, and moves on the Hell Gate line tracks would be likely able to be sped up too.

I am under no pretense that any Shell flyover is going to happen before East Side Access wraps, but I do envision some sort of flyover in the area being called for by the 2020s or 30s. I am interested to know if something like what I laid out above has ever been studied.

I just dug out a Peter Pan Bus timetable and they have several trips a day between Hartford and Boston some of which make no stops at all enroute and do the trip in a little less than two hours. That is a lot less than going by train and probably a lot cheaper as well. Anybody who thinks going to New Haveen first then to Boston has to be a gung-ho railfan or have a slight leak in the brain department. Time wise years ago the running time via Springfield was not much different than the time via Willimantic but via Willimantic was about 6 miles shorter. A little more history here, when the New Haven first restored passenger service in 1952 between New London and Worcester using RDC Budd Cars twice a day they also took off all the through cars through Springfield interchange with the B & A. They wanted all of the Worcester - New York business to ride on New Haven rails all the way and in 1952 that was exactly what they did.
Noel Weaver

Noel, as a rider of that very travel pattern who goes from adopted Home Sweet Boston to native birthplace Bristol, CT about twice a month...who rode those very buses for my first 10 years living here...and is now an 8-year car owner who's watched how much worse the traffic has gotten in that span. . .

. . .my leaky brain can't disagree with you more. The buses are cheap. Cheaper than ever. But the trending on the OTP of those schedules is undeniable. Ride during peak hours, and that low price is low because extra schedule uncertainty is built into the price. Today it's just uncertainty. 5 years from now it'll be genuinely lengthened schedules--and the same uncertainty--on the peak-hour slots...and the uncertainty becoming baked into those low prices on more slots further from peak. It's getting that bad, and the getting-that-bad is that recent a phenomenon.


This isn't fantasy. There's a whole market out there of people who need to travel from Central CT and Springfield to Boston between 3:00 and 8:00pm on a weekday and Sunday nights when Sturbridge to Auburn is a parking lot, and need to do so knowing that the printed schedule is a bit more reliable than a 'suggestion'. And are willing to pay a little more for it if it comes with other ride-comfort advantages. The cratering bus prices will always have their bread-and-butter, but it's ceasing to be at a point where it's reliable enough for every demographic. For business travelers, much more quickly untenable than for college undergrads.

I know you will never agree, and won't belabor the point. But I've been doing this trip twice a month for 18 years straight on both rubber-tire rapid transit and rubber-tire personal transit. And I'm gonna have to side with my own eyes, personal experience, and leaky brain on this one.

With all due respect Noel, getting to Boston via the Shore Line from Central CT is more popular than you would think - and out of every 20 passengers I have sold tickets to maybe 1 is a railfan. When someone complains about having to go through New Haven I will suggest the bus via I-84 and many will say 1. " I don't like buses" or 2. "I hate the traffic parking lot on I-84 and the Mass Pike."
This is another subject that F-Line is well informed on and I also recently have had experieces on the I-84 / Mass Pike route, as has my wife who visits her Mom near Ayer Mass twice a month from central CT. We know several alternate routes as during holiday weekends even the Mass Pike's parallel US Route 20 can be a problem. I have been driving from either Springfield or Hartford area to greater Boston since 1969 and and it is now far worse than before they added the 3rd lane west to Sturbridge and other improvements back around 1970-75.
The new intercity buses are fairly comfortable, and although some bargains remain many of the really cheap fares disappeared a number of years ago after Peter Pan and Greyhound started pooling runs instead of competing between NY and Boston. But the biggest problem the buses have is having to share the highways and ending up bogged down in the ever-increasing traffic mess.
I can see Amtrak adding service via the Inland route and if it somehow can get through New Haven without changing I think 3 or 4 trains a day each way might work, as long as the railroad doesn't have traffic jams of their own on CSX's Boston & Albany line between Springfield and Worcester and the proposed track improvements are completed.

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:There's a whole market out there of people who need to travel from Central CT and Springfield to Boston between 3:00 and 8:00pm on a weekday and Sunday nights when Sturbridge to Auburn is a parking lot, and need to do so knowing that the printed schedule is a bit more reliable than a 'suggestion'.

I'm going to agree and elaborate: It is a dawning problem that there are 3 road chokepoints: Hartford (I-84+I-91, esp when the 84 viaduct gets reconstructed), Sturbridge-Auburn (I-84+I-90) and Boston Rush Hours, any one of which which can crater a trip in either direction, with the result being that there are long stretches of the day where, if you're familiar with both ends of the trip, you know that you have to worry about timing at both ends and the middle. Its as chaotic as a triple pendulum--impossible to predict with any regularity.

This is where CT and MA could really be using CMAQ-type money to just skim off a little bit of road traffic at peak times onto improved Inland service that threaded into HFD at the AM rush, out of HFD at the PM rush, avoided Sturbridge-Auburn and got into BOS at the AM rush and out at the PM Rush (i'm not sure if that's 2 trains or 4 trains but like the Downeaster, we could expect the ones that were timed to beat the worst road traffic to be near-sellouts almost no matter how slow they are if they can be predictable rush-beaters) Partly to have fewer straws breaking the road camel's back, and partly to allow some people to escape without doing an add-a-lane project.

that market is not CDOT's concern and if CDOT awards contract to other than Amtrak you can kiss any Amtrak service goodbye.
Amtrak has stated that the New Haven crew base would be gone and they would basically lease the line to CDOT.

If you'd like to skip New Haven on a Hartford - Boston itinerary, it's theoretically possible to do so by using the east leg of the wye, and joining the NEC at Airline Jct. [I thing that's what it's called.] Only problem is that you've got that danged 39 train-a-day limit doing that, so practically it's not possible. Massachusetts really needs to step up and come with the funds to double track the Springfield to Worcester portion of the Inland Route to satisfy CSX's exigencies. There's no other way around increased service in the short term. Long term, Amtrak has big alternate plans, as we know.