Minutes
May 16, 2001
New Haven RR Station

 
1.  Minutes of the April Meeting were approved with the correction that
scheduled equipment purchases are for four Genesis engines, not 13.

OLD BUSINESS:

2.  The meeting opened with a lengthy discussion of a serious Shore Line East
issue raised by Council Member Joan Ventrilio -- an evening schedule
adjustment imposed by Amtrak, whereby the former 6:13 p.m. train now does not
depart New Haven until 6:32.  With Amtrak pre-empting this time needed for
critical commuter service for an eastbound Acela train, Ms. Ventrilio said
that this gives her a 32-minute wait in New Haven on her home-bound trip from
Darien, as the result of which she has stopped riding Shore Line East. 

Jim Turngren of Amtrak said he regretted this unresolved and controversial
situation, and had sought ways to remedy it without success.  Chairman Chabot
said a commuting delay of this kind would impair future expansion of Shore
Line East rider-ship, and must be eliminated. A passing siding proposed at
Guilford would solve the problem, it was said, but there is no present Amtrak
or CDOT budget for it, it would cost $11 million, and would take several
years to put in place.          

Present circumstances are compounded by Acela's schedule needs, complaints
that SLE trains often "crawl" between stations, and the deadheading of SLE's
equipment back to New Haven. Mr. Turngren said Amtrak has a difficult time
slotting in its trains between both Metro North rush hour schedules at the
New Rochelle merge and SLE's needs on its tracks east of New Haven.  Ms.
Ventrilio asked whether it would be possible to substitute a bus for the
former 6:13 train, although some attendees said this would lengthen commuting
time, especially during the summer beach months.

Harry Harris noted that the Transportation Strategy Board, now awaiting
official status, is exploring ways to overlap Metro North and SLE service to
obviate some changes of trains in New Haven.  In this connection, he added,
the Commissioner of Transportation is scheduling meetings with town mayors
along the SLE route to advise them that municipalities must move to provide
adequate commuter parking if CDOT is to justify its investment in new SLE
stations.  This is a mutual responsibility in which the towns must be
partners, he said.

Lee Carlson reported that SLE passengers are complaining that train windows
are unacceptably dirty.  Fred Chidester explained that Metro North's carwash
facilities in New Haven and Stamford have both been out of operation. 
Department of Environ-mental Protection regulations restricting the disposal
of wash water are more rigid for industry and business than for consumers, it
was noted, and must be dealt with.

Complaints were voiced that platform connections between Metro-North and SLE
trains often require passengers to descend into the tunnel and climb stairs,
and that train schedules were recently changed with only one day's notice. 
CDOT spokespeople explained that the extensive yard work in New Haven, which 

has closed some tracks and platforms, greatly complicates making transfers convenient. 

It was revealed that Federal Railroad Administration regulations covering emergency

door releases forced CDOT to take Bombardier cars out of  service.  Harry Harris said

the FRA's authorization to operate the cars is pending.

2.  Altering the agenda, Chairman Chabot introduced Town of Orange First
Selectman Mitchell Goldblatt, who stated the case for locating a Metro North
station in Orange, rather than in West Haven.  He listed these considerations:

 

·       the Orange site, principally owned by Bayer Corporation and
DeChello Corporation, is raw land, easy to use, with no environmental

      problems; it is readily accessible, and entrance and exit ramps from nearby

      I-95 are presently being widened

 

·       there is room for 1,000 parking spaces, 500 of them on flat land,

and 500 in a tiered garage, and a second tiered garage could be built to handle

500 additional cars

 

·       six owners would supply the Orange land, versus 26 West Haven

owners, and the accessible Orange location would better serve West Haven,

Orange, Milford, Woodbridge and other communities.

Mr. Goldblatt also noted these pertinent factors:  (1) because the
predominant commuter flow is east to west in the morning, and west to east in
the evening, fewer commuters would have to travel away from their
destinations if the station were in Orange; (2) DeChello Corporation has
indicated that it would fund the Orange garage and lease it back to CDOT, and
an unidentified developer has voiced willingness to build and lease back the
station itself.

Council Member Peter Myers asked why, since parking is the issue, it isn't
more practical to add parking in Milford and New Haven than to add a new
station.  The reply was that, because the nine-mile distance between Milford
and New Haven is the longest between Metro North stations, an additional
station is actually needed, even though funds for building it do not yet
exist.  Given five minutes by Chairman Chabot to rebut Mr. Goldblatt, Mayor
Richard Borer of West Haven repeated previous arguments that West Haven has

four times Orange's population, and that it has multiple local employers, a
Veterans Hospital with 3,000 employees, and extensive beaches.

Mr. Harris noted that the Transportation Strategy Board has retained the firm
of Frederick R. Harris to investigate where the station should be located. 
While TSB has allocated money for the station design, it has not yet proposed
funding construction.

4.  Only one delay of consequence occurred during the month on the Waterbury
Branch, and there were no instances in which buses were substituted for
trains.

5.  A contract has not yet been let on construction of the CTC signal system
on the Danbury Branch, Mr. Harris said, because all bids received exceeded
CDOT's cost estimates.  Several factors may have precipitated this, he
declared: bidders may not have done sufficient exploration to realize that
the entire right-of-way is not as rocky as they presumed; they may have
thought that Metro North's 48-inch cable depth was irrevocably mandated,
whereas depth may be reduced to 24 inches if necessary, and they perhaps
assumed that towns would require tunneling under roads, rather than the less
costly "cut-and-cover" cable installations.

While no date for decision has been reached, he said, the low bidder will
probably be invited to pare his bid based on these factors, which clearly
reduce installation costs.

6.  Dennis M. Murphy, project manager for the Stamford Station Repair,
updated the project's status.  Delayed by installation of the pedestrian
bridge, February, 2003, is now the scheduled completion date, but efforts are
being made to shave a few months from the timing, he said, and the center
island platform is nearing completion.   

Federal money has been received and will permit the low bidder, Manaforte, to
start expansion of the garage this summer, he noted, but Station Place will
necessarily have to be realigned.  This will reduce the width of the road
between the garage and station.  After the new section of the garage is
completed, portions of the existing gar-age will be closed for upgrading and
integration with the new facility.

A seven-car section of the Track Four platform will be opened May 20, but
cannot be given its full length until construction access is no longer needed
at both ends of the platform.  The shuttle bus loading area has been moved to
the other side of the station, and the tunnel will be closed June 5 for two
months for renovation, including adding to its headroom.  When the station is
complete, westbound Amtrak trains will normally use Track 3, and Metro North
trains Track 5, Mr. Murphy said.  There was further discussion of the need
for well placed monitors to obviate the need for passengers going up into to
the station for train information. 

Mr. Murphy reported that the updating of overhead wires in the station and
yard April 28th and 29th went off without a hitch.

7.  The planned update on the status of the station kiosk project was deferred.

8.  The winter shop maintenance backlog is ending, it was reported, and
operations are now only four or five cars short.  Two of the cars heavily
damaged primarily as the result of fires have been returned to service, and
two others are going in. 

9.  The Legislature is likely to approve the creation of Governor Rowland's
Transportation Strategy Board, Mr. Harris indicated.  While its Herculean
mission is highly ambitious, and impossible to implement without a staff, it
is a great concept, he added.  Operating only under a $50 million short-term
budget, however, TSB will need the mechanism for generating a $5 to $6
billion budget.  It will be comprised of five state commissioners, five
members of the business community, and five other members, one from each
transportation investment area.

The state has on order four locomotives and ten coaches, but the TSB
fore-sees an immediate need for ten locomotives and 60 coaches, and Council
members agree the long-range need is for dozens of new locomotives and
hundreds of coaches, for which no funding has yet been envisioned.

10. Discussion of the Darien station reconstruction was postponed in Mr. Cox's

absence.

11. Mr. Harris summarized the report issued this month by a contractor, FCN&J, 

 on its effort to develop a marketing plan for public transportation through
the use of focus groups.  The report found that there are three distinct
groups of Connecticut residents:   those committed to use of public transit,
those vowing that they will never use it, and a 40% segment who don't see how
transit could be made to work for them.  Sentiments voiced about public
transportation (overcrowded, inconvenient, dirty conveyances, etc.) pretty
much paralleled findings of most prior surveys.

OTHER OLD BUSINESS.   Members asked how long a time slot is allocated to
Acela trains which run late in reaching the New Rochelle merge point or the
operating area of SLE trains.  This obviously is pertinent to the issue of
having Amtrak schedules which do not directly impede commuter operations. 
The response was that no fixed time slots exist. Gene Colonese said that
Monday's breakdown at a Stamford plat-form of an Acela locomotive with locked
brakes, which created a 30-minute Metro North delay, could not have been
shortened by moving the train.  Locked brakes prevent any movement of the
train, he said.

NEW BUSINESS:

1.  Mr. Harris distributed copies of a CDOT analysis of its existing contract
with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.  Reporting on the status of
the mandate to reduce southwest corridor traffic by 5%, Mr. Harris was
pleased to note that efforts, which were behind schedule at the end of two
years, finished three years ahead of schedule.  However, efforts to encourage
car pooling and the use of vans seem to have stagnated, he added.

2.  Mr. Chabot urged Council members to be present Wednesday, May 23, at 6
a.m. for the scheduled "Meet the Commuter" Day at the Bridgeport Station.

OTHER NEW BUSINESS.   Mr. Colonese promised that no timetable surprises lie

ahead when schedules are updated in July.

    Lynda Pantalena of Amtrak, who has responsibility for Amtrak's Solari
boards, including those in the New Haven station and in its tunnel, explained
her continuing efforts to get the undependable boards in proper operation. 
The firm which handles the Solari board software is a two-man company, she
said, and it maintains all such boards along the northeast corridor and at
area airports.  One of the two in-demand men from the firm is coming to New
Haven Tuesday, May 22, to work with her.  The board under Track 12 has been
vandalized, she said, but others have been shut down because they have proven
unreliable; she'd rather have them out of service than giving out wrong
information, she said.

Because she had waited all evening to give her report (not on the agenda),
Mr. Chabot promised to put Ms. Pantalena first on the agenda for the June 20
meeting.  Providing the boards are working properly by then, she promised to
attend.

    Peter Myers said he had recently been taken ill at Grand Central Terminal
and, based on his experience, complimented Mr. Colonese on the excellence of
Metro North emergency care in the terminal.  Ed Zimmerman reported that on
his train ride from Darien to the New Haven meeting, no crew member had come
through the train to collect tickets; Mr. Chabot also noted that on his train
from Darien he had had to volunteer his fare to get a conductor to take it. 
Council Member Jim Mohs reported that a ten-trip ticket which he bought was
punched only twice during multiple uses.  Members naturally wondered about
the ex-tent of lost CDOT revenue from fares, especially intrastate fares,
which are not being collected.

Respectfully submitted,


Edward H. Zimmerman
Secretary


NEXT MEETING:    Wednesday, June 20, 7:30 p.m., SACIA, Stamford

                           (last meeting until September)

 

In Attendance

Rodney Chabot, Chairman            

Jim Mohs, Council member
Edward Zimmerman, Secretary    

Lee Carlson, Council Member          
Harry Harris, CDOT                      

Bob Jelley, New Council member, Guilford
Jon M. Foster, CDOT                  

 E. C. Schroeder, SLE Rail Assn., Clinton
Dennis M. Murphy, CDOT           

S. E. Howland, Shore Line East
Mike Donnarumma, CDOT          

Bonnie Olier, Shore Line East
Eugene J. Colonese, MNRR       

Mitchell Goldblatt, 1st Selectman, Orange
Fred Chidester, Metro North        

Marjorie Pawling, Guilford
John Hogan, Metro North            

Richard Borer, Mayor, West Haven
J. F. Turngren, Amtrak                 

Michael Mercuriano, Chairman, West Haven RR Comm
Lynda Pantalena, Amtrak             .
Peter S. Myers, Council member 

David C. Carmody, Counsel, WHRRC         
Joan Ventrilio, Council member