Jodi Rell saved our trains.  There is no governor in recent decades who did more for rail commuters than she did. 

Rell, who died this past week at age 78, came to office (when she was lieutenant governor) in the midst of a scandal as her predecessor, Gov. John Rowland, resigned when caught accepting illegal gifts and did ten months in a federal prison.  Rowland, you should remember, was no fan of Connecticut’s railroads.  He actually proposed replacing the trains on Shore Line East with buses due to that line’s high subsidies.

Rell’s attitude toward mass transit was just the opposite.

In Governor Rell’s first budget address to lawmakers in February, 2005, she told lawmakers they must order 300 new rail cars, and they did.  Mind you, she told us then the cars would be in service by 2008. That proved a bit optimistic.

I watched the governor ride the first of the new M8 rail cars in March 2011, and was struck by how it had taken her entire six and a half year tenure in office to order, design, build, test and finally deliver these new cars.

The governor suggested that rail riders should pay a small part of their cost with a modest fare hike, and that, too, was passed by lawmakers.

But Governor Rell also said that commuters shouldn’t pay more until they were actually riding in the new cars… a promise she kept.  As manufacturing delays by Kawasaki slowed delivery of the M8’s, a planned 1.25% fare hike was deferred.   A politician who keeps a promise.  Imagine that.

Rell also told the New York MTA, parent of Metro-North, there was no way she was going to raise fares in Connecticut to pay for the budget problems of New York’s own making.  

Governor Rell changed commissioners in the Department of Transportation at a pace that left many people wondering who was in charge:  five Commissioners in six years.  One was a former state trooper, another had run Bradley International airport.  Two of them actually had experience in rail transportation.

Wracked by scandals, Rell was embarrassed on several occasions by her DOT, eventually asking local businessman Michael Critelli to study the agency and issue recommendations for reform.  Sadly, few of the group’s suggestions were ever embraced.

Long promised repairs to our dilapidated train stations took four years to happen, thanks mainly to federal stimulus money.  If that work wasn’t “shovel ready,” nothing was.

Still, Governor Rell was a big rail fan, realizing the importance not only of fixing Metro-North, but planning for the future.  Together with fellow lame-duck U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, she secured a serious down-payment on “high-speed rail” between New Haven and Springfield.  Thus was born The Hartford Line, still CDOT’s favorite.

So the next time you’re on the train, pause to give thanks for M. Jodi Rell, the grandmother governor who made your ride possible.