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.