Some of the last federal transportation dollars to be distributed by the administration of President Joe Biden are going to Connecticut to expand rail service in the corridor from New Haven to Hartford and Springfield.
State and federal officials announced the $11.6 million in funding Monday at Union Station in Hartford, one of the stops on the CTrail Hartford Line service that launched in 2018 and has grown to 750,000 annual passenger trips.
The federal grant will be matched by about $13.4 million in state funding.
In the final round of awards before Biden is succeeded next week by Donald J. Trump, Connecticut was one of six states to win discretionary “restoration and enhancement” grants intended to improve passenger rail service.
“He’s only got six more days in office, but ‘Amtrak Joe Biden’ has made an enormous difference for infrastructure and rail across this country, in particular this state,” Gov. Ned Lamont said.
As a U.S. senator, Biden was a commuter on Amtrak.
One of the busiest commuter lines in the U.S. is Metro-North, which connects Fairfield County to New York City. Maintenance backlogs and outdated bridges have forced lower speeds on rails used by Metro-North and Amtrak.
“We are a rail state, probably more than any other state in the country, and we continue to rely on passenger rail to make our economy move,” said Garrett Eucalitto, the state commissioner of transportation.
Since Trump’s victory in November, the Biden administration has accelerated efforts to distribute grant money from the $1.2 trillion bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed in November 2021.
“We’re entering a period of uncharted waters, as they say, total uncertainty,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat.
Elon Musk, one of the overseers of what has been dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has set cutting $2 trillion in annual spending as a goal, though he recently lowered expectations to perhaps half that.
“The only place to slash funding is for transportation and education and health care and other vital sources of support for the state,” Blumenthal said.
Eucalitto struck a more optimistic tone, at least regarding transportation funding that comes to the states by a mix of formulaic and discretionary programs.
“I think, generally, there’s a sense that infrastructure is traditionally non partisan,” he said. “The way that infrastructure bill is drafted by the Senate and the House, a lot of it is already in place and pre-appropriated, as advanced appropriations is called. So they have to do an act of Congress to undo that.”
State Sen. Tony Hwang of Fairfield, the ranking Republican on the Transportation Committee, was the only Republican elected official to attend the announcement.
“I want to emphasize that for us in the state General Assembly, transportation is truly a bipartisan effort, and I see that also in the federal government, because the infrastructure bill was truly a bipartisan one,” Hwang said.
U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-5th District, said the state’s delegation, which is all Democratic, will continue to make the case to the new administration about the importance of transportation investment.
Connecticut, which originally anticipated getting about $6 billion through the bipartisan infrastructure law, has been awarded $9.6 billion in funding across 300 programs throughout state government, said Mark Boughton, the commissioner of revenue services.
The bigger ticket items are transportation projects to replace century-old bridges used by Amtrak and Metro North, including the major span that carries Amtrak over the Connecticut River between Old Saybrook and Old Lyme.
In addition to the Hartford Line grant, officials also said the state was getting funds for safety and other projects:
—$2.4 million for preliminary engineering plans to consolidate at-grade crossings on the Metro-North Danbury branch in Norwalk and Danbury.
— $2 million to study options and prepare initial plans to better connect the North End of Hartford to the rest of the city by lowering and covering I-84 and the rail line.
— $2 million to study the removal of physical barriers and the restoration of connectivity across I-91 in New Haven, from Fair Haven to the Long Wharf district.
— $400,000 to study the feasibility of eliminating the Toelles Road grade crossing in Wallingford on the Hartford Line and replacing it with a bridge carrying the road over the rail tracks and Route 5.