Rail advocates made a push Monday to restore services to the Shoreline East line.
The number of trains running between New Haven and New London is down significantly, and the legislature is now looking at a bill to increase funding by $30 million.
“If you don’t provide frequent, reliable service, you don’t get people to go on the trains,” said E. Zell Steeve, a member of the Connecticut Public Transportation Council.
Right now, the Department of Transportation provides 112 trains weekly along Shoreline East, roughly half the 222 offered in 2019.
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Lawmakers said that’s the result of a budget cut that Gov. Ned Lamont proposed and that they accepted last year.
“This is an important rail line for the shoreline,” Sen. Christine Cohen (D-Guilford) said Monday.
Cohen, co-chair of the legislature’s Transportation Committee, said she wants a full restoration but is pushing for at least two-thirds of the service offered before the pandemic.
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There’s bipartisan support.
“I think the state needs to do a better job promoting Shoreline East rail,” Rep. Devin Carney (R-Old Saybrook) said.
DOT Commissioner Garrett Eucalitto said he’ll go along with whatever lawmakers and Lamont decide, but he also indicated ridership doesn’t demonstrate a need for increased funding.
Shoreline East ridership has plummeted by nearly three quarters, from 660,477 in 2019 to 176,979 last year.
Eucalitto said a DOT ridership study found that’s likely because more people are working remotely at least a few days a week, reducing the need for more frequent service.
“As telework has now become very common, most of those individuals are not going into work five days a week,” he said.
But Steeves said people will feel discouraged from taking the rail and opting for vehicles if service is cut and trains run less often.
“The decision to cut the rails was basically a budgetary one and it was a shortsighted one,” he said.
Lawmakers said the DOT can prioritize higher demand times when adding service, but they agreed with Steeve that reduced service means riders are more likely to look for other options.
“If we abandon this rail, it’s going to create some problems,” Carney said.
