Posted on 05/02/2010 8:06:23 AM PDT by Willie Green
Busway Is A Dead End — Restoring Rail Would Serve More People Better
The proposed 9.4-mile New Britain-to-Hartford busway — a paved corridor exclusively for buses that would connect only four communities: New Britain, Newington, West Hartford and Hartford — could cause the permanent loss of rail rights-of-way and deal a drastic blow to the state's passenger and freight rail service.
The busway is estimated to cost $570 million. And that's just the estimate.
This costly project will harm passenger and freight rail systems in Connecticut and throughout New England. It would pave over an existing rail right-of-way between Newington and New Britain. That right-of-way is part of the former Highland Line, which provided passenger service from Waterbury to Hartford. Much of that track is still used by freight trains, but it could, for a relatively reasonable cost, be restored for passenger rail. Ideally, double-tracking is the best solution for passenger and freight rail in a shared right-of-way, but for less money, a single track will work, with a few sidings, improved signaling and proper scheduling.
Today, the only passenger rail out of Waterbury goes to Bridgeport on the Waterbury Line. Many legislators and residents are calling for passenger service to be restored from Waterbury to Hartford.
There is good reason for this demand. Passenger service would open up rail connections to hundreds of thousands of commuters and travelers. Passengers could board a train in Bristol or Plainville (the closest stop to Farmington) and go south along the shoreline to New York. Going north, the route would connect to the Amtrak line in Hartford and could continue through northern New England to Canada.
New Britain gains even more. It would have commuter service east to Hartford or west to Waterbury, southwestern Connecticut and New York. A resident of New Britain or Bristol could work in New York City. New Britain would also have a direct rail connection to the New Haven-Hartford-Springfield line, which will be both commuter and high-speed rail when it is upgraded.
The busway, on the other hand, is a dead end. It is even problematic for the communities just west of New Britain, because, to reach the busway, a commuter must deal with local traffic. Time estimates for commuter trips show little incentive to use a bus. For example: Bristol to Hartford via the busway would be 45 to 50 minutes. The same trip by train would be 27 minutes.
Hartford is ringed by massive highways. The only rail service is Amtrak, which is infrequent. But great opportunities are in store if we invest in our rail infrastructure, which links to all of New England. Massachusetts has funds to restore rail from Springfield to Vermont, a project that will cost $75 million and took only 18 months to come to fruition. Trains will be running on that line long before the proposed busway is completed.
Massachusetts is also pushing for improvement of the rail line between Springfield and Worcester. Worcester already has excellent commuter rail to Boston. When the Massachusetts projects are done and the New Haven-to -Springfield line is upgraded, Hartford will have modern rail service to Boston.
U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood was in Hartford last Monday to discuss the Hartford-to-Springfield line with U.S. Rep. John Larson, Sen. Chris Dodd and Tim Brennan, executive director of the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission in western Massachusetts. Connecticut could be one of the first states to get high-speed rail.
Busways — so-called bus rapid transit — are the last gasp of the highway lobby at work. This powerful industry has skewed our transportation system into near-complete highway dependency over the past century, while actively undermining rail transit as well as intercity rail.
America is left with a dysfunctional, broken, near Third-World transportation system. City and town centers have emptied out as people with cars fled to the suburbs, leaving the less fortunate stranded in downtowns with little or no access to jobs. We need to correct this transportation and economic injustice. We can and should re-program the funding for this over-priced busway to rail, so that people in central Connecticut will have fast, convenient rail connections to Boston, Hartford and New York.
I wonder should abandoned rights-of-way ever be pressed into service again for passenger rail traffic how will the "rails to trails" crowd react.
I’ve been living without a car for the last month and find that I am able to get just about anywhere I need to go using a combination of rail, buses, ride-share and walking. Also, my blood sugar is lower.
And the rest of us have the benefit of not having you on the road. ;-}
However we do get the pleasure of paying for their transportation.
Us backwards hillbillies always seem to get the shaft like that.
I suppose for some, rail seems the answer.
Rail doesn’t work for me.
I see too much gov’t control in it.
We would all need to live inside the city, gov’t knows where you travel every second, travel can be shut down in a heart-beat, terrorist attacks are made much easier and effective.
Rail will take money from the aero industry that already hurts, we cannot destroy our aerospace industry.
A country without a aerospace industry is done for.
Well, they could probably coexist. Bring the trains back and put a bike and walking path along the side. In most places, the trains don’t go by that often.
Also, I lived near one of these rails-to-trails projects, and it was beautiful and wonderful...except that I stopped riding my bike over it after several assaults, one rape, and one attempted rape because it went near a somewhat...er, challenged...community. The homies were out on the trail doing drug deals, and unfortunately every so often somebody with “victim” written all over them would come pedaling or jogging by. Maybe more train traffic would discourage this.
America's passenger rail system went into serious decline decades before the Interstates were built, so blaming the highways for our dependence on cars is a lie. Our highway system wasn't "skewed" by any powerful industry, it was built to conform to the wishes of the citizens who demonstrated their preference for cars. But, of course, that was back in the days when government was supposed to accommodate the public rather than tell it how it should behave -- and, evidently -- travel.
Yes, live and work in a crowded urban area. Take the bus, take the train, take any mass-transit mode that seems convenient. It’s much easier for them to round you all up when they get tired of you.
Rail is code for government jobs, government funding and massive taxes. No thanks.
I live in the country and intend to make it as hard as possible for them to control my travel.
I doubt it. The train would go by and everybody would go “oh my” and the vic would be just as raped or dead.
Buses are far more flexible, and don’t require all those steel rails. They COULD be just as good as trains, if they really had a right-of-way. I’ve just never seen buses implemented so that they could really get you where you wanted to go in a short period of time. Then theres the thuggers.
High Speed Bus - It’s the way to go! (esp for a 9.4 mi route)
Mr. Green, ie, I think you finally posted a story with an opinion I can agree to.
Ordinarily, I think that buses beat rail, because the infrastructure for buses (the road) can be shared among many vehicles other than the bus, thus reducing the per-vehicle cost of the infrastructure.
Ordinarily, I think that air travel beats rail, because, other than the terminals, there is no real infrastructure to maintain along the air routes.
In this case, however, you’ve apparently got pre-existing infrastructure, which is already being used by freight rail, and the author of the article just wants to improve the existing system enough to add passenger trains to the current system. The resulting system would (according to the article) allow both passenger and freight trains to operate on the same right of way, so the per-vehicle cost of maintenance would presumably be less. The bus-only system, by contrast, would allow only buses to operate on the right of way, so the per-vehicle cost would presumably be more.
As I said, you finally described a scenario in which trains make more sense than other forms of transport. Good to see it.
I prefer trains, also, because they’re a more comfortable ride and you can get up and move around. I often travel to Spain, which has both a good rail and a good long distances bus system, and I always take the train when I can. I like being able to get up and go for a cup of coffee, not having to sit too close to my fellow passenger (one time I was trapped on a Spanish bus next to a teenager who spent the entire trip squealing into her cell phone), etc.
I’m not sure that the greater room you get to yourself in a train is really a good reason to justify the costs of building and maintaining the rails. Put less seats on the bus ... and you can have more than enough room on the bus.
Given the subsidies rail systems get to maintain rails for the exclusive use of trains, it would probably be a lot cheaper to subsidize luxury bus lines that could offer large amounts of space per passenger on the bus, and still probably wind up costing less per passenger than the cost of railcars + rails required by trains.
I personally don’t think either trains or buses should be subsidized, but the fact that the heavily subsidized form of travel gives you more room is not, in itself, a reason that the subsidized form of travel should continue to be subsidized.
My view is, if there’s a reason (= demand) for a public transportation corridor in the first place, if we’re talking in the ten mile range and not a region-wide system, then busways make plenty of sense. They certainly don’t “permanently” kill a rail right of way...if ultimately there comes a time when rail makes sense, then the tracks can be laid over the same ROW. I think the very notion of a ten-mile long hi-speed rail system is dopey, because the the trains take a long[er] time to get up to speed, which forces the stations farther apart, which reduces the utility. Plus, the higher speeds the trains go, the higher the demand will be for grade crossings to be eliminated ( = raising the whole thing up on a trestle or digging it out into a subway = cost times 5 or 10) and then you’re talking about a 8-10 year construction project and nobody can predict what the neighborhoods and business districts will be like then.
There’s nothing wrong with busways other than not being as sexy as rail.
To this day I believe the removal of the downtown trolley, rail system in Los Angeles was a pretty stupid move. They had an efficient electric bus, electric trolley, and electric train system that worked, and they replaced it with stinking, vile smelling buses that contribute to the never ending cause of the Leftist political abuse machine.
Because, unlike buses, we'll all get unicorns to carry us to the trains!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.