Massachusetts East-West Rail vision gets $108M federal boost
The Massachusetts Department of Transportation has secured $108 million in federal funding to begin the process of implementing an East-West passenger rail service, by improving connections between Springfield, Worcester and Boston.
The grant, awarded by the Federal Railroad Administration and announced on Friday, will go toward the total project cost of approximately $135 million. MassDOT and Amtrak plan to cover the remaining amount, at $18 million and $9 million, respectively.
The two entities, with the support of CSX, applied for the grant last December.
“I am thrilled we were able to secure this critical funding for central and western Massachusetts, which will lay the foundation for West-East Rail,” Gov. Maura Healey said in a statement.
Healey credited the Biden administration for making the investment, and the federal delegation for helping to secure the funds.
The funding will add two new daily round trips on the Amtrak Inland Route, to improve connections between Boston, Worcester and Springfield, and to communities beyond the commonwealth, in Connecticut and New York City, according to MassDOT’s December 2022 grant application.
It will also improve travel times for existing Amtrak Lake Shore Limited service, enhancing connections between Boston, Springfield, Pittsfield, Albany and other upstate New York communities, the application states.
The project will seek to alleviate passenger and freight train conflicts and reduce travel times along the remaining single-track segments on the CSX-owned track between Worcester and Springfield.
Transit officials see these improvements as a “necessary first step” for increasing train frequency and speed along the Inland Route corridor and the corridor between Boston and Albany, N.Y., the application states.
Passengers will experience increased train speeds along the 53-mile section of the CSX Boston & Albany Line between Worcester and Springfield, where infrastructure improvements will lead to increased corridor capacity.
Acting Transportation Secretary Monica Tibbits-Nutt said the planned capital projects “will have long-term positive economic impacts on the region.”
U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, D-Springfield, said the grant funding brings the state “one step closer to making East-West Rail a reality.”
The project’s framework, he said, “has the potential to serve as a model for expanding passenger rail service across the country.”
State lawmakers tasked with looking into how best to incorporate an East-West passenger rail connection have cautioned, however, that since the project involves private and federal railroad companies, it could take many years to incorporate.
Providing a public transportation link from western Massachusetts to Boston is not as simple as just extending existing Commuter Rail service, which may be the perception some residents have, state Rep. William Straus, co-chair of the Western Massachusetts Passenger Rail Commission, previously told the Herald.
Trains involved in such a service would instead run over privately-owned CSX tracks, in areas that federal railroad company Amtrak is already under agreement to run through. Further complicating matters is the freight rail traffic that also runs through the area, Straus said in a prior interview.
The state will have to “come to some future agreements on a passenger rail connection,” he said.
An East-West rail connection also carries a hefty price tag, at a projected cost that ranged between $2.4–$4.6 billion in 2020 dollars, according to a MassDOT study issued in 2021.
A draft version of a new report that will be issued by the Western Massachusetts Passenger Rail Commission is currently under review, Straus said in a Friday email.
from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/wZjJIfl
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