The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
State picks transit team to operate Hartford Line
WALLINGFORD » Officials announced Monday that the state has selected a joint venture of two companies to operate the new Hartford Line commuter rail service, which is scheduled to begin operating next year between New Haven and Springfield, Massachusetts.
TransitAmerica Services and Alternate Concepts Inc. are working as partners to operate the line, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said during a press conference at the new Wallingford train station, one of three new station platform facilities being built.
The two companies already have commuter rail contracts in San Francisco, Denver and Boston as well as in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and New Jersey.
Malloy called the Hartford Line a “transformative transportation project” and explained why TransitAmerica Services and Alternate Concepts was selected from a field of five teams vying for the five-year, $45 million contract with the Connecticut Department of Transportation to operate the commuter line.
“Both companies operate commuter rail, light rail, metro rail and modern and vintage streetcar systems across the United States,” Malloy said, standing on the southbound platform of the new train station. “This partnership brings exactly the sort of experience that will make this line successful and provide the level of service that Connecticut commuters expect.”
The Hartford Line was have begun operating on Jan. 1, but now state officials said the service won’t begin until sometime in May 2018. Construction work on the new Wallingford station is expected to be wrapped up by the end of this month.
Connecticut Department of Transportation Commissioner James Redeker said the reason the start date was pushed back is to allow for an additional four miles of double tracking north of Hartford. The double tracking was requested by members of the Connecticut Bond Commission in January and Redeker said honoring that request set off a series of intricate negotiations with Amtrak and others involved in the construction that made it impossible to complete the additional double tracking by Jan. 1.
“It would have necessitated delays that would have inconvenienced riders,” he said referring to the additional double tracking. “It (the negotiations) took some time. It was not a simple change to make.”
When the Hartford Line begins operating, the number of daily round-trip trains between New Haven and Hartford will go from the current six per day to 17, with 12 providing continuing service to Springfield, Massachusetts.
TransitAmerica Services is based in St. Joseph, Missouri, and is a subsidiary of Herzog Transit Services. ACI is Boston-based and has management team made up of three former executives from the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. James F. O’Leary, the president and owner of ACI, ran the MBTA’s commuter rail service from 2003 to 2014 with another of his companies, Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad Co.
Both companies have experience in the daily operations of mass transit rail systems as well as doing maintenance work on the rail cars used by those systems. Working as partners, the two companies will be responsible for operating the trains, maintaining the stations and parking areas and handling a variety of customer service operations for the Hartford Line.
Amtrak will continue to maintain the rails, track signals, dispatching and rightof way security for the Hartford Line’s infrastructure. It also will continue to operate its own trains along the 62mile line.
Malloy last visited the new Wallingford train station in July 2016 to provide an update on the pace that construction of the commuter line was taking. At that time, the price tag for the project was said to be $569 million. But on Tuesday, state officials were unable to provide the New Haven Register with a clear accounting of the current estimates for the total cost for the project when it is completed, how much has been spent to date and whether that amount was within budget projections.