Niantic Station proposal

Well, this appears to have come to life:

Local legislators’ bills aimed at improving region’s transportation infrastructure

Hartford – A Transportation Committee hearing Wednesday will include bills proposed by two local Republican representatives, aimed at improving transportation infrastructure in Southeastern Connecticut.
A bill proposed by Sen. Paul Formica, R-East Lyme, would “require the Department of Transportation to remodel and repair the area surrounding Exit 74 of Interstate 95, including widening the bridge spanning Route 161 to six lanes, and (to reroute) the exit ramps to increase safety and expand economic development opportunities.”

Formica has proposed construction of new Shore Line East rail station in Niantic. Bumgardner, who serves on the Transportation Committee, has proposed a bill that would require a study of the feasibility of extending passenger rail service from New London to Brattleboro, Vt., as well as from New London through Stonington to the T.F. Green Airport in Providence.

In terms of construction of a new station in Niantic, this seems worth the investment. As for the idea of extending out to TF Green Airport, yeah, spend the money on a study that means getting nowhere.

As for the bill itself:

AN ACT CONCERNING A RAIL STATION AT NIANTIC FOR SHORELINE EAST.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Assembly convened:

That the general statutes be amended to require the Department of Transportation to construct a new rail station for Shoreline East at Niantic.

Niantic or South Lyme has been on the SLE infill wishlist for a long time. Amtrak's NEC Infrastructure Master Plan even shivs in a provision for one + center passing track at CDOT's request. That's nothing new or all that foamy. It's more that the CT River Bridge replacement project has to run its course so the full schedule can be extended to New London before infills east of Old Saybrook become practical. That bridge replacement is a this-decade thing since it's already in-design, so it's probably getting to be about time to start talking probable station sitings and crunch some numbers. Probably gonna have to be Old Lyme and not Niantic, though. Station along Main St./CT 156 Niantic is one hell of a tight fit with no parking room available. It'd be great if they could swing it there because of the surrounding density, but I just don't see how that's going to be possible. Shore Rd./CT 156 South Lyme has a couple sites that would work and be a straightforward drive points east-west and from I-95 via Exits 71-72.


Eh...dim-bulb legislators gonna do what dim-bulb legislators will do on some of those loopier ideas. SLE is never running past a Westerly terminus + layover yard...it's a double-edged paper barrier with the MBTA having all commuter service in RI and Metro North (justifiably) never agreeing to let its pooled New Haven Line fleet go to a 'foreign' crew base (which is the MBTA yard 10 miles north in Pawtucket, because there's no room anywhere near Warwick to carve out a layover). Apparently this legislator never read CDOT's own State Rail Plan which pretty clearly states Westerly--and the commuter rail transfer options for points north--as a high-priority goal after NLN service is fleshed-out full. Nor have they realized that the T.F. Green station is pre-built with provisions for the mythical creature called "Amtrak" to add its own stop there for this far-out concept known as a "Northeast Regional" if demand merits. Talk to the right people, Rep. or Sen. Numbnuts. Start writing letters of support to RIDOT and Amtrak if you want to grease those skids, because this ain't a state-level action item in any way, shape, or form.

Central Corridor...whatever. I think a Mohegan Sun-built station on their property and an NECR-run casino dinky to NLN with a couple RDC's is a nice skunkworks starter project to take the demand temperature if it's a private deal with CDOT paying in only for promotion and maybe upgrading a couple grade crossings (NECR's already got the grant for CWR installation from state line to New London). And maybe extend that to a UConn/Gampel Pavilion game train + shuttle bus out of Willimantic bouncing between NLN and *at most* an I-84 park-and-ride at the existing trackside parking lot at Exit 70 in Willington. Likewise a skunksworks deal with NECR doing the honors and UConn's filthy rich athletic dept. pulling its weight. But get real, pols...this isn't EVER going to be a CDOT commuter service in-the-making. There's just no demand outside of niche event service like that paid in proper proportion on the backs of public-private (incl. UConn's big-pocketed athletic boosters).

The thing about having a Niantic station right in the heart of downtown Niantic is that it could be the first commuter rail station of its kind to NOT have a parking lot. There's really no need for one with the density of the surrounding area being what it is. Build a day/mixed use parking lot, etc. nearby where all the shops and restaurants and beaches are, but build the station with just the platforms, overhead walkway, bike racks, and perhaps a kiss-and-ride. Making it that walkable could be a true slam dunk for the town. Imagine getting on the train at New Haven, Clinton, or Old Saybrook and getting off at Niantic just steps away from the beach, shopping, eateries, the boardwalk, you name it. Or walking from your house in Niantic 5-10 mins. to the station and getting on a train to your job in either NHV or NLC. More and more people are ditching their cars for public transport, bicycles, etc. It's time for CT to say "Yes we're building a train station with NO parking lot and it's going to benefit for everyone involved".

The same should be considered for Stonington when the time comes to extend SLE to Westerly and add any infill stops. There's a long enough stretch of the ROW just west of the overpass that could accomodate a set of platforms on both sides again without a parking lot.

Why not reopen the old Niantic station? Is it on too sharp a curve?

NH2060 wrote:The thing about having a Niantic station right in the heart of downtown Niantic is that it could be the first commuter rail station of its kind to NOT have a parking lot. There's really no need for one with the density of the surrounding area being what it is. Build a day/mixed use parking lot, etc. nearby where all the shops and restaurants and beaches are, but build the station with just the platforms, overhead walkway, bike racks, and perhaps a kiss-and-ride. Making it that walkable could be a true slam dunk for the town. Imagine getting on the train at New Haven, Clinton, or Old Saybrook and getting off at Niantic just steps away from the beach, shopping, eateries, the boardwalk, you name it. Or walking from your house in Niantic 5-10 mins. to the station and getting on a train to your job in either NHV or NLC. More and more people are ditching their cars for public transport, bicycles, etc. It's time for CT to say "Yes we're building a train station with NO parking lot and it's going to benefit for everyone involved".

The same should be considered for Stonington when the time comes to extend SLE to Westerly and add any infill stops. There's a long enough stretch of the ROW just west of the overpass that could accomodate a set of platforms on both sides again without a parking lot.

Niantic's constrained even without the parking. The seawall goes right up to the northbound track everywhere it directly abuts Main St., and the active Ring's End freight siding blocks Baptist Ln. and the ped underpass there. Amtrak's already put it in the Master Plan that any infills here have to be baked fresh with a passing track (as it should be), so there just physically isn't any room in the place that has the most ideal downtown access. Next-best options are the Columbus Ave. and Black Point Rd. underpasses, which both have space constraints on fitting station platforms and a passing track with the ROW pinned in by abutting backyards; you can have double-track + station or passing siding + no station, but not both. And Amtrak is setting the terms here.

If there's a miracle fix...yeah, sure. But I can't squint any tighter at Google and come up with a better answer than "Oof...that's hella snug." Pretty much any of the options in South Lyme on tangent track have enough space for 1) a non-impossibly squeezed station facility, 2) the requisite passing track, 3) more direct access to CT 156 without having to go down a narrow residential street. I think that's where it's going to end up being. But, really, it's splitting hairs...2-1/2 miles west of downtown Niantic is Old Lyme, 5 miles east is New London. They win any which way with a spacer stop.


As for Stonington...Westerly and Mystic are the Stonington stops. Mystic's inside Stonington-proper serving the western population center (7250 per the village's 2010 census, though it doesn't divvy up those numbers between the Groton half and the Stonington half), Westerly is 2 blocks across the state line and walking distance to the entire Pawcatuck population center (5624 village pop. in the 2010 census). The only pocket un-served is Stonington Borough, the town center + harbor. Village population of 929 in the '10 census...all crammed into a 1 mi. x 6 blocks rectangle from Route 1 to Stonington Point. Stonington's an absolutely massive expanse of land...one of the largest towns in the state by square mileage...but the entire population is hyper-concentrated into those three tiny villages with vast empty wetlands and diffuse nothingness between them. Given that the Borough village has 1) sharp curves on all sides, 2) wetlands and boat lots galore on its tangent areas, and 3) no possibility whatsoever of a passing track...that's a dead issue. The town doesn't want trains (remember: they held the grade crossing eliminations hostage so they could LIMIT the number of trains whooshing behind their backyard fences), and a village of barely 900--adorable as it is--is not going to float 3 stations in 7 miles gumming up Amtrak traffic. That will never be proposed or asked for. They're arguably the most transit spoiled-rotten Shoreline town of all if SLE rolls into the 2 existing stops bookending their most populous borders.

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:Amtrak's already put it in the Master Plan that any infills here have to be baked fresh with a passing track (as it should be), so there just physically isn't any room in the place that has the most ideal downtown access. Next-best options are the Columbus Ave. and Black Point Rd. underpasses, which both have space constraints on fitting station platforms and a passing track with the ROW pinned in by abutting backyards; you can have double-track + station or passing siding + no station, but not both. And Amtrak is setting the terms here.

In looking at the 2010 Master Plan control panel-style map for New Haven-Westerly there's no sign of a passing track for a South Lyme station other than a thin green line branching out between the two main tracks which to me appears to indicate a gauntlet track similar to the one on Track 3 in Old Saybrook (unless I'm reading it wrong). I doubt the plan is to swing Track 1 over and have Amtrak run on a new "middle" passing track with high speed turnouts at each end.

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:Pretty much any of the options in South Lyme on tangent track have enough space for 1) a non-impossibly squeezed station facility, 2) the requisite passing track, 3) more direct access to CT 156 without having to go down a narrow residential street. I think that's where it's going to end up being. But, really, it's splitting hairs...2-1/2 miles west of downtown Niantic is Old Lyme, 5 miles east is New London. They win any which way with a spacer stop.

It appears that the stretch in question most likely to cover all 3 of those points would be the segment from ~500 yards west of the 156 overpass to ~500-700? yards east of the Shore Acres Rd. underpass with the station and parking lot being placed somewhere between 156 and the Threemile River on the south side of the tracks (and perhaps a new access road and bridge extending south from 156 on the north side if a longer access road isn't built along the south side of the ROW?).

Niantic definitely is a tight spot. I always thought this would be a good spot:
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Though I'm unsure of the space there to accommodate a passing siding and 2 highs on either side. It would be great exposure though, being right at the jct of 156/161 and right in the center of town. But parking is pretty tight all around. But parking isn't always required. Look at State Street Station in New Haven. Not one parking spot, though I'm pretty sure there are garages in the area. But the station itself was built without parking. However a parking-less station in Niantic may actually work. Will it fly with ConnDOT? Probably not.

History note: this location was about the location of the Amtrak stop from 1978-1981 for one daily roundtrip. The 1980 timetable lists the station location as "Main St & Pennsylvania Avenue", better known as CT 156 at CT 161. Most likely the station stop back then was nothing more than a single low level platform with minimal parking and maybe a bus-type shelter, if that.

Groton would be a very viable infill when SLE goes to Westerly. Groton Bank and the Route 1 corridor are both fairly dense, and getting into New London is generally unpleasant. A station on the tangent next to Bridge Street would serve Groton Bank and potentially work as a I-95 park and ride; a site off 1 near Meridian Street Extension or Poquonnock Road might also work.

A station in Niantic would rock. i bet it would be packed in the summer

shadyjay wrote:Niantic definitely is a tight spot. I always thought this would be a good spot:
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Though I'm unsure of the space there to accommodate a passing siding and 2 highs on either side. It would be great exposure though, being right at the jct of 156/161 and right in the center of town. But parking is pretty tight all around. But parking isn't always required. Look at State Street Station in New Haven. Not one parking spot, though I'm pretty sure there are garages in the area. But the station itself was built without parking. However a parking-less station in Niantic may actually work. Will it fly with ConnDOT? Probably not.

That's exactly my point/point of view. A parking lot might actually defeat the purpose of having a station there in the first place when you think about it because part of its purpose would presumably be to take cars off the roads altogether. The surrounding neighborhoods are within a 10, 15, 20 minute or so walk from roughly where a station could go in near Main St./156. Build a walk/bike path along the ROW through McCook Point Park and you could probably cut walking times to/from neighborhoods south of the tracks by around 5 min. And if anyone bikes to the train those times are even less!

Now as for making it work the only way I think it could if ever is by extending the width of the ROW to the south right up until where the beach begins and installing the 3rd track from where the cut ends to where the beach/boardwalk begins. This would mean shifting the shoreline/rock embankment south of where it exists and quite possibly replacing all cat poles in that stretch with cat towers, but since there doesn't appear to be any actual beach to be poached on so to speak it might not be as problematic as one might think. The biggest hurdle might actually be getting the town to agree it in the first place. But if in making their pitch -should CDOT decide to pursue an additional in fill stop other than South Lyme- they mention the "car free potential", the "less traffic on 156" and "attracting those along the shoreline and even NYC and Boston who don't have a car" points I think the town could seriously consider jumping onboard.

kitn1mcc wrote:A station in Niantic would rock. i bet it would be packed in the summer

What might end up being a problem as the result of a Niantic station is having enough seats on hand for passengers if ridership really were to take off. I remember taking SLE to New London during OpSail 2000 with the train being practically SRO and the conductor announcing that the train was going straight to NLC instead of picking up more passengers at the next stations. The line at the station and the parking lot was long enough! Now granted there would be probably 12 weekday RTs (more than 8 RTs on weekends) to/from NLC by the time such a station were to open post-2030, but if 4 or 5 cars isn't enough and the current SLE fleet has been retired/replaced/displaced and there's no immediate answer to an equipment shortage other than borrowing spare Hartford Line sets for weekend service with 6 cars+ (even if it means using 2 locos) then there could be some problems there. If riding SLE to the beach becomes like riding the Green or the Red Line during rush hour that might start turning people away. It's definitely not going to help when you've got beach chairs, bags, umbrellas, etc.

The EGE wrote:Groton would be a very viable infill when SLE goes to Westerly. Groton Bank and the Route 1 corridor are both fairly dense, and getting into New London is generally unpleasant. A station on the tangent next to Bridge Street would serve Groton Bank and potentially work as a I-95 park and ride; a site off 1 near Meridian Street Extension or Poquonnock Road might also work.

Part of the ROW through Groton is I believe due for 3rd passenger (Amtrak) track + electrification (is it the entire segment from the P&W jct. to Fort Hill Brook?) so unless Amtrak says it needs it for their trains only the 3rd track requirement has already been met.

Also as a side note to nomis: Should all the SLE South Lyme, Niantic, expanded existing stations threads (including the one I started last year) be perhaps be merged into one single "SLE New And Expanded Stations" thread?

Pardon my ignorance as a not-CT resident, but wouldn't Groton be equal to about East Haven in the fact that it's close to the city nearby? I know both New Haven stations and New London station have little parking (I've done it for all three), but it seems like both Groton and East Haven would need to serve as park & rides to be even useful.

Niantic and Old Lyme are probably both destinations on the shore to themselves, and why couldn't SLE try to serve both? It's understandable if ConnDOT cannot afford both Niantic and Old Lyme, but neither downtown is exactly close by or in walking distance.

As for any potential service to Westerly, would Noank have any attraction or just Stonington, Mystic, Groton and Westerly? Same question could be applied to Groton, other than the Navy base and sub museum, is there anything for reverse commutation? (Mystic and Westerly would serve as a nice connector to Foxwoods up CT 2.)

Noank is awfully small - 1800 residents, and many of them seasonal.

Groton wouldn't be a feeder for New London, but largely for New Haven-centered riders (and possibly EB workers). East Haven isn't as necessary because it's largely duplicated by bus connections and the rail line has a more circuitous route; only when the passenger traffic transferring to Metro-North (rather than working in downtown New Haven) became especially significant will it come into its own.

I'm going to keep them as separate threads for the time being. If i didn't have two shows going up in the next two weeks, i could get around to some housekeeping to make an index of expansion topics for both SLE & NHHS.

NH2060 wrote:Now as for making it work the only way I think it could if ever is by extending the width of the ROW to the south right up until where the beach begins and installing the 3rd track from where the cut ends to where the beach/boardwalk begins. This would mean shifting the shoreline/rock embankment south of where it exists and quite possibly replacing all cat poles in that stretch with cat towers, but since there doesn't appear to be any actual beach to be poached on so to speak it might not be as problematic as one might think. The biggest hurdle might actually be getting the town to agree it in the first place. But if in making their pitch -should CDOT decide to pursue an additional in fill stop other than South Lyme- they mention the "car free potential", the "less traffic on 156" and "attracting those along the shoreline and even NYC and Boston who don't have a car" points I think the town could seriously consider jumping onboard.

Any kind of taking of beach and/or marshland is a huge deal these days. You'd get the EPA and a slew of other government agencies crawling all over the project; and the townspeople would fight tooth and nail before they let a single foot of beach go. That's the reality of the coastal Northeast these days.

True, but the western half of the beach is more or less just a rock embankment. There's no real "beach" beach if you get my drift. When the new drawbridge was built a portion of the beach/boardwalk was displaced and was later rebuilt. So it wouldn't be the first time it's happened at that particular location. If in making the pitch for a new station the words "parking free", "relief from traffic congestion", etc. are emphasized to the hilt the town could in theory be receptive to shifting the shoreline at that particular spot.