Screw Boughton. I've lived in Danbury since 2002 (coincidentally when he took office) and he has completely neglected the Danbury branch all that time. Never pressed for improved service, never publicly supported extension northwards, and has overseen a major increase in sprawling, auto-dependent greenfield development on the edges of the city. He's a Republican Boomer and governs like one. Meanwhile this ROW has been abandoned and development sites around it in West Danbury have been built up with transit-incompatible uses. In the evening traffic is terrible around exit 2 because the whole area is a bottleneck, and the huge number of new apartments and townhomes being built in he hills to the South are adding hugely to traffic. And everyone is in a car.
This proposal seems to call for a spur off Maybrook that leads into Southeast station, therefore requiring a connection or a reverse move. Trains from Southeast to NYC already take 80+ minutes. So the time savings and convenience rapidly dissipate. Way down the line, if rail money was flowing, sure, build it. In the short term, maybe build out the mixed-use path from Brewster to Danbury. Run a frequent bus. HART transit is not geared as mass transit, but rather transit for the marginal. That should change. Coincidentally, Danbury just released a downtown TOD plan that would call for a bus hub adjacent to the Danbury station. How a station for the Maybrook service would tie in to these plans? Undefined.
A larger question is how Danbury will grow over the next 50 years. It has an urban core, but has sprawled and grown in a suburban way for a long time. We'll see what happens to the jobs in the big suburban office parks in the area. And traffic is a growing problem, and there are plans for more highway expansions... and more sprawl... and more traffic. But my position in sort is: invest in the Danbury Branch and New Haven Line!