Mr. Haskell goes to Hartford

Will Haskell is 22 years old.  And he’s about two months into his first full-time paying job:  Connecticut State Senator, representing the 26^th District covering much of the interior of Fairfield County.  His election victory in November over Sen. Toni Boucher, who’d been in office since he was born, was astonishing.

Jim Cameron

And he has certainly hit the ground running as he is sponsor or co-sponsor of 68 different bills that are “in the hopper” in the State Senate.  Of course, submitting a bill is the easy part.  A senator can submit a bill ordering anything, but it may never see the light of day… making it out of committee for a vote.

Sen. Haskell’s “progressive” proposals cover everything from voting rights to ghost guns, from a plastic bag ban to fracking.  But the proposed bill that first caught my eye concerned Metro-North, whose Danbury and New Canaan branches run through his district.  I’m thrilled that the senator appreciates the value of the railroad to his constituents, but his bill (SB 163) says nothing about the speed or safety of the trains.  It doesn’t talk about fares, lack of seats, insufficient station parking or electrification of the diesel line to Danbury.

No, the senator’s two sentence bill would address only one issue:  requiring Metro-North to provide free Wi-Fi on all its trains.  Wow.  That is a hugely misplaced priority.

There are so many more pressing needs for rail commuters in Connecticut:  the aging catenary, the signal system, grade-crossing safety, unreliable locomotives, etc.  But Sen. Haskell wants us to have free Wi-Fi.

Why?  Because the cell service along much of the line is so poor.  But does the senator understand that “free Wi-Fi” on trains relies on local cell service?  If there’s no local cell signal, the Wi-Fi won’t work.  And anybody who’s ridden Amtrak lately can testify about the slow speeds and unreliability of their technology.  So imagine a packed Metro-North train with 50 percent more passengers than an Amtrak coach and you’ll be lucky to get any bandwidth at all.  Don’t commuters have enough to complain about already?

There are legitimate reasons that Metro-North doesn’t offer Wi-Fi (as I’ve written about before).  The railroad considered Wi-Fi and even issued an RFP for vendors, including Cablevision.  But they balked at once again adopting a technology that would be leapfrogged.

Does anybody remember the 1990’s when Metro-North use to offer pay phones on trains?  They were made obsolete in months when cellphone prices dropped and everyone could afford one.  Once burned, twice shy.

Today’s “state of the art” 4G cellphones will be toast in another year or two when 5G technology starts getting built-out.  That 5G will give you connection speeds making today’s fast connection look like the early days of dial-up modems.  And, of course, we will all need new phones.

So, isn’t Metro-North busy enough with getting Positive Train Control’s sophisticated radio tech working right that we don’t need to burden them with a millennial’s dream of free Wi-fi?   If you really want to have high-speed internet on your daily commute, get yourself a wireless card from your cell provider and an unlimited data plan.

But please, Sen. Haskell, let’s get our priorities right when it comes to telling Metro-North how to run a railroad.

Posted with permission of Hearst CT Media. Jim Cameron is founder of The Commuter Action Group, and a member of the Darien Representative Town Meeting.

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