Jim Cameron

Shortly after he came to office, I wrote something critical of newly elected Governor Malloy.  Nothing new there.  I’d certainly questioned Republican governors in years past, usually to little response.  But this time the reaction was different.

A Malloy confidante, a senior State Senator from Fairfield County, took me aside and threatened me.  Not physically, but legislatively.  “You know, we could eliminate the Commuter Rail Council if you keep this up,” he said in Machiavellian tones.  “Bring it on,” I said, half-shocked at this political threat.

Well, it took a couple of years (and more criticism), but the threat has come true.  The Governor has submitted a bill (HB 6363) that would wipe out the existing Metro-North Commuter Rail Council and its 15 members.  In its place, a new Council would be appointed and the Governor, not the members of the Council, would choose its Chairman.

Further, the new Commuter Council’s mandate would turn from investigation and advocacy on behalf of fellow commuters to a PR advisor to the CDOT.  While the current Council has the power to request information and is required to receive cooperation from any state or local agency, that power would be eliminated under Malloy’s bill.

The Commuter Council isn’t the only pro-transportation group affected by the bill.  The CT Public Transportation Commission would also be eliminated along with the last vestiges of the Transportation Strategy Board (killed off by Malloy last year), the TIA’s, or “Transportation Investment Areas”.

This obvious power-grab by the Governor has so far gone unchallenged in the legislature, buried in a 66-page Christmas tree of a bill.  If it becomes law, my 15+ years as a member of the Commuter Council (the last four as its Chairman) will be history.

But why is the Metro-North Commuter Council singled out for such harsh treatment?

It’s not that the Commuter Council has been wasting state money.  We operate on a budget of zero dollars, even dipping into our own pockets to pay for design of a logo and pay for postage.  And I don’t think it can be argued that we haven’t been doing our jobs … meeting monthly with Metro-North and the CDOT to address commuter complaints and push for ever better service.

No, I think the real problem is that we’ve done our job too well, calling out CDOT, the legislature and yes, even the Governor, when they did things that we felt screwed commuters.  That’s our mandate.

I guess Governor Malloy didn’t like it when we pointed out that as a gubernatorial candidate he promised to never raid the Special Transportation Fund to balance the state’s budget, but then did just that when he took office.  And I guess he wasn’t happy when I noted that his budget took new fare increases from Metro-North riders but didn’t spend the money on trains, in effect making the fare hike a “commuter tax”.

And I’d imagine the Commissioner of the CDOT… the fifth Commissioner in my 15+ years on the Council… would be happy to see the current Council gone, critical as we have been about their Stamford Garage project which we see as selling out the interests of commutersto private developers.

It’s sad that the Governor feels the way to answer legitimate criticism is to eviscerate those who question him.  But I can promise you that his proposed elimination of the Metro-North Commuter Council won’t silence me.

Bring it on, Governor.

Editor’s Note: JIM CAMERON has been a commuter out of Darien for 21 years.  He is Chairman of the CT Metro-North / Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council, and a member of the Coastal Corridor TIA and the Darien RTM.  You can reach him at Cameron06820@gmail.com or www.trainweb.org/ct

If you had a contract with someone and paid them in advance to do a job, only to find they never provided that service, you should get your money back, right?  Otherwise, by keeping the money and not delivering on the bargain, that person would be committing fraud.

Well, that’s exactly what Metro-North does to weekly and monthly ticket holders when it sells those tickets, but cancels train service.  The railroad refuses to give those riders a refund.  That’s wrong.

For years the CT Rail Commuter Council has asked Metro-North (and its boss, CDOT) to rethink that policy, but they have refused.  We even approached Attorney General Jepsen, making a consumerist’s argument, but he wasn’t interested in helping.

Clearly, it’s not Metro-North’s fault when Tropical Storm Sandy or Winter Storm Nemo leave the tracks buried.  In some cases they can attempt substitute bus service, in which case refunds shouldn’t be required.

When the Commuter Council last year pushed for a “Passenger Bill of Rights”, we asked for refunds when service was out, but the railroad said “impossible”,  though they did allow refunds on one-way tickets, which is not the problem at all.

One-way tickets are good for 60 days.  If the train’s not running, you can use them next week.  But weekly tickets are only good for seven specific days, Saturday through Friday.  If the train doesn’t run, you’re out of luck.

Look at the Waterbury line during storm Nemo.  Train service was halted Friday night and wasn’t resumed until the following Wednesday… four days.  A commuter who’d bought a weekly ticket from Waterbury to Grand Central Terminal paid $125, but lost 4/7ths of the ticket’s value and was denied a refund.

This year we’re pleading our case for fairness to the state legislature with the help of State  Representative Gail Lavielle of Wilton.  At our behest, she introduced HB 5127, which would require Metro-North and CDOT to offer credit for unusable tickets when service is cancelled for more than 48 hours.  That credit could be made by extending the validity of a ticket, offering replacement tickets or maybe even a refund.

Fifteen commuters submitted testimony in support of the bill, making a very simple argument:  if the railroad can’t provide train service (or buses), ticket holders should be made whole.

When the airlines cancelled thousands of flights due to the blizzard, they honored passengers’ tickets on later flights.  When Metro-North cancelled trains, they just kept the money.

In his testimony on the bill, the Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Transportation said the refund plan wasn’t feasible.  And weekly / monthly commuters already get a discount, so why are they complaining?

And Metro-North, in one of its more arrogant moves of late, thumbed its nose at the Connecticut Legislature saying that as a New York State agency, it was immune from Connecticut law.  That, in New York, is what they call chutzpah.

It’s not too late for commuters to support this bill by calling their elected officials.  Because, while Metro-North deserves credit for much improved, usually on-time service, it should not be allowed to pick our pockets by selling us tickets when it cannot run trains, for whatever reason, but then keeps our money.  That’s just unfair.

Editor’s Note: JIM CAMERON has been a commuter out of Darien for 21 years.  He is Chairman of the CT Metro-North / Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council, and a member of the Coastal Corridor TIA and the Darien RTM.  You can reach him at Cameron06820@gmail.com or www.trainweb.org/ct

Any regular reader of this column knows that I hate to fly.  I’ll enjoy an overnight Amtrak sleeper ride to Chicago over a 3-hour flight, anyday (or night).

But when I do have to fly, I really like seeing grey hair in the cockpit.  The older and more experienced the pilots, the better (despite this crazy FAA rule that pilots must retire at age 65, regardless of their health).

The other place I like to see experienced aviators is in the cabin, i.e. the flight attendants.  No longer are “stewardesses” seen as sex objects to entertain business men (remember “I’m Cathy… Fly Me!”?) or mocked in songs as nothing more than “waitresses in the sky”.

In my mind, flight attendants are under-paid, over-worked and unappreciated safety experts.

A few years ago I was in an emergency landing of a Boeing 767.  The flight crew performed perfectly and nobody was hurt.  Since then I listen to every safety briefing and study all my options for egress.

But increasingly, flight attendants (and passengers) are being called upon to protect a flight from other passengers… like the drunk maniac on a recent Icelandair flight who had to be subdued, or the JetBlue pilot who went psychotic and had to be wrestled to the floor.  “Coffee, tea or duct tape, sir?”

Flight attendants earn an average of $35,000 – $40,000 per year.  New hires start at $14,000 and, as a sign of our desperate times, there’s no shortage of applicants.  When American Airlines announced last November they’d be hiring 1,500 new flight attendants they got 20,000 app’s. (Question:  do those jobs automatically come with Food Stamps, or do they have to apply separately?)

Unlike most jobs, flight attendants are paid not when they show up to work, nor when they board a plane, but only when that plane departs from the gate.  The time clock ticks 65 – 90 hours a month, but there is no pay for the average 50 hours a month spent prepping flights, doing paperwork and waiting at airports.

Sure, there’s the glamour of free travel and over-nighting at airport hotels.  But as anyone who travels for work will tell you, that glamour wears thin when you’re constantly on the road.  And that’s when you’re on an expense account.  Flight attendants do this for a living and make about $10 an hour.

Is it any wonder that, being human, flight attendants occasionally snap?  Like the JetBlue male “stew”, Steven Slater, who cursed out his cranky passengers, popped the emergency exit and slid to the ground at JFK.

As I’ve written before, flying is no fun.  It is crowded, expensive, unglamorous and tedious.  And if it feels that way for the occasional passenger like me, God bless the poor flight attendants who have to do it for a living.