The Promise of Rail Service

Editorial

As one rides on Amtrak’s Vermonter through Western Mass. and along the Connecticut River, the potential that train service holds for helping to change the local landscape can be seen.

Well, sort of.

Actually, it can’t be seen unless one uses and extends his or her imagination. That’s because there are only two trains coming through that stretch, one southbound and one northbound, and they both hit this region in the middle of the afternoon (see story, page 6).

That makes train service, as currently constituted, ideal for Smith College students going home for Thanksgiving or the holidays; business owners and professionals going to conferences and meetings in New York, Philadelphia, or Washington, D.C.; skiiers looking for an affordable option for getting them to the slopes in Vermont; and individuals visiting relatives anywhere along that route.

All that’s fine, but those uses don’t really explain why officials in this region fought so hard to bring rail service back to the so-called Connecticut River Line and three cities — Holyoke, Northampton, and Greenfield — that hadn’t seen a passenger train stop within their borders in nearly 30 years. They didn’t lobby for the train — and the state didn’t invest in the concept — to create a transportation alternative.

Or just a transportation alternative. Instead, the train was viewed as an economic-development opportunity, a vehicle for bringing people to cities, where they could spend money, support businesses, and, maybe, if they really liked that they saw, decide to live and/or locate a business.

That can’t happen with what amounts to one train a day. It might happen with five or more, and that’s why those same officials are again lobbying state officials to allocate surplus MBTA equipment to run along the Connecticut River Line several times a day.

With such frequency, people could commute to jobs; they could visit Northampton for dinner and a show and return home that same night; they could attend a lecture at Amherst College in the morning and return to their office in the afternoon. And maybe they’d fall in love with one of those stops along the route and decide that, because they can commute from there, they want to live there.

Maybe. What’s more likely is that this last kind of activity — what the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission director and others call ‘transit-oriented development’ — can only happen if reliable, fast train service between Springfield and Boston becomes reality.

And it probably won’t for many years. This would require a huge capital investment and an equally large amount of political goodwill, and we’re not sure if there is enough of either to make this happen.

But we encourage area officials, especially those aforementioned mayors, to keep the state’s feet to the fire on this matter. Indeed, while some have doubts about just how much train service can do for this region — after all, one can already get from Springfield to Boston fairly easily and inexpensively — we believe rail service is one of those ingredients needed for Western Mass. to enjoy some of the success enjoyed by Boston and its suburbs.

With the train, there can be more connections, and connections mean opportunities. It won’t happen overnight, but as this region becomes accessible, good things can happen.

That’s what people can see if they ride the Vermonter — again, if they use their imagination, and if they look far enough down the tracks.