Issue 460

May 24, 2004

New CT Rail Cars Look Good on Paper According to a recent Connecticut Post article, ConnDOT has a 324 rail car purchase in its 2004 Draft Long Range Plan, a 20 year planning document which is currently under public review. But the entry could be wishful thinking by transit managers. Charles Barone, the DOT’s transportation planning division director, told the paper that it will "be really difficult" to find new sources of revenue for the new cars. However, a recent Tri-State Transportation Campaign analysis (MTR #458) of the draft state TIP found that the agency spends 84% of its flexible federal transportation capital funding on highways, and only 7% on transit. The remainder goes to environmental mitigation for road projects, transportation demand management and bike or pedestrian projects. Flexible transportation funding represents about 35% of the overall $3.6 billion 2004-2009 capital program. A shift of some of these dollars from highway projects to transit could result in hundreds of millions in new transit funding, and no new revenue source would be needed. v

MTR #460 portable document format (PDF) file version (requires Adobe Acrobat). Related Articles and Links DOT Declares Need for New Rail Cars   MTR back issues: Go to index of all Mobilizing the Region back issues