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Can t Get There from Here
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Business New Haven
9/30/2002
By: BNH
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As much as beleaguered motorists have learned to take it for granted, Connecticut s overburdened highway system affects businesses and individuals alike.
Traffic congestion has a significant negative influence on Connecticut s economy, air quality and quality of life. Congestion, especially along the state s coastal corridor and in particular I-95 between Greenwich and the suburban communities east of New Haven, threatens future economic growth and places Connecticut in danger of becoming an economic cul-de-sac in the global economy.
A group of transportation planners on September 26 reported that selective widening of the southern Connecticut s highways could help to mitigate the region s traffic congestion, as well as efforts aimed at making rail, bus and even pedestrian options more attractive.
A $500,000 federal study managed by South Western Regional Planning Agency SWRPA, Congestion Mitigation System Plan: Vision 2020, aims to mitigate southwestern Connecticut s expected level of traffic by 2020. The study encompasses both the I-95 corridor from Greenwich to Branford as well as the Merritt Parkway and much of the Route 7, Route 8 and Route 34 corridors.
Why bother throwing a half-million dollars at a problem everyone already knows about? Because it s getting worse even faster than most people know. By 2020, the number of daily motor vehicles on I-95 in Norwalk, for example, now estimated at 125,000 daily, is expected to climb to 170,000. On the Merritt Parkway, they d jump from 70,000 to 90,000.
The solutions are not so simple. They may involve a variety of measures, from express buses between key points, to the possible addition of specialized highway lanes. Such lanes could be dedicated to high-occupancy vehicles, which solo motorists could use by paying electronically rather than through barrier tollbooths, or have reversible traffic.
Any such supply side solutions are likely to be breathtakingly expensive, and widening options will of course make the problem worse in the near-term ‹ as the ten-year project to widen New Haven s Pearl Harbor Memorial (a/k/a Q) Bridge makes abundantly clear.
But what about the demand side ? Mass-transit options along the coastal corridor have been around long enough to conclude that ‹ well, that not enough people use them to alleviate the automobile congestion.
There are plenty of reasons why commuters have failed to embrace mass transit ‹ parking, convenience, cost, etc. ‹ but the most powerful and ingrained reason of all may be simple force of habit: Workers accustomed to driving to the workplace need a powerful motivator to change their ways.
People who want to drive to work will drive to work ‹ and it will take more than government bureaucrats telling them not to, to change their ways.
Business owners can play an effective role is helping to reduce road congestion, in any number of positive ways:
¤ Businesses can encourage mass-transit by offering workers schedules compatible with train and bus schedules, or at least permit employees to commute during non-traditional rush hours.
¤ Companies can participate in programs similar to Rideworks Deduct-A-Ride, which enables employees to pay commuting expenses on a pre-tax basis through payroll deduction.
¤ Employers can organize (or assist their workers in organizing) can- and van-pools to and from the workplace.
For businesses, the choice is not really between business-as-usual and doing something vaguely friendly to the environment. It is about making it easier for workers to get to and from work ‹ and, by extension, being able to hire workers for whom commuting might otherwise pose a major obstacle.
In a larger sense, it s about helping to keep Connecticut a state whose transportation infrastructure works ‹ for companies and for individuals ‹ and keeps the state from becoming, in the words of the transportation planners dire warning, an economic cul-de-sac.
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