Highway tolls get hearing Wednesday

Ed Stannard, Register Metro Editor

You can have an opportunity to weigh in on whether the state should bring back highway tolls at a public hearing from 6 to 9 p.m. Wednesday at Gateway Community College, 60 Sargent Drive, New Haven.

The Transportation Strategy Board scheduled two hearings to get public feedback on a variety of proposals to bring tolls back to bring more money into the state treasury.

The second hearing will be held 6 to 9 p.m. May 5 at the University of Connecticut’s Waterbury branch, Multi-Purpose Rooms 113 and 116. Legislators from Fairfield County, the most congested area in the state, have said they’re not happy that no hearing has been scheduled for that area.

In February, the TSB heard a presentation from Cambridge Systematics Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., which did a $1 million study looking at toll options. Links to the full study can be found on the TSB Website.

A bill in the General Assembly, Senate Bill 445, calls for an analysis of the feasibility of electronic tolls at the state borders. State Sen. Donald DeFronzo, D-New Britain, co-chairman of the Transportation Committee, has advocated border tolls.

But Roger Joyce, vice president of the Bilco Co. of West Haven and a member of the TSB, said the board is not advocating for any option, or even for tolls at all.

“We’ve made no decision on any matter, either in terms of a preference or elimination until we’ve conducted these hearings,” he said Monday.

State Department of Transportation Commissioner Joseph F. Marie said at a recent New Haven Register editorial board meeting that he thought border tolls were a bad idea because they could hurt businesses near the state line, for example in Danbury, that depend on out-of-state business.

Other options include tolling the most congested corridors, turning the high-occupancy vehicle lanes into toll lanes for those who want to avoid traffic, or putting a charge on every mile driven in the state.

Tolls were removed from Connecticut highways and bridges in the 1980s after a fatal accident in Stratford in which a truck barreled into a row of cars. Any new tolls would be electronic, with an EZ Pass system or cameras to record license plates, so there wouldn’t be the same safety issue as the old tolls.

Sierra Club calls together transit advocates

Published in the New Haven Register, Friday, April 24.

By Elizabeth Benton, Register Staff

NEW HAVEN —Mass transit advocates gathered at Union Station Thursday evening to identify ways to catalyze action on slow-moving projects, including the long-discussed New Haven-Hartford-Springfield rail line.

The meeting was one of numerous discussions taking place across the country, facilitated by Washington, D.C.-based transit advocates Transportation for America.

New Haven’s meeting, which drew about a dozen participants, was organized locally by the National Corridors Initiative and the Connecticut Chapter of the Sierra Club.

“Getting mass transit in Connecticut is painfully slow,” said state Rep. David McCluskey, D-West Hartford, pointing to bureaucratic and attitudinal obstacles, including what he described as a long-time focus solely on highways at the state Department of Transportation. That focus has only recently shifted to address mass transit, he said.

The state is “in a better position now than it has ever been” to launch a New Haven-Hartford-Springfield line, he said.

The conversation Thursday mirrored, on a smaller scale, a hearing held last week in New Haven by Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn, on transit issues, including the New Haven-Springfield rail line.

State DOT, Metro-North Railroad officials, business leaders and local elected officials all attended that hearing.

A north-south commuter rail line has been a top transit priority for both Gov. M. Jodi Rell and the General Assembly, and the DOT is conducting an environmental assessment.

“It is finally happening. We are moving to the next level on this project,” said Michael Piscitelli, director of the city’s Department of Transportation, Traffic and Parking.

President Barack Obama announced last week that $8 billion in federal stimulus money would be directed to developing a nationwide high-speed rail system.

Meeting participants Thursday discussed ways to secure some of that money for the New Haven-Hartford-Springfield line.

“We’re preaching to the choir here. We’ve got to be leaders,” said Molly McKay, Transportation Chair of the Connecticut Sierra Club.

McKay plans to use input from Thursday’s meeting to draft a letter to Rell pushing for increased transit funding.

With Connecticut facing competition for the stimulus funds, a draft outline of the letter to Rell recommends that Connecticut emphasize the project’s ability to benefit the entire region.

Meeting participants also discussed expansion of bus lines, bike safety, the transportation needs of the elderly, and funding sources for transportation initiatives, including new taxes.

Elizabeth Benton can be reached at 789-5714 or ebenton@nhregister.com.

For more information about these organizations, go to Transportation for America and the Connecticut chapter of the Sierra Club.

State, Amtrak need to get on same page

Ed Stannard, Register Metro Editor

Getting a high-speed commuter rail line going between New Haven and Springfield, Mass., is the hottest transportation topic in Connecticut right now.

On Friday, House Speaker Christopher G. Donovan, D-Meriden, saying Connecticut “has a rare opportunity to make this long-anticipated project a reality,” called on Gov. M. Jodi Rell to put $30 million for planning and design work on next month’s Bond Commission agenda.

He also said he will convene a working group to plan how best to use money Connecticut can apply for from an $8 billion federal stimulus pot. President Barack Obama on Thursday designated that amount to develop a high-speed rail network centered on population centers across the country.

The competition will be intense for the money. New Haven-Springfield may have an advantage because it’s a two-state project, and Donovan wants Connecticut and Massachusetts to work together on the application.

Rell is already behind the project, and U.S. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., said at a hearing held in New Haven on Thursday that he’ll do all he can to move it along. As chairman of the committee that oversees mass transit financing, he has some clout.

Donovan said he wants the state departments of Transportation and Environmental Protection and Amtrak around the table for his working group. Of course those state offices are already on the governor’s working group, which oversees how to use federal stimulus money coming to the state, including transit money. State Sen. Donald G. DeFronzo, D-New Britain, co-chairman of the Transportation Committee, also sits at that table.

“It is absurd that one of the major transportation corridors in the Northeast is without high-speed commuter rail,” Donovan said. “We simply have to make the most of the opportunity now before us.”

Whether a second “working group” is the best way to go is open to debate, but getting Amtrak at the table is important. The quasi-public, federally subsidized rail line owns the tracks between New Haven and Springfield and runs six daily trains each way between those points.

In an interview last week after Obama’s announcement, Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black was less than an enthusiastic endorser of the plan.

“It’s a topic that Amtrak is willing to discuss at any time,” he said. “We’re receptive to suggestions from the state but there are priorities on both sides and there are costs associated with it.”

Those priorities have to do with Amtrak not wanting commuter trains to interfere with its Vermonter and Northeast Corridor service.

Last month, state DOT Commissioner Joseph F. Marie handed a letter to Amtrak President Joseph Boardman from Rell and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick asking for support. An environmental assessment has been under way for months and the state’s consultants presented a plan for two levels of service back in December, but Black said “we haven’t been given a detailed proposal.”

If high-speed trains are ever going to bring people to Hartford, Bradley International Airport, New Haven’s Union Station, the Basketball Hall of Fame and points in between, Amtrak needs to be involved in the talks. That’s more important than competing “working groups” set up by the Republican governor’s office and the General Assembly’s Democratic leadership.

Workers on Frontage roads, highways

Ed Stannard, Register Metro Editor

NEW HAVEN — Drivers will have a few opportunities to run into road work this coming week.

First, South Frontage Road will be closed between Park and York streets from 10 p.m. Monday until 6 a.m. Tuesday. A detour will be posted. Then, from Tuesday night to Saturday night, the road will be closed intermittently, for 15 minutes at most, between York and College streets. At other times from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., there will be one lane open to traffic.

North Frontage Road also will be closed intermittently, during the same hours, between College and York street from Monday to Saturday.

Detours will be set up to get around the area. Contractors will be working on overhead road signs.

Next Saturday, state Department of Transportation workers will be performing bridge inspections on Interstate 95 southbound between Exits 50 and 45 and on I-91 northbound between I-95 and Exit 2. The left lane in those sections will be closed from 6 to 11 a.m. Saturday.

State offers bonus to unclog I-91 bottleneck

By Ed Stannard, Register Metro Editor

Originally published March 21, 2009

NEW HAVEN — The drivers waiting in line to slip through the bottleneck from Interstate 91 to Interstate 95 may have about 13 months left to their misery.

By April 2010, there should be two lanes instead of one on that southbound stretch, and the contractor, Walsh Construction Co. of Sharon, Mass., has a good reason to get it done on time.

“We made it so important that there’s an incentive, a $2 million incentive” to finish that part of the overall project on time, said Brian Mercure, the state Department of Transportation’s assistant district engineer for the New Haven Harbor crossing improvement project.

“If he wants to get to the bonus, he has to make that date,” Mercure said, referring to the contractor.

Widening the I-91/I-95 southbound merge is one piece of the project that will reconfigure and rebuild the interchange of those highways and Route 34.

The daily traffic jam is the 22nd worst bottleneck in the country, according to the traffic-monitoring company INRIX. The half-mile stretch is congested 63 hours a week, with an average speed during that time of 13.4 mph.

The length of time people are sitting in line actually dropped five hours from 2007 to 2008, INRIX reported, but average speed also dropped, from 16.4 mph.

Mercure said the work won’t further restrict traffic at the merge during rush hours.

To get ready for construction on the merge, the two ramps near the Brewery Street post office are scheduled to close permanently on Monday, Mercure said. One is an off-ramp from Route 34 eastbound onto Brewery Street; the other is an on-ramp from Brewery Street onto southbound Interstate 95.

Drivers going to the post office or Ikea from downtown or leaving the area to head toward New York will have to use the Exit 46 on- and off-ramps on Sargent Drive.

“That whole area becomes a work zone,” Mercure said. “We’re going to need more area to stockpile more material that we can reuse.”

The interchange reconstruction project also includes a new flyover bridge to get from northbound I-95 to Route 34 west, which will soar over the highway. In preparation for that, the bridge over Long Wharf Drive is being widened. In the future, the Exit 46 ramps will be moved farther west, across from Gateway Community College.

The vast harbor-crossing project has resulted in tall cranes, dug-up earth and felled trees all around the harbor, with work going on to construct the foundations for a new Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge on one end and to widen the Howard Avenue bridge over I-95 on the other.

The latest work site is off Hamilton Street near Sports Haven, where piles are being driven into the ground. That job is related to the bridge project.

Ed Stannard can be reached at estannard@nhregister.com or 789-5743.

URL: http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2009/03/21/news/new_haven/a1_--_ramps.prt

Off the Road and onto the Rails

Ed Stannard, Register Metro Editor

The emphasis of the state Department of Transportation has made a definite turn, from roads to rails.

DOT Commissioner Joseph F. Marie, who was director of operations and maintenance for the METRO light-rail system in Phoenix before Gov. M. Jodi Rell appointed him last April, met with the New Haven Register’s editorial board last week and said unequivocally, “I’m a public transit guy.”

While Connecticut’s aging roads and bridges always will suck money out of the state’s budget, in order that we don’t suffer another Mianus River bridge collapse, more money and effort is being directed to railroads, buses and even bicycles under Marie’s tenure. The amount of transportation money devoted to mass transit has risen from 20 percent to 50 percent, he said.

The beginnings of construction on a new Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge has been visible for months, and drivers on Interstate 95 have been dealing with narrow lanes and overnight closures for years. All that is intended to get traffic flowing more freely, reducing our frustration and wasted gasoline.

But there are also plans to make it easier to get around without our cars. Marie said talks are under way with Amtrak to get a rail line between New Haven and Springfield, Mass., going by 2015 at the latest. He said he’s met with marina operators between Old Saybrook and New London to try to increase Shore Line East service. The new Metro-North cars, which will start arriving later this year, will have more bike racks than the old ones do.

At the same time, Marie said plans to widen I-95 from Branford to Rhode Island are not likely to go forward any time soon. “Building more road capacity in this state right now probably doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” he said.

He has challenges. One big one is the new rail-maintenance shop in New Haven, whose costs have risen over $1 billion. Marie said the small space available and the amount of work that needs to be done are a challenge. “I’m nine months into my tenure and I’ve built a few rail yards and I’m still trying to wrap my arms around that one,” he said. “It’s a complicated job.”

The change in emphasis has been noted by the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, usually a critic of the DOTs in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey for putting two much money into highways. The TSTC recently gave Connecticut a pat on the back for how the state allocated federal stimulus money.

Rell’s Connecticut Economic Recovery Working Group “should be applauded for heeding advocates’ calls to emphasize maintenance and repair when funding road and bridge projects,” a recent press release said. “Virtually all the road projects put out to bid will be for upgrading structurally deficient and functionally obsolete roads and bridges, repaving and striping existing roadways and improving traffic signals, projects that are cost-effective and create more jobs than road and bridge expansion projects.

“Prioritizing these projects recognizes the need to upgrade Connecticut’s existing road and bridge infrastructure, which ranks fifth- and 10th-worst, respectively, in the country.

“The working group also fully allocated its transit and transportation enhancement (which generally funds bicycle and pedestrian projects) funding from the stimulus package, dedicating dollars to needed bus procurement, New Haven Line station improvements and various streetscaping, bike trail and transit access projects.”

The TSTC said it’s “too early to tell” if this is “a fundamental shift in the way ConnDOT does business” and said the answers will be clearer later this year, when a new Statewide Transportation Improvement Program draft will be released. Transit advocates will be watching closely.

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