Some big "What Ifs" include what if President Musk wipes out Amtrak and even if not, where will the funding come from?
Joe Biden loves Amtrak so of course King Donald hates it
By Colleen Cronin / ecoRI News staff
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| EDITOR'S NOTE: My last job before retirement had me travelling from Westerly to downtown Manhattan several times a month. I loved it! The stretch between Westerly and New London is one of the most beautiful in the Northeast Corridor - W. Collette |
But a group of residents would like to see more service roll
into town, and they are working on ways to make it happen.
“People have been trying to get commuter rail back into this
part of the world for a long time,” Doug Brockway, a member of the Westerly’s
Commuter Rail Advocacy Group, told ecoRI News.
Rail service was abandoned in the area after World War II,
and although Amtrak runs about five trains a day through Westerly, the
relatively high cost of tickets and lack of frequency prevents train travel in
the area from reaching its full potential, Brockway said.
Commuter rail service, either from Connecticut or
Massachusetts, cannot stop in Westerly because the station doesn’t have raised
platforms. The current configuration also makes getting Amtrak passengers on
and off trains at the station more difficult and slower.
So the changes could also benefit Amtrak, which owns the
tracks and would have to foot the bill for improvements, Brockway said.
The Eastern Connecticut Rail & Transit Feasibility Study completed
by the Connecticut Department of Transportation (CTDOT) in 2023 estimated that
raising the platforms would cost about $32 million.
If Amtrak raised the platforms, Shore Line East trains run
by CTDOT could come to Westerly from New London, and the Massachusetts Bay
Transportation Agency (MBTA) commuter rail cars could come further south (as of
now, the Providence-Stoughton Commuter Rail Line only reaches Wickford Junction
in North Kingstown).
For Brockway, 70, the effort to get more trains to Westerly is less about his own personal use and more about increased train travel as a smart ecological and economic move.
“Everybody driving around in cars and sitting in traffic
jams and chewing up gasoline,” said Brockway, who is also chair of Westerly’s
Economic Development Commission. “If that’s your only strategy … if anything
goes bad in that infrastructure, you’re in trouble.”
He pointed to volatile gas prices and the failure of the
Washington Bridge as problems made worse by a dependence on driving.
Geoff Kaufman, 78, and Penny Parsekian, 79, said their
efforts to bring more trains to Westerly are about creating a better, cleaner
future, as well as helping their community and improving their own lives.
“Part of it is that we are adamant walkers, and we also like
to bike,” Kaufman said. “We are just appalled by the nature of car traffic and
the level of death and injury that it has inflicted on the walking and biking
public.”
The married couple walk 3 or 4 miles daily and live within
walking distance of the Westerly train station. Both said they would like to
have increased access to trains to get to the airport or the other cities on
the rail corridors between Boston and New York.
Doing those trips in the car is possible but not always
ideal, Parsekian noted.
“As you get older you don’t want to be driving around on
congested highways at night,” she said. “It gets harder as you get older. It’s
not safe, in my mind.”
More public transit also means more community connection,
Parsekian said, something she has believed and advocated for a long time.
“I got involved years and years ago with the Sierra Club to
stop the expansion of the highway system in Connecticut, when the big casinos
went in,” she recalled, “so our idea was to revitalize the railway corridors.”
Seeing the progress that has been made in Westerly and
joining the commuter rail advocacy group has been “a thrill,” she said.
“Westerly has been envisioned as a commuter rail station in
about 20 different plans and studies going back more than 25 years at this
point,” said Alex Berardo, West Bay coordinator for the Rhode Island Association of
Railroad Passengers and the author of an upcoming book on the history
of rail service in town.
Berardo noted that between the CTDOT study, Amtrak’s
decision to make improvements to Westerly’s platforms, and a Rhode Island
Department of Transportation ridership forecast analysis at the station are all
moves in the right direction toward getting a project underway.
A form to send letters to Gov. Daniel McKee and members of
the state’s Congressional delegation, created by state Sen. Victoria Gu, “is
one way for the community to demonstrate its enthusiasm for commuter rail
service,” Berardo wrote in an email to ecoRI News.
So far, more than 400 people have used the form to send in letters,
urging the officials to offer policy and financial support for need studies and
eventual improvements.
On a personal note, Berardo wrote that public transit is
something that helped him take advantage of opportunities that he would have
otherwise needed a car for, like when he used the Rhode Island Public Transit
Authority’s 95x line from Westerly to internships in Providence during summers
in college.
“Commuter rail could provide that same benefit, and it can
do so more efficiently than buses can at that cross-state range,” he
wrote.
Gu, a Democrat who represents Westerly, Charlestown, and
South Kingstown who helped organize the advocacy group., said that she was
partly motivated to support commuter rail service because of her own experience
getting around on public transit.
“If you’re thinking about connecting all major towns or
places from New York to Boston, the only stretch that doesn’t have commuter
rail is New London to Wickford,” she said.
Gu would like to see federal money come through to complete
an engineering study, which would need to happen before any construction, but
funding blocks from the Trump administration could complicate that.
“A month ago, we’re saying there’s a bucket of
funding allocated to Amtrak for the next two years. So, we wouldn’t worry about
it necessarily,” she said. “Right now, I personally am not sure, just because
it feels like nothing is guaranteed.”
With the needs of commuters, seniors, and students, on top
of the state’s Act on Climate mandates, she said improving public transit by
doing things like adding commuter rail in Westerly is crucial.
Rhys Johnstone is one of Gu’s constituents who said he’d
love to see service added.
“I want to live a lifestyle that is not totally car
dependent,” the 24-year-old said. “I want to have the option to use other kinds
of transportation.”
Growing up in a family that didn’t have a car for every
driver, getting around was sometimes difficult, he said.
“You have scenarios when you’re stuck at home no matter
what,” he said.
In college and when commuting today, he frequently uses
Amtrak, but he noted that the cost and low frequency make it challenging to
depend on.
“If you don’t book Amtrak trains far in advance, it can be a
pretty hefty price tag,” he noted. (The cheapest fare for a same-day,
round-trip, weekday ticket in February between Westerly and Providence cost $65
when an ecoRI News reporter checked. By comparison, a weekday MBTA commuter
rail ticket from Providence to Boston is $24.50 round trip.)
Although he said he would personally take advantage of
increased rail service, Johnston noted that not everyone might be keen on
hopping on the train — but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t get something out of
added commuter rail service.
“Not everyone wants to take the train, that’s fine. Everyone
has the choice to do so,” he said, but every person who decides to get on the
train instead of in a car will clear up congestion and make the roads a little
smoother for those people still in their vehicles.
“All commuters benefit,” he said, “not just transit riders.”
