New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Metro-North riders speak out against railway cuts
NEW HAVEN — Jonathan Pineiro stood alongside his luggage on a Union Station platform Tuesday morning, waiting to board a train that would carry him to Grand Central Terminal in New York City.
Pineiro, 27, a commuter from Manhattan, said he was unfamiliar with a provision in Gov. Ned Lamont's two-year, $50.5 billion recommended budget that proposes to reduce service of the New Haven Line to 86 percent of prepandemic levels, potentially resulting in dozens of fewer daily trains running between Connecticut and New York City.
But after hearing details of the governor's proposal, Pineiro quickly expressed his dissatisfaction.
“A lot of people do rely on the trains, and to know now that the trains will be more packed, it will bring discouragement,” Pineiro said. “Things happen on a train, too. Let's say a train gets delayed, it's already rough how it is. To add extra stuff to it, (such as) less trains, it's rough.”
As Connecticut lawmakers mull Lamont's spending plan and whether to roll back service for two of the state's commuter rail lines, Pineiro and other riders are speaking out against the idea, arguing that it would sour the experience of taking the train and push more passengers to using motor vehicles as their primary form of transportation.
In addition to the New Haven Line, the Shore Line East route, currently operating at two-thirds of its pre-pandemic levels between New Haven and New London, would be pared back even further under Lamont's proposal, to 44 percent of its earlier levels.
The governor's office has pointed to the sluggish pace at which riders have returned to both routes as the region has emerged from the pandemic. The state's newest commuter route, the Hartford Line, has seen a more robust return to its ridership and would not face any cuts under the governor's budget.
New Haven resident Sean McAvoy said reducing the state's rail service would be a “terrible idea.” According to McAvoy, rail cars traveling along the New Haven Line already are crowded, and reducing the number of trains would exacerbate congestion and discourage ridership.
“Do they want it to be standing-room only? Do they want us to be stuffed in there like sardines?” McAvoy, 39, said. “That's not what we're looking for.”
“Rail has a hard enough time in this country, and the more difficult or unpleasant you make it for people, the harder it's going to be to justify an expansion of that service or even its maintenance in the future,” McAvoy added. “You're only driving more people toward cars at that point anyway.”
McAvoy also said he believes that slashing rail service could hinder the city's economy by deterring commuters from seeking housing near the train station. New Haven continues to undergo a boom in development, but new housing units could become less attractive and harder to fill if Lamont's cuts are approved, according to McAvoy.
“It doesn't take a lot of change in terms of numbers to affect extraordinary change in terms of experience,” McAvoy said. “For those who rely on (rail), the worse you make the commuting experience, the more they're going to seek housing in a community elsewhere. If anything, we need more trains, not fewer.”
Angela Douglas, a New Haven resident who uses the train “just about all the time,” said cutting rail service could impact a person's ability to get to work in a timely fashion.
“They want everybody to get to work, and to (reduce) the trains is going to make it a little hard for everybody to get there on time,” Douglas said.
New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker said last week that “clearly reducing service to New York and other stops in between is not a good thing . ... “We should be going in the opposite direction, of improving the frequency of service.”