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Old Habits Die Hard
State's traffic-congestion problems expected to significantly worsen over the next decade
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Business New Haven
2/3/2003
By: Melissa Nicefaro
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You're never alone on Connecticut's highways, especially in Fairfield County on a Friday afternoon in the dead of summer. Drivers passing through Connecticut on Interstate 95 sit in traffic for hour upon hour, traveling only 30 or so miles. The visions the out-of-towners conjure up of what lies ahead run the gamut. Typically there is no serious accident up ahead holding up traffic. Welcome to Connecticut.
Many commuters take the train from New Haven area towns to Stamford every weekday. But unless you work in the vicinity of the Stamford train station or your employer has a shuttle service to pick you up at the train station, the train is not necessarily a quick and easy way to get to work.
The problem, according to a South West Regional Planning Agency (SWRPA) survey concluded in September about traffic congestion in southwestern Connecticut, is not necessarily a lack of travel alternatives, but poor connectivity between and among some of the travel alternatives that do exist.
Explains Melissa Leigh, special projects manager for the SWRPA, "You can take a train from Point A to Point B, but there isn't a bus connection that will get you that last mile to work."
She says her group's survey - known as the "Congestion System Mitigation Plan: Vision 2020" - examines connectivity issues as well as personal preferences of people who live and/or work in southwestern Connecticut. The study uses that information as a way to develop a menu of alternatives that could be put into place by either public or private sector entities. "We're essentially trying to reverse some of the auto-dependent culture that we have in the area," she says.
The congestion study is part of a larger SWRPA study that was expected to have been concluded by the end of January.
According to the study, 91.5 percent of respondents drive to work every day. Asked why, 32.4 percent said there was no other option available, 29.9 percent preferred the convenience of driving and 9.1 percent said a personal car was simply easier to use.
"What we're doing at this point is reviewing the last bits of travel demand, modal and other transportation data that will give us a sense of, if we implement this menu of improvements over a 20-year period, what kinds of improvements can we expect?" Leigh says. "How much can we expect ridership to increase on buses or trains? How much might the number of miles traveled per year on area highways decrease, what kinds of air quality benefits might there be?"
SWRPA officials believe that traffic congestion has a significant negative influence on Connecticut's economy, air quality and quality of life. They also emphasize that congestion along the state's coastal corridor threatens future economic growth and puts Connecticut in danger of becoming an economic cul-de-sac in the global economy.
So why isn't it getting easier to get around the state?
SWRPA says this study differs from previous efforts and takes a new approach to plan development. "The plan will provide for a bold 'vision' for transportation in the corridor by viewing commuters and shippers as 'customers,'" according to the SWRPA. "Relating to commuters and shippers as customers will be a key in developing a transportation system that responds to the needs of the people it is intended to serve. Efficient movement of people and goods without unnecessary impacts on the natural and built environment will be a key element of the study effort."
Employers admit frustrations with delays and employees getting to work on time. Many businesses across the state offer employees the opportunity to work extra hours Monday through Thursday to make up for "summer hours," or a compacted workday on Friday.
"We've had businesses [that] have been concerned about the freight-movement aspects" of highway congestion, Leigh says, involving considerations such as "if they have to have deliverables at their plant by a certain time to meet their manufacturing deadline, and manufacturers have to get parts out of their facility and onto the road at a certain time to get to the next step.
Leigh says that Pitney Bowes, for example, offers a menu of programs for its employees that consider flexible options to alleviate or at least minimize the stress employees are having with the difficult commutes.
"Since they have their manufacturing unit here in Stratford, they are interested in the freight movement side of things," she notes. Pitney Bowes CEO Michael Critelli serves on the state's Transportation Strategy Board, the group that recently drafted a report calling for $5.5 billion in improvements to the state's economy and transportation system (see accompanying story).
By 2020, the number of daily motor vehicles on I-95 in Norwalk, now estimated at 125,000, is projected to climb to 170,000. On the Merritt Parkway, they're expected to jump from 70,000 to 90,000.
The highways themselves certainly aren't growing to meet increasing demands.
Louis Schulman, administrator of the Norwalk Transit District, says he works with companies coming into the community and companies already in the community to consider alternate methods of getting employees to work.
Norwalk Transit offers several services. People using the fixed route service are typically blue-collar workers going to work, explains Schulman.
"Part of what we're doing is working with adjoining transit systems. We have a service that operates basically along the Post Road from Norwalk to Milford." The service is provided by the Norwalk, Greater Bridgeport and Milford Transit Districts. "We also have a similar service between Norwalk and Danbury to the north. We provide half the service and Danbury provides the other half. That's a fixed route," Schulman says.
Norwalk Transit also offers commuter connection shuttles that meet trains coming into the railroad stations and take employees to their job sites in Norwalk and Greenwich. Those tend to attract a somewhat more upscale workforce, Schulman says.
"The third type of service that we offer is in Westport. We take people from their homes, or somewhere near their homes, to the railroad station," he explains. "We have a six-route system. Five go out into the community and pick people up. The sixth is centered on a remote parking lot in downtown Westport. People park and take the bus to the Saugatuck railroad station." Those riders are typically taking the train to New York, Stamford or Greenwich.
Schulman and other transit directors are on track to provide at least part of that missing connectivity link.
"We are having public and private sectors work together to move things along," Leigh says.
A prime example of a step in the right direction is a new train station complex that is ready to break ground in Fairfield. The complex is a public and private partnership with financing provided by both the state's Department of Transportation (DOT) and the town of Fairfield.
"It really shows a change in how land-use factors into the solution," Leigh says. Additional tracks that may need to be laid for the station, parking and other amenities that will help the rail station work are being funded publicly. The private sector is co-developing an office development and other commercial facilities right there.
"The private sector is essentially helping create a critical mass for people who would be interested in using that station as either an origin or a destination. That in turn helps the survival of a transit station because you are building an amenity that people are actually going to use rather than building something and hoping there's a reason for people to come," Leigh says.
"Another place we've talked about businesses coming to the table is a number of different commuter programs to encourage employees to use the train and to use the regional bus service instead of sitting on I-95 in their car," she adds.
Companies like Pitney Bowes, Perdue Pharma and UBS Warburg in Stamford have been active proponents of these programs, according to Leigh.
"They have large percentages of employees who are using transit," Leigh says. "Close to 45 percent of Perdue Pharma employees use transit to get to work each day instead of using their cars. Part of that was they relocated to Stamford from Norwalk a few years ago. A lot of the employees lived in Norwalk and they really bent over backward to be flexible and relieve the added stress that employees might feel by extending their commute by ten miles in the morning."
Leigh concludes: "One of the places where the private sector could get involved is to be interested in being flexible in creating those in-house programs that lead employees to feel that they can explore these options, even if it means coming in a half-hour early or leaving a half-hour earlier. Or in the case of people who have freight deliveries, getting a scheduling for those kinds of deliveries so something doesn't have to be there at nine in the morning or try to get trucks to use highways at times during the day when the highway isn't overcrowded."
A Bridge Too Far Gone
Span's unplanned demise highlights lack of resources for infrastructure improvements
The city of New Haven is digging deep in its pockets, sorting through the lint and looking for roughly $9 million to replace the Ferry Street Bridge. The city-owned bridge was shut down in late November and city officials are anticipating traffic nightmares once the state-owned Pearl Harbor Memorial ('Q') Bridge also closes for replacement.
One alternate New Haven river crossing is the Tomlinson Bridge, but according to City Planner Karyn Gilvarg, travel across that span does slow with the heavy traffic diverted to it. It likewise slows traffic when it opens to allow maritime traffic to proceed, as it has about 1,000 times over the last three months for roughly nine minutes each occurrence.
"Let's say it's summer and people are heading to the Cape on a Friday afternoon," explains Gilvarg. "People are going to look for alternative routes. The local traffic people are going to miss the Ferry Street Bridge. Before the load restriction was placed on it, it was carrying 12,000 vehicles on an average day."
Many residents are curious about why the Ferry Street Bridge was closed at the same time as the Q Bridge, but city officials blame a more-rapid-than-anticipated deterioration of the span. The state is responsible for inspecting bridges statewide, whether they connect state or local roadways. As Gilvarg says, the cost of doing more structural replacement was prohibitively high - around $5 million, too much for a temporary fix.
The bulk of the city's transportation funding comes from the so-called T-21, a six-year federal transportation bill. Federal officials allocate the money to the state based on a series of matching formulas, then the state dollops it out to various programs.
There are two ways the city can have the project funded with largely non-city money: One is for the state to take it out of its own allocation and use it in New Haven.
"They could decide that it qualifies for the local bridge program, a matching program with federal, state and local money," Gilvarg says. "The bulk of it would come from the state fed money. They'd say the bridge is eligible for that money and then we could access that funding."
The second (unlikely) possibility: The state gets between $400 million and $500 million from the federal government for transportation each year. A certain amount of that money is allocated to the 11 metropolitan planning organizations (New Haven is part of the South Central Council of Governments (COG) MPO). The MPO has a 20-year transportation plan and within that, a three-year transportation plan.
"Our state DOT gives us [COG] a chunk of cash every year that has been about $5 million every year out of that $500 million," explains Gilvarg. "The COG decides how to allocate that. Obviously, for a $10 million bridge, if we only get $5 million a year, nobody else can do any projects in the region. So it's much more preferable, from the city and the region's perspective, for it to come out of the statewide pot, but that's not happening right now.
"What we're working on right now is getting a little bit from here and a little bit from there," Gilvarg explains.
The city has said it will foot $3 million of the $9 million bill and is scuffling to find the other $6 million soon.
That's a lot of bake sales.
At press time, COG had yet to approve a proposed transportation plan. A vote was to have taken place on January 29.
The DOT was accepting written comment through February 3 for a separate project just west of the Q Bridge Project, at Sargent Drive and Long Wharf Drive. A public hearing was held in mid-January for a DOT proposal to reconstruct I-95 from Canal Dock Road to Howard Avenue in New Haven to provide increased capacity and improved safety and traffic operations. (The Q Bridge project includes rebuilding seven miles of I-95 from Exit 46 in New Haven to Exit 54 in Branford.)
The Sargent Drive area project includes widening I-95 to accommodate four 12-foot-wide lanes, one 12-foot-wide operational lane, and 12-foot-wide left and right shoulders in each direction separated by a six-foot-wide median. A relocated and reconfigured Interchange 46 (on and off ramps for Sargent Drive and Long Wharf Drive) is proposed at Long Wharf Extension, approximately 2,300 feet south of the present location to maximize the distance between adjacent Interchanges 45 and 47.
The proposed project also includes a pedestrian bridge over I-95, replacement of the I-95 bridge over Long Wharf Extension, reconstruction of Long Wharf Drive and partial reconstruction of Sargent Drive. A new signalized intersection is proposed at Long Wharf Extension and Long Wharf Drive, according to DOT officials.
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