W. Mass. showing clout on East-West rail

WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS, with the help of US Rep. Richard Neal, is starting to flex some muscle on the region’s holy grail of transportation — East-West rail.

At a meeting in Springfield on Tuesday, officials from western Massachusetts secured Gov. Charlie Baker’s support for a long-sought rail connection running from Pittsfield to Springfield to Worcester, where it would hook up with the MBTA’s existing commuter rail network.

They also won support for an independent authority to oversee development of the rail line and raised the possibility of using a portion of the MBTA’s proceeds from the state sales tax to fund the new authority.

The sales tax proposal is the latest sign that western Massachusetts is tired of its second-tier status and wants a bigger seat at the table when it comes to transportation.

Currently, the MBTA receives 20 percent of the state sales tax. Rep. Smitty Pignatelli of Lenox said more than $40 million in sales tax revenue is passed along to the MBTA from Berkshire County each year. Including the other counties in Western Massachusetts, Pignatelli said, between $150 million and $200 million in sales taxes flows to the T from the western part of the state.

None of that money comes back to western Massachusetts in the form of services because the T doesn’t operate west of Worcester. “We get no benefit from it whatsoever,” Pignatelli said.

Pignatelli said he asked Baker on Tuesday at his private meeting with local officials whether he would support taking the sales tax revenue currently flowing from western Massachusetts to the T and redirecting it to the new authority that would be put in charge of building East-West rail.

“He was intrigued by that,” Pignatelli said. “He seemed open to learning more about it.”

The Baker administration has long been wary of the high cost of East-West rail and the relatively low forecasted ridership, but the possibility of federal funding appears to have eased those concerns,

Pignatelli said the plan now is to write a piece of legislation establishing the new authority and providing funding for it. He said the legislation would probably be tacked on to a transportation bond bill that the Legislature hopes to pass before the end of this legislative session at the end of July.

If the legislation is approved, the state would then seek to tap federal funding available through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that passed last November. Baker on Tuesday said the federal government and Amtrak are very interested in building out the Northeast Corridor.

“I think we have a real opportunity,” Baker said.

Much of the plan for the governance of East-West rail comes from a white paper issued by the Baker administration last November that called for Amtrak to provide the rail service because of its unique ability to access rail lines owned by private companies and for the creation of an independent authority separate from the MBTA to oversee the project.

The independent authority, dubbed the Western Massachusetts Intercity Rail Authority in the white paper, would be another sign of the growing clout of the western part of the state.

“The ability to match local governance of the service with local transportation needs would undoubtedly lead to a more effective service,” the white paper said. “It is assumed that the authority would be governed by a board of directors appointed by the governor of Massachusetts, consistent with other state authorities such as the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority and Massport, and made up of qualified Western Massachusetts residents with a strong interest in providing intercity rail service to Western Massachusetts.”