Next month, MassDOT will host a public hearing for a proposed new Amtrak station in the central Massachusetts town of Palmer – a long-planned component of its "Compass Rail" plan to add more intercity passenger rail service through western Massachusetts.
Palmer is a town of 12,448 people located about 14 miles east of Springfield and 28 miles west of Worcester. If the station plans come to fruition, it would be the smallest town in Massachusetts with an Amtrak station.
But Palmer also has an unusually well-organized citizens group that's been advocating for a train station for years at the state and local levels.
Anne Miller, a co-founder of the Citizens for a Palmer Rail Stop, told StreetsblogMASS that Palmer residents began organizing in 2015.
“At that time the state was doing the Northern New England Intercity Rail plan (also known as NNEIRI, a precursor to MassDOT's Compass Rail initiative). The study was underway and they were having public meetings, and at that time Palmer was listed as a possible or potential stop. Our first goal was to get it included in that study as a definite stop.”
The administration of Gov. Charlie Baker shelved the NNEIRI plan, but many of its recommendations have been revived in the state's Compass Rail initiative, which would add two new Amtrak routes through Palmer and Springfield: one from Boston to Albany, NY, and a new "Inland Route" from Boston to New Haven.
In 2024, Gov. Healey's administration funded a planning and design study for a new station in Palmer to help implement the Compass Rail plans.
This spring, study consultants recommended a vacant site in an industrial area on South Main Street (pictured above), about half a mile southeast of downtown.
Preliminary plans call for a no-frills station, with a high-level platform for level, wheelchair-accessible boarding, a basic shelter for riders to wait under, and a park-and-ride lot between the tracks and South Main Street.
On October 7, MassDOT will host a public hearing to present their conceptual designs for the station.
A transit hub for rural Massachusetts
Palmer is located at the junction of several historic railways, and calls itself the "Town of Seven Railroads."
Two of those railroads are still operating, and intersect at an X-shaped junction in the center of Palmer – the New England Central freight railway, which runs from Brattleboro, Vermont to New London, Connecticut, and the CSX-owned east-west route between Springfield and Worcester.
“Palmer’s a former factory town, and it's been in decline economically for a long time," Miller told StreetsblogMASS. "We felt like it would be a huge economic driver for the town if we could bring passenger trains back and get that connection to Boston and Worcester and Springfield. Historically it was a nexus of train lines. The town’s history as a railroad town is there.”
The town's current public transit service consists of two PVTA bus routes. The Palmer Shuttle loops around the town roughly every hour from 7:30 a.m. 'til 5:30, and makes two extended runs to downtown Springfield for the morning and evening rush hour. The PVTA's Ware Shuttle, which makes six daily round trips, also stops in Palmer with connections to Wilbraham and Ware.
"We're not just rail advocates, we’re really public transport advocates," said Miller. "We see the rail as the spine that you build everything else off of, with all the bus services that connect our region to the new Palmer station.”
Ben Hood, who chairs the Palmer Redevelopment Authority and also serves as the town's representative to the PVTA regional transit advisory board, told StreetsblogMASS that Palmer is also eager to encourage new transit-oriented development.
"The town is ready to rezone whenever they see an opportunity to encourage development in the station area," said Hood.
Hood also noted that the station site is also just two miles away from the Monson Developmental Center, a former state hospital campus that's being offered for new housing development (see map above). Preliminary plans for the site call for a new mixed-use village with up to 600 new homes along with commercial and retail spaces.
More rail improvements in the works
While its plans for the new Palmer station develop, MassDOT is also entering the final design stages for a suite of infrastructure upgrades on the rails between Albany and Boston to allow for additional passenger service and faster trains.
Amtrak currently runs one trip in each direction on this route: the daily Lake Shore Limited, which connects Boston to Chicago via Albany. According to MassDOT planning documents, CSX, the private-sector owner of the rails between Albany and Worcester, currently operates up to fifteen daily freight trains between Springfield and Worcester, and has plans to increase its traffic to 21 daily trains in the future.
To accommodate even more train traffic, MassDOT plans to upgrade signals and its Positive Train Control safety systems along the route. Track upgrades between Worcester and Springfield will increase the maximum allowable speed for passenger trains from 60 to 80 mph.
The state is also planning to double-track several segments of the route to allow passenger trains to pass slower freight trains.
The Federal Railroad Administration pledged $108 million to help finance these projects in 2023. In January, during the last week of President Biden's administration, the FRA finalized a grant agreement to formally "obligate" those funds, which means that they have an extra measure of protection from President Trump's more recent attempts to cancel federal grants.
