New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
The hidden cost of slower, less reliable rail service
Lengthening a person’s daily commute by 20 minutes has the same job dissatisfaction effect as reducing their pay by 19 percent, according to one study of 26,000 commuters. The stress caused by longer, less predictable commutes negatively impacts riders’ health and productivity. What’s more, extended trip times lower property values in impacted communities.
This problem has crept up quietly but unmistakably in southern Connecticut along the New Haven Line. As a Darien resident, who has been a frequent commuter to New York for nearly 40 years, I recall when a trip between Grand Central and Darien was 51 minutes in 1981. Today, as I sit on a train from Darien, it will be a 66-minute trip. From New Haven to New York, the trip has been lengthened by more than 30 minutes.
Why does this time difference matter so much for Connecticut? Long commutes into New York City and within Connecticut mean our state is a less attractive place for people to live. People who travel into New York often drive and park at a train station and then get on subways or buses or walk to a workplace. As a result, their commute can now be close to two hours in each direction, four hours daily. Communities like South Norwalk, Westport, Fairfield and Bridgeport, which used to be within reasonable commuting distance of New York, are now outside a reasonable daily commute.
And commute times within Connecticut — from New Haven to Greenwich, for example — are also much less viable.
The Connecticut Department of Transportation and MetroNorth are working to deliver on the promise of on-time performance, but are unable to reduce travel times due to maintenance and related safety issues along the line. Speed restrictions are in place in many locations where infrastructure is old and unreliable, where there are sharp curves and where there are bottlenecks caused by limited track capacity. Along sharp curves and century-old moveable bridges, trains must slow to between 30 and 45 miles per hour to ensure safety.
These are all problems that we can solve by investing in our rail infrastructure. Revenue generated from electronic tolling is crucial to making this happen.
We need to embark on a major program to upgrade our rail system and we need new funding sources to make it happen. The argument that we can fix our problems with bonding just doesn’t hold water. Bonding is a tool that we’ve had access to for decades, yet Connecticut now ranks 46th in the nation on both infrastructure and fiscal stability, according to US News and World Report — down from 41st last year.
We have to ask ourselves: Is it fiscally responsible to kick the can further down the road to address this crisis with $11.2 billion in bonds, which we will be responsible for repaying? And if we were to decide to go all in on bonding to meet our transportation infrastructure needs, what other needs in our state will go unmet?
With tolling we can collect user fees from the out-of-state drivers who currently get a free ride on our highways — 40 percent of tolling revenues are expected to be collected from out-of-state drivers. Tolls can also help us reduce congestion and lower vehicle emissions. There is no other practical way to achieve these goals and to secure the revenues we need to improve our commuter rail system service.
Many residents may not support tolling because they are concerned about tolling revenues being diverted away from transportation needs to address other items in the state budget, a practice that has occurred far too frequently in the past. But federal laws and regulations that allow for toll collection require that monies collected along a corridor be spent on transportation improvements in that same corridor. In addition to that protection, once these funds are allocated to the Special Transportation Fund, the Connecticut “lockbox” constitutional amendment approved last year makes diversion exceptionally difficult.
Governor Lamont is taking bold action moving tolling legislation through the state legislature. It’s exactly this kind of leadership that got him elected. His colleagues should support this move and get Connecticut moving again.
The argument that we can fix our problems with bonding just doesn’t hold water.