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Connecticut, Amtrak at odds over Springfield Line upgrade
I love it!! Two government agencies fighting over which one is the more incompetent.
Amtrak is just falling apart, I mean theyve lost commuter contracts, cant manage to get out of a wet paper bag, the accident in Philly. Its just time to acess Amtrak honestly by an independent commitee, its just a debacle there.
Perhaps it’s time for Congress to do to Amtrak what it just did to the Veterans Administration. Remove the responsibility of any new construction and award the responsibility of all new construction to the US Army Corp of Engineers.
Sounds like Amtrak needs new and more competent leadership.
It would have been both interesting and helpful to have had some specifics in this article (and in the Hartford Courant article as well) on some of the specifics that are driving up the cost of the line rehabilitation. The right-of-way is there from the time when the double-tracked line was single tracked, so there shouldn’t have been a lot of problems there. There would be the cost of modifying signaling, re-working protection at grade crossings, etc. but this shouldn’t be rocket science with a line that’s already in service. The article should have discussed what the State was supposed to have been getting from Amtrak in the original bid, why this has happened, and why the additional money is specifically needed to overcome the foregoing shortcomings.
Appears obvious that Connecticut bureaucrats want to wrench control of the New Haven-Springfield rail corridor away from Amtrak. Where was the State to work with the New Haven RR back in 1955 when the railroad was drowning in red ink? Answer: Doing everything it could to eliminate any railroad operations state wide because it was just finishing building the Connecticut Turnpike and the best way to justify the hurrendous expenditure of taxpayer funds was to make passenger and freight rail look as bad as possible.
Sounds like to incompetent bureaucracies spending their energies fighting and nothing getting done.
Col. Woodworth, I agree with what you are saying here. Having previously lived in the area (my sister lives within walking distance of the line) I don’t see what the problem is. However, I suspect that the right amount of money has not been placed in the appropriate pockets yet. Once that occurs these problems will disappear.