I don't think anyone truly knows because it's a long-term growth corridor. What it really hinges on is all the office parks getting their private shuttle buses out to the stations. While it does hit the central business districts of the 3 major cities en route it is more of a decentralized reverse-commute type line. Metro North is doing a robust business with that...it's basically their future growth strategy since all the commuters that are ever going to hit GCC are pretty much already riding there. So there is good in-state precedent. I-91 does have its glut of office parks, and the insurance HQ's in the state are really salivating over this. But success is going to mean pounding away at those last-mile public-private partnerships as they ramp up.
Chances of success I think are outstanding. Any way you slice it it's faster than godawful and unexpandable I-91, but even moreso if it's 90 MPH+ (CDOT's Shore Line East diesel fleet, which is going to be assigned here after the M8 EMU's take over SLE, is rated that fast). And I think it is truly going to be a revelation for easy flying out of Bradley. But I hope nobody gets indignant when the ridership is light on the startup service. This is long-term, constant-effort, constant connectivity push type stuff. But at least everyone's got eyes on prize for it.
BTW...for high costs, keep in mind that the goals are twofold: commuter rail, and developing an NEC primary branch that in 30 years will be brought up to Keystone Line spec infrastructurally. While it is Class 4, cab signaled track now the state of good repair on it is overall pretty abysmal. The grade crossing protection is old and speed-restricted, there are structurally deficient bridges also speed-restricted, there are old switches also speed-restricted, places on it are flood-prone because the culverts suck, they not only have to double-track but throw in several freight turnouts because it has the highest-frequency freight schedule in the state used by 3 different carriers, they have to add several interlockings because it's not set up for very frequent headways, and going from Class 4 to Class 6 speed is not altogether trivial when it involves re-graded curves and replacing a whole slew of slower interlockings. And to do >80 MPH through grade crossings they have to replace the crossing protection with maximally expensive timed gates and/or quad gates like on the NEC Shoreline (Wallingford and Meriden clusters will still be speed restricted...but they can be
faster-speed restricted and the restrictions can be outright lifted on many others).
Think of how many billions in backlog the NEC and Empire Corridors have just on bridges and other bedrock infrastructure. And then consider that part of that $800M is startup costs for commuter rail (ops, ticketing, staff), and constructing a small full-service maintenance facility at Springfield layover...stuff we wouldn't have to consider with any new MBCR extension. Then 4 new stations, 2 relocated stations that are full-rebuild, every remaining station (in generally lousy condition) getting first-time ADA upgrades, new fiber network infrastructure to run the ticket machines and stop announcements, and lots of building and parking lot repairs/expansion to the generally cruddy condition of the current stops. And it's always the stations and ops where cost bloat comes from and has to be liberally padded.
I wouldn't call $800M efficient by any means, but it's pretty much par work as South Coast Rail for $1.2B less while still having startup and intercity-speed premium items that project lacks. And they do NOT have abutting NIMBY problems with hostage-taking over sound fences and whatnot...there's little if any of that type of abatement. The good news is that once you get all this out of the way and get such old infrastructure up to a Class 6 speed threshold, electrification and Class 7 speed is a smaller step up. The NEC had its wires and HSR upgrades to Boston installed at-cost 12 years ago...but only after a similar 15-year slog getting the baseline infrastructure up to top diesel speed. There won't be any new stations to construct or modify when that time comes here. Save for downtown-impacts mitigation in downtown Wallingford and Meriden the grade crossings are mostly abutter-free or industrial abutter and can be done at-cost for the infrastructure. It'll be expensive--three-quarters $B--but it won't be 25% NIMBY contingency expensive. All of it (literally) is concrete infrastructure. And par for the cost of doing similar to the Keystone and Empire Corridors.
Here's an EIS-related project doc showing some of the baseline infrastructure upgrades they're doing:
http://www.nhhsrail.com/pdfs/ea/nhhs_fonsi.pdf. p.2 has the laundry list of bridge and grade crossing rebuilds...south-of-Windsor only. They haven't even tackled the huge speed-restricted Conn. River Bridge in Windsor Locks, the structurally deficient (but not yet critical) Hartford station viaduct, and the impacts of getting those long spans re-rated to the 286,000 lb. freight car spec badly needed by all those carriers. One of the other project docs which I can't locate has the complete list of bridges and culverts on the whole line. In total 50 of them are getting some sort of repair, and about 1/4 of them major repair. That's not chopped liver. This line was/is falling the hell apart end-to-end.
