South Norwalk (Metro-North station)

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South Norwalk

West entrance, Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

Station statistics

Address

29 Monroe Street
at 1 Chestnut Street,
Norwalk, CT 06854

Coordinates

Lines

Metro-North Railroad:

Danbury Branch

New Haven Line

Connections

Norwalk Transit District:
10, 11, 12, Evening Shuttle, Sunday Shuttle, Norwalk Commuter Connection - Hospital-Virgin Atlantic, Merrit 7, Westport Road

Tracks

Parking

816 spaces

Other information

Accessible

Traffic

Passengers (2006)

494,260^[1] ▬ 0%

Services

Preceding station	Metro-North Railroad	Following station
Terminus	Danbury Branch	Merritt 7 toward Danbury
Stamford (limited) toward Grand Central	Danbury Branch	Merritt 7 toward Danbury
Rowayton toward Grand Central	New Haven Line	East Norwalk toward New Haven-State Street

The South Norwalk Metro-North Railroad station is one of three stations serving the residents of Norwalk, Connecticut via the New Haven Line and is the more significant of the three. Nicknamed "SoNo" by riders and staff, the station is the point where the Danbury Branch connects to the Northeast Corridor as well as a peak-hour terminal for some express trains (and the last stop for New Haven super-express runs before running non-stop to Grand Central Terminal. Just east of the station is the SONO Switch Tower Museum, a preserved switch tower which is open weekend afternoons during the summer months.

South Norwalk is 41 miles (66 km) from Grand Central Terminal and the average travel time from Grand Central is 64 minutes though this varies depending on run and time of day.

The station has 816 parking spaces, none owned by the state.^[2]

The station was the first to receive Wi-Fi service on the New Haven Line in March 2006. The service was provided for one year from a federal grant received from the "One Coast, One Future" initiative designed to help economic development in Stamford, Norwalk and Bridgeport. The grant provides for Wi-Fi service for one year with the expectation that local governments will provide it in the future if they find it valuable enough to do so. Similar service was planned for Stamford and Bridgeport stations in the spring of 2006 but no others. Westport also started providing the service in the spring of 2006.^[3]

The City of Norwalk and the Norwalk Transit District let a contract for $238,000.00 to study possible improvements to the South Norwalk Station with a goal to make it a better "intermodal" facility with improved access for cars, buses, shuttles, pedestrians, and taxis in February 2008.^[4]

1 Connections
2 See also
3 Notes
4 Pictures
5 External links

[edit] Connections

Norwalk Transit District; 10, 11, and 12.

[edit] See also

Connecticut Rail Commuter Council is the official state advocate for commuters and brings station problems to the attention of officials.

[edit] Notes

^ Using 260 weekdays in a year multiplied by number of weekday passengers (1,901)
^ [1]"Task 2: Technical Memorandum parking Inventory and Utilization: Final Report" submitted by Urbitran Associates Inc. to the Connecticut Department of Transportation, "Table 1: New haven Line Parking Capacity and Utilization", page 6, July 2003
^ Ginocchio, Mark, "Area train stations ready to ask Wi-Fi", news article in The Advocate of Stamford, March 18, 2007, pp. A3, A8
^ Jared Newman. "$238K contract awarded to study rail station", The Hour, The Hour Publishing Company, 2008-02-28, p. A1.

[edit] Pictures

Inside the more modern building	Trackside view, New York-bound side	Older building, across the tracks	Entrance to older building
The station about 1909	The station in the 1880s