Big picture though: in an ideal world, shorn of petty turf battles/jurisdictional spats and everything else, would a quad-state compact (NY, CT, RI, MA) between Amtrak, MBTA, and the Metro North operator, yield efficiencies? Or is Metro North so vastly dissimilar in terms of infrastructure/logistics (and institutional culture?) from the MBTA's Providence CR line as to make that ludicrous?
Well, at one point it *was* all Penn Central running every intercity and commuter train on the Corridor from Boston to Washington, D.C. But the mega-bankruptcy?...yeah, didn't work out so well.
There is most definitely a hard line at the CT state line where further intermixing becomes impractical. Shore Line East gloms off Metro North's fare system, while RIDOT is all-Charlie for RIPTA buses and will be going AFC 2.0 lockstep with us. There's a similar divide with the Hartford Line vs. PVTA buses in Springfield. Until somebody comes up with an EZ-PASS equivalent for transit that can seamlessly unite the MTA back offices in New York and the MBTA back offices in Boston, this is going to be a difficult divide to heal. That's like AFC 3.0 territory...with the added difficulty that the MTA is many times
worse than the T at getting anything half-coherent strung together between its modes.
Lesser but still significant problem is the equipment. Everything MNRR/ConnDOT orders is contingent on being able to fit into Grand Central. The T's bi-level coaches won't fit at all. For EMU's, the need to be able to change from 12.5 kV to 25 kV current at New Haven to operate on Shore Line East adds some complexity, while the need to run on 750V DC third rail to get into Grand Central or Penn Station adds
lots of complexity. The M8's are hugely expensive, hugely overweight, and hugely intensive to maintain. No system that did not have those specific conditions of an AC-to-DC change and an AC voltage change would ever opt to buy that car. The T arguably would not be able to afford to pursue RER electrification if it were bound to buying that car with stuff it didn't need just on the chance that fleet overlaps would send some of theirs to New Haven.
As is, if the T wanted to buy New Jersey Transit's new MLV EMU they'd be able to get them
cheaper and
lighter weight than NJT by omitting the 12.5 kV voltage taps and omitting the 25 Hz frequency transformer core needed for running on the NY-D.C. portion of NEC. You could even run them to New London or Old Saybrook if you wanted to...just don't cross into New Haven where the 12.5 kV changeover is. Seeing as how there's a crapload of Amtrak schedules going that way already...not a big loss if "no New Haven = $$$$ to spend on more RER in Greater Boston where it matters".
And yes, there are some institutional problems...though nothing out of the ordinary. The MTA has flirted with merging LIRR and MNRR into one management entity for streamlining, but they're so different in ops and cultures it proved impractical (as well as the geography served being too divergent for commonality). Amtrak is the line maintainer from South Station to the junction with the Springfield Line in New Haven, and line owner from RI state line to the Springfield Line merge. Same landlord as today. Charter-wise, MNRR crews rule the roost from New Haven State Street station west. Shore Line East trains run to Bridgeport, but the Amtrak crews who are contracted to run SLE have to switch to MNRR crews in New Haven. The arrangement
works well, so isn't as cumbersome as it seems on-paper. But when an agency's charter spells out things like that, it's extremely difficult to change it without the legislatures from 2 states getting involved. When the Penn Central bankruptcy court ruled that all operated commuter services had to go public or cease, it took less than 1 year (1973) for the T to re-charter itself into a bigger district with full control of southside commuter rail. It took 10 years (1983) for "Penn Central Metropolitan" to re-charter itself into Metro North...with extremely reluctant interim operator Conrail stuck running it in limbo while the politicians deadlocked.
The way it's always been envisioned, ConnDOT badly wants SLE extended to Mystic and Westerly. Westerly Station is exactly 3 blocks over the state line from Pawcatuck village by foot, and 400 ft. over the state line by rail. Pawcatuck is the most densely-settled part of Stonington, CT...and Westerly
is the de facto Stonington stop. There is also a former freight yard and current Amtrak maintenance yard adjacent to the station that would make an ideal SLE layover yard, since they have none in New London and the options by state pier over there are ham-fisted. So it's very much an in-district constituency for them, and has all the operational benefits. They will likely pursue a Westerly extension for SLE with or without a reciprocal RIDOT extension from Kingston.
RIDOT's whole overriding philosophy on the various moving parts of its intrastate dreams is that if you draw a backwards "C" shape by rail from Woonsocket to Pawtucket, Providence, Kingston, and Westerly...four-fifths of the state's population is within 10 minutes of a potential rail station. So while the working group several posts up is making icky-poo faces at Westerly for being an outlier, RIDOT sees it as a core duty to serve the whole state. Both opinions have merit, but the working group needs to stop listening to the sound of its own voice and realize: RIDOT's ultimate opinion is the one that's going to matter. I think you could certainly accommodate Providence-Westerly on a sparser headway and use service layering to densify the I-295 belt. It's pretty much how the T is netting :15 Urban Rail headways on some lines through the interlining of two :30 schedules. No reason why some combo of that can't treat Westerly. Plus the layover yard can be shared by both states regardless of whether they're using unlike fleets; it saves money to have 2 tenants.
The local-to-local transfers at Westerly are no doubt an asset. But because of the different ticketing systems and difficulties therein, it's probably a *little* overrated as a perk. ConnDOT probably cares about the Westerly transfer a bit less than RIDOT does, because as-above Westerly is the Stonington stop by any other name and they meet all their service goals just tapping their own citizens' walkup at the station. There have been various informal proposals to either take SLE north to Kingston or the RI Purple Line south to New London; both of those (moreso SLE-Kingston) start getting rather absurd on distance and constituencies multiple times removed from the train's core service area. So it's a little murky. At the end of the day it's very cut-and-dried to see SLE enthusiastically setting up shop there, and probably an eventuality that RIDOT someday meanders over there. Someday just may be down in the queue over getting more of their intermediate stops built out.
