Talking Transportation

Speeding on our roads is linked to over 38,000 deaths each year in the U.S.

Like many, I love visiting Vermont.  But I’m not crazy about getting there. Fortunately Amtrak is a good alternative.

Have you noticed how terrible our traffic is lately?

Big changes are coming for pedestrians and motorists starting this week:  new laws giving more power to those on foot.

While adding more trains and encouraging (no, praying!) that commuters will come back to the rails, the railroad is still refusing to make those passengers feel safe by enforcing the Federal and state mask rules. 

Much has been written about Metro-North’s slow return to “normal.” But what matters as much, if not more, is bus ridership.

New England is home to many railroad “firsts,” but none is more impressive than the Mount Washington Cog Railway, the world’s first cog rail line. 

What do Metro-North and the Merritt Parkway have in common, I mean, aside from often crawling at a snail’s pace?  Well, both seem to be hotbeds of unenforced safety rules.

These days “getting there” doesn’t just mean moving yourself from point A to B, but the logistics of moving stuff from dozens of locations to your doorstep.  And nobody does that better than Amazon.

There’s a new effort to speed up the New Haven line: CDOT’s ambitious “Time for CT” $8-10 billion plan.   It promises 10-minute faster running times from New Haven to New York by next year and a 25-minute quicker run by 2035.

Not with a bang, but a whimper. That’s how commuters seem to be moving, albeit in small numbers, back to working in-person in their New York City offices.

The summer travel season is starting with a vengeance.  After a year of quarantining, we’re all anxious to get back on the road again.  But where to go?  And what can you expect when you get there?  A recent mid-week mini-vacation to the Berkshires taught our family some important lessons.

In the “waste of time” category were the recent series of virtual public hearings (May 18, 19, 20 and 25) by the Connecticut Department of Transportation.  The topic… service reductions on Metro-North and CT Transit that have already been implemented.

Is it safe to get back on the train to New York?  Casey (not her real name) thought so when, a couple of weekends back, she wanted to see some millennial friends in Manhattan for brunch.  But boarding the Saturday morning train she immediately started to worry and texted me.

How would you like a plan to remove thousands of trucks from Connecticut highways, clean up the air and create new jobs? Who wouldn’t?  It’s a win-win-win plan that you’d expect Gov. Ned Lamont to embrace, especially in this time of the Transportation Climate Initiative. The solution?  Invest in our state’s freight railroads.