Candidates Differ on Transportation Solutions

Two of the major projects affecting the shoreline are the proposed $1.6 billion expansion and improvements of Interstate 95 from Branford to North Stonington and the proposed $410 million completion of Route 11 from Salem to Waterford and fixing the interchange of I-95, I-395, and Route 1 in Waterford.

Liz Dupont-Diehl, Communications Director for Ned Lamont for Senate, said she asked Lamont on his views regarding these transportation projects.

“His priorities on transportation are highway expansion is self-defeating, in practically every instance, the highways just fill up again within a few short years,” Dupont-Diehl said.

Lamont believes rather than funding road projects, there should be more investment of public transportation.

“We need to massively increase our investment in mass transit capital spending (busses and trains) instead of spending another $1.5 billion – or more – on highway expansions that won’t fix anything,” Dupont-Diehl said of Lamont’s stance on the issue.

Lamont believes a comprehensive “smart growth” strategy is a better way to achieve the long-term solution of resolving traffic problems and more environmentally sensitive.

U.S. House Representative Rob Simmons, R-2nd District, a member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, is an advocate for completing Route 11 claiming it will protect the environmental from impending sprawl.

Route 11 is a four-lane highway starting in Colchester and terminates in Salem at Route 82, forcing traffic to use this road and Route 85 to connect with I-95.

“We’re going to make Route 11 the green highway of America with a greenway securing open space, endangered habitat over and above mitigation,” Simmons said.

Lieberman said a transportation bill, he and U.S. Senator Chris Dodd, D-CT supported in June, provides funds for Connecticut including $14,400,000 for Route 11 and for a bike and pedestrian path along the highway’s proposed greenway between Salem and Waterford.

Simmons believes air pollution and wasting fuel from idling on a congested highway would both increase if I-95 is not expanded.

“A few years ago, the state did a study which indicated unless we add an additional lane to I-95 especially from Branford to the Rhode Island border, with upgrades necessary, it will be a parking lot in 2008 and beyond,” Simmons said.

Simmons believes both road projects are public safety issues but supports public transportation as well.

“Even though I’m a big supporter of rail transportation and have been an advocate for 15 years, something has to give with I-95, you simply cannot have a four-lane bridge at the Connecticut River and go to two lanes without a backup and that’s what’s happening all the time,” Simmons said.

Lieberman said the transportation bill includes $7,500,000 for widening I-95 between Branford and North Stonington allowing him to secure “$50 million to address congestion mitigation, safety, and capacity improvements along I-95.”

The bill allocates money for public transportation projects including high speed ferry terminals, intermodal transportation facilities, a rail terminal and rail underpasses, as well as bus facilities.

Lieberman’s website claims the bill increases Connecticut’s share of funding for transportation projects by 19 percent each year for the next five years.

According to Lamont’s website, “rather than the pork-ridden omnibus transportation bill, which features more than 6,000 earmarks for favored congressmen, I would work for a transportation strategy which interconnects cities and suburbs, inner cities and jobs and affordable housing, and ports and airports.”

In a July 6 debate with Lieberman, Lamont said, “Alaska gets 10 times gets what we doâÂ?¦the (transportation) bill also includes the infamous bridge to nowhere.”

Lamont was referring to the $200 million earmarked by Alaska’s U.S. House Representative Don Young, chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, to build a bridge estimated to cost $1.5 billion, to connect Anchorage to an island with only a handful of homes.

Young also designated $223 million to build a bridge from Ketchikan with a population of 8,900 to the Gravina Island with a population of 50.