NEWINGTON, Conn. — Planned service cuts for Connecticut’s Shore Line East commuter service, which have been delayed during an Amtrak maintenance project, will take effect Dec. 18, the Connecticut Department of Transportation has announced.
Previously, Shore Line East service had included 23 trains per day; under the new schedule it will see 16 trains per day on weekdays and weekends. The new schedules are available here. They include two Amtrak trains in each direction each day on which Shore Line East tickets are accepted.
Cuts on other commuter lines in the state had taken effect Oct. 29 [see “Connecticut finalizes commuter rail service cuts,” Trains News Wire, Oct. 23, 2023], but the Shore Line East changes were delayed by the Amtrak project as well as Amtrak’s approval of the new schedule.
“The new Shore Line East schedule starting on Dec.18 reflects the feedback we received during our public hearing process and working with community stakeholders,” Connecticut Department of Transportation Bureau Chief of Public Transportation Benjamin Limmer said in a press release. “We look forward to implementing this new schedule that provides customers travel options that meet their needs.”
Since September, just eight Shore Line East trains have been operating in each direction to accommodate an Amtrak project to add a new interlocking in Clinton, Conn. [see “Connecticut’s Shore Line East set for schedule changes …,” News Wire, Aug. 31, 2023]. During the project, passengers have had an increased ability to have their tickets honored on Amtrak trains; that will also end as of Dec. 18.
Once again the unending pop up ads that have been allowed to beset this site, thanks Trains and Kalmbach Publishing, my writing was cut short.
After all the efforts to electrify SLE, after all the $$$ that was spent to purchase enough M8s for both SLE and NHL services, we are seeing the service made unattractive with this schedule change with its greatly lowered frequencies. Will there be any pushback the locals pols cannot ignore or risk being voted out of office? I have a feeling not.
Pathetic service cuts…
The construction schedule and related service cuts have been laughably mismanaged.
As background, there is an ongoing major construction project on I-95 (which parallels SLE and is the reason why SLE exists in the first place). This construction involves blasting rock which necessitates a shutdown of I-95 1-2x per day. For whatever reason, CDOT thought that starting this blasting during the summer was a good idea. That unnecessarily caused absolute gridlock throughout the region daily, as the shoreline’s population doubles to triples in the summer months and people travel to the water.
This was a massive opportunity for SLE to be useful for a wider population, especially with the new M8s. Projects should have been coordinated so that service could have been increased and the line would have actually been useful.
The reduced schedule is all but useless. Connections to MNR in new haven are lacking, and there aren’t scheduled trains to accommodate typical work schedules for new haven based employees.
The line has never received the focus it deserves from CDOT, and i have a real concern that these schedule cuts are what we look back in in five years as the precursor to SLE being shut down.
After all the efforts to deplMr. Milledge, the way things are looking per this article this service won’t even last another 5 years. ConnDOT and its political enablers seem determined to do the usual with passenger rail; Make the service unattractive and and inconvenient so the riders will, in ever increasing numbers, give up the train for their cars. And then ConnDOT will propose to do what state DOTs do best, widen the highway, in this case the sacred I-95, to ease growing congestion. Just wait. ConnDOT may yet put the New Haven Line in their crosshairs.