Shore Line East or Metro North to Rhode Island Green Airport

The rush hour is currently running at capacity for that ever to happen (an equivalent Cannonball). Good luck fighting political opposition from riders from Stamford, Westport, and Fairfield not making a station stop there.

YamaOfParadise wrote:Considering the limited schedule to New London itself, a limited schedule east of there should be a-okay. I really wonder where they're going to lay up trainsets, though; realistically you need to have a set or two on the east end so you don't need to deadhead from New Haven to Westerly daily.

Westerly has a large MOW yard attached that RIDOT plans to upgrade into a full-blown layover yard. Provided CDOT's and RIDOT's target dates are in-sync with initiation of Westerly service they'd be sharing the same staffed facility. If you're talking large-scale expansion of SLE service east of Old Saybrook, Westerly layover may end up a better value-for-money over the long term than building a full-service layover facility at New London a few hundred feet up NECR's tracks. Given that the "extension" consists of 2 pre-existing stations and a transfer node with somebody else's commuter rail service there's going to be a lot of economy-of-scale fodder the planning decisions will attempt to capitalize on.

You'd very much want to have a stop in Stonington (Borough), as well. The population is dense in that area, easily within walking or biking distance. Later on you might want to have one in between Noank and Groton Long Point, as well. Dunno where you'd put a stop in Groton (City), though, the terrain the Shore Line cuts through there isn't exactly what you'd call "flat". The connections to the lower half of the City of Groton is abysmal from coming from New London via public transportation, though; when I tried commuting in to UCONN @ Avery Point for a couple of days via SLE and the busses, and it took me about an hour flat to get between there and New London Union Station.

In due time. Let's get that South Lyme infill first to plug the cavernous gap between OSB and NLN. And establish a beachhead at the existing stops by putting some elbow grease into an improved Mystic first.

How about they increase farebox recovery before expanding? SLE is abysmal on ride subsidies. I think it's as bad or worse than Waterbury branch. And at least on that branch there's a pent up demand for service improvements and traffic relief.

I'm not concerned with the lack of commuter rail east of New London. There's still rail service, and CtDOT can do with Amtrak what they did with the Hartford line by subsidizing commuter passes as they did on the Springfield line if they want to increase intrastate ridership.

Not to mention, the interminable studies of the Danbury branch, no service to New Milford, a decaying Maybrook, the Berlin - Waterbury route, and so on where there's no service and potential demand.

Could it be that the people on the Shoreline are more "beautiful" than the people on the Danbury?

the ride home on the SLE is nice in the summer time. the amount of Birds you see is amazing

The SLE to RI would be nice, stops at Groton, Mystic (Mystic Seaport and Aquarium should get more business), Stonington and Westerly. It would tie with the MBTA at Westerly. More commuter rail planned?

FLRailFan1 wrote:The SLE to RI would be nice, stops at Groton, Mystic (Mystic Seaport and Aquarium should get more business), Stonington and Westerly. It would tie with the MBTA at Westerly. More commuter rail planned?

RIDOT's still got its sights set on it circa 2020-22. Kingston's having its platforms raised to full-highs right now and having a Track #3 platform added, so Westerly is next up on the renovations bucket list and probably will have the TIGER grant application ready to go. That would match Kingston as a tri-tracker w/ 3 platforms, and they'd be cleaning up the adjacent MOW yard to prep that for their layover yard. The only things they would then have to do for actual initiation of service is to install northbound-side platforms w/ track turnouts at T.F. Green and Wickford Jct. (not a major expense since all other station facilities + southbound platforms are pre-existing) and equip Westerly layover. The 3 additional south-of-Providence intermediate stops at Cranston, East Greenwich, and West Davisville they'll pick off one-by-one in individual funding installments so the (skeletal-frequency) inaugural service to Westerly doesn't have dependencies on those infills.


SLE's bucket list for skeletal starter service would amount to:

-- Upgrade of Track 3 from the Groton side of the Thames Bridge to Amtrak MOW just east of the Airport (as specced in the NEC Infrastructure Master Plan track layout)

-- Rebuild of Mystic for full-high platforms.

-- Squaring rights across the state line into Westerly + Westerly layover.

That's enough for a diesel starter schedule. Obviously they'd be paying in to wire Westerly layover and Track 3 in Groton if the M8's are going any further than New London. But since the RIDOT service is going to be sparse on Day 1 and scaling up slowly they're not under a lot of pressure to do more than the minimum at first. Because of that I can't imagine all-new intermediate stops east of NLN are going to be on-the-docket for Day 1. That's probably something best deferred one-at-a-time for each incremental step-up in service levels like RIDOT is doing. For that reason I really wouldn't worry much about SLE-Westerly being a distraction from other more badly needed expansion projects. It's a very *slowly evolving* rollout that probably sticks to very short money for Phase I of getting foot in door (e.g. sparsely-scheduled diesels with just existing Mystic + Westerly at first). If only because it makes little sense to jump the gun by too much on RIDOT's equally slow and steady scale-up.

Both Mystic and Westerly are on curves-- sharp enough that when you're stopped the tilt from the superelevation will make things slide off a table. How are they going to put in high levels?

Will continuous commuter rail cannibalize Amtrak service?

Unlikely - most people are willing to spend a little more to go faster in nicer seats with fewer transfers if they're traveling more than 50 miles.

The rides it will cannibalize are generally shorter runs that take away seats from profitable intercity markets. Every URI student that switches to commuter rail to ride from Kingston to Providence for an evening out, and every shoreline commuter who swaps to SLE to get to Stamford, frees up a seat to be occupied from Boston to New York. Amtrak will be happy for those riders to switch, and the riders will be grateful for higher frequency.

Ridgefielder wrote:Both Mystic and Westerly are on curves-- sharp enough that when you're stopped the tilt from the superelevation will make things slide off a table. How are they going to put in high levels?

Westerly's curve is so slight it shouldn't make any difference, not even to the extra door on an M8. Worst comes to worst, when Track 3 gets re-added on the northerly side and the Canal St. bridge deck gets widened they can reach for a couple additional degrees of curve-straightening. There's fair amount of slack space.

Mystic would need more substantial work. Maybe a slight realignment coming off the bridge causeway and new platforms on the west side of the grade crossing eating a little space by the MOW turnout. After all, we haven't seen any potential renders of station layout since this is still in the non-formal "wish list" phase. AMTK is probably going to state preference for a tri-tracker with center passing track, which would necessitate a shift to the west side of the crossing and some fudging around with the perimeter. This is one reason why if CDOT's up for doing a fast start of Westerly service for the minimum of $$$ they'd probably initiate as diesel, split the M8 schedules to just Old Saybrook short-turns, and deal with the geometry mods at places like Mystic on one-by-one basis after the service is running.


Really, to justify the operating costs of only a *skeletal* diesel schedule the only prerequisites they need are for RIDOT to secure the Westerly reconfiguration grant and build the layover yard, and probably an Amtrak request to rehab Track 3 in Groton. Mystic they can probably just install a $75K Home Depot-quality wood mini-high for the first few years of diesel service then figure out the permanent station reno later when they're refilled the piggy bank a little.

The EGE wrote:Unlikely - most people are willing to spend a little more to go faster in nicer seats with fewer transfers if they're traveling more than 50 miles.

The rides it will cannibalize are generally shorter runs that take away seats from profitable intercity markets. Every URI student that switches to commuter rail to ride from Kingston to Providence for an evening out, and every shoreline commuter who swaps to SLE to get to Stamford, frees up a seat to be occupied from Boston to New York. Amtrak will be happy for those riders to switch, and the riders will be grateful for higher frequency.

Plus Amtrak would dearly like to drop Mystic forever; it's the one low-margin Clamdigger stop they couldn't shake off entirely after service ended. And they'd probably want to slash the number of NE Regionals stopping at Westerly by a lot. You'd have to look at the numbers on a per-schedule basis, but I bet what modest weekday ridership they do get there clusters to just certain time commuter-oriented slots and is pretty negligible all other times of day.

it would be nice for service to providence at night

I'm confused. How could there possibly be enough commuter demand between RI and New Haven, New York, and points between to justify this???

MCL1981 wrote:I'm confused. How could there possibly be enough commuter demand between RI and New Haven, New York, and points between to justify this???

I don't think that there are many NY-bound commuters in this area, nor do I think it's meant to service NY-bound commuters at all. A fair deal of commuting traffic out this way is towards Kingston, Providence, and Boston; which is RI's job to conduct, or served by Amtrak, so that's not a short-term goal for this service either.

I'd expect New Haven would still have some draw from these areas for commuters, but with the introduction of local service New London <-> Westerly you'd likely get a modest amount of ridership commuting between those areas, as all existing stops for a skeletal service setup are within the immediate area of the town/village centers with proximity to commercial and residential density. Key word is modest. I don't think many (if any) are under the illusion that this is going to be a huge successful new service pattern in ridership or profits. It's a stepping-stone for service towards RI, and closing the gap in lack of commuter rail service Boston-NY, and the increasing interest in service local and regional bodies are showing to CT and RI (respectively). I suspect an additional impetus for CT, (and despite Malloy's 30 year transportation plan still mentioning this project,) adding local rail service in the area is probably still cheaper than the long-desired plan of adding a new lane in each direction to I-95 between Branford and Stonington, which is in the 1.6 - 2 billion dollar range. Even if it does materialize, it's going to take a long time to get the funds to do such a project and then do the actual construction required, so completing SLE's coverage of that corridor is going to be able to take additional traffic in the meanwhile, in addition to serving the shoreline communities more directly (as I-95 is much further inland, particularly east of New London).

So this is a stepping stone service, one that almost regardless of its success in ridership or monetary metrics is going to serve its intended purpose. As long as it doesn't end up as a stinking mess, it'll fulfill its goals... if it does get surprising amounts of ridership (like SLE originally did), great, if not, still okay. It is ConnDOT's analog of the extension of RI getting MBTA service extended to Warwick Junction. Both are whittling away the commuter service gap from each end, working towards the same end of once again providing service in the entirety of the old Clamdigger/Beacon Hill region, and the growth/development opportunities that such a service will bring to their regional economies.