Planned Springfield Station Expansion Anticipates More Amtrak Service in Western Mass.

MassDOT and Amtrak are working on plans for new tracks and platforms at Springfield Union Station in anticipation of a significant increase in passenger rail service between Boston and western Massachusetts.

The project would add new station tracks and upgrade several passenger boarding platforms in order to accommodate more trains stopping in Springfield on their way to New Haven, Greenfield, Albany, and Boston.

The Springfield station is an interchange point between the north-south railroad along the Connecticut River and the east-west railway that connects to Boston. MassDOT’s project would upgrade signal systems and add new switches and crossovers to accommodate more train traffic through the area.

“One of the goals of the Springfield Area Track Reconfiguration Project is to improve train operating fluidity through Springfield and enhance route connections to and from each direction,” a MassDOT official told StreetsblogMASS.

The project would also rehabilitate an old rail yard east of the station, near Armory Street, to create a four-track layover facility for passenger trains.

MassDOT officials told StreetsblogMASS that currently, Amtrak stores four trains at Springfield Union Station each night. The new yard would offer modern maintenance and repair facilities, and could potentially be expanded to store one additional train in Springfield overnight.

The Springfield hub

Springfield Union Station already sees more than a dozen passenger train departures on a typical day. It’s the northern endpoint for the CTRail Hartford Line to New Haven, and for two daily trains on the Amtrak Northeast Regional to Washington D.C.

It’s also a stop on the Amtrak Valley Flyer route between New Haven and Greenfield, and it serves one daily stop in each direction for the Amtrak Lake Shore Limited, which runs between Boston and Chicago, and the Amtrak Vermonter, which connects northern Vermont and New York City.

Under MassDOT’s “Compass Rail” plans, Springfield would become a much busier transfer point for new Amtrak routes to Albany and New Haven.

First, sometime in the early 2030s, MassDOT and Amtrak plan to launch a new “Inland Route” that will connect Boston, Worcester, Springfield, New Haven, and Hartford with two daily round-trips.

In the longer term, Amtrak and MassDOT are also planning a new Boston-to-Albany route, which would also run through Worcester and Springfield.

MassDOT is currently working on a “service development plan” for that route that will take several years to complete, but a 2023 grant award from the Federal Railroad Administration described “up to eight daily round-trip passenger trains” on the route.

MassDOT is currently working with Amtrak, freight railroad CSX, and other railroads that operate in the project area to receive Federal Railroad Administration approval for their conceptual plans.

MassDOT received a $36.8 million Federal Railroad Administration grant in 2024 to complete its final designs for the project, but there is not yet any additional funding in MassDOT’s budget for actual construction.