Hartford Line ready to roll all the way to Massachusetts

New Haven to Springfield in 81 minutes

The long-planned highspeed rail service known as the Hartford Line will begin carrying commuters between New Haven and Springfield, Mass., on June 16, and trips on the 62-mile line that weekend will be free.

After that, drivers tired of the traffic jams on Interstate 91 can ride the train for $16 round-trip between New Haven and Hartford and $25.50 to go on to Springfield. Monthly passes will be $210 and $267.75, respectively.

That includes the trains now run by Amtrak (not including the Vermonter) and those run by CTrail’s contractor, a joint venture of Transit-America Services Inc. of St. Joseph, Missouri, and Alternate Concepts Inc. of Boston. “It’s effectively half or less than whatever Amtrak charged before,” Redeker said.

“It puts more trains through the high-speed rail program than any other high-speed rail corridor in the country,” said state Transportation Commissioner James Redeker. There will be 17 runs between New Haven and Hartford and 12 that connect to Springfield. According to the state Department of Transportation, trains will travel as fast as 110 mph and a trip from New Haven to Springfield will take 81 minutes.

Trains will run about every 45 minutes during morning and evening peak periods. Fares will be the same at all hours, Redeker said. There are bus connections to the University of Connecticut, Central Connecticut State University and Bradley International Airport.

There are also bus connections from each station. For example, the M-Link bus, operated by Middletown Area Transit, connects downtown Middletown to the Meriden station.

“It’s a thing that’s long overdue as a travel transportation alternative but also has brought with it economic development,” he said. “We’ve seen $400 million of economic development up and down the line.”

As an example, Redeker gave the 24 Colony St. mixed-use development in Meriden, “which is completely occupied,” and which was built specifically to take advantage of the new rail service.

Redeker said the Hartford Line completes what was “a major missing link” in mass transit in the state, which combines with the CT fastrak east-west bus service. That rapid-transit system connects to the Hartford Line from as far as Waterbury and Manchester.

According to the DOT, the Hartford Line is estimated to reduce the number of car trips by 1.5 million a year and carry 1.26 million riders a year by 2030.

Jim Cameron, founder of the Commuter Action Group and a Hearst Connecticut Media columnist, said, “I remember DOT talking about this 15 to 20 years ago, so it has been a long time in the planning. They had to deal with Amtrak … going back to double-tracking” portions of the line where a second track had been removed.

“I think it’s going to take a little time for the ridership to discover and embrace it,” Cameron said. He urged commuters not to pass judgment too quickly.

Cameron said he was impressed with the joint venture running the line along with Amtrak. “They’ve been able to cherry-pick engineers and conductors from Amtrak and CSX,” a freight line, whose employees applied for jobs on the Hartford Line, he said.

“I think they’re going to have a good, positive approach toward customer service. … It’s quite exciting. This is the first new railroad since Shore Line East was launched.” That line, which started in 1990, runs between New Haven and New London and connects, as does the Hartford Line, with the Metro-North train into New York City.

Cameron said he is “not concerned about the old cars that they got from MBTA at the moment.” The 16 cars being leased from the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority are 30 years old, but, Redeker said, “Amtrak cars that are operating in this corridor are 40 years old.”

The original plan was to use M8 cars, the state’s newest fleet, used by Metro-North, on Shore Line East and transfer the Shore Line East cars to the Hartford Line, Redeker said. But Metro-North ridership is up 18 percent so the cars can’t be spared, and it would be too expensive to buy 16 new cars.

“We knew we were going to buy an entire replacement fleet in a couple years” that would serve Shore Line East, the Hartford Line and the Waterbury and Danbury branches of Metro-North. So the Massachusetts cars, which Redeker called “frankly the best cars operating around the country,” will fill in until then.

To prepare for the Hartford Line, the DOT rebuilt stations in Meriden, Wallingford and Berlin, added a “mini-high-level platform for level boarding in Hartford” and a new platform at New Haven’s State Street Station, Redeker said. There are existing stations also in Windsor and Windsor Locks.

“We do have design efforts going on for additional stations” in Enfield, Windsor Locks, West Hartford, Newington and North Haven, he said.

State Department of Transportation / Contributed photos Train cars for the new Hartford Line have been leased from the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.