Malloy, Foley promise transportation funds
NORTH HAVEN -- New York-bound Metro-North trains will soon depart from New Haven every half hour, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said Monday at a forum on Connecticut's transportation problems.
Malloy and challenger Tom Foley spoke before hundreds of transportation advocates and professionals during a forum staged to avoid a head-to-head debate between the two top gubernatorial candidates. The candidates appeared separately, standing at a podium before about 200 people in the Best Western Plus Hotel here, in their first joint appearance since a debate in Norwich on Aug. 27. "Listen, we cannot be competitive with the rest of New England and with New York and New Jersey if we don't make substantial improvements in our transportation infrastructure on all parts," Malloy said during a 47-minute speech and question-and-answer session. "Quite frankly, I'm more than happy to let the last 3½ years speak for itself." Foley said the state has underinvested in its transportation infrastructure and the result has been massive traffic jams. "I, because of my business experience, know the difference between spending and investing," Foley said during a 26-minute speech-and-question session. "We simply have to do better and do more." CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Lawyer questions city financing od Depot Square plan
BRISTOL — A confidential memorandum by a city-hired outside lawyer raises questions about the legality of a proposal for the city to help finance the initial phase of the Depot Square project.
The June 12 memo by Judith Blank, an attorney with the Hartford firm Day Pitney, said it didn’t have enough information to determine whether the proposal for the city to invest $6 million in the construction of a market-rate apartment building downtown is legal. Blank’s memo urged city leaders to consider whether the public benefit from the project outweighs the private gain for Renaissance Downtowns, the developer. It also appears to lend support to those who want to let the public vote on the plan before the city moves ahead. Blank wrote that a referendum is required under the most likely financing option. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Foley slams Malloy progressive agenda on mass transit
NORTH HAVEN >> Republican Tom Foley accused Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of driving people out of their cars and onto mass transit as part of a “progressive agenda” that he does not support. “I think a lot of people in Connecticut need their cars to get around and for some people mass transit doesn’t work for them, and they need to be able to make that choice for themselves. I don’t think the government should be telling them what to do,” Foley said to reporters after a transportation forum Monday. Malloy, when asked to respond to the assertion, seemed incredulous. “What world is he in? Does he understand how many people use buses? Does he know what a bus is? Has he ever used a bus? Does he use the railroad?” Malloy asked. “Can you imagine Connecticut without the New Haven (rail) line?” The governor said he has spent more on transportation since the special fund was established, adjusted for inflation, than his three predecessors. Malloy said it isn’t a matter of spending money on transit or roads and bridges. “The balance has been more (spending) in both areas to make up for the deficit of spending over a long period of time.” The governor said he expects to announce shortly that trains will run every half hour out of New Haven. He also addressed the issue of buses. Malloy said Travelers Insurance employees in Hartford work for among the “most bused companies in the country, and it is a high-end company. I think he (Foley) has this idea all transit is for people other than his class and therefore it is not important and he is therefore totally missing the point.” The two men, who are in a repeat contest for the governor’s office, followed each other in talking to the packed breakfast meeting organized by the Connecticut Construction Industry Association, in conjunction with chambers of commerce, environmental advocates, planning agencies and city groups. Both candidates want to reduce congestion on Connecticut’s roads, with both looking to maximize federal dollars, something Malloy said he is already doing with five competitive TIGER grants coming to the state during his administration, while he allocated $25 million to communities for bridges and $120 million more in direct bonding. He said this year alone the state is closing in on $1.2 billion in transportation projects under way. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Structurally deficient bridges in CT
The Federal Department of Transportation has identified 413 of the more than 4,200 bridges managed by the state as “structurally deficient” — meaning inspectors found that at least one of the major components, including the deck, superstructure, substructure and culverts, was rated as being in “poor” or worse condition. Many other bridges that were built to older standards in areas such as deck geometry or vertical clearance were rated “functionally obsolete” — but they are not necessarily in poor condition. For example, historic bridges over roads such as the Merritt Parkway, while structurally sound, earned the functionally obsolete classification because of low clearances.
Department of Transportation spokesman Kevin Nursick emphasized that a “structurally deficient” rating does not mean a bridge is unsafe. The classification informs future work orders for the bridges, he said, and insisted that inspectors examine each bridge for safety flaws that would necessitate a closing. “All the bridges that we are responsible for are safe, and that is verifiable by any engineer worth their salt,” Nursick said. “All of the components of a bridge are thoroughly inspected, reviewed, and verified after the inspection process is done to make sure that there are no imminent or critical safety items that would put the public in harm’s way.” Bridges are also assigned a 0-100 “sufficiency rating” that evaluates bridges according to a complex formula that takes into account structural adequacy and safety, serviceability and functional obsolescence, and "essentiality for public use," according to the FHWA handbook for bridge ratings. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Malloy and Foley drive home their differences on transit
NORTH HAVEN — Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and Republican Tom Foley agree on one point: Traffic in Connecticut is bad. But at a transportation forum Monday morning, the two rivals offered starkly different visions on how to alleviate the congestion. Foley, a businessman from Greenwich, said the Malloy administration has placed too much emphasis on mass transit and has not done enough to expand capacity on the state's roads. "I understand there's ... important balances between mass transit and roads and bridges," Foley said. "But ... any purposeful strategy to push people out of their cars and onto mass transit, I really don't think is going to work."
Malloy said Foley's remarks show a deep disconnect between Foley's world view and the everyday lives of many Connecticut residents. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Reviving Rentschler Field grasslands debate a difficult path
EAST HARTFORD — A bird enthusiast is furious over plans to build an $85 million outlet center at Rentschler Field, an important nesting site for several rare grassland birds, and is trying to revive arguments to preserve the land. The outlet development could deal a catastrophic blow to the upland sandpiper, grasshopper sparrow, bobolink and other grassland species, some of them endangered in Connecticut, said Ronald Corcoran, 83, of Hartford. The birds use the fields to breed every spring, he said. Corcoran wants to stop the project or at least stall it long enough for an alternative nesting site to be found. He's contacted the Sierra Club, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, his state representative and state senator trying to gather support. "If we fight hard enough, maybe we can bide some time," Corcoran said. "The problem is nobody is offering much support."
Debate over preserving the grasslands at Rentschler started more than a decade ago as the University of Connecticut football stadium was built. Plans for an outlet center, announced earlier this year, have revived concerns among some birding enthusiasts. But the fight against development at Rentschler is long over, according to members of the Connecticut Audubon Society and Audubon Connecticut. Plans for development at Rentschler Field and strategies to lessen any impact on grassland birds were approved when the Cabela's outdoor equipment store was built in 2007. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Foley, Malloy vow to spend more on transportation but offer no plans to pay for it
North Haven – While Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and Greenwich businessman Tom Foley both vowed Monday to spend heavily on transportation, neither gubernatorial contender outlined any plans to pay for these investments. Also at Monday’s forum, Foley said he would consider shutting down CT fastrak commonly known as the New Britain-to-Hartford busway, if the project’s annual operating drain on the state budget is too high. “This stuff is a passion to me,” Malloy told more than 200 transportation advocates gathered at the Best Western Plus in North Haven. Malloy, who conceded Connecticut must expand its transportation spending, nonetheless insisted he has outspent every administration dating back to Gov. William A. O’Neill's in the early 1980s.
“This administration is committed to build out the infrastructure of this state,” Malloy said.
“I know the difference between spending and investing,” Foley said, adding that while his plan is to hold overall state spending flat for the next two fiscal years, “there are areas where we need to invest more.” CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
TIGER Grant to transform Waterbury
WATERBURY -- The $14.4 million federal downtown development project will transform the city, creating both jobs and a vision for the future. That is what the politicians who helped the city "beat the odds" to secure this competitive transportation grant promised Monday at a celebration in Library Park. Assistant U.S. Transportation Policy Secretary Peter Rogoff said it was easier to get into Yale University than land one of these so-called TIGER grants. "But most importantly, (it is) going to create jobs right now when we need them most in a community that is still desperately in need of jobs," Rogoff told the crowd. The grant, which is part of the Federal Recovery Act, will fund the downtown portion of the Naugatuck River Greenway and other projects aimed at sparking economic development through improved transportation and access to the river. The city will use the money to redevelop 60 acres and create connections between downtown, the train station and the Naugatuck River, including the reconstruction of Freight Street, extending Jackson Street, a foot bridge over Meadow Street and train station improvements. In May, the city applied for a $19 million TIGER grant, which stands for Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery, to fund the project. Waterbury was one of 797 communities to apply for a TIGER grant this year. The federal government handed out $600 million this year in TIGER funding, including one for the Waterbury project and one for a new rail project in eastern Connecticut The members of the area's congressional delegation took turns congratulating each other, Gov. Dannel Malloy, and Mayor Neil M. O'Leary for landing the grant. "It really is a game-changer for this city," O'Leary said. "I realize it could be the single most important, and most transformational, moment I will have here as mayor." O'Leary said he had been warned that most cities do not land one of these grants on the first try, or even if they do, are lucky to even land half the funding they seek. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Construction continues at Seymour Fish Ladder
SEYMOUR -- At first glance, the rocky channel at the base of the Tingue Dam and Route 8 in Seymour might look like a branch of any other river. Passersby might wonder why construction crews have spent more than a year on the project taking shape there. Once complete, though, the Paul Pawlak Sr. Fish Bypass and Park at Tingue Dam will provide a variety of fish access to 26 additional miles of the Naugatuck River for them to swim upstream and spawn. "There's a method to our madness even though it looks so simple," said Steve Gephard, supervising fisheries biologist for the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection's Inland Fisheries Division. There are more than 60 fish bypasses statewide, but none are quite like the one being built in Seymour, Gephard said. Aside from a multimillion-dollar budget, the fish bypass was carefully researched and designed to be as natural as possible. Gephard said that James MacBroom, the lead engineer from Cheshire-based Milone & MacBroom, visited Vermont to study stream structure and riffle-pool relationships to incorporate into the project's design. The alternating patches of shallow and deep water naturally occur in the wild and help fish swim upstream. "This is totally artificial so it makes sense for us to mimic the conditions of the natural stream," Gephard said. "It's based on actual stream conditions." The bypass will help American shad, blueback herring, alewives and other fish species swim up from Long Island Sound to spawn. The $5.2 million project will allow these anadromous fish -- those born in fresh water, spend most of their life at sea and return to fresh water to spawn -- complete their lifecycle. It will be combined with a park for visitors to view the channel and access the river. "We expect it to be a destination," Gephard said. "We know that we're leaving this area a lot better than we found it." Gephard said it could take between four and seven years to see fish bypass's impact on the fish population. "It's after that that we expect we're going to see some changes because those fish that benefited from the new habitat will now themselves start coming back to the river," Gephard explained. "Our goal isn't to build fishways. It's to restore the fish population." Work started on the bypass last May. It was originally supposed to be completed this spring, but due to a few hiccups, the deadline has been now pushed back to Oct.15.