But after years of planning, construction will begin tomorrow on a $222.5-million facility that will bring commuter rail to the airport.

01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, July 16, 2006

BY DANIEL BARBARISI
Journal Staff Writer

WARWICK -- The state will officially break ground tomorrow on a new intermodal train station next to T.F. Green Airport, a sprawling $222.5-million, multipurpose facility that has long been touted as the link connecting Warwick and its airport to Boston through the commuter rail and to the entire Northeast corridor via Amtrak trains.

But even though the station itself will be as grand and sweeping as initial plans promised, and the commuter rail station will be a part of it, Amtrak won't be. When the station opens in late 2009, the railroad's high-speed Acela trains and Metroliners are going to rocket right by Warwick and its new station.

The plan for the station, 10 years in the making, was to combine the rail facilities with a huge parking garage and a rental-car concourse, all connected to the main airport by a skywalk snaking its way over Post Road.

As planned, it would extend existing daily Metropolitan Boston Transit Authority commuter service southward through Providence and Warwick, all the way to another new station in Wickford, and would provide access to the rest of New England through Amtrak.

It has been stalled for years by an inability to reach a deal with the rental-car companies and by the need to secure more financing. Last month, the companies came to agreement with the airport on a cost-sharing scheme, and the General Assembly approved $48.7 million in bonds, cobbling together the final piece of the financing puzzle.

But the state has been unable to work out a deal to get Amtrak to serve the station without adding another $50 to $60 million in new tracks and electrification for the national railroad. On a project which has already ballooned far past the original $168-million estimate, that money would be hard to come by. State officials are still confident that Amtrak will come someday, but that could be 10 years away.

"If we could build the infrastructure, they would live up to their commitment to come," said James Capaldi, director of the Department of Transportation. "But we don't have fifty or sixty extra million."

As it is, the builders are incorporating a lot into what for now is a very expensive commuter rail station. Planners boast that its combination of rail-and-air link and rental garage is one of the first of its kind in the nation. The station will sit on a now-vacant lot between Jefferson Boulevard and Post Road, straddling Amtrak's Northeast corridor rail line.

The meat of the facility will be a 3,200-space garage, housing cars for the 10 rental-car companies that use the airport. The companies will use 2,200 of the spaces, while the rest will be set aside for commuters using the rail station.

The garage itself will sit atop the train tracks and the accompanying MBTA train platform.

A concourse jutting off the side of the garage will contain counter space and offices for the rental-car companies, allowing them to abandon their small kiosks in the Green terminal and move their fleets off the crowded airport property.

A 1,250-foot-long elevated skywalk will wind out of the concourse, taking customers directly from the garage to the main terminal. In the original plans, the skywalk would have used a "people mover" -- essentially a monorail -- to shuttle passengers from one side to the other. But now it has been replaced by a moving sidewalk. The skywalk will be lined with small retail kiosks, and will have a junction point at Post Road where, in the future, hotels and other facilities can build attachments tying them directly in to the terminal.

All told, the facility will take up 1.5 million square feet and rise six stories, according to Brian Shattle, chief financial officer for the Rhode Island Airport Corporation.

The station was first seriously proposed in the mid-1990s, and attempts to build a rail-air link in Warwick began in earnest in 1998 with the acquisition of a $25-million grant by the late U.S. Sen. John H. Chafee.

The rental-car companies held up the project for years with a lawsuit because they didn't want to tax their customers to pay for costs not covered by government grants. This spring, they came to an agreement that the rental companies would continue to charge customers the $3.75 per-day per-car fee that they have levied since 2001 to fund the construction and operating costs of the garage. That should mean $6 million in payments annually when the garage opens, Shattle said. That fee will increase over time, capping at $5.50. The companies would also pay the airport a facility fee totaling $900,000 annually.

The other problem has been financing. As the project has been transformed from a small train station to a massive intermodal facility, the costs have risen accordingly -- from $168 million to $195 million earlier this year to now $222 million. The increases are also partly due to inflation and the spiraling costs of construction materials.

Last summer, U.S. Sen. Lincoln Chafee helped to secure nearly $60 million in federal highway dollars for the project, adding to the almost $25 million in federal grants already in hand. The rest is being financed by a $42-million low-interest loan, the $48 million in bonds floated last month, $22 million in state money, and $29 million from the fees the rental-car companies charge, Shattle said.

Even with those major challenges out of the way, however, this project is not a done deal yet.

The DOT is still in negotiations with the MBTA and Amtrak over fees for the use of Amtrak's rails between Providence and Wickford, and the two sides are fairly far apart on price, Capaldi said. The state wants to pay $15 per train mile. Amtrak wants $35 per train mile, amounting to roughly a $2 million difference in the annual payment. Capaldi said that the normal price nationwide is $8 to $11 a train mile. They are also negotiating over indemnity and insurance in case of problems or a wreck.

He predicts that there will be an agreement by the end of this year.

But getting Amtrak to add a stop in Warwick is an entirely different matter. Service from the national railroad was a key part of the train station plan from the very beginning. But in 2004, Capaldi said, Amtrak shifted its priorities, surprising local planners by announcing that it would not stop at any new stations unless there were several side tracks present in addition to the main lines. This would reduce slowdowns by giving Amtrak its own, fast route into a station, and eliminating time spent waiting for other trains to clear the tracks.

This altered the game significantly for the Warwick station, adding a large cost at a late stage. To appease Amtrak, it would require that the new station be built with multiple tracks stretching for more than two miles around the station, adding to the project cost by as much as $90 million.

Through intense negotiations over the past two years, Capaldi said the state was able to persuade Amtrak to serve Warwick with fewer tracks by electrifying an under-construction freight track, and adding new train switches that would allow Amtrak trains to shift to side tracks while still traveling at high speeds.

But the new tracks, the electrification, the high-tech switches and other track work would cost in the $50- to $60-million range.

With the project's cost already far exceeding its original estimates, there is no more money immediately available, Capaldi said.

"I believe we're going to see Amtrak wanting to stop here within 10 years, maybe 5," Capaldi said. The station could then be retrofitted to accommodate Amtrak.

Amtrak representatives could not be reached for comment late last week.

The DOT believes that the huge project will be worth it even without Amtrak. The department is planning for eight roundtrips from Boston to both new stations per day on weekdays, with no service on weekends. Studies indicate that by 2020, about 1,000 riders would take the train from Wickford each day, and a few hundred more from Warwick.

Capaldi said that the project should ease commuter congestion on Route 95, and while it may not necessarily be a huge moneymaker for the MBTA, it should break even. Airport officials say the airlines are excited about the access it gives them, too. Airport spokeswoman Patti Goldstein boasted that the station would be the closest rail access to an airport in the nation, and this has the airlines buzzing about the ability to further ply the southern Rhode Island and Connecticut markets.

"They're very optimistic about the impact this could have on their customers. They're very excited about this," she said.

Tomorrow's groundbreaking will bring out a score of federal, state and local officials, including Maria Cino, acting U.S. secretary of transportation; Governor Carcieri; Senator Chafee; James Rosati, chairman of the Rhode Island Airport Corportation; Mark Brewer, president of the airport corporation; Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian; and Capaldi. It is scheduled for 1 p.m. at the airport.