CT: Will Shore Line East ever have service levels like before the COVID-19 pandemic?

A bill to increase service on Shore Line East has once again advanced through the state legislature’s Transportation Committee, but this time, the proposed legislation doesn’t mandate that the state Department of Transportation restore service to exactly the same level as before the COVID-19 pandemic and gives the agency a list of factors to consider.

An initial version of the bill would have required the state DOT to restore service on Shore Line East “to the same level of service that existed” before pandemic-related cuts. The committee has passed legislation with the same language every year since at least 2023.

A new version approved by the committee in a 35-1 vote this month would require DOT to “increase the frequency of service and number of runs on the Shore Line East rail line to a level comparable” to the pre-pandemic level and consider ridership numbers, connectivity with other transit services, commuting patterns, local hiring activity and seasonal tourism.

“The goal of such increase in service and number of runs shall be to reduce the waiting times for passengers and increase the reliability of service on the Shore Line East rail line,” the bill reads.

The new bill comes after a public hearing where committee Co-Chair Christine Cohen, a Democratic state senator from Guilford, told DOT Commissioner Garrett Eucalitto that the line’s current schedule has frustrated riders.

A westbound train could arrive in New Haven “2 minutes after the express has left for Grand Central,” Cohen said. Meanwhile, the trains going east from New Haven arrive in New London around either 7 a.m. or 9 a.m. — too early or too late for many commuters, she said. At the same time, she noted General Dynamics Electric Boat, with facilities in New London and Groton, has been hiring more and more employees.

“I’m wondering what you can tell me about what we could do,” Cohen said to Eucalitto. “We continue to introduce this bill. You know it’s a passion of mine. It’s no secret. I represent a lot of the communities impacted, riders that ride Shore Line East, and I want to see us do more. I truly believe in this rail line. I see things changing for the better along the line. Tell me a little bit about the challenges with expansion.”

Eucalitto said 132 trains currently run on Shore Line East each week, compared with 222 trains in 2019. Other lines in the state have nearly returned to pre-pandemic service levels or exceeded them, according to numbers DOT shared with the legislature.

“The biggest hurdle ... is really costs,” Eucalitto said.

Shore Line East is especially expensive because the state has to pay Amtrak to access its two-track territory, he said. It also must pay to draw power from the wires over the tracks. As part of Gov. Ned Lamont’s proposed budget revisions, DOT has recommended bringing diesel trains back to the line to save money without cutting any rail service.

Shore Line East “was built around the concept of being a commuter railroad that would take people in the morning from eastern Connecticut into New Haven,” Eucalitto said. “To continue to serve that purpose while also serving the purpose of getting people in the morning to eastern Connecticut from the New Haven region would require even more ... equipment and crew costs because you would essentially need to have a second base of operations (in New London).”

He said before the pandemic, DOT considered the idea of building a railyard in Old Saybrook because infrastructure constraints at the time prevented many trains from continuing on to New London. But Eucalitto said the property is no longer available.

Today, 20 weekday trains run on Shore Line East. During 2019, 13 trains served New London each weekday, while 36 trains served other stations, according to Eucalitto’s testimony.

DOT is taking a fresh look at its train schedules and how they could better reflect today’s ridership patterns, he said during the public hearing.

“It’s very different because people expect 100% of the trains that they had in 2019, but they only want to take it two days a week,” Eucalitto said. “So that creates a fiscal impact that the state is going to have to grapple with. Every commuter rail system in the country is grappling with that. And how do you provide the same level of service they had previously with essentially 40% of the riders or 60% of the riders some days?”

Last year, about 247,000 passengers rode on Shore Line East — down about 63 percent from 2019, according to DOT’s public transit dashboard.

Of the total ridership for 2025, about 167,000 passengers traveled between New London and New Haven, while about 79,000 took SLE trains only on a segment of the New Haven Line from New Haven to Stamford.

That through service to Stamford was suspended from March 2020 to October 2024. From 2020 through 2024, the line’s total annual ridership remained below 200,000.

The number of weekday trains running on the line went down and up over those years, according to DOT data. First it dropped from 36 to 16 in spring 2020, then increased to 23 in 2022, then dropped back down to 16 in 2023 and finally increased to 20 trains in 2024 thanks to an allocation of federal pandemic recovery funding.

Proponents of increased service have argued that more trains would make it more convenient to use the line, which would encourage more people to take the train.

But when questioned about Shore Line East’s service levels, the Lamont administration has pointed to how highly the line is subsidized and projections that Connecticut’s Special Transportation Fund will be in deficit before 2030.

The state is expected to subsidize Shore Line East at a rate of about $155 per trip during fiscal year 2026, according to DOT.

But Shore Line East boosters have pushed back against that point.

“I get frustrated because transportation in general is highly subsidized,” Cohen said. “I think we need to stop talking about how much money this costs us and think about all of the ancillary benefits.”

Cohen and others also mentioned the idea, which has been floated for years, of expanding the line through Mystic and to Westerly, R.I. Eucalitto said DOT recently met with Rhode Island officials and spoke about the hurdles to such an expansion.

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