The 2024 round of grants from a federal railroad infrastructure program will send more money to add track capacity at Springfield Union Station, where several proposed new Amtrak routes would converge under the state's "Compass Rail" plan.
The Springfield Area Track Reconfiguration Project would build new crossovers, layover tracks, and upgrade platforms around Springfield Union Station, which is currently a choke point where several freight railroads and busy Amtrak routes converge.
The $36.8 million grant will come from the Federal Railroad Administration's Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) grant program.
A year ago, MassDOT received a $108 million CRISI grant for other rail improvements on the east-west rail line between Worcester and Springfield. That work will enable a new "inland route" Amtrak service through Springfield, with two round trips per day between Boston and New Haven, Connecticut, while also cutting the rail travel time between Springfield and Boston by about 40 minutes.
Last year's CRISI funding also awarded $1.75 million in preliminary engineering funding to begin design on the Springfield Area Track Reconfiguration Project.
“This award moves us one step closer to making West-East Rail a reality. By making these critical upgrades at Springfield’s Union Station, we’ll be able to expand rail capacity and ensure smoother service across Western Massachusetts,” said Gov. Maura Healey in a press release issued Tuesday morning.
Project aims to relieve a rail bottleneck
Currently, Springfield Union Station serves 12 daily round trips on the CTRail Hartford Line to New Haven, two round trips on the Amtrak Northeast Regional to Washington D.C., and one daily stop in each direction for both the Amtrak Lake Shore Limited, which runs between Boston and Chicago, and the Amtrak Vermonter, which connects northern Vermont to New York City.
The station itself lies on the state's primary east-west freight railway, which is owned by the CSX Corporation and connects Springfield to Worcester and Albany.
MassDOT owns the rails north of the station, on the Valley Flyer route to Northampton and Greenfield. Amtrak owns the tracks south of the station, on the Hartford Line to New Haven.
The intersection of all those railways is located just a few blocks southwest of Springfield Union Station, at a junction on the bank of the Connecticut River.
It's an area that already gets a lot of rail traffic, but the state's Compass Rail plan aims to fit even more trains through that junction, with new Amtrak routes that would connect Boston to Albany and Boston to New Haven.
In addition to the funding it's received to upgrade the rails between Springfield and Worcester, MassDOT also won a $500,000 grant last winter to plan for additional Amtrak service between Boston and Albany.
According to Amtrak and MassDOT, that funding will lay our a strategy for the agencies to eventually provide up to eight additional daily round-trip trains through Springfield on that route.
Other CRISI grants support western Mass. freight lines
Massachusetts railways also received two other smaller CRISI grants in this year's round of funding for freight rail projects.
Pan Am Southern, the private freight rail company that owns the "northern tier" rail route between Ayer, Greenfield, and North Adams, will receive $21.6 million for safety improvements and rail infrastructure upgrades.
The Pioneer Valley Railroad, LLC, which connects Holyoke to Westfield, will receive up to $8.9 million to upgrade rails and replace ties.
According to a grant description from the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), the grant will also fund an expanded unloading facility at the Tunnel Hill Reclamation Landfill in central Ohio.
"The project will allow for safer rail traffic and for the THR facility in Ohio to accommodate additional rail cars and process greater volumes of construction and demolition waste," according to the FRA.
