October 30, 2012

Better Train Service Coming to the Valley

by Eesha Williams
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Passenger rail service between towns and cities in the Valley, and between the Valley and New York City and Montreal, Canada, is getting faster and more frequent. Ticket prices may go down, if activists succeed in pushing the government to tax the rich for this purpose. Earlier this month, government officials announced they would invest $121 million to make trains go much faster and much more frequently between Springfield and New Haven, Connecticut. Starting in 2016, the new trains will travel at up to 110 miles per hour and will depart every 30 minutes during rush hour, and hourly the rest of the day. From New Haven, there is frequent, cheap train service to New York City on MetroNorth, and expensive, very fast service on Amtrak to Boston, New York City and Washington, DC.

In 2014, Amtrak will stop going to Amherst and will instead travel straight down the Valley from Brattleboro to Springfield, stopping in Greenfield and Northampton. The new route will be twice as fast at the current route from Brattleboro to Springfield. It will be approximately as fast as driving. “It will take approximately one hour,” Tim Brennan told the Valley Post. He’s director of the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, a government agency.

This month, Vermont completed a $72 million project to make Amtrak faster between the Massachusetts border near Brattleboro and the Canadian border near Burlington. The improvements mean the trip will be 30 minutes faster. The train now goes up to 79 miles per hour on the route, which has stops in Brattleboro and Burlington.

Vermont governor Peter Shumlin has vowed to restore train service to Montreal. He’s working with the Canadian government on the project, which will include making the border crossing document checks much faster. In the past, these checks have added hours to the trip.

There is frequent bus service between Amherst and Northampton: www.pvta.com.

The direct Amtrak train from Springfield to Boston takes 3 hours and 17 minutes, and only goes once a day. Driving the same route takes about 90 minutes, unless there is a traffic jam.

Activists who are working to make train travel cheaper and better have a web site at www.narprail.org.

More information about trains in the Valley is at www.valleypost.org/node/135.

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