State needs a modern transit system
If Connecticut truly wants to retain talent, then a massive change in the way our state approaches public transit needs to happen. Connecticut is facing massive capital flight due to the rising cost of living, which has seen state residents paying New York City prices without any of the perks of a big city.
Rents and food prices are increasingly identical to those found in the ultraexpensive city, but many state residents still find themselves car dependent, an expense many are increasingly unable to afford, helping to drive an exodus of workers from the state.
Surveys consistently show Connecticut residents want to leave the state, with one survey conducted by InformCT in 2019 showing that over half of the state plans to do so in the next five years. I am planning on leaving due the same reason that many people in that survey cite as their reasoning: lifestyle.
The United States has objectively the worst transit infrastructure in the developed world, with most people outside a select few major cities being mostly car dependent simply due to a lack of reliable transit services. Nevertheless, small, dense and urban states like Connecticut can serve as the perfect starting point for what can be an American transit revolution.
Western Connecticut in particular is important to our state’s economy since it contains over a quarter of the state’s population and four of our state’s largest cities, surrounded by mostly dense semi-urban towns.
Despite having all of the ingredients for a transit-first society, according to the Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics only 3.34 percent of Connecticut’s commuters use transit to get to work versus similarly dense states: In New Jersey that number was 7.06 percent, Maryland 7.2 percent and Massachusetts was 6.61 percent.
Living in a car-dependent community comes with additional costs that cashstrapped Americans are quickly finding themselves unable to afford. Not only has the cost of basic necessities greatly risen, but so has the cost to purchase, maintain and fuel a vehicle. Even the lowest-cost vehicles can be out of reach to many Connecticut workers as our minimum wage remains far below what experts consider to be a living wage.
When Congress passed the historic infrastructure package last year, a record $39 billion was allocated to improve transit in the United States, but that pales in comparison to the amount of money other large economies spend on transportation infrastructure, and any real progress on major infrastructure projects has yet to be seen even after the funds from the infrastructure package have been dispersed to the states; but then again, the U.S. is infamous for it’s incredibly poor ability to build infrastructure quickly.
A number of things could be done to quickly make Connecticut the first state in the union that chooses transit before personal automobiles. Among them, we could electrify the Danbury branch and expand service northward to connect with Amtrak in Pittsfield, Mass., along existing tracks in order to connect our communities to each other and to the global city and economic powerhouse that is New York.
We could also roll out expansive demand response transit to solve the first and last mile issue, so people who are not able to walk to fixed route transit services can still reliably access transit without the need for a personal automobile or rideshare services that are often prohibitively expensive for daily use.
More importantly, Connecticut should be cooperating with other states in the New England and Mid-Atlantic regions to push the North Atlantic Rail project that would see America’s first high-speed rail system built in the Northeast region which is responsible for a large portion of the U.S.’s economic output and has a population of over 50 million people.
The United States remains the only G7 economy to not have a high-speed rail system and travel between the major cities found in the Northeast corridor is often ridiculously overpriced considering how close the cities are to one another. A one way ticket on Amtrak’s Acela service between Boston and New York City for example can often cost well over $100.
A heavily subsidized high speed rail system like those found all over Europe and Asia, along with drastically expanded transit services, would enable Connecticut to keep those residents here and make our communities happier, healthier and more prosperous than ever.
Connecticut needs to utilize its “budget surplus,” create new taxes to fund transit, and get serious about making Connecticut a transit-first state or else it will crash and burn and find itself with a lackluster economy, a dwindling population, and unfortunate reputation as the state that wouldn’t even try to invest in its own people and its own economy.