Redeker oversees completion of long-awaited Hartford Line
Department of Transportation Commissioner James Redeker wants to see increased infrastructure investment.
For Department of Transportation Commissioner James Redeker, 2018 marked the culmination of a nearly decade-long effort to reestablish rail service between Hartford and Springfield, Mass.
“The Hartford Line, I helped write the grant in 2009,” Redeker recalled. “To see it open in 2018 — and … we've exceeded our ridership forecast for the first year in just the first couple of months, it's another extraordinary success story.”
DOT ridership data seems to show pent-up demand for rail service since the $769 million CTrail Hartford Line began shuttling passengers in mid-June. Between June and October, rail ridership in the state increased from just over 100,000 passengers in 2017 to well over 220,000 in 2018, according to the state DOT. That's not including at least 10,000 CTrail ticket holders who had to ride Amtrak shuttle busses in September and October, due to over demand.
In addition to healthy ridership, Redeker said he thinks the Hartford Line will continue to spark transit-oriented development, pointing to housing projects in places like Meridan as demonstrative of transportation's importance to economic growth.
“If you're going to fix the economy, you're going to have to improve rail service, improve bus service, and you're going to have to get rid of congestion on highways,” Redeker said. “Before the Hartford Line opened, we documented $400 million of transit-oriented development projects in that corridor, and that's before it opened.”
There were challenges in 2018. Early in the year, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy put on hold more than 400 DOT projects worth close to $4.25 billion, citing revenue shortfalls in the state's Special Transportation Fund. The halt ended at the end of the legislative session, when lawmakers transferred tax revenue funds for transportation use in fiscal 2019.
That action stabilized the transportation fund for the next few years, but it's unclear what will happen after that.
What did become clear toward the end of 2018 is voter support of transportation funding. The state electorate in November approved a “lockbox” measure that requires all money in the transportation fund to be spent on transportation-related uses.
The DOT also proposed to increase spending on infrastructure projects in a five-year, $12.1 billion capital spending plan released in November. The plan, which basically serves as a DOT wishlist, would be a steep increase over what was actually spent during the previous half-decade — about $7.7 billion.
Redeker said completing the projects necessary to improve highways and bridges would require a spending increase of about 50 percent. He identified tolls as one possible revenue generator.
DOT officials in November released a tolling study conducted by engineering consultants CDM Smith that said installing 82 toll gantries across the state could generate $1 billion in annual revenue.
Going into 2019, Redeker, whose future as DOT commissioner under Gov.-elect Ned Lamont remains uncertain, said he hopes to continue progress on highway and bridge projects with the intent of spurring economic growth.
“It's a long-term strategy,” Redeker said. “You've got to spend money to get money.”
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