MA: Officials: With fresh cash infusion, WMass rail projects chug forward

Today, northbound passenger trains through Springfield — like the long-distance Vermonter or Knowledge Corridor trains to Holyoke, Northampton and Greenfield — have to make an elaborate K-shaped turn at Springfield Union Station.

The entire process takes about 30 to 40 minutes, according to Andy Koziol, director of west-east rail for the Massachusetts Department of Transportation.

Reconfiguration

But once the Springfield Area Track Reconfiguration Project happens, trains will be able to leave Union Station the way they came, Koziol said at a roundtable hosted at Union Station by U.S. Rep. Richard E. Neal.

“Union Station here in Springfield is going to be the center of activity,” said Neal, D- Mass., who spearheaded the $100 million renovation project that saved the 100-year-old station. “Every conversation that you have. This is a crossroads of New England.”

Neal also announced a $1.2 million earmark for advanced positive train controls for the Knowledge Corridor rail line from Springfieldto Greenfield. And he touted a total of $150 million in federal funding that’s flowed into west-east rail over the past five years.

But the first two new trains from Springfield to Boston still aren’t scheduled to depart until 2030, according to a rundown delivered both by Koziol and MassDOT Rail Administrator Meredith Slesinger.

The long-sought Palmer station is now scheduled for 2033.

A long wait for rail

But west-east service as far as Albany, New York, isn’t scheduled until the year 2045.

State Rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier, D-2nd Berkshire, said that’s too long for a region starving for economic development. She’s been telling constituents that frequent trains to Albany and Boston probably would not happen during her time in office, but certainly in her lifetime, she said.

“But I’m getting a little scared about that,” she said.

And she promised to keep advocating to keep Boston-to- Springfield-to- Albany service on track, noting that she’s not alone in her efforts. “The entire Berkshire delegation is here,” she said.

State Rep. Kelly Pease, R- Westfield, asked about planned stops between Springfield and Pittsfield.

Bob Daley, a representative of Chester’s rail advocacy group, pushed for a stop in his scenic hilltown, which has a rail museum.

Ambitious upgrades

The Springfield track work has $36.8 million from the Federal Railroad Administration toward about $45 million in environmental review and engineering work that will commence in the next few months.

“It’s a huge design project, and it’s all about what’s happening upstairs here at the track level in Springfield Union Station,” Koziol said.

The Union Station track reconfiguration and a new rail yard nearby for storing trains; reconfigured track at Pittsfield’s passenger station; a new station in Palmer; planned hourly Amtrak service from Springfield to New York City; and innumerable new signals, sidetracks and straightened curves are all part of the state’s ambitious Compass Rail plan.

Koziol said work on many of the track improvements between Springfield and Worcester can begin in 2027.

MassDOT also has $108 million from the federal government for design and construction between Worcester and Springfield. “It’s broken up into many little projects,” he said.

The work, Slesinger and Koziol said, is needed to help integrate passenger trains with freight traffic on lines owned by CSX. The federal law creating Amtrak in 1972 guaranteed Amtrak access to freight lines at reasonable prices.

“But only to the extent we make room for ourselves,” Koziol said.

Trying to get noticed

Station projects, like in Palmer where a site has been selected, can advance more quickly if money is approved.

Phil Eng, interim MassDOT secretary, and general manager and CEO of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, concurred, saying projects can move up and down timelines based on funding.

And he said MassDOT’s plan is to chug ahead, something he wants the public and the federal government to see.

“So when they see progress being made, I think our applications become even stronger. Because at the end of the day, if they invest federal dollars in Massachusetts, they want to see those projects come to fruition,” he said.

Neal said infrastructure spending still can break through the partisan divide in Washington. Republicans have rail, road and bridge projects in their districts, as well.

Slesinger said there is a need: Passenger traffic on the Compass Rail lines through Springfield doubled from 2018 to 2024, although growth was more modest in recent years because of track construction.

Look what rail did for Worcester

And as Neal, Eng and others completed their trackside news conference Wednesday, a CTrail train from New Haven and Hartford, Connecticut, pulled in. Passengers, oblivious to the goings on, poured out and streamed down into the station.

Former Lt. Gov. Tim Murray, now head of the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce, gave the crowd a taste of what to expect from expanded rail.

The MBTA returned commuter service to Worcester’s Union Station in the 1990s. There are 22 trains a day now, and 1,200 new units of housing with another 1,200 in the pipeline, he said.

“Polar Park wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t close to Union Station,” he said, referring to the new stadium that wooed the former Pawtucket Red Sox away from Rhode Island in 2018.

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