Trolleys in Middletown?

The return of Trolley's in Middletown are being discussed.  Ed McKeon presents the case and has some great visuals from C. Johnson.  See the big bold ideas here and here.

Middletown Area Transit District:

• Here is their website

• Try this link for schedules, or call: 860-346-0212

• remember Bikes Ride on Busses in Middletown (note the rack on the front of the bus in the photo above).  Click here to read the Rock N' Ride Safety info for safely getting your bike on a MAT bus.

• 340 Main St., Middletown, CT 06457

• Here is a PDF of the MAT transit routes from The City of Middletown's Transportation Planning Paper.

• The Connecticut State DOT says "we need to get people out of their cars and onto public transportation."

CT Transit and Trips123

• CT Transit has a website that's a must for riding out of Middletown by mass transit

• Trips123 can also suggest routes based on starting/ending points

• Bikes can get on board CT Transit busses.  Click here for details.

You Can Get There From Here:

• Here is a great resource, a Middletown and region CT Transit map: 

Gov. Jodi Rell Announces 100 Bike Racks on Buses in the Greater Hartford Area:

The Hartford Advocate reports that bike-rack-on-bus usage is up in 2007 and now 100 busses in the greater Hartford area carry them.

Midstate Regional Transportation Report - summary by Vijay Pinch:

The Midstate Regional Transportation Report.  A principal member of the regional planning agency that authored the report is, incidentally, our own Lee Osborne, downtown resident.

It does make for great reading.  For example, of the 30,000 plus jobs located in Middletown, close to 8000 are filled by people living in Middletown (these are all based on 2000 census statistics).  (One
wonders how many of these folks walk or bike to work.)  Just over 1000 come from Cromwell, 600+ from Durham, 600+ from East Haddam, nearly 1600 from East Hampton, 1100+ from Haddam, 500+ from Middlefield, almost 1000 from Portland.  This produces the over 14,000 people from within the region who work in Middletown.  An additional 16,000+ come from "non-regional" origins -- in other
words, outside the Mid-State authority area which is defined by the towns mentioned (e.g., Guilford, West Hartford, Madison, New Haven, East Hartford, etc.).

The study authors point out that the vast majority of the people drive to work in single occupancy vehicles.  Middlefield had the highest percentage of such drivers at 98.1%.  Middletown had the
highest percentage of people using public transportation at a (paltry) 1.7%.  Haddamites had the highest number of carpoolers, at 10%.  Of course, the Haddam people are also carpooling to jobs elsewhere, like New Haven or other points along the shoreline.  But just imagine what could be achieved in terms of reducing traffic congestion simply by creating a serious bus system in and around Middletown, linking (for starters) the immediately adjacent towns of Portland, Middlefield, Durham, and Cromwell.

Also interesting are the work-travel data for people who live in Middletown.  Of the 22,000+ workers who list Middletown as their residence, less than 8000 work in Middletown.  Over 11,500 work out
of the Mid-State area (mostly Hartford and New Haven, I would guess).  That leaves about 2500 who work in the regional towns but not in Middletown.  What most Middletowners who do not work in town need, then, is public transportation links to towns that are outside the regional planning area.

Regardless of how we slice it up, the single most important lesson to be taken away from all this is that we need a much better network of public transportation serving Middletown and the surrounding area, both within and without the mid-state region and better facilities for alternative mobility like bikes and walking (so that people who live, say, on Highland, don't have to get in their cars to get anywhere safely).