Central Connecticut Rail Study Hartford-Waterbury (Busway)

Potentially bad news for rail proponents, and thanks to MNRR9900 (I think I have that user name right) for posting this article in the M-8 thread:

http://articles.courant.com/2011-02-24/ ... haven-line

In what might be a signal about Malloy's plans, the measure also makes the money available to towns on the path of the proposed New Britain to Hartford busway. The $567 million bus-only highway has become a political quagmire in recent years. New Britain and Hartford insist it's vital to their economic development, while Newington opposes it and many Bristol leaders dismiss it as a horribly overpriced white elephant.

The state DOT wants to seek construction bids in March, but needs Malloy's go-ahead. Asked Thursday when he'll decide, he replied, "Within a month."

I would suggest interested parties contact their local representative or Governor's office concering this boondoggle, er, busway. Not that I have an opinion or anything.......

I don't think it's going to come to pass. Every town on the line other than New Britain is starting to lodge complaints, especially ones that are getting overpasses built. And the engineering problems are mounting including rated speed and headways being drastically cut by the limitations they're uncovering with the busway's ROW geometry. i.e...that it's impossible to cram a road's turning radius and intersection grade crossings onto a RR footprint and get anything close to tolerable travel times. This is still below most pols' radars, but Malloy will be given a pretty sobering engineering and cost analysis briefing if he hasn't already. I think the only question here is whether a patronage gravy train that's running out of control and chewing up money at an astonishing rate on the planning end can politically get cut off. This might be one of those things where stopping it requires feigning interest and feeding it a little bit longer until its food supply can get throttled down and gradually choked off. This is always a problem with bad pork projects that have taken on a life of their own. Look at that F-35 contract that it just took Congress 3 tries to finally kill after the DoD pleaded for years "Please kill this piece of crap we don't need." Congress kept resurrecting it anyway. This busway's got some of those same characteristics at the state level. I wouldn't necessarily assume Malloy's swallowing the kool-aid if it's a wait-and-see. The wait-and-see itself might be a tactic to let the air out of remaining support.

Don't discount also that most of the ROW alternatives in the new Amtrak 30-year HSR vision for an inland NEC bypass use this busway ROW. That's far, far future but it doesn't help seeking Fed funding for cannibalization of a ROW that cuts against a capital B-I-G national plan. Not when the asphalt project itself is so dubious.


That Somethingawful.com thread by the CDOT traffic engineer outlines what a freaking impossibility it's becoming, since that guy works on the busway engineering every day. His assessment gets ever more grim by the day the more unsolvable flaws he finds in the design. Fascinating general-interest transit thread in and of itself...I highly recommend bookmarking and checking in periodically. This guy offers spectacular insight, and is funny as hell.

porkfriedrice wrote:An actual CTDOT traffic engineer gives his opinion on the busway here.

is Ct jealous of the Big Dig and wants a union pay day boondogle of its own ?

BigLou80 wrote:is Ct jealous of the Big Dig and wants a union pay day boondogle of its own ?

This stupid black hole of waste has been around since before the Big Dig was built. What can you say...it was the "in" thing to do in the mid-90's.

F-Line, great points. It was a coalition of dems and tea-party republicans who killed the F-35 second engine; CT went the other way, it seems, in the last election, but let's see if Malloy will stand up to the Hartford lobby and kill this thing. If he has national hopes, and I suspect he does, he needs to kill it, and put that money into genuine improvements.

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:

BigLou80 wrote:is Ct jealous of the Big Dig and wants a union pay day boondogle of its own ?

This stupid black hole of waste has been around since before the Big Dig was built. What can you say...it was the "in" thing to do in the mid-90's.

Really the big dig was a brain child of the early 1980's with an original estimate of 1.5 billion dollars.........

I have lots of family in CT in the area around 84 west. it would be great to have rail service instead of a 3 hour drive

Also not widely known, the I-84 viaduct/interchange just west of Hartford Station - and where the bus(t)way is to terminate will have to be rebuilt since it is nearing the end of its expected lifetime (ask me why Europeans design their highways to last over 50 years with lest maintenance - we did it with the Hutchison & Merritt Pkws) and will have to be rebuilt.
In that process, the AMTK mainline AND the busway will have to be relocated.

So - let's see - spend $$$ for the busway & then a few years later spend even more $$$ to relocate it.

What a bunch of "maroons".

By viaduct/interchange do you mean the tunnels you hit heading right on and off of 91? It doesn't seem like that long ago they rebuilding the I91Northbound/I84 eastbound interchange. That flyway was a godsend compared to the stop light in Hartford.

Anyhow this is exactly how Gov't operates a problem put off until after the election is a problem that politically solved. Moving the station in the future is not today's problem so they are not going to address it.


It's really no surprise that rail is a much better deal. There was a reason private money chose to build out a rail network over 100 years ago and not a roadway network for horse & buggy or stanley steamers. Only the gov't could pretend to afford the Interstate system, could you imagine trying to sell it to private investors ?

CannaScrews wrote:Also not widely known, the I-84 viaduct/interchange just west of Hartford Station - and where the bus(t)way is to terminate will have to be rebuilt since it is nearing the end of its expected lifetime (ask me why Europeans design their highways to last over 50 years with lest maintenance - we did it with the Hutchison & Merritt Pkws) and will have to be rebuilt.
In that process, the AMTK mainline AND the busway will have to be relocated.

So - let's see - spend $$$ for the busway & then a few years later spend even more $$$ to relocate it.

What a bunch of "maroons".

Actually, I think the busway deviates off the RR alignment for that last mile and goes a few blocks on city streets to the terminal. It's got a convoluted overpass structure at the end that's going to totally @#$% up some of the streets there...and be one of the single most expensive structures on the busway. RR, as mentioned, is going to be realigned and dropped into the new below-grade I-84 cut when the viaduct is torn down and the highway straightened to get rid of all the sluggish curves. Instead of crossing the highway 3 separate times it'll cross only once and parallel the north side of the highway the rest of the way. Viaduct thing's unrelated to anything busway or NHHS commuter rail. It simply must be replaced it's in such scary decrepit shape and in danger of collapse, and the cost analysis said that a total tear-down and re-route of the highway into a cut would be cheaper over 50 years than rebuilding the viaduct all over.

The bigger issue that'll cause a busway relocation is Amtrak's warned CDOT that in 2 decades it's going to need to add a 3rd track to its ROW to handle increased inland route traffic (line is former 4-track to Hartford from at least Berlin Jct. if not further south). And since the busway's on an Amtrak-owned easement from south of Route 173 in Newington to Park St. in Hartford 3 miles of it are going to be evicted and have to rebuilt on eminent domain-taken land to the side when Amtrak wants its space back. Amtrak's said this is non-negotiable when they do, because the 3rd track will be needed for normal traffic growth nevermind their grand vision for an inland NEC bypass (which will require all 4 tracks restored). That's almost half the busway length that'll have to be rebuilt in-full. The CDOT engineer on that thread hammers away at this incredulously because it's the single most pointless part of the design. Literally...20 years thereabouts and they have to start all over again on this stretch.

I can't wait to see this thing try to run in a snowstorm lol. Seriously, hasn't anyone involved with this project taken that into consideration given CT's (rather unpredictable) climate? I know trains aren't immune to being shut down in extreme situations (as has been seen this winter), but they would definitely have a much better chance of running in a regular storm compared to a bus. Hmm shortsighted thinking on the part of the DOT?...

NH2060 wrote:I can't wait to see this thing try to run in a snowstorm lol. Seriously, hasn't anyone involved with this project taken that into consideration given CT's (rather unpredictable) climate? I know trains aren't immune to being shut down in extreme situations (as has been seen this winter), but they would definitely have a much better chance of running in a regular storm compared to a bus. Hmm shortsighted thinking on the part of the DOT?...

It'll have to get diverted onto side streets during bad conditions until it gets a very thorough plowing to the curb after snow stops. Tight radius means you can't just plow middle of the pavement to keep things moving during the storm and leave a giant plow mound on the shoulder. The engineers have fired the emergency flares and stabbed their own eyes out with drafting pencils over that unfixable design flaw too. The engineers aren't in control...if they were it would have been killed years ago. They're being put on a death march from above to keep designing the un-designable to keep the patronage gravy train going at the political level. Even their mid-manager bosses know how senseless it is, but they too have to put on a brave face because of pressure from the top. This thing couldn't possibly have any more strident built-in opposition from the poor DOT desk- and truck-jockeys charged with actually making it buildable and operable.

For those of you that were interested in what that CTDOT traffic engineer has to say about the busway there's a small update here: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showth ... t389606331

I think you can tell he's not a fan. This project really seems like it will benefit someone politically, as opposed to helping traffic conditons on I-84. The hell with what experts think. What a shame.

Porkfriedrice, you should read the blog posts on TSTC's site. They love this project, and are all for buses on the TZB too instead of rail. For an advocacy group, it makes no sense. Rail could be restarted at much less cost than this concrete cacaphony.

porkfriedrice wrote:For those of you that were interested in what that CTDOT traffic engineer has to say about the busway there's a small update here: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showth ... t389606331

I think you can tell he's not a fan. This project really seems like it will benefit someone politically, as opposed to helping traffic conditons on I-84. The hell with what experts think. What a shame.

Malloy's supposed to reviewing rebuttals for the rest of this week on the meeting he had at the beginning of the week with proponents and opponents. Then supposed to make a final call next week.

Really, it amounts to the $270 mil in fed highway funding unrelated to any of the rail project grants. If that isn't happening, then it's deader than dead. And still could be with all the violent community opposition in Newington, West Hartford, and Hartford over the required bridges. If I was the Administration I sure wouldn't fund a project giving off such mixed messages...this isn't a whole lot different from the way the Capitol Corridor in New Hampshire is coming apart at the seams. Not to mention Amtrak is matter-of-fact about booting the busway off its land easement as soon as it needs to tri-track the Springfield line (which it's said they project traffic growth will require in 20 years with or without any of those NEC east-west bypass proposals). Nobody has any idea what the actual chances of the fed funding are, other than the proponents are lockstep that it's going to be approved. Because they have no choice but to push that line.

I think it's still gonna die when the engineering impossibilities and local opposition around the bridges crest at final EIS stage. Unfortunately by that point all the fed money will be completely blown on vaporware and the price tag will be $1.4 billion or something at the time they have to pull the plug. Which is a hell of a bitter way to murder all future transit projects of any ilk in the state.

We know New Britain Mayor Stewart's on the take from the BRT lobby as well as a whole lot of local pols and DOT upper management. But I'm surprised the BRT snake oil still has this much of a hold on them when support for it has more or less collapsed across the country in the last 5+ years. Even the MBTA, which fell for it harder than anyone else, has pulled the plug on the Silver Line Big Dig Redux, the Urban Ring, the Roxbury-Mattapan 28X branch, and the Silver Line branches to Southie. It pays unenthusiastic lip service to regular bus upgrades like signal priority and curb abutments being "BRT-like", but it's not even pretending to try anymore. All gone by the boards in favor of other stupidity like the Fall River/New Bedford commuter rail sinkhole. You would think since CDOT is incapable of coming up with an original thought that they'd keep miming along to other regions and find something else shiny, unbuildable, and flavor-of-the-month to distract itself with by now.

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:You would think since CDOT is incapable of coming up with an original thought that they'd keep miming along to other regions and find something else shiny, unbuildable, and flavor-of-the-month to distract itself with by now.

You mean like a light rail system in Stamford?