Commuter rail cars en route

Kawasaki Rail Car Inc. began shipping the first pair of M-8 commuter rail cars for use on the New Haven Line and Shore Line East, with 300 eventually to be sent at a rate of 10 cars monthly.

Gov. M. Jodi Rell announced the order in 2005 as part of a $1.3 billion public transportation program, which also included a new rail yard in New Haven currently under construction to maintain the fleet.

Connecticut holds an option for an additional 80 cars including café cars, which would put the total contract value at $883 million.

Kawasaki Rail Car has its U.S. headquarters in Yonkers, N.Y.

The State Bond Commission is expected to approve a $100 million bond to build a 300,000-square-foot facility in New Haven to maintain the state”™s rail fleet. The rail yard bond will support the purchase or construction of  support shops, office and training space, as well as site work for utilities, track connections, roadways and catenary systems.

The State Bond Commission is expected to approve also a $46 million issuance for upgrades to rail lines throughout the state.

 

The request includes $8 million to replace railroad ties on the New Haven Line between Stamford and the New York border. Between 2010 and 2011, some 18,000 concrete ties will be installed along a six-mile stretch of one of the four tracks comprising the line, replacing wooden ones.

More than $5 million will go to upgrading a power substation in the Cos Cob section of Greenwich, which will accommodate the larger M-8 trains between Greenwich and Harrison, N.Y. The state plans to contribute another $6 million to an emergency control center in White Plains, N.Y.; and $26 million for double tracking the line running between New Haven and Springfield, Mass.

The state stalled indefinitely a planned project to add a third lane on portions of Interstate 84 between Southington and Waterbury, part of a wider project to improve traffic flows between Waterbury through Danbury to the New York border.

 

Joseph Marie, Connecticut”™s commissioner of transportation, indicated the state lacks the $300 million in funds needed to complete the project, and gave no timeline for when funding could be secured.