Nothing has changed since the 1920s except maybe there’s more trees, but last week the Danbury News Times reported this curious factoid:

In the 1920s, it took about 42 minutes to ride a train from Danbury to Norwalk.

Now, after eight decades of progress and technological innovation, it takes about 50 minutes.

The report centered on the Congresscritters Jim Himes-D fourth CD, Chris Murphy-D fifth CD, press tour along the line.

“You would think it would be shorter,” said�Dave Hannon, the deputy director of the�Housatonic Valley Council of Elected Officials last week.

Hannon was among a group of area leaders — includingU.S. Congressmen Chris Murphy and�Jim Himes — who rode the rails last week to promote the need to improve the Danbury-to-Norwalk line.

Better train service, they said — more modern, faster, more frequent — is essential for the region to thrive.

“If we do this right, it can represent a tremendous change for the region,” said Murphy, D-5th District.

Well first the headline on this should be that bankrupt Connecticut needs to cough up another $28 million, but that would get us sidetracked on the budget woes, and not on the conduct of the DOT. The Courant reports on Judge Barbara Sheedys findings:

The judge’s ruling included scathing criticism of the DOT, which Sheedy said “conducted itself throughout as unprofessional, lacking in diligence and less than scrupulous.”

She found that DOT retained two appraisal experts “solely to minimize the quarry’s value.” She said that the testimony of one of them, New Jersey appraiser Kenneth Jones, lacked credibility because he “made patently clear his willingness to formulate opinions based upon the identity of the master he served — here the DOT.”

The details of the case:

The DOT served notice in 1997 on the quarry owners that it needed to take the land by eminent domain for the new highway bypass, and intended to take possession by 1999.

The owners tried to persuade the state to use an alternate route that would allow them to continue what promised to be a lucrative business because of significant stone deposits on the property.

They presented several alternatives. But the DOT would not relent, and took the only one of five routes that resulted in closing the quarry, said Halloran, co-counsel for the plaintiffs.

The quarry owners changed their business plans based on the state’s announcement that the quarry would be turned into a highway right of way within two years — putting it under what the plaintiffs called a “cloud of condemnation” and diminishing income potential — but then the state failed to follow through with the acquisition for five more years.

It turned out that DOT had not completed an environmental assessment required by the federal government before it would come across with highway funds necessary for the project, the judge said in her decision. Sheedy noted that a DOT official acknowledged “we really messed up.”

A big reason for the DOT’s delay in providing that assessment was that the state’s Department of Environmental Protection did not like the route that the state’s highway planners had chosen, Halloran said. “The DEP felt other alternatives were less damaging, but “finally ‘caved’ in 2004,” Halloran said.

The plaintiffs’ expert appraiser, Edward “Ned” Heberger, included future potential revenue of the business prominently in his calculation of the property’s value. Sheedy wrote that she found his testimony professional and credible.

A DOT spokesman said the department would have no immediate comment. Jones, the DOT’s appraiser, could not be reached for comment.

source: Courant, State Must Pay Owners Of Brookfield Quarry More Than $28 Million Extra, By Jon Lender, August 4, 2009

There are some additional details that today’s Advocate article reveals that could make this palatable, sort of.

Budget director Robert Genuario of Norwalk told the Appropriations Committee that the workweek resolution is not technically a raise but an increase in pay for an increase in work.

The expanded workweek is related to a separate agreement the administration worked out with the DOT that requires the union to waive several million dollars of disputed claims for retroactive pay, he said.

DOT employees who work more than 35 hours are compensated, but that money is not eligible for reimbursement on federal projects, Genuario said. He could not say how much federal money the state has lost.

Genuario and others said the longer work week would allow the DOT — which many say does not have enough workers, particularly engineers — to attract new hires, speed up projects and provide better oversight.

Being able to tap into federal funds for reimbursement is a good thing. But not having a fact and figures report on what those federal dollars would be is wrong.

Not every Democrat was on board with the resolution.

State Sen. Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, vice chairman of the Transportation Committee, said it troubled him that Genuario did not provide a cost-benefit analysis.

“I think we should have more information before it goes into effect,” Duff said.

Right on. So who pushed this through?

After hearing testimony, Democrats and Republicans on the committee met separately to discuss the proposal. Once the committee reconvened, the co-chairman, state Rep. John Geragosian, D-New Britain, called for an adjournment, avoiding debate and a vote.

He was supported by a majority voice vote. The resolution goes to the Senate and House of Representatives, which have 30 days to act before it automatically takes effect.

“We expected to have a debate on it,” said state Sen. Dan Debicella, R-Shelton. “It’s not just a failure of leadership but of bipartisanship.”

Gov. M. Jodi Rell backs the workweek extension at the same time she is urging the legislature to reject a three-year contract for correction officers. Rell wants the arbitrated wage increases reconsidered because the state faces a budget shortfall of $1 billion this fiscal year and a possible $8 billion shortfall in the coming two years.

Some lawmakers said Thursday her positions were inconsistent.

State Senator McLachlan-R Danbury, is calling for Rell’s rescission powers to be expanded.

“To date, Governor Rell has been the only state official willing to make the difficult decisions necessary to address our budget crisis, but she has all but exhausted her statutory authority to make spending cuts,” said Senator McLachlan. “Meanwhile, the Democratic-led legislature has so far failed to take any meaningful steps to cut spending on their own. If the Democrats aren’t willing to make the difficult and sometimes unpopular decisions necessary to lead Connecticut out of its fiscal crisis, then they should give Governor Rell the power she needs to do the job on her own.”

source: Advocate, Dems OK hike in DOT work week; But GOP is irked by lack of debate on costs, By Brian Lockhart, 01/22/2009

Apparently the economic vitality of Fairfield County isn’t high on the agenda for Governor Rell. Despite the urging of State Senator Bob Duff, Rell is dodging the Super 7 issue, ignoring the needs of both roads and rails to link Danbury and Norwalk.

Duff said he has urged Gov. M. Jodi Rell to include construction of the Super 7 in her recommendations for infrastructure improvement projects to the federal government.

“If we’re to wisely improve our state’s economic standing, then we must work to reduce our highway congestion problems,” said Duff, vice chairman of the General Assembly’s Transportation Committee, in a press statement Monday. “Fairfield County is one of the main economic drivers in the state of Connecticut, and we cannot expect businesses to take a solid interest in our area, if one of our primary roadways is clogged, dangerous and inhospitable.”

Duff’s request comes as talk of major infrastructure investment builds in Washington, D.C., as part of the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama.

Communities nationwide have prepared wish lists for federal dollars to pay for local projects. Norwalk this week assembled a list totaling $175 million to be submitted to Washington via the United States Conference of Mayors.

A spokesman for Rell’s office, while saying that the governor will submit her list also, indicated Tuesday that Super 7 will not be on that list.

“The governor is still in the process of putting together the list of shovel-ready projects, and the criteria, we understand … is shovel-ready means that all permits and approvals have been finalized, that all local, state and federal requirements have been met, and that there be a final design for the project,” said spokesman Chris Cooper. “Super 7 does not meet any of those requirements right now. In addition, there isn’t community consensus that the project should be built.”

Cooper said competition for the federal dollars will be intense. As such, Rell intends to put forward for federal funding shovel-ready projects that will create jobs and have immediate benefits, according to Cooper.

Duff rejects that Super 7 isn’t shovel-ready. He said approximately 1,000 acres of right-of-way land currently owned by the state could be “fast-tracked for construction,” if the project is included as part of a federal plan for infrastructure investment.

While discussed for decades, Super 7 ground to a halt in the face of planning, regulatory approval and other hurdles, as well as opposition from Wilton and other communities in its path.

Duff said the federal government’s interest in infrastructure investment “gives us a golden opportunity to finally get this project off the ground.”

“Route 7 has the potential to be the most direct and safe route between upper and lower Fairfield County,” Duff said. “Small improvements are counterproductive; our economic viability depends on this roadway’s completion.”

In his press statement, Duff traced talk of the expressway to 1955, when the Connecticut Highway Department began planning improvements to the Route 7 corridor. Two years later, the state announced that the existing Route 7 would be expanded from two to four lanes, between Norwalk and Danbury, and estimated that the project would be done by 1962, according to Duff.

source: The Hour, Duff wants Super 7 on Rell’s infrastructure projects, By ROBERT KOCH, 12/16/2008

By the early 1900′s rail lines had become signalized with better efficiency mostly due to the use of the telegraph. Now, Connecticut’s own Danbury/Norwalk line will leap into the 20th century by starting work on designing a centralized signaling system. Currently, the single line rail system runs on a manual block system.

A block system is the way in which train traffic is controlled so essentially no two trains will occupy the same stretch of rail at the same time. Rail lines are divided into sections, known as blocks, and signals are used to indicate whether the block is occupied or not. Trains, due to that physical property of a large body in motion takes a long time to stop– I knew I learned something in physics, or was that billiards– need lots of room to stop, so conductors need to know if the track ahead is occupied long before they get there. The telegraph revolutionized the way in which signals were transmitted up and down rail lines in the late 1800s.

The Danbury/Norwalk line requires that a human physically pull a switch on entering and leaving a block. Which means someone traveling on the train. The Hour reports:

“This is the only rail line in America where a trainman still has to get off the train and manually pull a switch in order for one train to pass another,” said Boucher, also state senator-elect for District 26. “With this computerized signal system, the Danbury line can begin to move into the modern era at last.”

With $2.5 in bonding money now released, someone, and let’s hope that its not the DOT itself, will begin designing the computerized system to replace this.

Boucher credited Gov. M. Jodi Rell, who heads the Bond Commission, and the DOT for “heeding the call of the Danbury-to-Norwalk area.”

“Not only will a modernized rail line help commuters, but also businesses along heavily traveled Route 7 who are impacted by traffic congestion,” Boucher said. “As more people ride the rails, there should be an environmental and quality-of-life benefit to residents and businesses along Route 7.”

Boucher said the signalization must be done for other improvements to be made to the Danbury line. The DOT, for instance, is in Phase Two of a feasibility study to electrify the line.

According to the DOT, the Danbury line averages 70,000 riders a month, including weekday and weekend ridership. Rider-ship rose 6.6 percent between August 2007 and August 2008.

Electricity became very popular and by the 1930s had been inegrated in some rail lines in the US. By the 1960′s diesel powered trains became more widely used except in the northeast corridor. In the United States the only new mainline service was an extension of electrification over the Northeast Corridor from New Haven, Connecticut to Boston, Massachusetts. In unrelated news, the DOT is considering an upgrade to the horse and buggy transit system in use in Litchfield.

source: The Hour, $2.5M bonding secured for Metro-North Danbury line rail traffic signals, By Robert Koch, 12/12/2008