Rehab on the way Mixmaster slated for $188 million upgrade to extend life 25+ years
BY ANDREW LARSON REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN
WATERBURY – The state will spend $188 million to rehabilitate the interchange of Route 8 and Interstate 84, but the result will be nearly identical to the existing infrastructure.
The upgrade is expected to extend the life span of the aging stacks of ramps and bridges, known colloquially as the Mixmaster, for another 25 to 35 years.
The Mixmaster was built in the 1960s and has been rehabilitated several times, but this will be its most extensive overhaul.
State Department of Transportation spokesman Kevin Nursick likens the upgrade to the 100,000-mile service on a car.
“Rehabilitation projects generally start out like a 30,000 mile tune up, but as the structure ages, the subsequent rehabilitation projects will become more in-depth and complex, and ultimately more expensive, just like a car.”
This is the last time the Mixmaster can be rehabilitated before it needs to be replaced, Nursick said.
In the longer term, the DOT is exploring options for a complete redesign and reconstruction. That project is estimated to cost $8 billion and will be one of the biggest reconstruction projects the DOT has undertaken.
As it stands, the Mixmaster’s infrastructure is so antiquated that the DOT no longer allows oversize loads to travel over it. Trucks hauling heavy loads are diverted onto local roads to bypass the structure.
Once the rehabilitation is finished, oversize loads will be able to use the Mixmaster again.
The project does not include any functional changes to the Mixmaster, such as adding lanes or improving traffic flow on the notoriously cramped on- and off- exit ramps. Those changes won’t come until the Mixmaster is rebuilt.
“It will be safe and sound, but will be functionally identical,” Nursick said.
The work is included in the DOT’s State Transportation Improvement Program report, which lists all projects the agency is scheduled to fund over the next four years.
The DOT has secured funding for the rehabilitation, including $157 million in federal money, which constitutes 84 percent of the total cost. The remaining $31 million will come from the state.
The DOT is completing the final design phase and plans to go out to bid to hire a construction contractor in November. Work is expected to begin in spring 2018, while the I-84 reconstruction project between Washington Street and Pierpont Road is still ongoing.
The Mixmaster rehabilitation involves deck repairs, joint replacement, parapet improvements and steel and substructure repairs to 10 ramps and bridges on Route 8 and I-84.
The contractor will build a temporary bypass with three bridges to carry Route 8 northbound traffic while the highway is under construction.
The bypass will run easterly away from Route 8, crossing the Naugatuck River twice, then run under I-84 and over Freight Street before tying back to the normal route, according to the DOT. It will be three-quarters of a mile in length.
About 90 percent of the Route 8 northbound bridge deck will be replaced, but before that can happen the roadway needs to be shut down. To do that while keeping traffic flowing, the DOT plans to build a temporary bypass.
“It’s a long project, but one thing that drives the schedule is the length of time necessary to construct a temporary bypass before starting the deck replacement on the Route 8 northbound bridge and then removal of the temporary bridge when it’s done,” said Tim Fields, principal engineer for the rehabilitation.
More authorizations needed after Connecticut bill passes for new casino
HARTFORD >> The tribes that run Connecticut’s two casinos have won the long-sought approval of the General Assembly to run a third one, but there are still major tasks ahead as they seek to fend off competition from Springfield, Massachusetts.
Federal and local authorizations are needed before the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes can begin transforming a former movie theater complex in East Windsor into a $300 million satellite casino, which will be 25 minutes away from the $950 million MGM Resorts casino, opening in late 2018. MMCT Venture, the company created by the tribes, also needs to finish designing its new gambling and entertainment center and obtain financing while dealing with the legal challenges expected from MGM and others.“We’ve got a few things in the hopper, a few things we have to focus our efforts on to get to the conditions where we can put shovel in the ground,” said Mohegan Tribal Council Chairman Kevin Brown. “We are positively on a path to do that.”Brown said he hopes construction can begin by the end of this year. Early Wednesday, the final day of the legislative session, the House of Representatives gave final approval to a bill authorizing the 200,000-square-foot casino, which is expected to have 2,000 slot machines and 50 to 150 table games. Under the bill, the state will receive 25 percent of the revenue generated from the slot machines and table games. Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said Thursday he anticipates he will sign the bill. Malloy will then have to sign off on an amended compact between the state and the tribes, something Brown said will clarify the tribes’ existing exclusive rights to casino gambling Connecticut, adding how “it’s changing nothing.” The federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, which has provided technical assistance letters saying the new casino won’t threaten the state’s existing revenue-sharing agreement with the tribes, needs to formally sign off. Brown said he expects that process will take six weeks.
MGM, which lobbied against the bill, has called the whole process unfair. It has a lawsuit pending against the state. Uri Clinton, senior vice president and legal counsel for MGM, said the company will “continue to vigorously advocate in the courts as we seek to protect the constitutional rights of any company hoping to do business in Connecticut.” Any legal challenges from MGM shouldn’t affect the tribes’ construction plans, Brown said. “We promise to move forward and build this facility in East Windsor,” he said.Passage of the casino bill marked the culmination of a two-year push by the tribes to pass legislation allowing the state’s first casino on non-tribal land, an effort they contend will help save jobs at their existing casinos and preserve the $250 million the state receives annually in slot machine revenue. It had appeared questionable in the waning days of the session whether the bill would pass. However, lawmakers secured enough votes in the House by negotiating a separate “sweetener” bill, which, among other things, expands the number of off-track betting parlors and sets the stage for possible sports betting, to deliver more support. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Worries grow over infrastructure plan
Washington — Dozens of public transit projects around the country are in danger of stalling as the White House's plan to boost U.S. infrastructure fails to gain momentum — with thousands of jobs at risk.
The uncertainty over these projects has worsened in recent days as President Donald Trump — who had vowed to make the week's focus infrastructure - faced a series of distractions, including a congressional hearing featuring former FBI director James Comey.
The president, who had called for $1 trillion in new infrastructure programs to create millions of jobs, now faces an increasing probability that not only will his proposal fail in Congress, but also that existing infrastructure efforts will stumble.
The situation has emerged because the Trump administration has signaled it wants to take an approach to infrastructure spending that is different from the previous administration's. Instead of funding many of the existing projects that depend on federal money — a practice that officials say they worry is wasteful — the administration says it wants to move toward a version of financing projects that is based far more on private funding.
The sudden uncertainty has left local officials who had long anticipated federal support for their projects worrying whether they will get it.
In previously unreported letters, officials at the Department of Transportation last week told project managers for a bus corridor in Pittsburgh and rail projects in Phoenix and New York that the administration's budget plan for next year "proposes no funding for new projects" under an existing federal program known as the Capital Investment Grant.
Robert Rubinstein, who received the letter as executive director of the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh, said the proposed cancellation of funding would effectively kill the project, which has been in the works for 10 years. It would have created an electric-bus corridor between Pittsburgh and nearby Oakland, Pennsylvania.
"We don't have enough resources locally to undertake the larger project," Rubinstein said. He said officials had sought roughly $80 million in federal money to go toward the $224 million project. He said the several million dollars already spent on studies and engineering reviews could be lost.
CIG funding allocates $2.3 billion each year to various projects and was recently authorized by lawmakers from both parties. Its projects include public transportation projects such as rail, streetcars, and rapid bus systems. The White House's most recent budget has proposed phasing out CIG funding, and the White House can block any new CIG projects even if there is congressional support.
Andrew Brady, senior director of government affairs at the American Public Transportation Association, said that more than 50 public transit projects are at risk of being denied federal funding because of Trump's planned cuts to infrastructure spending.
"He's saying a lot of good things on infrastructure, but what he's done is implement very real cuts to infrastructure programs," Brady said.
Capitol Hill aides closely tracking infrastructure funding say that uncertainty over the administration's infrastructure plans is particularly threatening to programs that are far along and are dependent on federal funding for completion.
The projects that are most at risk, they said, include some that have moved through the funding pipeline for years but are just short of final approval. Many are in states that Trump won last year, and they include a light-rail platform-lengthening project in Texas, a streetcar line in Arizona, and a bus rapid-transit line in Indiana.
Bryan Luellen, a spokesman for IndyGo, said the agency is concerned about long-term funding stability as it embarks on a major expansion of its system. The agency is expecting the CIG program to cover $75 million of the $96 million project and plans to seek federal funding for two other rapid transit projects in coming years. CLICK TITLE TO CONTNUE
Centerplan: Talks at 'impasse' in Hartford ballpark case
Patricia Daddona
Centerplan Construction says efforts to mediate its $90 million lawsuit against the city of Hartford over its firing from the Dunkin' Donuts Park construction have reached an impasse.
In a letter Thursday to Hartford Superior Court Judge David M. Sheridan, Centerplan informs the court that after one mediation session on June 7, "the parties are at an impasse" and mediator M. Jackson Webber "feels further efforts would be useless."
The Middletown company is now requesting a trial by jury, court papers said.
Centerplan's attorney, Raymond Garcia, of New Haven-based Garcia & Milas, asked Sheridan to set a trial date.
The two sides entered the mediation process in early December, Garcia noted. A second possible session was cancelled when a city attorney fell ill, he wrote.
Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin declined comment and Garcia would not comment further Friday on the situation.
The city fired Centerplan last year from completing construction of the minor league ballpark citing a lack of confidence in the contractor's ability to get the job done. Centerplan subsequently sued the city over its firing.
Since then, under another contractor, Dunkin' Donuts Park was completed and opened this spring for the Hartford Yard Goats' inaugural season in the Capital City.
Stadium construction delays forced the Yard Goats to play their 2016 season entirely on the road.
Trump's infrastructure package to include wage protections
President Trump's infrastructure bill is expected to include wage protections for federal workers - a provision key to winning Democratic support.
Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, speaking during a House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing on Thursday, indicated that the administration's rebuilding package will contain wage requirements mandated by the Davis-Bacon Act.
The nearly century-old law requires employees working on federally funded construction projects to be paid prevailing wages.
"The administration's proposal is to include Davis-Bacon," Chao told lawmakers. "For the infrastructure proposal, I'd like to see it passed, and I understand that without the provision, the minority would not sign on."
During a New York Times interview in April, Trump promised an announcement on Davis-Bacon in "two weeks," but it never came.
Democrats who are worried about efforts to diminish labor laws have promised to push for the requirements to be included in Trump's infrastructure package.
"If [Trump's infrastructure bill] targets unions or leaves Americans worse off, I will fight it every step of the way," Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.), chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said during a builders conference in April. "And if it doesn't include prevailing wages and protect Davis-Bacon, it's a nonstarter - at least for me."
But the GOP hasn't always been enthusiastic about the idea, which they say drives up costs. House Republicans attached language to a water infrastructure bill last year to waive certain Davis-Bacon requirements.
And conservative groups recently laid out an infrastructure wish list that calls for repealing "draconian" labor regulations, which could set up a battle between Republicans and Democrats over the administration's infrastructure effort.
"Heritage Foundation research shows that repealing Davis-Bacon and reinvesting the funds back into infrastructure would add over 160,000 construction jobs to the Economy," the document says.