The Associated Press reported last week that the Connecticut Department of Transportation, the Town of Fairfield and Black Rock Realty of Stamford have finalized an agreement that will include the construction of a new rail station in Fairfield, the first new stop on the New Haven Line in decades. The agreement, pending for a number of years, is a part of Black Rock's $250 million redevelopment of an abandoned industrial site into a 1.3 million sq. ft. office, hotel and restaurant complex. The new Metro-North station will be built on the site and paid for with $16 million in state funds and up to $12 million from municipal bonds. Black Rock will construct a 1,200 space parking structure for the station.

Fairfield's push for a new rail station was initiated by the parking crunch at the downtown station - the waiting list for a space there is greater than 1,500. Town officials felt that adding more parking at the existing train station would have created an intolerable amount of congestion on downtown streets. Still, although the Black Rock development is expected to create 5,000 new, transit-accessible jobs, it is unclear if it will reduce congestion on I-95 or ease the overall parking crunch, as transportation officials hope. The site itself will presumably have additional, non-station related parking and new traffic will be created as drivers now jockeying for spaces at the existing station head to the new one. 

Elsewhere, ConnDOT has a new Shore Line East station slated for Branford and a new Metro-North station in the works for eitherWest Haven or Orange (MTR #304).

Station parking is in high demand all along the New Haven Line. ConnDOT is directing $23 million to a 1,200 parking space expansion at the Stamford Intermodal Station and spent $16 million building a new 900 car station lot in Bridgeport that opened last year. A new garage of roughly the same size is programmed for New Haven. Darien and Norwalk have also asked the state to consider added parking at their stations. ConnDOT and shore towns should look into feeder transit services, more transit-oriented development strategies and better pedestrian and cycling environments around stations in order to maximize non-auto access to commuter rail service.

Parking Management - an on-line brochure from the Tri-State Transportation Campaign

Grappling with Commuter Rail's Downside - January 31, 1997

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