Metro-North to upgrade New Haven Line's power supply; Gov. Malloy to meet with MTA's Prendergast, Metro-North's Giulietti

The Connecticut Department of Transportation (ConnDOT) yesterday began a $10 million project to upgrade the power supply for MTA Metro-North Railroad's New Haven Line, Gov. Dannel Malloy announced.

The project is designed to prevent the type of "catastrophic power failure" that occurred in fall 2013 in Mount Vernon, N.Y., which caused a major disruption of New Haven Line service, the governor said in a press release issued by ConnDOT.

Malloy also announced his plan to meet Feb. 13 with Metro-North's incoming President Joe Giulietti and Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Thomas Prendergast to discuss his concerns about the New Haven Line's operation.

"The New Haven Line is the busiest single rail line in the country and, each day, takes more than 60,000 travelers off of our already congested highways," said Malloy. "In anticipation of adding even more service on this state owned rail corridor, we want to ensure riders have as safe and reliable a commute as possible and prevent the major system interruptions that we experienced in September."

Metro-North will manage the project in conjunction with Connecticut Light & Power (CL&P), which has been contracted to install new transformers to replace four aging transformers at Cos Cob, in Greenwich, to ensure reliability and safe operation of the electric supply that powers New Haven Line trains, ConnDOT officials said.

This effort will implement redundant power for the portion of the line and increase the power supply by almost doubling the capacity of the two west transformers from 16 megawatts to 30 megawatts, matching the capacity of the two east transformers that have already been replaced.

Metro-North and CL&P have developed an accelerated schedule for replacement of the two transformers. Replacement of the first transformer was scheduled to begin yesterday and is expected to be completed in 16 days. The second transformer is expected to be installed by mid-March.