Other than the completion of Route 11, which, let's be honest, is not likely to happen in any of our lifetimes, I can't think of many more pressing transportation initiatives for eastern Connecticut than extending commuter rail through Groton and Stonington to Westerly. 

OK, there is the deadly problem of the intersection of Interstates 395 and 95 in East Lyme that needs immediate attention.

But extending commuter rail, rather than highway improvements, is ultimately simpler, less expensive and has an enormous upside for economic development. It's a pretty simple infrastructure fix that will connect beautiful and tourist-attraction-rich southeastern Connecticut with urban centers, from New York to Boston, by mass transit.

After all, mass transit is the backbone of the future of smart growth and development. Millennials want to live near train lines.

We already have the train lines here. We just need to put more trains on them.

So far, the only local state lawmaker I have heard banging the drum loudly for this smart and fairly cheap initiative, an economic driver, is Rep. Aundré Bumgardner of Groton.

"A plethora of constituents have been reaching out to me on this," Bumgardner said this week.

It was Bumgardner, a member of the General Assembly's Transportation Committee, who on Wednesday got transportation Commissioner James Redeker to disclose that Connecticut has begun talks with Rhode Island officials about the logistics of linking commuter rail systems across the border.

The linked system would entail extending Metro North or Shoreline East to Westerly, where it could connect with an extended line of the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority, which already runs service deep into Rhode Island from Boston.

"The discussion is underway. We will be able to talk a lot more about it in a few months," Redeker told lawmakers.

Redeker appeared before the committee with the president of Metro North, who told legislators the railroad business is booming in Connecticut.

Ridership on the New Haven to New York line, generally the most traveled commuter line in the country, is up in all categories, in both directions at all times of the day, the railroad president said.

I attended the committee meeting after learning some constituents of Sen. Andrew Maynard of Stonington were urging him to attend the session on commuter rail travel to talk about Westerly service.

The brain-injured senator, who has attended few meetings of the committee of which he is co-chairman, did not turn up this week.

Some committee members now refer to Sen. Carlo Leone as the co-chairman of the committee, a practical if not formal substitution for the long-absent senator from Stonington.

Senate Democrats have denied Maynard's constituents representation this session on many important issues, like new rail service for the region.

Now we can only wait and see if they will bring him in at the close of the session for his valuable Senate votes, like his crucial vote on last year's budget deal.

You can sense the tension in the General Assembly now, with a budget tsunami about to wash over the place, and end-of-session voting is going to be especially critical.

Will we see the long-absent senator from Stonington play a key role again this session at voting time?

We should all stay tuned.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com