Amid Metro-North’s many accidents, some fatal, and service interruptions in recent months, elected officials in Connecticut are indignantly asking: Is this any way to run a railroad? They act as if Metro-North is some alien entity, maliciously imposed on Connecticut by outsiders.
In fact Connecticut imposed Metro-North on itself 45 years ago when the New Haven Railroad and its brief successor, the Penn Central, failed and New York state took over commuter service through its Metropolitan Transit Authority. Connecticut state government long has contracted with the MTA to operate the commuter rail lines into New York City from the southwest part of the state. Connecticut covers two-thirds of the rail system’s losses in Connecticut and one third of its losses in New York, shares the expense of buying railroad cars, and owns the tracks and stations in Connecticut and bears the expense of their maintenance.
But Connecticut has never gotten representation on the MTA board, nor, apparently, has Connecticut ever really pressed for it; the board remains entirely a New York state agency and so hobbles itself with the usual excessive labor obstructions to efficient administration.
Not that Metro-North necessarily would operate any better if Connecticut state government was part of management, since the first objective of state government in Connecticut is also only the satisfaction of its own employees. And not that New York would be eager to share control of the railroad, since New York has most of the leverage here, with far more Connecticut residents wanting to get into and out of New York every day than there are New Yorkers wanting to get into and out of Connecticut.
But if it thinks it could do much better with Metro-North, Connecticut could ask New York to give it a share of the MTA’s board or negotiate an interstate compact for the railroad’s operation, like the compact New York and New Jersey have had to operate the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey since it was chartered by Congress in 1921. New Jersey state government operates that state’s commuter railroad lines into New York, either directly through New Jersey Transit or jointly through the Port Authority.
Or Connecticut state government could simply take control of the state’s own tracks and rail cars and negotiate with the MTA the terms for operating Connecticut’s own trains into New York.
That is, New Jersey state government long has accepted the responsibility Connecticut state government long has refused to take, Connecticut’s politicians long having determined that complaining endlessly about a railroad without result is a lot less trouble than having to run one.
Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.