Magic

Last Tuesday it rained champagne in Norwich. The Governor of the State of CT, The Honorable M. Jodi Rell, was in our fair city, while we were "Norwich in Bloom" no less, to 'deliver a shot in the arm to the regional transportation center' by announcing she expects (this week) the state bonding commission to approve a 7.2 million dollar grant that will start the full funding mechanism.

The Regional Intermodal Transportation Center has been the Norwich White Whale since 1994 or so, as I recall (and my memory is pretty good on this stuff). The idea has always seemed to me to be a little too 'a combination floor polish and desert topping, with a hint of aloe' for me, but that's not been the part that's kept a project originally estimated at 12 million and now costing out at 22 million dollars from being built. As in all real estate transactions, it's been location, location, location.

If you've been to, through or near Norwich via Route 12 you've seen the Southeastern Area Transportation, SEAT, buses gather in what we seem to call the Viaduct parking lot behind the, and to the left (facing) of, the Otis Library near what looks like it might have been an old railroad station that now seems to be part of a community outreach (the reference to railroad station is a literary device known as foreshadowing. Wait for it--after all, your tax dollars are at work here).

Norwich has been a hub, of sorts, for SEAT buses for New London, Jewett City, Griswold and Cucamunga (sorry, I always loved the way Mel Blanc said it in the cartoons) and the Viaduct parking lot has basically been a center of travelers in as close to downtown as Norwich has (okay there are no more shops in that area of town than anywhere else, but that's because we've dedicated our downtown to architectural memorials of brave ideas that failed but are immortalized forever in brick and mortar and glass buildings. Empty buildings for empty promises. Hey! Why couldn't that be our downtown marketing slogan?!? Think on it and have your machine call my machine and we'll do lunch, okay?)

For years, every time it looked like money to start the Regional Intermodal Transportation Center was about to be disbursed, another round of paralysis by analysis would happen as we all forgot whatever answer we had come up with for the location question and began anew. Some years ago, Hollyhock Island (a name far lovelier than the purposes currently being pursued there) was deemed ideal (though I know not by whom) when only a project like a Regional Intermodal Transportation Center would do.

If you've visited this space previously you may be aware of my skewed sense of humor but Governor M. Jodi delivered her lines without a touch of irony and with a smile you could see through the champagne glasses. "When you use the term ‘intermodal’ you are really talking about choices. That’s what we are giving people. This is good news, not only for Connecticut but for the entire region. Southeastern Connecticut needs this. The more convenient we can make public transportation, the more attractive it will be, whether you’re going to work, a medical appointment or shopping downtown." Tell it, Sister M. Jodi!

The Regional Intermodal Transportation Center is envisioned to combine a bus transfer station and parking garage with ferry connections and rail passenger service (between modes of transportation, hence the name)-all in one convenient to nothing in Norwich location, but that's okay because Norwich isn't the destination, it's a pass-through. The ferry and railroad passengers are coming for the two casinos that are, respectively less than a quarter of an hour from Norwich on either side of the Thames. Norwich will, literally and figuratively, be over their heads as the city hugs the banks of the confluence of rivers that form the harbor where Hollyhock Island sits.

Unclear to me, and again I have a decent memory, is whether the Regional Intermodal Transportation Center will be incorporating in any way the pier/dock (parking space for a watercraft) that the city paid to construct about a decade ago when the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe, owners of Foxwoods, were hoping to operate high speed ferries from a variety of locations but mostly Long Island, to bring guests to their casino in the woods.

The tribe actually had a Pequot ShipYards to build and operate the ferries until they closed it after three years because the ferry runs didn't really work out as planned. The only routes permitted by local authorities were from Jersey City, New Jersey and Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts (and those terminated in New London at the mouth of the Thames where concerns about low wake as you travel at high speeds up the river, to Norwich, are obviated). Folks in The Hamptons have people to drive them, you know, and ferries that can rush you to the casino can, and (it was feared) would, return with the wrong sort mixed in with the homies.

So the Regional Intermodal Transportation Center, praised by Norwich Mayor Benjamin Lathrop as "(A)nother segment putting Norwich back on the map" doesn't seem to have ferry many waterfront travelers (I told you I had a puckish sense of humor). In comparison to the number of rail travelers arriving, though, the water bugs may seem like a swarm of locusts.

Remember how I mentioned that structure located near the Viaduct parking lot? A wonderful book, by our (unpaid) City Historian Dale Plummer, published in 2003 by Arcadia Publishing, in their Images of America series, simply entitled "Norwich", has it on page 40 in 1898, then called the Union Depot, with passenger cars on rail tracks behind it; page 42 has an earlier image from the 1880's of the 'Freight Yard on the bank of the Shetucket' (not the same river the Union Depot is depicted next to) and on page 46, is a photo of 'The First Train from Groton' from 1889 on the Laurel Hill side of the Thames River.

My point? Rail passengers, should they have ever been heading to Norwich, would be coming up, or down, on the opposite side of the Harbor from where the Regional Intermodal Transportation Center is being planned to accommodate them. Perhaps if the Providence and Worcester Railroad which owns all the tracks and all the rights of way on both sides of the river ever revives passenger rail (which they've indicated no interest to so do), we can force these folks to detrain at gunpoint near Seder's scrapyard, march them over the Laurel Hill Bridge, up through downtown, over the Sweeney Bridge and down the stairs to the Regional Intermodal Transportation Center, load them onto buses and get them the hell out of Dodge. And they'd better not complain--there's no crying in Regional Intermodal Transportation Centers! By the way, I loved you in 'The Wizard of Oz.'

For at least 22 million dollars we will construct a Maginot Line, a Dien Bien Phu, of mass transit. Let's hurry up and finish that "Way Back Machine", set it for 1949 and enjoy our success in solving a previous century's challenge. 'Now there's a fire down below, but it's comin' up here. So leave everything you know And carry only what you fear.'
-bill kenny