The shortcomings of Metro-North's Waterbury Branch are plentiful, but perhaps can best be summarized by the fact that a rider who misses a 6 p.m. northbound train out of Bridgeport will be waiting two and a half hours to catch the next one.
The Waterbury line lacks signals and usable sidings, meaning only one train can be on the tracks in either direction at any time. Not surprisingly, it has the lowest ridership of any Metro-North branch in the state.
Thanks to an influx of state funding, that is all about to change.
The 27-mile route with stops in Naugatuck, Beacon Falls, Seymour, Ansonia and Derby will benefit from $70 million in state spending to install signals and potentially increase service dramatically.
"For me, as an involved member of the commuter council, it's probably the most exciting information on the Waterbury line that I've seen," said Jim Gildea, a member of the Connecticut Commuter Council and a daily commuter from Derby to his job in Fairfield.
"If the work comes to fruition, in addition to the benefit for commuters, it's arguably one of the most important economic development projects for towns along the corridor," he said.
Naugatuck Valley towns that long depended on heavy manufacturing have suffered as the factories closed and jobs disappeared. But with intact downtowns and a renewed interest in walkable communities, local officials say all that's needed is a little help to bring prosperity back.
The Waterbury line, with in-place infrastructure and a built-in constituency, is the key, Gildea said. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
2nd major gas pipeline would link Penn, Northeast
SCHOHARIE, N.Y. (AP) — New York landowners along the planned 124-mile Constitution Pipeline are getting details of a second major natural gas pipeline proposed to cut through their property, this one a 325-mile link from Pennsylvania to New England.
Construction workers in economically distressed southern New York are ecstatic about the job possibilities, but landowners who have been fighting the first pipeline for three years are dismayed at the prospect of going through the whole process a second time.
"You think about the worst things that can happen to you in a life and I've had some things happen to me in life, but this is right up on the scale," landowner Dan Brignoli said this week at the first open house held in New York for the $4 billion Northeast Energy Direct project planned by Houston-based Kinder Morgan.
A right of way through the property where Brignoli and his wife built their home 40 years ago in Davenport was taken by eminent domain two weeks ago for the Constitution Pipeline, the furthest-along of a slew of projects planned to pipe cheap gas from the massive Marcellus Shale region in Pennsylvania to gas-hungry New York City and New England. A federal court will determine the Brignolis' compensation.
Constitution plans to break ground this summer if a critical state permit is issued. Northeast Energy Direct, which would have to obtain a second right of way if it's routed across Brignoli's land, is scheduled to file a formal application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission this fall and break ground in January 2017. The exact route is still being fine-tuned.
"Eminent domain is a very touchy subject, but in this country a lot of things were taken for the greater good, for the interstate highways and other projects," said Josh Shaul, a member of the New York State Laborers' Union who was among a large contingent of orange-shirted union members at the pipeline meeting in Schoharie. "This project is good for jobs, good for the community." CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Officials allocated $6 million for the project but when it went out to bid recently, all of the interested contractors wanted more money.
As municipal decision-makers eyed the project details, they decided they didn’t want to spend extra. They also agreed to include a “burn building” that can be used for training firefighters, an item left out during in the earlier plans.The city is looking now at a renovation that would create a “much smaller” station – slicing out a lot of storage space – while adding the training center. They hope they can still do the project for less than $6 million.
“We’re going back to the drawing board,” said city Councilor Henri Martin, chairman of the Building Committee. “We hit the pause button.”
But the change in plans will cost an extra $200,000 for design-related expenses and will require closing the station for up to 10 months during construction, something that would not have been necessary with the original scheme.
City Councilor Ellen Zoppo-Sassu said the way the project was handled highlights “the dysfunctional representation of what the fire department needed from the start.”
Instead of listening to firefighters from the beginning, she said, “the former administration liked to play with their toys” instead of using resources wisely.
Martin said the new leadership at the fire department sees its needs differently.
Mayor Ken Cockayne said he’s “not going to rehash what was done two or three years ago” under a different mayor and fire chief. Instead, he said, he’s focusing on getting necessary work finished. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Construction productivity still slumping
The construction industry must become more proficient in its use of labor because, as everyone knows, labor is at a premium. How bad is it? Consider the following passage from an industry publication:
“Talk to almost any contractor in virtually any part of the country these days, and chances are that the biggest problem he is facing is a lack of labor. Too often, the projects are there; the people to do them are not. The labor crunch has reached such critical proportions that now is the time for fresh approaches.”
The kicker is that the quote is from 1999. Here we are 16 years later and the situation is unchanged. Consider a quote from a National Society of Engineers publication just a few months ago: “If you look at the growth data for the whole [construction] industry, if anything, labor productivity is getting worse.” The industry is wasting labor.
Productivity is all about numbers-crunching. Even allowing for the duplicity of data (as expressed in the old line about lies, damn lies, and statistics), the numbers do not add up for the construction industry. Researchers measure construction work in the same way they do other nonfarm industries and the results are unflattering. Example: The value added per manufacturing employee climbed rather dramatically from 1998-2011; for construction employees, it fell.
Yes, some capital intensive construction (such as highway work) can be unfairly compared to labor intensive building (home or office construction). CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE