Central Connecticut Rail Study Hartford-Waterbury (Busway)

Mr rt wrote:The "congestion" in and out of Hartford is North/South more so then East/West !
South there are two RxR lines, one to Meriden, the other to Middletown ...
North, along the river all the way to Springfield ...

What evidence do they have that Transit Oriented Development occurs from additional B-U-S service ?
Rail:
- Exhibit A: HBLR/NCS
- Exhibit B: Riverline

The Armory Line is active only to the state line. Landbanked in MA and there's a couple encroached developments in Springfield. CT is pissed at MA that they were so lackadaisical and unhelpful about preserving that ROW, because it really wanted the east-of-river alternate freight route to keep some of the slow traffic off the mainline. Any way they slice it now there's still going to have to be mainline freight because of the Armory Line blockage.


TOD. with bus? Not here. It can certainly be done with a well-designed route, but this is about as poorly designed as you can get and still feign interest in building. In fact no one has ever talked about TOD at any location on the line for the whole duration of the project. Mainly because the single-track ROW is so narrow for vehicle traffic that there's not gonna be much in the way of available space at stations to build much. in It might even inhibit rail TOD on the ham-fisted portion of busway shared with the Springfield Line in Newington and West Hartford.

Apologies in advance for the off topic post, but I thought it may be of interest. Our friend the traffic engineer at the CTDOT has been laid off, effective in August. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showth ... t393568622 Always a shame when someone who knows their job and does it well gets the axe.

porkfriedrice wrote:Apologies in advance for the off topic post, but I thought it may be of interest. Our friend the traffic engineer at the CTDOT has been laid off, effective in August. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showth ... t393568622 Always a shame when someone who knows their job and does it well gets the axe.

That's another strike against building this project because CDOT got hit the hardest of any agency in layoffs, and the engineering personnel for the busway were decimated so that's going to strangle design progress which he said was closer to 60% than the 99% the gasbag pols were citing. If they go ahead and try to complete the Route 11 expressway, a much higher-priority project, the remaining manpower is going to have to get reassigned to that project. I'm pretty sure the busway is terminal. It's just a matter of how long Malloy's going to keep up a facade of supporting it and letting the consultants continue to chew up millions while he runs out the clock. If he waits until after the 2012 elections and for the New Britain mayor's office to flip to a decidedly less busway kool-aid drinking candidate to kill it (loudmouth Tim Stewart's running for Legislature), they may chew up another 10 figures in sunk consultant costs and likely end up with $100 mil total spent for a whole lotta nothing. Embarrassing and damaging to future funding prospects. But at least it's not a billion for a project that physically does not work.


As the engineer notes in his post, it's not a fait accompli that these layoffs are gonna stick. His salary is federally subsidized, so the cost of severance and unemployment costs the state more for the fiscal year these layoffs are supposed to save money than it does to keep him and many of the other 844 CDOT layoffs employed. If the unions that spiked the new terms come back to Malloy and agree to it, a great many of the thousands of statewide layoffs he's announcing will get recalled. Certainly a lot of those at CDOT because it got hit so hard and the payroll math doesn't make a lot of sense. It's a ploy and the political ante's been upped to absolute max now, but these jobs could be retroactively saved with a 13th-hour agreement. You never like to see the employees screwed around like this as pawns, but that's how it works. At least the door is still slightly ajar to rescind most of these, diminished odds and all. Maybe if they are reinstated the decimated busway staff finds themselves reassigned to different projects like Route 11 and the beginning of the end for this farce is mercifully upon us. Stay tuned for the next 6 weeks because the drama is far from over.

Sometimes I hate my state. Can I just skip 2 months and be in Boston now?

Thought about posting this in MNRR forum; I still may. However, this is the thread I was looking for for this:

http://articles.courant.com/2011-11-13/ ... ranch-line

Nicasto, chief of the Chambers of Commerce of Central Connecticut, late last month joined state transportation officials in a tour of the rail tracks from Berlin to Waterbury. He's hoping to build momentum for at least rebuilding the Waterbury to Plainville stretch soon, a move that could extend Metro-North's Waterbury branch line schedule into the center of the state.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy earlier this year committed $1 million to study whether it makes sense to rehabilitate the entire Berlin-to-Waterbury section of tracks, bridges, crossings and other infrastructure. The line is now used only for occasional freight trains; bringing it up to standards for new commuter service would cost about $125 million to $130 million and could be done in 18 to 30 months, Nicastro said.

But if the job is divided into stages, the first one — from Waterbury to the Plainville railyard — would cost just $50 million or so, Nicastro said. That would offer thousands of central Connecticut people a new way to get to their jobs in the Naugatuck Valley and Fairfield County, he said, and also would give easy access to New York City for the region's biggest employer, ESPN.

The late Peter Lynch, a widely respected railroad manager and consultant, concluded two years ago that Connecticut could restore passenger service on the route for a relatively low cost. But advocates were pitching the plan as an alternative to the $569 million New Britain busway, and encountered stiff resistance at the time from busway supporters in the DOT and elsewhere.

Jeff Smith wrote:Thought about posting this in MNRR forum; I still may. However, this is the thread I was looking for for this:

http://articles.courant.com/2011-11-13/ ... ranch-line

Nicasto, chief of the Chambers of Commerce of Central Connecticut, late last month joined state transportation officials in a tour of the rail tracks from Berlin to Waterbury. He's hoping to build momentum for at least rebuilding the Waterbury to Plainville stretch soon, a move that could extend Metro-North's Waterbury branch line schedule into the center of the state.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy earlier this year committed $1 million to study whether it makes sense to rehabilitate the entire Berlin-to-Waterbury section of tracks, bridges, crossings and other infrastructure. The line is now used only for occasional freight trains; bringing it up to standards for new commuter service would cost about $125 million to $130 million and could be done in 18 to 30 months, Nicastro said.

But if the job is divided into stages, the first one — from Waterbury to the Plainville railyard — would cost just $50 million or so, Nicastro said. That would offer thousands of central Connecticut people a new way to get to their jobs in the Naugatuck Valley and Fairfield County, he said, and also would give easy access to New York City for the region's biggest employer, ESPN.

The late Peter Lynch, a widely respected railroad manager and consultant, concluded two years ago that Connecticut could restore passenger service on the route for a relatively low cost. But advocates were pitching the plan as an alternative to the $569 million New Britain busway, and encountered stiff resistance at the time from busway supporters in the DOT and elsewhere.

My reply on that: http://www.railroad.net/forums/viewtopi ... 15#p988237.

Don't take it at face value as a "real" service proposal. He's doing some very arcane (and kind of clever) political strategery'in here for very different aims than how it verbatim-appears.

Latest laugh-to-stop-crying tales of busway woe from the Somethingawful CDOT traffic engineer (who got his job reinstated in the budget deal, BTW):

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showth ... t396525457
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showth ... t396578896
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showth ... t396602008

Totally gonna end well!

News from Hartford Courant today, (11/18/11) Busway looks like a Done Deal. Feds are poised to commit $275M to the project on Monday. This is the saddest day of my life. Biggest waste of money I have ever seen to date. Price tag of 9.4 mile busway is $567M. You know that will go up as it is being built. My article to the Hartford Courant has not been printed in the Opinion Section but this is what I see and wrote about back in October;

Well since it is almost Halloween, the timing seems right anyways for the Big Scary Bus.
I thought I would never see the day but driving on 91 North today, I saw a Bus that looked very much like a train. I mean what is CDOT thinking. The buses that are driving around today are mostly empty and now this Big Boat comes along. I mean why is CDOT trying so hard to make it all look like a train, run like a train with stations, along a right–of-way that once had trains, I mean really, do these Buses have conductors on them? I guess the Bus-way is a done deal with this behemoth coming on board but I would be very nervous about having this on our roads today.
I say enough already. Kill the NB Busway before these Big Buses invades your local streets. Let your politicians know this is a big waste of money. Put the the train back in where it belongs and take the Big Scary Bus away before someone gets run off the road.

Sad day indeed.

It is not a done deal. It's a done deal that they'll break out the gold shovel for a ceremony for the cameras and waste another $100M on design for the next 5 years because it's only 60% complete. They're still fighting over traffic signals on the "easy" part of the busway and stuggling with how to make it 2-way in the narrow parts instead of 1-way between blocks with timed-signals for buses passing each other. They haven't yet got a final design on the crazy ramps that are going to tear up West Hartford and downtown Hartford. Maybe they do some brush clearing next year and there are guys in reflective vests crawling around looking busy, but the crazy ramps alone are going to take the rest of the decade to resolve.

And that's not accounting for the near fait accompli that West Hartford will sue to stop the project as soon the final ramps plan gets presented to the town. There's a reason they're waiting till last for that. I agree with Jeff's take on this in another thread...it's like the ARC Tunnel. They might be able to get shovels in the ground for the very initial work but all hell is going to quickly break loose, the plug will get pulled when consensus is impossible, and they'll forfeit the matching money when it gets scuttled for political expediency. Possibly by Malloy's successor, and possibly with the state also having to reimburse if it blew too much of the money prior to start of construction. Maybe, just maybe, they can salvage some substitute project like ARC with Gateway. But I still think the chances are < 20% that a bus ever runs on that corridor. They can only lie through their teeth so much longer before the real traffic engineering capacity numbers slash the ridership projections (which are already going to plummet while cost balloons) too low to continue. The BRT fetish isn't what it was 10 years ago. Cut-and-run's going to be a lot easier than trying to beat back a lawsuit from a crucial busway town, constant rabble from the Waterbury-to-Plainville legislative bloc, and widespread taxpayer discontent with it.

The very worst outcome, and the one we're unfortunately heading for, is that they waste the remainder of the decade on it, nothing ever gets built and I-84 congestion spends 2 more decades unimproved, they're out $250 million with CDOT a nationally-mocked embarrassment, and the state gets no penny to do any critical projects including Route 11 and the I-84 viaduct. I really hope West Hartford is rarin' to go with that lawsuit and those crazy ramp designs don't take 3 more years and 26 more revisions on a drafting table before they have just cause to file the injunction. Otherwise senseless waste for no build is the sad end it's careening towards.



And there's no way those rapid buses are ever running on this. They'll have no money but to run the current CT Transit diesels. Half the BRT systems that get built intending to have those frills end up going so far over budget the grade separation starts disappearing and the crappy city buses start appearing in the final compromises.

Yep, I foresee an ARC fate for this project.

Let's remember to include a link and brief quote for articles:

http://www.courant.com/community/new-br ... 0362.story

Design details have changed over the years, but the latest estimate is that the state and federal governments will spend $567 million to build a 9.4-mile bus-only highway from New Britain to Hartford's Union Station. Much of the route runs alongside Amtrak's north-south rail line, and part will pave over an unused Conrail freight link between New Britain and Newington.

The DOT projects that the multiyear construction will create more than 940 temporary jobs, and that the bus operation and related services will generate 100 permanent jobs when it opens in early 2015. It projects that buses on the route will carry 16,000 riders a day, including 5,000 who'd previously been driving to work.

Opponents have argued that it's vastly overpriced and that ridership estimates are inflated, but despite several years of campaigning they failed to block the crucial FTA funding.

"It's a mistake. Wrong is just wrong, and I don't see how we can afford this when we need so much money for highway and bridge repairs," said state Rep. Whit Betts, R-Bristol, who traveled to Washington, D.C. to try to rally Republican Congressmen to block it. "But it's beginning to look like it's a done deal."

http://www.courant.com/community/new-br ... 7787.story

This quote from Malloy says everything about the disconnect going on here:

Malloy called it a valuable part of the state's economic revival plan, and dismissed critics who say it's horrendously overpriced and unnecessary.

"They're wrong. This project is going to work," Malloy told reporters. "This system will be delivering people to work and to home in a timely fashion at a bargain price."

Malloy was flanked by Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, but the rest of the state's Congressional delegation — usually eager to be on hand for such events — didn't appear.

The sky is pink because I said so!

That's great. So why is it then that none of the state's Congressional delegation besides Sen. Irrelevant made the trip to stand behind their funding votes with photographic evidence for posterity of them holding the golden shovel? You don't think any of them are a little concerned about that money shot being used against them in a 2012 negative campaign ad, do you?

As with every Courant busway article, get a load of the comments (well...except the gutter-dwellers who heap on New Britain as a worthless crackhead prison). There's exactly 1 busway fan, couple more who live next to it and say they would use it...and then every single other comment is violently against it for reasons that run the gamut across the whole political and IQ spectrum. I don't think I've ever seen a public works project with this immovable a bloc of opposition--80% is no exaggeration--where so few will even talk themselves a little bit into it on these very same inevitability grounds that the pols are going all-in on. This is a much bigger fissure public vs. political than you see on nearly any brick-and-mortar project. I think this is taking on more meaning than just a slab of overpriced pavement for half-empty buses and giving off a hint of "Occupy..." vibes as some rallying point illustrative of elected officials completely abdicating their responsibilities to constituents and chasing the lobbying money. Not that there'll ever be an "Occupy the Busway" or anything--there simply isn't a broad-enough cross section of society impacted--, but it seems to be striking that same nerve with a significant number of people.

Pols don't have to own up to their actions unless they and the people who fund them face a threat on their own rich people's turf. They can ignore away until that day. But they will scuttle this project like it's got ebola if anyone starts facing a reelection threat with their vote for the project being a Top 3 liability. It's a little amusing, and borderline sad, that the state's whole non-Lieberhole Washington delegation apparently has that concern just enough in the back of their minds to bail on physically being within 500 miles of a pork ribbon-cutting ceremony they'd usually fight each other to attend and then promote in campaign literature. Do they really think people are not going to notice?

F-Line your answers were well thought out. I think that the Tomasso, and Manafort owned construction companies still contribute greatly to those in power. Hence, we can't shake the road building mindset. I grew up in Plainville, but could not imagine having to live there again. Plainville is on the highway, but one constant with Bristol remains. Every postage stamp sized lot has now been developed. My parents live off of Farmington Ave. (Rte. 10). It is now near impossible to pull off of their side street.

My grandfather used to have a trucking company, when I was in grade school, in the late 1970s. One of his big accounts was with GE. Every afternoon my father used to take some package from the plant in Plainville to Bradley Field. I used to ride along. The gridlock was bad then, 30 years ago. This was in the days of the Morgan St. connection from 84E-91N. Some days it was quicker to go up route 10, and cut over toward the airport, through Windsor or even Rte. 20 through Granby-E. Granby. Like I said, Plainville is no longer a sleepy little town. It is gridlock there. I can only imagine what I84 is like in the morning.

Tom Nelligan talked about his relative who commutes from New Britain to Windsor or Bloomfield. I think that this could be addressed too. If the Highland was rebuilt, and so was the remaining Midland. Many commuter agencies have noted the increase in reverse commute, and inter-suburb commutes. Metra was looking at using the EJ&E to connect the outer ends of its lines. Who says that we couldn't have it like the Long Island Rail Road. All of the lines converge on Jamaica, the schedules have the westbounds from all points east meet there. At Jamaica, one can switch to the right train west of there, to either LI City or Penn.

We could have it so that a train from New Haven, and another from Waterbury arrive the same time at Hartford. If the Highland train continued to Manchester, but the other kept going toward Springfield. Tom's brother-in-law could use it. The last step would be for the buses to serve between the stations, like Windsor, and go to the industrial parks, like Day Hill Road.

I know that Connecticut does not have a dime to waste, but SOMETHING must be done.

TSTC continues to advocate for this project. Who's buying them dinner?

http://blog.tstc.org/2011/11/23/busway- ... nnecticut/

Brief, fair-use quote:

Apparently 13 is a lucky number for Central Connecticut transit riders and businesses. That’s because after 13 years, Connecticut and the Federal Transit Administration have finally signed off on a Full Funding Grant Agreement for the Hartford-New Britain Bus Rapid Transit, scheduled to begin operations in 2014. The agreement, signed Monday at Central Connecticut State University, will allocate $275 million in federal New Starts funding, and sets the stage for construction to begin in March 2012. All told, the Federal Government will finance 80% of the $567 million project. Initial bids for construction contracts have come in approximately 23% under previous estimates.

Nice juxtaposition with the 100% negative comments citing every other busway in the country that's underperforming ridership and other "model" builds like Ottawa being reconsidered for multi-mode adaptation and supplementing because of their ridership limitations.

BRT PR is getting to be a very lonely business compared to 10 years ago when it was the "it" thing supposedly one mode to rule them all. Not enough places are buying into the talk anymore, or are quickly making that a non-preferred alternative when their studies get down to the nitty-gritty. CT still swallowing the Kool-Aid by the bucketful is merely the leading indicator of how much payola is going in plain view, and if anything the lobby's still embedded enough at pockets of the fed level that they'll make a last-ditch effort to prove themselves right with one of the few projects some state is still willing to jump at without parachute. Those "very favorable bids" Malloy's crowing about which are going to put shovels in the ground next spring (*cough* 2017)..."very favorable" means different things to different people who have different favor to gain. They aren't talking about cost savings. It's all ex-Rowland contracts doing the design work to date and intentionally screwing up to rack up the billable hours 9 figures beyond the initial bid. Nobody really thinks the state's swept clear all the booby traps that era of corruption left behind, or that that graft culture has even had the chance 1 year out from Rowland/Rell of getting reformed out of every nook and cranny. That (and other CT gov't-endemic things) are key to understanding why they're still living a solid 10 years ago on this project in a vacuum against overwhelming public disapproval.

All some media outlet has to do is start following up on all this plain-view chatter and the cover-story exposé writes itself. You know it's only a matter of time. It's too easy pickings for some investigative journalism award nomination.

This project almost makes me feel embarrassed to live in this state. That money could pay for a brand new and FASTER commuter rail to Waterbury and maybe even some short-term repairs for our desperately-in-need-of-replacement bridges. If it is true and word gets out to the media that there's some kind of kickback involved with this project, Rowland's improprieties might end up looking like nothing compared with this.