Chris Powell: Overlook subsidy and new rail line looks lovely

A Hartford Line train at the Hartford Station

Wonderful as it is now to be able to take the train from Springfield to Hartford to New Haven and back as many as 16 times a day on the Hartford Line, Connecticut Gov . Ned Lamont and other state officials should have been far more realistic this week as they celebrated the railroad's first year of operation.

They noted that ridership has been greater than forecast, the trains are usually on time, passengers are happy, and the service is encouraging commercial and housing development along the line. Connecting with the Metro-North commuter rail system in New Haven, the Hartford Line gives the whole Connecticut Valley up to the Springfield area much more convenient access to New York, eliminating the need to drive a car into the city. This will increase the region's quality of life generally.

What the governor and his colleagues overlooked is the Hartford Line's enormous cost, and not just the infrastructure expense of restoring the double tracking and the stations along the line, estimated at $769 million in state and federal capital. Right or wrong, that money is already spent. Of greater concern is the railroad's operating expense, which the state Transportation Department reports at $43.9 million annually. Passenger fares are low, $13 or less one way, and the department says they have produced only $7.2 million on an annual basis, leaving a $36.7 million shortfall to be covered every year by state government.

Divided by the first year's 634,000 passengers, the Hartford Line is enjoying a taxpayer subsidy of nearly $59 per trip.

A bus ticket between any of the railroad's three main cities costs less than a third as much as the railroad's total cost for a passenger, and in some circumstances even a taxi's cost is less.

Travel by train is usually more pleasant and reliable than travel by buses and taxis, since the train avoids traffic congestion. But for those who want to work as they travel, long-distance buses typically have wireless internet service, while the Hartford Line doesn't.

So evaluating the Hartford Line requires evaluating not just the fun and novelty of the journey but, much more so, the taxpayer subsidy. Of course all transportation is subsidized by taxpayers, since the government builds and maintains the highways and airports and operates the air-traffic control system, not just passenger railroads. Further, in densely populated areas, like Connecticut's shoreline from New Haven to New York, without the railroad, which is overwhelmingly used by commuters, the highways would be impossibly crowded. Indeed, they often are already.

While $59 in state subsidy per ride may be justified to draw interest to the Hartford Line at the outset, for the long term it will be appalling. Growth in ridership may reduce the subsidy slightly, and the imposition of tolls on Interstate 91 may boost ridership. The Hartford Line's fares should be raised soon. But at best the line will be the longest of long-term infrastructure investments for Connecticut.

With its tens of billions of dollars of unfunded long-term liabilities, can Connecticut really afford the Hartford Line, or any infrastructure improvements? Of course not. Indeed, the state can't afford those unfunded liabilities either, and now the Hartford Line itself is another one. Celebrating the railroad last week the governor and those who joined him showed mainly that they're not yet serious about Connecticut's ride to insolvency.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.

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Chris Powell: Will 'starve the beast' work in Conn.?

Original Godzilla film poster in 1954.

From his remarks to reporters last week at the Crocodile Club lunch at Lake Compounce in Bristol, the Republican candidate for Connecticut governor, Bob Stefanowski, seems to think it's not important to tell voters how he would cut the half of state government that is financed by the state income tax, which he wants to eliminate over eight years. 

“We're ready and happy to talk about it," Stefanowski said, but he still has not   done so specifically. "I don't think the argument is about what the details of people's plans are," Stefanowski added, because there is such a "stark contrast" between him and Ned Lamont, the Democratic candidate for governor. Lamont, Stefanowski said, "is going to raise taxes and I'm going to try like heck to get rid of the income tax.” 

Yes, telling voters the consequences of his platform before the election might spoil the lovely dream of escaping the income tax. Since he won the Republican primary with nothing but that lovely dream, maybe Stefanowski thinks he can keep avoiding specifics because a candidate's credibility doesn't matter. 

Stefanowski doesn't seem to have noticed that he got only 29 percent of the Republican primary vote and that only 20 percent of Connecticut's voters are Republicans. Or maybe he doesn't think that matters either. 

But maybe even if a governor had no budget priorities and just began to cut spending across the board -- pursuing the good, old conservative platform, "starve the beast" -- much help might be volunteered to him, if resentfully. 

Maybe just reversing the dynamics of budgeting would spark the necessary reforms. That's because all the spending-dependent groups in Connecticut long have been on the same side, clamoring together to increase taxes so they all could get more. 

This has always worked for them, since, despite the whining about spending cuts, total spending in state government always increases and the only "cut" is in its  rate of increase.  

If a governor was determined to reduce or even just freeze spending and had enough support in the General Assembly to sustain his veto, the spending-dependent groups might be forced to split up and scrutinize each other for inessentials and excesses. Knowing the tricks of budgeting, these groups might make excellent auditors. 

For example, advocates for the mentally handicapped, 2,000 of whom are always languishing on a waiting list for placement in group homes, might start caring about the expense of the paid day off enjoyed by state and municipal employees in the name of Columbus. They might even question collective bargaining and binding arbitration for government employees, policies that put the compensation of those employees ahead of all other purposes in government. 

Employees of nursing homes and nonprofit groups with whose salaries state government long has been stingy might protest the extravagant pay at the University of Connecticut. 

Passengers of the Metro-North commuter railroad, where maintenance is always neglected, might protest the bus highway to nowhere. 

Parents of special-education students for whom services are hard to obtain might denounce the huge but never tabulated cost of social promotion in the schools. 

They all could have fun picking through the bonding package. 

If Stefanowski really thinks that most voters care only about taxes, let him run on "starve the beast." 

The beast does need to go on a severe diet. But if voters are more sophisticated, Stefanowski better start explaining. 


Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.

Chris Powell: Back to the future with CTrail

Within living memory there was frequent passenger railroad service north and south out of Hartford, and the railroad company, the New York, New Haven, and Hartford, known simply as the New Haven, was as famous as any. Thanks to Hartford-born financier and monopolist John Pierpont Morgan Sr., the New Haven practically owned transportation in southern New England for the first half of the 20th Century, having acquired most of its competitors. 

The line north of New Haven to Hartford and Springfield, Mass., was double-tracked to hasten the heavy traffic. But the New Haven was usually over-indebted, went bankrupt twice, was crippled by cars and highways in the 1950s and '60s, and was taken over by the government in 1970. One track north of New Haven was torn up to reduce maintenance costs. Since then the passenger service maintained on the line by the government railroad, Amtrak, has been only nominal. 

Now Connecticut's Transportation Department hopes to revive passenger service frequent enough to serve commuters from Springfield to New Haven, connecting there to the Metro-North commuter railroad system, the busiest in the country, serving Grand Central Station in New York and the whole metropolitan area. Double track north of New Haven has been restored and the new trains (refurbished ones, actually) are running. This is thrilling as it shows that state government still can do something more than pay pensions to its employees, do something of potentially general benefit. 

But it may be a long time before the new train service can be considered a success. For just like the old New Haven, the new service, dubbed CTrail, will lose money -- probably tens of millions of dollars per year -- and each passenger paying $8 per trip between Hartford and New Haven probably will be subsidized by state government by many times that amount for a long time. Busy as Metro-North is, fares still don't cover its costs and never will. State government pays tens of millions each year to keep the line running. 

Of course highways cost money too and are vital to commerce and development. But a railroad can support commuters and development only if its stations have frequent trolley, subway, bus, or van service to connect them to their communities. Such systems are not yet in place for the new line, and when they are they will lose money too. 

Ironically, at the outset the new rail service's biggest beneficiary may be the MGM casino under construction in Springfield, which more easily will siphon Connecticut and New York customers away from the Indian casinos in eastern Connecticut, costing the state still more money. State government has authorized the tribes to build a casino in East Windsor to intercept Springfield gambling traffic but the railroad doesn't go through East Windsor. No one seems to have thought of that when the site for the interceptor casino was chosen. 

Even so, on the whole the new rail service will accentuate Connecticut's excellent position between New York and Boston, especially if, as is contemplated, Massachusetts extends its own commuter rail service from Boston and Worcester west to Springfield. 

After all, nearly everyone in Connecticut goes to New York and Boston sometimes. Now it is easy again for people north of New Haven to go to New York by train and use the time not to stew in traffic but to read, work, or just relax or nap. (If only Metro-North and CTrail trains could be equipped with wireless internet service.) 

So "puff-puff, toot-toot, off we go" -- just, please, not to another bankruptcy. 

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.

 

'Undifferentiated life forms' in Conn.

From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com:

In an orgasm of political correctness and, well, silliness, Metro-North,  thepublicly owned commuter railroad that serves southwestern Connecticut and thelower Hudson Valley, announced that it will no longer note a purchaser's gender identification on month-long train tickets.

The railroad said that it had used such identification to make it more difficult for riders to let others use their monthly passes. Makes sense!  And one would think that police seeking suspects on trains or in train station might, from time to time, like to know the sex of suspects they seek. Gender-identifying tickets could help.

But Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy opined. "We should not be using antiquated gender norms as a method of personal identification.’’

The wonderful Chris Powell, managing editor ofthe Manchester (Conn.) Journal Inquirer asked:

“{H}ow can the governor be sure that there are no longer any circumstances in which it is useful to distinguish male from female? While the governor seems to think that the right of anyone to assume either gender at any time trumps the right of sexual privacy in bathrooms, he strangely has not yet insisted on erasing the divisions between boys and girls and men's and women's sports. ‘’

“But even if the governor really thinks that gender norms are ‘antiquated,’ there's not enough time left in his term for him both to run Connecticut's creaky old government and to persuade the rest of the world that there are no longer boys and girls and men and women, just undifferentiated life forms.’’