Merritt 7 is the Danbury Branch’s newest station in multiple ways. The station primarily services a large suburban business/office park that opened originally has a simple low-level platform on July 29, 1985, with just a large bus shelter for waiting passengers. Passengers commuting to the station didn’t have direct access to their offices across the railroad tracks from the station, with a fence prohibiting access, requiring most of them to board local shuttles to and from their offices. As the rest of the Danbury Branch station’s got ADA accessible high-level platforms in the 1990s, Merritt 7 became the only non-ADA accessible still low-level platform station on the entire Danbury Line. It became the only Metro-North station outside of the Waterbury branch and the seasonal hiker’s stations on the upper Hudson and New Haven lines.
This changed on June 7, 2023 when a new high-level platform opened 250 feet north of the original station’s low-level platform. This new platform is 500 feet long. This platform is canopied for its entire length with grey painted beams holding up the platform canopies.
All the station signs on the new platform stylized as a station for CT rail, not Metro-North with signs like those at the new CT rail Hartford Line stations. These includes all station name signs being in a different font than regular Metro-North Helvetica, and the Red Line on the bottom of all signs instead of the top. There are also a couple of Amtrak information sign-style panels, with three information panels. These have white sides and the Merritt 7 name on the top of the information panel.
The platform is at street-level with multiple staircases and two ramps down to Glover Avenue, this avenue runs parallel to the train station. At the northern end of the platform is a Kiss & Ride loop with a couple of parking spaces. From here a crosswalk leads across Glover Road to the station’s main small Park & Ride lot with about 22 spaces. Just south of here is a small pull off area from Grover Street (directly along the platform) I assume designed for buses.
In the middle of the platform is the main feature of the station that finally made the station, nearly 40 years later part of a Transit Oriented Development, instead of a Transit Adjacent Development (with no pedestrian access). There is finally a pedestrian bridge across the train track to the major corporate offices across the train tracks from the station. This means that commuting office workers can finally walk directly to their offices after getting off the train, instead of having to take shuttle buses the short distance. This fully enclosed pedestrian bridge is covered in green glass and has escalators and staircases up to it at either end of the bridge. The bridge didn’t open with the rest of the station due to COVID-19 related supply chain shortages, for the glass required to complete the structure. It finally opened on January 12, 2024 (I visited the station before the bridge opened).
Just south of the station there is additional commuter parking via basically on-street angled parking spaces along Glover Avenue, these lead south and to the now demolished former low-level platform tiny station.
Photos 1-48: November 27, 2024
South Norwalk 