CTrail to Significantly Expand Service on July 26

After nearly a year and a half of significantly reduced schedules due to the impacts of Covid-19, CTrail's Hartford Line and Shore Line East lines will receive massive service improvements.

SLE will not resume a full pre-pandemic schedule, however service will be restored to 12 weekday round trips (against the current 8 and pre-Covid 17) and EVERY train will now go to New London for the first time in SLE history. Since ridership is still well-below pre-covid levels, this seems pretty fair. My only gripe is with some of the listed "connections" - as an example, #1627 has a 23 minute connection that gets you to GCT at 8:50, when there is both a local and an express train that both arrive in the city about a half hour earlier. Could potentially dissuade riders who don't want a three hour trip into the city, even though it's actually 2.5 hours.

The Hartford Line on the other hand IS going back to a full schedule, and this reflects the returning ridership, higher than any other Connecticut line except for the Waterbury Branch. The four hour midday gap is still there, and the same issue with connections is present (#4466 is a good example), but overall it's pretty much business as usual.

New Haven Line service was improved back in June, and a "new normal" schedule will be implemented in late August, per officials.

How many trains went to New London before corona? If 12 trains did before, but SLE ran 17 total, then now saying "this is the first time every train goes to NLC" isn't really something to celebrate.

Pre-Covid, it was 6.5 RTs on a weekday (plus 3 to 5 multi-ride Amtraks) and 8 on weekends.

Hartford Line - Schedule Effective July 26th, 2021

Shore Line East - Schedule Effective July 26th, 2021

In addition to the resumption of the lack of a fuller mid-day service, CDOT is proposing editing the CTtransit 950 Express Bus between Hartford and New Haven, including allowing CTrail fare media (except the 10 ride passes) to be accepted on the buses for the 3 mid-day trips. It is a fare decrease from the express bus to the train ticket for these 3 RT buses.

I made up a side-by-side schedule of both services and at least the in-town "closer to the people" bus stops for New Haven Green to/from Travelers Row is not as horrible as the station to station times.
Ps. I am adding this since it is concurrent service along the route, and has concurrent fare structure.

Proposed Bus Changes - see page 3 (route 950)
Proposed Full Bus Schedule - see page 31

Cool to see the 950 might be reducing its fares! And I'm glad the SLE & Hartford Line are getting their schedules expanded, but I am so frustrated they took the time and effort to use more staff and equipment to run the expanded schedules but didn't look at all at making them better? What the hell is with the four hour northbound gap in the HL schedule that's been there nearly since service opening?!? It's so frustrating!

daybeers wrote: ↑Wed Jul 14, 2021 7:51 pm Cool to see the 950 might be reducing its fares! And I'm glad the SLE & Hartford Line are getting their schedules expanded, but I am so frustrated they took the time and effort to use more staff and equipment to run the expanded schedules but didn't look at all at making them better? What the hell is with the four hour northbound gap in the HL schedule that's been there nearly since service opening?!? It's so frustrating!

No extra staff or equipment is used to run the full schedule. The gap is there mainly because of the Vermonter.