Two-Car Vermont Train on Track to Ease Commute

Vermont on Monday inaugurated the smallest commuter rail line in America--a 13-mile stretch of track offering two round trips a day aboard a little train called the Champlain Flyer.

“This is the beginning, I hope, of a real renaissance in rail,” said Gov. Howard Dean, who has championed the project for nine years.

Opponents call it a waste of $18 million in state and federal money.

The train was originally conceived as a way to get people who work in Burlington, Vermont’s largest city, with about 40,000 people, out of their cars and off a busy highway during a construction project. But now, Vermont transportation officials say they are solving future problems.

“As I go around the country, I see very heavily populated urban areas scrambling to get rail service,” Transportation Secretary Brian Searles said. “Their highways are already clogged. They already have air pollution.”

He added: “We have an opportunity in Vermont to provide balance in the transportation system before there’s a crisis.”

The Flyer makes the Burlington metropolitan area--with around 150,000 people--one of 22 around the nation with a commuter rail system, said Frances Hooper of the American Public Transportation Association in Washington.

The train runs Monday through Friday between Burlington and the town of Charlotte to the south. Each train has about 150 seats in two cars. For now, the train makes only one stop, at Shelburne, but South Burlington will soon be added.

In April, service will expand to 10 trains a day in each direction, with some weekend service.

The inaugural run attracted about 250 passengers. A family handed out muffins as the train rolled past frost-covered fields of corn stubble and the untouched shoreline of Lake Champlain.

“I would like Vermont to stay the way it was, but it’s not going to,” said passenger Wayne Duerinck, 60, a retiree from Burlington. “Everything changes. Ten years down the road, it would be hard to establish the railroad.”

People who live along the track fought to keep whistles from being blown at road crossings, forcing the state to put up costly gates.

Critics said no one would ride it and that the money would have been better spent elsewhere. As late as last year, opponents in the Vermont House tried to delete money for the project.

But on Monday, even longtime opponent James McNamara, who lost a bid for reelection to the House this year, showed up to ride the Flyer.

“I still don’t think it will work. I don’t think there’s the ridership in Charlotte and Burlington,” McNamara said. On the other hand, he added: “I was invited, and I didn’t want to feel like a poor loser.”