Do you wish Connecticut had cheaper homes, cleaner air, and less traffic?
The Train Campaign invites you to help make that vision a reality by signing our petition urging the Department of Transportation to study the reactivation of passenger service on long-neglected rail lines. Click here to sign!
Connecticut faces some serious challenges these days. Home prices are endlessly climbing upwards, pushing working folks into poverty, out on the streets, or out of the state. Our car traffic is some of the worst in the country. Carbon emissions are on the rise, accelerating the pace of climate change. What can we do to deal with these multifaceted, yet interconnected issues?
Let’s address these problems one at a time. The simplest way to lower the cost of a home is to build more of them, but through zoning regulations, many Connecticut towns only allow for the construction of single-family homes on large plots of land. If we rely solely on this model, we would have to devastate countless acres of our state’s natural areas in order to build the quantity of housing we need to lower aggregate costs.
Additionally, the physical distance between residential and commercial areas that single-family zoning creates makes car ownership a necessity. This has two major drawbacks. Firstly, cars are a huge contributor to carbon emissions and thus, climate change. Secondly, more cars means more traffic for everybody. One of the biggest reasons cited for opposition to new housing is the impact of new developments on local car traffic.
The state has created quite a conundrum for itself. If we want home prices to go down, we need to build more housing, but if we only build single-family homes, we’re stuck with more traffic, more pollution, and less wildlife. What is the answer to this perplexing problem?
Trains are the answer. Trains offer commuters a climate-friendly alternative to gridlock traffic and its poisonous exhaust. Trains enable the development of walkable communities, creating arteries of transportation that allow us to build housing up instead of out, preserving our precious greenspace.
The Nutmeg State is crisscrossed with train tracks, many of which now lie abandoned or disused, relegated to the infrequent shuttling of freight. These forgotten tracks offer us an exciting opportunity; if we upgrade these tracks to support passenger service and build walkable housing adjacent to revitalized stations, we can cut through Connecticut’s Gordian Knot of transportation, housing, and environmental issues.
This proposal isn’t mere daydreaming; states like Maryland, New York, and Montana have already embarked on this journey, recognizing the huge potential offered by rail reactivation. The Train Campaign now calls upon the Connecticut Department of Transportation to conduct a comprehensive feasibility study to explore the reactivation of passenger rail service on two underutilized tracks: the Maybrook and Housatonic (aka Berkshire) lines. This study should aim to determine the most economically beneficial and least costly options for reactivating these lines, with findings made available to Connecticut policymakers by January 2027.
The Maybrook Line connects the Waterbury, Danbury, and Harlem Metro-North lines, offering a potential new east–west transportation corridor for Connecticut and New York. The Housatonic Line could reconnect communities along the Massachusetts border, reopening a historic route between Pittsfield and Danbury.
We wouldn’t be building from scratch. The tracks already exist, and several former stations remain. The potential to boost accessibility, stimulate local economies, and reduce traffic and emissions is enormous.
We urge the Connecticut Department of Transportation to undertake this feasibility study with an eye towards determining which project would yield the greatest benefits while being the most feasible to implement.
If you support such a study being conducted, please click here to sign our petition. In doing so, you are helping us push forward a greener and more connected Connecticut.
Learn more about the Train Campaign and get in touch at traintime.substack.com and www.traincampaign.org.
Matthew Silber lives in Norwalk.
