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Connecticut rail study may include commuter DMUs
This’ll be cool to see. I live next door to Bristol in the town of Southington. It would be real nice to have commuter trains going through Bristol and Forestville everyday to connect with Berlin to Hartford. I currently have no rail service where I live, all of it (the roadbed and right of way) have been converted into a rail trail. I would love to railfan in Bristol everyday and it would be really great if the line connected with Waterbury also because the service is not doing well there.
The busway is moronic. They could have done something sensible like light rail during the day and preserving the line for conventional rail service at night, as was done in Baltimore. Now they’ve severed the most direct route from Waterbury to Hartford - ready made for dmu’s for those who don’t enjoy the dubious delights of I84 at rush hour.
Bad ideas promoted by the Ct highway department last for decades, and so the long dormant bus way a waste of hundreds of millions of dollars ends with another million thrown away on a sop to the towns that lost out. A commuter train to Berlin makes no sense and will never attract riders. I would bet that in another thirty or so years there will be a light rail line on the bus way.
Yeah, our tax dollars at work, again, trying to fix up a mistake made back in the early 1980’s when “ClownRail” turned its back on serving the state of Connecticut …
Great! America was wrong to tear up it’s commuter rail system back in the 1940s. This is a far better solution to commuter congestion and we need to invest now in this rail alternative solution.
Busways have been a complete waste of money here in the UK. We’ve had 2 big schemes - one came in 2 years late and at 3 times the budgeted cost; the other cost more than reinstating the old railway whose trackbed it uses, and is handling less than 50% of the forecast passengers. If you’re going to invest in public transit, do the job properly with a rail line!
@Merrill R Perkins what’s “ClownRail”?