The pain of Connecticut's imminent fiscal meltdown seems to be coming at us in dribs and drabs, oozing out in successive news cycles.

The full-frontal body blow of the financial crisis still awaits. But slowly we drift into it, starting with more cuts to the current budget, which doesn't leave us enough in the tank to even get to July 1.

Then, with predictions like the one by the Department of Transportation, suggesting what might happen if they have to cut 10 percent of the agency's budget, we get primed for the really scary things that lie ahead.

This is a bit like the slow and steady climb up the roller coaster, tick, tick, tick, as the chain pulls us up, while you can see over to the other side, where the cars are zooming down, alive with screams, streaming hair and flailing arms.

The nasty little budget forecast from DOT, sketching out the slippery, snow-covered streets that await, seems to be an especially worrisome harbinger for eastern Connecticut, where we are more heavily represented than ever before by the minority party in Hartford.

The most alarming DOT budget scare was the idea of cutting some $18 million from the Shoreline East trains, eliminating more than half the service.

Maybe in Hartford they think of it now as the rail line that connects Republican Senate districts along the shoreline. What a big target.

I can't remember a single politician of either party who didn't praise the region's upgraded commuter rail during the fall elections. Many even promised to extend it — more trains, maybe to Mystic, or even Westerly.

This new threat of train cutting comes from an administration that has promised a transportation overhaul for the next century, to relieve our congested highways. How can that be?

Maybe it's a bluff.

They usually use the Connecticut River ferry as the budget bludgeon, promising to eliminate the historic icon, then sparing the little river ferry when they make much more draconian cuts elsewhere. We're supposed to focus on feeling good about saving the ferry.

I find it especially comical, though sad, that the state would cut back on rail service, trying to save as much as $18 million, after just last year committing $67 million to try to make Connecticut more appealing to people who might otherwise choose to live in cities.

This was a knee-jerk reaction to GE choosing Boston over its suburban Connecticut campus.

Some of that $67 million already has drifted down to this region, with help to hire consultants from New Mexico, who are being paid $75,000 to give us a "story of place" to help lure millennials to come live here. I'm not making this up.

Well, I've got news for these budget jugglers in Hartford: We don't need a story of place here to make millennials want to live here.

We need the trains. Millennials like trains, not cars. The trains also keep money here, instead of sending it to New Mexico.

So as we cut and consider cutting the things for eastern Connecticut that show promise of helping the region out of its employment doldrums — tourism promotion and mass transit — we choose to spend instead to study why people don't want to live here.

With a delegation of lawmakers fighting to be part of the decision-making in Hartford, it might also make us feel powerless here, like victims tied to the train tracks.

Although in this case, the trains may not be coming.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com