Jeff Smith wrote:CT owns the ROW north of New Milford; who's responsible for maintaining that portion? I'd expect them to maintain their own (the Maybrook, and the stretch Danbury to New Milford).
HRRC is sole maintainer in CT, required to do all track work in-house or hire the outside contractors who do it. Obviously that involves some degree of continuous CDOT financial and material support (unlike the private trackage where everything is self-paid except when a one-time grant is in effect). But since CDOT doesn't have an in-house rail department on publicly-owned lines where it's not also the public
operator, the only way to physically do any work is through the tenant railroad. Same cut-and-dried deal here as it is for P&W on the Air Line/Valley Line and western Willimantic Secondary, or CNZR on the Griffins and Armory. State cuts the checks, RR has to make sure the work gets done to-spec.
On any typical trackage rights agreement the self-maintenance responsibilities are fully enumerated, and it's spelled out what they have to self-fund on the state's trackage. If their agreement follows the boilerplate of most Northeastern state-owned lines purchased and converted over to trackage rights within the last 3 decades, then HRRC pays out-of-pocket for what wear and tear their own operations put on the infrastructure above the baseline. CDOT's responsibilities for continuous subsidy would also be spelled out in the same agreement. Usually the way that works is that when the purchase is made and trackage rights are inked, a baseline track class is specified and the division of responsibilities pivots from there. On the Berkshire Line the baseline would've been set back when CDOT spent all the money to get the New Milford-North Caanan track operable again. So when it comes to a finger-pointing contest over whose fault it is that the track is garbage, everything is traceable back to that baseline. CDOT's required to itemize the maintenance line items 8 years at a time every time it files a new State Rail Plan with the FRA; that's all recorded for public record with dollar figures if you Google "Connecticut State Rail Plan" and look in the appendices. Most of the dollar figures itemized in there are unfunded mandates, so of course the "improvements" part of the HRRC bucket list is speculative and they have to rally first around basic upkeep like funding cycled tie replacement and whatnot. Because this is all public record, if HRRC
is delivered the funding/material resources and
isn't applying those CDOT resources wisely...it's their problem, and they're the ones on the hook for making up the gap they're falling short on that baseline track class specced by their trackage rights agreement.
^^This^^ is CDOT's problem with HRRC in a nutshell. HRRC habitually fails to implement or mis-applies what subsidy they do get. All those controversies about "disappearing rail" being snuck into Massachusetts, holding company sleight-of-hand, general incompetence, etc. CDOT's giving them a subsidy for the trackage rights (a problematically meager one, no doubt), but HRRC is falling further and further behind on maint because they're wasting what pittance they do get and are falling increasingly short with time on maintaining that baseline track class. And falling further behind
faster than what a he-said/she-said re: "CDOT's not paying us enough subsidy!" vs. "HRRC @#%&'s away all their subsidy!" offers for plausible deniability. Unfortunately their trackage rights agreement is unusually permissive and makes it nearly impossible for CDOT to evict Danbury Terminal to recruit a new carrier, so HRRC falling further behind is an entrenched structural problem in the agreement that's going to eventually require a taxpayer bailout. The Godfather move that MassDOT made to liquidate the Coltsville Terminal holding company and bring the line under public ownership + oversight...and the Godfather move that CDOT will inevitably make to liquidate Maybrook Properties and bring the private trackage under public ownership + oversight...can thus be explained as preludes to that eventual reckoning. i.e. Clean out the line ownership holding companies and their shennanigans first so when it's time to clean up the mess they're dealing with just Danbury Terminal on just a publicly transparent set of trackage rights.
Since CT is going to take a bath on the bailout thanks to that unusually permissive trackage rights agreement signed 25+ years ago...it behooves them and MassDOT to take out the trash everywhere else HRRC-related first before they have to bail out the Berkshire Line with an overpay of new state-of-repair money to bring it back to the track class baseline that HRRC failed to live up to.
^To answer an earlier question, this is also why Berkshire Scenic isn't back on its home rails yet. MassDOT had to bake into its purchase agreement a ($8M?) package of basic repairs to roll back the substandard spots in BSRM territory. That's more or less Phase I of the bailout on the MA side of the border. They've reset HRRC to trackage rights, and the baseline track class that HRRC has to live up to now becomes the state-of-repair
after MassDOT has applied all its repair money. First in mission-critical spots, then filling in any remaining gaps in BSRM territory, then elsewhere south towards the border. Since their fresh trackage rights agreement is a little toothier than the older one HRRC has with CDOT, MassDOT can actually play watchdog and penalize HRRC if it starts slipping behind again on baseline track class. So there'll be that much additional stability after they swallow these up-front costs. Unfortunately the state's busy doing a summer work blitz on the recently purchased (and much more mission-critical) CSX Framingham Secondary, so the Berkshire Line probably isn't going to get most of that repair work done this year. And it's unclear if they're going to get 100% of BSRM territory done in this first shot, or if hyper-critical patches elsewhere limit where the funds get spread. It could take another year or two before BSRM is cleared, which is why the state is rallying around that Adams-N. Adams excursion service in the interim. But the goal is most definitely to get BSRM back home when the Berkshire Line's been repaired, and to have HRRC live up to its maint responsibilities in MA going forward.
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