The views from the train are stunning. Sitting by the window of a modern, smooth, nearly silent commuter train, you see the coves, beaches, and marshes as you glide near the water at 90 miles per hour next to Long Island Sound. The ride from New London to New Haven is faster than driving on your own and is convenient; State Street Station is right downtown, and Union Station offers connecting services to Fairfield County and beyond, fully avoiding the endless I-95 traffic jams.
Shore Line East, the commuter rail service connecting New London, New Haven, and points west, launched in 1986, initially as a temporary service to offer some relief to commuters in that corridor during scheduled highway construction projects. For years, trains ran with an odd mixture of second-hand and obsolete equipment, often with provisional, ramshackle stations. State Street, in New Haven, did not open until 2002. Although the line was electrified in 2000, ConnDOT only started running modern, electric M8 trains in 2022, offering significantly faster travel times.
Despite the speedy, convenient service, Shore Line East ridership remains far below what it was before the pandemic. In 2025, an average of 769 passengers use the line every weekday, down from 1,340 in 2019. Weekend ridership has fallen from 767 to 361. Although usage has slightly increased compared to 2024 (by 3%), other rail services in the state have fared much better at bringing back passengers.
As a result, Shore Line East is the most heavily subsidized mass transit line in Connecticut. In February, ConnDOT projected that operating Shore Line East will cost around $40.8 million this year, with around $720,000 in ticket revenue. This is a $183.76 state subsidy per passenger, compared to $78 for the Hartford Line or just $6.48 for Metro-North.
Most commuter lines both across the country and overseas are subsidized. The benefits they produce in reduced congestion, emissions, and service to those who cannot afford a car usually outweigh the cost. Shore Line East’s subsidies, however, are unusually expensive, even compared to other rail lines in the state.
This is due to a combination of factors. Despite its modern rolling stock, Shore Line East is unusually expensive to operate. ConnDOT does not run the service directly; instead, Metro-North supplies three M8 trainsets for Shore Line East service. The state has an operating agreement with Amtrak, under which the company runs the service on its behalf.
Most commuter rail services around the world rely on one-person train operation; that is, having a single crew member, the engineer, on each train. They rely on either faregates or random spot inspections to check for tickets. Shore Line East uses three-person crews: a locomotive engineer, a conductor, and an assistant conductor on each 4-car train, due to Amtrak labor union and federal regulations. This raises operating costs considerably compared to other railroads.
The trains themselves are also larger than what the service requires. The 4-car trains do not fit on most platforms along the line and have much more capacity (more than 400 seats) than necessary. This is due to an abundance of caution. A 2-car M8 has one active pantograph to collect power from overhead wires. If it were to fail, a 2-car train would become disabled. Electric units, however, are much more reliable than diesel locomotives, and CT Rail operates Hartford Line trains with a single engine, so it is hard to tell if this level of caution is entirely warranted. As a result, instead of having a fleet of six 2-car trains, Shore Line East must operate with three 4-car consists, limiting service.
Although the trains are fast and convenient, schedules are sparse. As of today, Shore Line East runs 10 trains a day in each direction. Service patterns are inconsistent; ConnDOT runs more frequently during early morning and afternoon peaks, with large gaps during the day.
“The best practice is running more frequent all-day, bi-directional service,” says Eric Goldwyn, Assistant Professor of transportation and land-use at the NYU Marron Institute. He uses as an example Caltrain, following its recent modernization, as the gold standard for service, with clockface, half-hour service all day that has led to a huge increase in ridership. A 2024 report by the Federal Transit Administration highlights the need to move from “commuter” rail, with a focus on peak service, to “regional” rail, with all-day, regular, hourly schedules.
State officials recognize there are gaps in service, but the existing budget does not provide the resources necessary to offer hourly service. Amtrak has limited slots for Shore Line East trains east of New Haven, as they give priority to their own Northeast Regional and Acela services. Shore Line East, however, runs fewer trains today than it did in 2019, following pandemic cuts. The legislature did add additional funding to increase service this year, but not to pre-COVID levels.
If trains run less frequently, they become less convenient; taking the Shore Line East to run an errand in New Haven might be faster than driving, but this might be of little use if you have to wait two hours for the next train. This means that a reduction in frequency might end up causing decreases in ridership that are larger than the amount of capacity removed, leaving remaining trains emptier. Running fewer trains can increase overall costs instead of saving money.
More than any other policy, however, the best way to fill commuter trains is to have people living and working close to train stations. “In the immediate vicinity of the station you need quite a bit of density to get enough people who can walk to the train to lower the subsidy per rider,” says Pete Harrison, Regional Plan Association Director for Connecticut and head of Desegregate Connecticut. “That doesn’t need to be tall buildings, but it needs to be a lot of homes and jobs in walking distance.”
Shoreline towns have been notoriously reluctant to build housing or commercial buildings in their downtowns for decades, but this might be changing. After months of wrangling and a gubernatorial veto earlier this summer, Connecticut finally passed an ambitious housing law that gives these communities new tools and incentives for transit-oriented development. “There is a good amount of interest in most towns along Shore Line East already,” says Harrison. “This bill really just helps local pro-homes leaders sell more ambitious reforms that some already want by giving these towns more resources to plan and build.”
Jennifer Donahue, Old Saybrook Director of Economic Development & Communications, agrees: “Old Saybrook is actively seeking creative ways to increase diverse housing availability in town, including transit-oriented development in our downtown area.” The town has opted into the Connecticut Municipal Development Authority, one of the resources created by the law to promote new development, and is even undertaking a study of its Main Street to determine why more building owners have not taken advantage of the ability to develop housing.
She mentions, however, that additional service would be welcome: “The limited evening hours are somewhat prohibitive to encouraging people to use the service to attend a show at our performing arts center, The Kate. We would love to be able to promote a full evening out with dinner and a show that is accessible by commuter rail.”
Any new development, however, is bound to attract resistance from residents, with some complaining that new, denser housing might change the character of the community. Harrison explains that not building anything also has an impact: “By resisting, in the short term it might seem like you’re preserving the character, but you’re making it more exclusive and more expensive, which will result in a very different character over time.” Building more homes, however, “might look different on certain streets, but the people and businesses in the community will ultimately look a lot more like they have for previous generations.”
Harrison also suggested improvements in local bus service to act as a feeder, coordinating schedules with Shore Line East trains. At some point, he says it is also inevitable that we will have a discussion on tolling highways in our state, which will ultimately shift more drivers to the train.
Ultimately, making Shore Line East live up to its potential will require more than zoning changes or modernizing its operating practices. It will require a coordinated effort by ConnDOT, Amtrak, and the Federal Railroad Administration to update how railroads operate in the country and to reduce costs. It will also require a considerable degree of regional planning and state support to spur new development close to the stations, both in shoreline towns and in downtown New Haven.