In a major setback for business-led efforts to bring passenger trains back to Manchester, the Republican-led Executive Council voted to end a state study into a commuter rail link between the state’s biggest city, Nashua and Boston. 

State transportation officials had asked the council to approve an extension to the $5.4 million study, initially OK’d in late 2020, through September 2023 in order to do more coordination with local and federal officials and the owners of big properties next to the planned train stations at Nashua’s Pheasant Lane Mall and south of Manchester’s Millyard. 

Instead, councilors voted the extension down, effectively killing a study that had been initially ordered by a Democrat-led state legislature. The remaining $1.5 million that would have been spent on the contract will be directed to other transportation projects. The entire study was funded with a federal grant. 

 “I think it is time to stop the bleeding in this project. I don’t think this is going anywhere,” said Executive Councilor David Wheeler, R-Milford, expressing skepticism that a train could “pay for itself” 

Climate and transportation advocates had pitched the line as a way to lower carbon emissions from the state’s many commuters who work in the Boston area, and a cure for increasing traffic on Interstate 93. 

A business group also formed before the pandemic to support the idea of a commuter rail line, as well, calling it a major boon to real estate in the area. 

Republicans in the state House of Representatives sought to block spending any state funds on a train line last year, but the Republican-dominated Senate stopped that effort, preferring to wait for the study’s results to see how much such a project might cost.