Railroad Forums
Moderators: GirlOnTheTrain, nomis, FL9AC, Jeff Smith
Comments may be submitted via email to [email protected] and via US Mail to Hartford Line Comments, Bureau of Public Transportation, 2800 Berlin Turnpike, P.O. Box 317546, Newington, CT 06131-7546.There will also be public hearings in New Haven, Hartford, and Springfield in mid-November: http://www.ct.gov/dot/cwp/view.asp?a=1386&Q=592852" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
sullysullinburg wrote:Any word yet on equipment and what a “normal train” would look like?Probably not much different than the average SLE consist. How many cars depends on what percentage of the fleet needs to be split amongst SLE and NHHS, which is entirely dependent on when M8's get the greenlight on SLE. The diesel fleet will be split between lines for awhile until the supplemental M8 order comes in, as it's unlikely there'll be enough EMU's to pry away now for covering more than the Old Saybrook runs...with New London remaining diesel for time being and OSB occasionally being supplemented at peak with diesel sets. That said, there's more Mafersas than SLE truly needs so they're not looking at any sort of shortage for the limited Year 1 schedule on the Hartford Line. It's more a matter of whether the locos under rebuild get back from the program in-time.
njt/mnrrbuff wrote:I can imagine the Mafersa cars currently used on SLE. Down the road, ConnDot wants to buy brand new equipment for the Ctrails service, which is a great idea, as the Mafersa cars and motive power used on SLE trains is aging.MNRR's East-of-Hudson bi-level procurement may serve up this opportunity, as the MTA is going to be replacing all Shoreliner I/II/III/IV's and Comet II's on the Hudson and Harlem Lines with MLV-clone bi's in one fell swoop with the LIRR C3-replacement order. CDOT will have its normal seat at the table to participate in that order, but since Danbury/Waterbury/NHHS all have little to gain from going taller and packing the seating denser the state may find better economy of scale pulling a lateral ownership swap for all of the MTA's Shoreliner IV's and a large number of the Shoreliner III's to put through a light midlife overhaul. While junking all of the CT-owned Shoreliner I/II's and the rebuild-age Mafersas. That would give CDOT a full common coach fleet all equipped with center-door boarding and ability to run thru to GCT (which the Mafersas cannot because the carbody undercarriage doesn't have adequate third rail clearance). Since there's way too many III's/IV's (117 active cars) for CDOT's needs some judicious scrappings of rougher-condition surplus III's to supply the rebuild program can help lower the costs a bit more. They'll still likely have dozens more than they know what to do with, enough to bank for lots of frequency expansion on Hartford + Danbury/Waterbury and maybe even for taking MassDOT's money to run the Conn River Line commuter rail as a seamless Hartford Line HFD-SPG-Greenfield routing flavor.
GirlOnTheTrain wrote:Correct me if I'm wrong since it's been about 4 years since I've used SLE - but I don't recall there being any discount if I bought a UniRail ticket to Branford...it was just the MN fare and SLE fare from New Haven lumped together.The SLE website says there's a discount, but only for monthly passes.
CVRA7 wrote:There was a time when you could go to a station - at least the larger stations - and purchase a ticket for a journey over a number of different railroads - this was called an interline ticket, and this was done way back before computer access. One would think that in the age of computers, interline ticketing would be an easy thing to administer. Amtrak does interline ticketing to a slight degree, much of it with selected bus connections. One rare rail exception was over N J Transit from Philadelphia over the ex PSRL to Atlantic City. Also into Toronto on Via Rail Canada. There seems to be no will to do it in Connecticut between the various rail carriers, except Amtrak could sell Shore Line East - possibly because Amtrak operated that service, although Amtrak agents could not issue tickets on most other Amtrak-operated commuter carriers, such as when they operated MBTA Commuter Rail in the Boston area. During my decades in ticketing I heard a lot of complaints from Amtrak passengers not being able to purchase tickets for connecting Metro-North service from New Haven. I don't know how ticketing will be handled for this new CT Rail Hartford line service outside of seeing announcements for ticket vending machines being located at each station plus cash fares on the train.Amtrak California provides free or sells discounted tickets to local transit services.
I looked at the link to proposed Hartford Line fares but couldn't see any reference to any "Uniticket" offering.
njt/mnrrbuff wrote:True. The non-center door Shoreliners will be the first to retire and they are up there in age. I believe that they are a little over 30 years old.1985-1991.
sullysullinburg wrote:Have you seen Connecticut gas prices lately?The EGE wrote:Embarrassing. They're spending two-thirds of a billion dollars on this line, and then sabotaging ridership with high fares. The one-way fares are about 4 times higher than the equivalent price of gas, and even the monthlies are twice the price of gas. If the point of the line is actually to reduce congestion on I-91, then it's going to fail.I really hope they hear this and lower prices. I was hoping to use this often to head down to New Haven to spot but now I’m a little concerned.
Or traffic? The cost of commuting in your car is not exactly cheap.
