Andy Sauer
My daughter will be getting a little closer to home.
She hasn’t moved. She’s still in New York. Visiting her, though, will get a little easier with the new train station opening in Windsor Locks.
I know what you’re thinking: ‘Windsor Locks already has a train station.” That’s not a train station — it’s a 30-foot-long loading dock with a couple of plexiglass bus shelters.
The new station, in comparison, will feel like a Florida theme park transportation hub. It will have a covered platform that extends the length of the train, variable signage denoting train times, a convenient drop-off area, a newly paved parking lot, a bona fide bus stop, and all the little flourishes that project the image of a functional train station. And, as it’ll be located in the old Windsor Locks Commons Plaza, Suffieldians will no longer have to budget an extra 10 minutes on the off chance the railroad crossing gates inconveniently snarl Windsor Locks traffic.
I loathe driving to New York. Connecticut highways are objectively dangerous; the traffic is insufferable; the tolls, punitive; and the navigation around city gridlock, e-bikes, e-scooters, jaywalkers, and half-closed streets for al fresco dining, maddening!
The train is a breeze. You can take an Amtrak train to Penn Station (if you book it in advance) for as little as $27. You can also take the Connecticut Transit train to New Haven and then board the Metro-North train to Grand Central Station. The train takes just as long as driving to New York, and costs — when you factor in gas, tolls, parking, and a shortened life expectancy — so much less.
In the more than 30 years I’ve lived in Connecticut, I’ve always been puzzled why the state didn’t embrace train travel beyond Fairfield and New Haven counties. I grew up just outside New York City, and it seemed as if everyone I knew had parents who commuted by train. When I worked in New York (very briefly), I took the train. My friend Mike moved from Manhattan to New Jersey because he found the commute by train easier than the one he had living three miles from his office. Train travel is just so easy, it’s part of the culture.
In the land of steady habits, maybe it takes more than safety, stress-free travel, money and a convenient, modern train station to pull people from behind the wheels of their cars.
That’s fine. That just frees up more space on the train to relax as I head to New York to see my daughter.