In the News

Federal and state officials agreed Tuesday that Springfield can play an important role in the revitalization of passenger rail service in America, and Governor Charlie Baker pledged to use his remaining time in office to put the long-discussed East-West Rail expansion project in position to benefit from the new federal infrastructure law.

“When I was growing up in Springfield, Springfield was often described as the east-west, north-south corridor of America. And based upon the tutorial that we received today from the CEO of Amtrak, Steve Gardner, I can tell you that we’re well on our way to making this a national intersection again,” US Representative Richard Neal said Tuesday at Springfield’s Union Station.

Baker, Neal, state Secretary of Transportation Jamey Tesler, Gardner, and MassDOT officials arrived at Union Station by train. They rode a “theater car” on the 449 Lake Shore Limited — the only regular direct rail link between the state’s largest and third-largest cities — to get a better look at some of the issues at play in discussions around expanding regular passenger train service from Boston to Springfield and Pittsfield.

The train departed Boston’s South Station at 12:50 p.m., and made stops at Back Bay, Framingham, and Worcester before pulling into Union Station at 3:27 p.m. — 6 minutes late, according to Amtrak.

While Baker, Neal, and the others held a press conference, the train they rode in on headed west to Pittsfield and then Albany, N.Y. In its second capital city of the day, the Amtrak train will join with another that originated in New York City and make its way by about 10 a.m., Wednesday, to Chicago.

Between Boston and Springfield Tuesday, Baker said the group discussed “what it would take to do the work that would be required to get it to the point where it can really deliver the two-hour ride that we’ve talked about for the past several years.”

But Baker will not be in office when much of that work takes place, and he said he looks forward to “going real hard on this over the course of the next few months” to ensure the project is in line to tap into resources the Federal Railroad Administration and Amtrak have available through the new federal infrastructure law. The state can compete for federal grant funding under that law as well, which Baker said will be another focus.

“While my time here is short, I can promise you that over the course of the next few months, we will continue to build on the work that’s been done over the past several years to position this as one of the major opportunities that we will have here in the commonwealth and throughout the Northeast to do something very special with Amtrak to take full advantage of the bipartisan infrastructure law and the resources that it makes available,” Baker said.

Gardner, the chief executive of Amtrak, appeared enthusiastic about the East-West Rail project, and Baker praised him for coming into the talks with “an enormous amount of what I would describe as high-level information and painstaking detail.” Gardner said America needs “to rediscover the power of passenger rail to make our nation mobile and sustainable for the future,” and said Springfield could be a significant part of that.

Baker and Neal were together in Springfield in April to announce a breakthrough on efforts to offer passenger train service linking Springfield and Pittsfield with the eastern part of the state. At the time, Neal said the agreement would hinge on the Legislature using an infrastructure bond bill to create a new rail authority.

Lawmakers didn’t jump at the idea, and the $11.3 billion bill that Baker recently signed instead creates a commission to study and take public comments on “public entities now in existence or that may be created by statute with the ability to design, permit, construct, operate and maintain” passenger rail expansion to Springfield and beyond. It also included $275 million that will go toward development of East-West Rail.

Link to article HERE.