It’s the poor stepsister to the trains that take residents into New York City, and that image needs to change, several Naugatuck Valley residents said Thursday at a forum on the changes needed to Metro North’s Waterbury Branch.
The Connecticut Commuter Rail Council sponsored the forum held at the Naugatuck Historical Society, which is located in the Naugatuck Rail Station.
A similar forum was held in Derby back in July, all part of an effort to bring attention to the Waterbury train line, which passes through Naugatuck, Seymour, Ansonia and Derby locally.
This time even more heavy hitters were at the meeting, including State Department of Transportation Commissioner James Redeker as well as U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal.
They were there to hear the concerns of those who ride the trains everyday.
“It’s so vital, not only to the people who use it but to the economy,” Blumenthal said. “This moves people — it’s not only convenient, it’s a lifeline for all of us.”
But that lifeline is in dire need of work, according to many of those who ride the train everyday.
As a member of the Commerce Committee’s Transportation Subcommittee, Blumenthal said will be introducing a “massive overhaul” for transportation soon.
“This nation needs to invest in quality and safety upgrades to all surface transportation, and especially railroads,” he said.
The Metro-North Bridgeport-Stamford-New York City line gets the most attention, Blumenthal admitted, but the Waterbury line is just as important.
“This line also takes commuters to New York, but also between Connecticut towns and cities and it needs better cars,” he said.
It also needs a better image, one Naugatuck resident said.
“The perception of the Waterbury line is that it’s rowdy, dirty and not working correctly,” said Ray Schilling. “The bar is set so low on this line that the people don’t want to take it.”
Things have improved a bit since the last hearing in Derby in July, he said. At that meeting, a rider called a Metro-North Waterbury rail car an “outhouse on wheels.”
“Since the Derby meeting, the air conditioning is working, it seems cleaner and things seem to be working better,” he said.
But more needs to be done, Schilling and other said, and specifically, there needs to be more trains running.
It’s especially dire in the evening, Schilling said. If one misses the 6 p.m. train out of Bridgeport to Waterbury, it’s a two-and-a-half hour wait until the next one.
“I don’t see the New Canaan and the Danbury lines having these problems,” he said. “They’re clean and functioning.”
Redeker, the state DOT honcho, said adding trains to the Waterbury line isn’t a possibility because of infrastructure problems.
The Federal Railroad Administration requires a signal system be in place before adding trains, Redeker said.
“I would love to add trains but we can’t,” he said. “The FRA said we can’t run any more trains without a signal system.”
Plans for the system are in place, he said, but until it is up and running, adding trains isn’t an option.
In the meantime, a better shuttle system is the answer, Redeker said.
“I’ve been an advocate of putting buses in the place of trains,” he said. “We can’t fill ever need and demand we have.”
“We are trying to be honest about what we can and can’t do,” he said.
