(Updated, Jan. 29)
SOUTH KINGSTOWN – The R.I. Department of Transportation will receive $1.2 million to undertake work at the Kingston train station that could lay the groundwork for extending commuter rail service there, the state’s congressional delegation said Thursday.
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The Kingston project is one of 13 rail corridors in 31 states that got federal money, which was included in the economic stimulus package signed by President Barack Obama a year ago.
“This funding will help realize the vision of true high-speed rail system in the Northeast – a vision first articulated by Sen. Claiborne Pell,” U.S. Sens. Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse and U.S. Reps. Patrick J. Kennedy and James R. Langevin, all D-R.I., said in a joint statement.
“At the same time, it anticipates the need to provide more efficient transportation options to the people of Rhode Island,” they added.
The money will pay for engineering and design work necessary to build a two-mile siding that would run parallel with the existing rails at the station, DOT spokesman Dana Alexander Nolfe told Providence Business News Thursday.
If built, the siding and accompanying platform would allow slower trains to pull off the main line to clear the way for faster trains, such as Amtrak’s high-speed Acela service, Nolfe said. The Acela does not stop at Kingston currently.
The siding could also position the station to receive commuter trains, though that proposal is only at an early stage, Nolfe said. The Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) already serves Providence and is scheduled to add stops this year and in 2011 at new stations now under construction at T.F. Green Airport and Wickford Junction in North Kingstown.
Separately, lawmakers in Massachusetts and Connecticut said a long-stalled project to revive commuter rail service between New Haven, Hartford, and Springfield would receive $40 million to build additional tracks so commuter trains will not interfere with Amtrak trains.
However, Massachusetts officials were unsuccessful in their bid to secure $1.9 billion for the South Coast Rail project, which would extend commuter rail service from Boston to New Bedford and Fall River.
But officials there said they plan to continue moving the South Coast project forward even without the federal money. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is slated to release an environmental impact study on the proposal in the summer.
Additional information is available at dot.state.ri.us.
