MassDOT selects consultant for Palmer Station Planning and Design!
Our nine years of advocacy have finally hit pay dirt!
At the January 17, 2024 MassDOT Board of Directors meeting, Rail and Transit Division (RTD) Administrator Meredith Slesinger announced that “RTD selected a consultant in December of 2023 for Planning and Conceptual Design” of a Palmer intercity passenger rail station.
“This contract will include public outreach, site selection, identification of station amenities and access, conceptual design, and environmental scoping.” Administrator Slesinger estimated that this work would take a year-and-a-half to complete.
Importance of Palmer
Slesinger characterized the Palmer planning and design as “an important part of the Compass Rail program that the Governor’s Budget originally identified as a priority last year, and that was identified in prior studies, including the East-West Rail Study, that Palmer needs a station.”
The contract will be funded from the $4 million for Palmer planning added last June to the MassDOT Capital Investment Plan (CIP). As a member organization of the Western Massachusetts Rail Coalition, the Citizens for a Palmer Stop successfully lobbied the Governor and MassDOT to put this money in the CIP after it was (unfortunately) axed from the FY2024 state budget by the legislature.
Springfield to Worcester track work
In yesterday’s MassDOT Board meeting Slesinger also said that RTD is “continuing to advance the work with Amtrak and CSX on the Inland Route award that we received from FRA (Federal Railroad Administration)–that’s the $108 million for infrastructure improvements between Springfield and Worcester–and we continue to work on the infrastructure modeling for that ahead of schedule.”
Boston & Albany Corridor
Slesinger expanded on Transportation Secretary Monica Tibbits-Nutt’s announcement of the $500,000 FRA award to MassDOT for the Boston & Albany Corridor. “This acceptance of the Corridor ID Program is important because this is the FRA program that establishes a pipeline of projects off the Northeast Corridor to bring passenger rail corridors from concept to implementation. These projects will then be eligible for the Federal-State Partnership National Network Program in the IIJA (Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act). That program was funded at $12 billion so that would be the primary program that we would look to in the future to fund building out the west-east, north-south rail components.”
What happens next
All of this is great news, especially the upcoming Palmer station planning and conceptual design work.
All of us, advocates and town officials and business people and citizens, will need to engage with MassDOT’s consultants to ensure that site selection and station planning achieve our goals of maximizing transit-oriented development in Depot Village.
Our objectives include:
- Revitalizing our downtown business district;
- Incentivizing residential housing development (#1 priority of the Healey Administration);
- Enabling a future train connection to the Central Corridor Line, which runs northwest to Amherst/UMass, and southeast to Storrs/UConn.
Please see our A2B Campaign for more about potential train service on the Central Corridor.
