Timothy Brennan is Executive Director of the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, based in West Springfield. In part one of this interview last week, Brennan began to describe his agency’s efforts to "break down the political border" and "build a cross-border partnership" between Massachusetts and Connecticut.
HB: Is there hostility toward working with Connecticut?
TB: Not hostility. There is this group called the Hartford-Springfield Economic Partnership; the collaboration was signed by the two governors six-plus years ago, [John] Rowland and [Paul] Cellucci, at a public ceremony at the Big E. Since that time, it hasn’t gotten regular attention, but the steering committee continues to meet. The work tends to get divided by functional area.
My colleague from Hartford and I tend to get the public policy and public project initiatives, that run the gamut from cleaning up the Connecticut River to using the West Springfield rail freight yard in a new way; the commuter rail connection; the just-announced international air service out of Bradley [Airport] to Europe. We’re responsible for all those pieces directly involved in the public governmental arena, as opposed to the private-sector folks who are doing the joint marketing of the region, on a cross-border basis; or bringing up site selectors; or chasing big prospects that might be landed on one side of the state line or the other.
Who’s your colleague in Hartford?
A guy by the name of Lyle Wray. He’s been there about two and a half years. I’ve known him a long time. He was the head of the Minneapolis Citizens League for many years, but came to the Capital Region Council of Governments, our counterpart, based in Hartford.
Both of you are members of the Hartford-Springfield Economic Partnership?
Yes. We try to do an annual event, the State of the Region (PDF). I always try to convince them it should be the "state of the interstate," but they haven’t gone for the idea yet. We try to do something very public, once per year, invite lots of people—it basically draws 300-plus—and talk about what’s been going on, but also bring in some interesting speaker, someone from another region, someone who has a new idea that’s getting a lot of attention.
Do you happen to recall who the speaker might have been at the last one?
Yes, Michael Gallis, a nationwide-reputation consultant out of Charlotte. He did work around 1999 which, in a sense, lit the fire behind this. He was commissioned by Connecticut to take a strategic look at the Connecticut economy. He carved Connecticut into a set of discrete economic corridors, and when he got to Hartford he said, there’s no way possible you can look at Hartford without connecting to Springfield, and so it should go across the line. He said things we already knew, but in compelling ways.
For example, this airport is plunked down right in the middle of these two regions; it’s shared. Maybe employment from Massachusetts is 30 percent, but it’s a shared resource; people don’t think about how they have to drive through a border gate to go to the airport. So that’s the way the thinking ought to change as well. He got me thinking about the idea that if there’s a Bradley for airplanes, shouldn’t there be something for rail freight?
We started to focus on the CSX yards. We didn’t know it at the time, but when we got CSX to allow what they call gate surveys, to see the trucks that were coming and going, it was almost a 50/50 split right down the middle between Massachusetts and Connecticut vehicles served. We had the disguised equivalent of Bradley for rail, but it was pretty unnoticed and underutilized. We’ve tried to bring more focus on it, turning to what we call an inland port idea—the way you would connect trucks to trains, and get more trucks off the road. We have a serious nationwide problem with the volume of trucks. It’s going to melt down the interstate system unless there’s some sort of intervention. We’re thinking maybe we could intervene first, or be one of the first, and get ourselves an advantage.
Do you have data about the trucking situation on I-91 and I-90?
The data tends to be more national than it is carved out by state or region, but there’s tons of it on the US Department of Transportation Web site. There’s a national organization called American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials that did a seminal piece on freight movement in the country. Essentially, with the volume of trucks on the road, we’re now 95 percent dependent on trucks to move stuff. We had things that happened, like 9/11, when they closed the border—you’d have nine-mile backups of trucks. Factories that are working on just-in-time, you don’t get stuff to ’em just in time, you shut the factories down—so this was eye-opening, but hasn’t gotten a lot of attention.
The idea is, we’ve gotta back off the truck dependency. Some of my thinking for this has come out of Los Angeles. They’re building, inland from the port, rail-truck connector points. Their problem is, as usual, five years ahead, or more, so they’re clogging their interstates now, and talking about exclusive interstate truck routes. We’re thinking maybe we could steal an advantage by getting in on the first wave in responding to this.
When you say "inland from ports," the idea is that—
Los Angeles is one of the major ports, so they’re bringing in a lot of stuff from Asia, that comes off the ships, and goes on the trucks—
Ideally over a short distance.
This goes back to a period when railroads became very unreliable, and very expensive, and everyone migrated away from rail to truck. And now, we’ve overdosed on the truck mode, and now what do you do? Part of the solution is connecting trucks and trains. Let the train do the long haul, which is extraordinarily cost-efficient if you can make it work. But then let the truck do the short haul, and so you relieve the pressure on the interstates, which is mounting all the time. And also, there’s interesting stories about the truck problem migrating to the workforce side—they can’t find sufficient people to drive. Companies are paid bounties: there are employers catering to tag team arrangements, husband-wife teams. That’s the level of need that has been ratcheting up.
Not sustainable.
No. And not exactly the kind of job most people want to do, which is part of the problem.
There’s the commuter side to it. Is it less acute, in terms of impact?
Commuter rail? In my opinion, commuter rail is the biggest thing of all. It’s the most important change agent for the better. Certainly for Springfield, but also for the region. Part of the hidden agenda is when we get to Springfield, we want to go up the rest of the [Connecticut River] valley. We want to connect up into the five-college area, we want to go up into Greenfield—
And to Vermont, longer term—
Vermont people are already coming down. They desperately want to get back onto what’s called the main line, and bring it back down the valley. But we’re never going to get to the rest of the valley unless we get to Springfield. And to me, the fortunes of Springfield from the standpoint of a public infrastructure investment that could make a huge change for the better, it’s like a home run. And there’s ample evidence, locally and across the country. But we have to convince the next governor.
It needs state funding to make it happen. That’s what Connecticut’s been waiting for?
Connecticut has already moved on the funding. They’re serious. My worst nightmare is that Connecticut will do this, we won’t buy into it, and the trains will essentially turn around in Springfield with the doors closed. Which, operationally, is probably what will happen, because of the way trains have to sort of reconfigure from going north to south.
They can’t do it in Enfield.
No, but they can do it in Springfield, but they don’t have to open the doors. We would lose the opportunity, or we’d have people driving to Enfield to get on the train. This is, for me, one of the most exciting projects right now, by far. I see it as part of our job to make this happen. Relatively speaking, it is a lot of money, but our share of the cost to get it to Springfield is modest.
What’s the amount the state might need to pitch in?
The overall amount, the sort of Cadillac version of the budget, is $300 million for everything, and our share is ten percent. We spent $30 million re-doing the Coolidge Bridge. To me, it’s the same kind of worthy investment, and in this case it’s transit as opposed to a highway bridge facility. And then we’d probably have to come up with about $1 million a year for the operating assistance. Not the capital side, but the operational subsidy to keep the fares low enough that they’re attractive to lots of folks, to release themselves from the car, and change at least a substantial part of their trip into rail mode. So the potential benefits from the development and property value side are just very compelling. All you have to do is look at an example like Brockton. The change of Brockton since they got MBTA service, or a lot of the communities in Massachusetts and Rhode Island that connect now with Providence-Boston. Portland, Maine-Boston. Worcester is probably the closest example, which is now pleading for more service.
It’s successful enough that other communities want something like it. New Bedford wants a connection, like Providence.
Oh yeah. The mayors are screaming about getting it down to that part of [the state].
What are some of the opponents saying—do they have reasonable concerns?
Are their concerns reasonable? Yes, they are. The concerns are things such as: is this another Big Dig West? I’ve heard that. Is the public subsidy too rich, given the ridership? The ridership projections that were done in the first study were very conservative, and they were the most contentious issue in the whole phase one—they were too low. We said this; our counterpart said it; there were problems with the model itself—all of that was acknowledged, but it brought out very low numbers. When you have very low numbers, and high costs, you do the math and you say, wow, that much subsidy? But you look at the totality of the picture.
Connecticut’s position was, we don’t want to lie to anyone; we have had enough problems; we don’t have any lack of confidence that this is the lowest of the low. And typically if the service is offered, and the service is affordable and reliable, ridership builds. Fast. And so you usually break your projections pretty quickly out of the box, provided what you’re asking from the consumer in the way of a fare is a good deal, and also, they can rely on the train.
Nothing more will chase people away—it’s not even the price as much as unreliability. I need this train to get to work by such and such a time. I can’t be standing on the platform, waiting for half an hour for it to run. The commuter is a very big deal. It’s probably the biggest deal for Springfield and our region for the next decade, at least.
Up next, in the final segment of the interview, Brennan addresses how topography impacts the possibility of connecting eastern and western Massachusetts with commuter rail, and touches on ways his agency is reaching out to the public.
