Business View Magazine - April 2016 35
trains to get where they want to go - because Enfield,
Connecticut doesn’t have a train station. Those trains
just rush on by.
And so it is that getting a train station funded, built,
and running has been a key focus of Enfield’s town’s
leaders and administrators for many years, because,
at present, Enfield commuters who need to travel
either north to Springfield or south to Hartford and
beyond, must rely either on their own vehicles or on
one of the express buses that traverse U.S. 91, the
interstate highway that runs down the middle of the
Nutmeg State.
But according to Peter Bryanton, Enfield’s Acting Assis-
tant Town Manager for Development Services, some
significant progress has already been made in that im-
portant pursuit. “We’ve been engaged in the planning
of this rail line for ten or twelve years,” he reports, “and
we’re just now getting to the point where it’s starting
to look like a reality.” Bryanton explains that the State
of Connecticut has proposed building a commuter rail
line, called “The Hartford Line,” in conjunction with the
existing Amtrak service. “There’s a single track now,”
adds Lee Erdmann, Enfield’s Acting Town Manager.
“And part of the plan is to put second track down.”
AT A GLANCE
WHO:
Enfield, Connecticut
WHAT:
A town of 45,000
WHERE:
Northern Connecticut on the east bank of
the Connecticut River
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