CT Construction Digest Friday February 23, 2018

CT DOT pitches ‘astounding,’ cheaper plan to break I-95 gridlock

By: Keith M. Phaneuf
Connecticut could implement a “strategic and incremental” widening of Interstate 95 to relieve congestion along the state’s shoreline without having to take huge swaths of private property by eminent domain, a game-changer for breaking gridlock in Fairfield County, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said Thursday.
But the governor, who cited the results of a new Department of Transportation feasibility study, said the undertaking — which probably would cost more than $4 billion and take at least eight years to widen various sections of the highway  — has no chance of proceeding until legislators stabilize Connecticut’s cash-starved Special Transportation Fund.
“Anyone who has traveled on I-95 during rush hour understands the urgency of addressing our congestion problems,” Malloy said. “It hurts our economy. Every days commuters spend hours in traffic and businesses face unnecessary burdens in getting products to market.”
A few minutes later, the governor put the obstacle that the state’s most congested traffic artery sets before economic growth in blunter terms.
“We’re getting our ass kicked,” Malloy said, “because you can’t get from place A to place B in Connecticut.”
That congestion already has cost the state significant job growth in recent years — particularly in the high-paying financial services sector — as expanding New York City businesses have chosen Westchester County and northern New Jersey over Fairfield County.
Peak morning and evening congestion cause 54 million hours of delays per year, costing businesses $1.2 billion annually.
The governor resisted a suggestion that the project could be used to win support for tolls. Malloy, a former mayor of Stamford, said the new study sets aside previous assumptions that widening I-95 would be financially and politically impossible, due to the need to buy private land for a wider right of way.
“My opinion is that was the news, not the ongoing discussion about how we’re going to replace gas taxes,” Malloy said.
James P. Redeker, the transportation commissioner, said the new finding that significant relief could be achieved by adding one lane largely within the existing right of way was “astounding.”
The DOT can mitigate the lower Fairfield County congestion problem, the new study found, by:
Adding one northbound lane between Exits 19 in Fairfield and Exit 28 in Bridgeport.Adding one southbound lane from Exit 7 in Stamford to the New York state line.
And adding one northbound lane between Exit 9 in Stamford and Exit 19 in Fairfield.
These measures, which would cost $2.3 billion collectively, would shave 22 minutes off the daily commute from the New York border to Bridgeport, and return $5 billion to the economy.
More importantly, Redeker said, they could be accomplished chiefly by relying on property the state already owns or holds a right-of-way over, sparing the enormous cost of taking the property using eminent domain.
While I-95 is a north-south highway running from Maine to Florida, it is an east-west path through Connecticut along coastal communities.
Though congestion is not as severe on I-95 east of Fairfield County, the DOT is recommending road widening in strategic segments between: Branford and Old Saybrook; Old Lyme and East Lyme; and Waterford and New London. It also would redesign the junction of I-95 and Interstate 395 in Waterford.
These projects would cost just under $1.9 billion in total.
Redeker said most of this work would begin after 2022.
But Malloy said the combined pricetag for widening along all of I-95, about $4.2 billion, isn’t far beyond the reach of Connecticut’s existing transportation financing program.
The administration warned Wall Street credit rating agencies, businesses and the legislature in late November that the new state budget short-changes the transportation program. Absent more funding, that program is headed for dramatic contraction over the next five years.
The Special Transportation Fund, which holds about $1.51 billion this fiscal year, represents about 7 percent of the overall budget. It chiefly is used to cover debt payments on transportation-related borrowing and DOT operations.

The administration says the existing transportation program is headed for a series of annual deficits starting with the fiscal year that begins July 1, and would reach insolvency by mid-2020. Growth in gasoline tax receipts has been meager for much of the past decade, in part because of improving vehicle efficiency.
Meanwhile, debt costs on transportation bonds –involving both outstanding debt and anticipated borrowing in the next few years — are not slowing down as Connecticut tries to reverse decades of deferred maintenance and other infrastructure investment.
Debt costs alone are projected to jump 38 percent over the next three years combined — and 73 percent over the next five.
The governor and Redeker announced in early January that more than 400 projects, and about $4.3 billion in capital spending planned for the next five years, are effectively suspended unless the transportation fund is replenished. These projects include some major highway rebuilds including: the elevated section of Interstate 84 in Hartford and the “mixmaster” junction of I-84 and Route 8 in Waterbury.
Most of the spending involved with the proposed widening for I-95 is not part of the $4.3 billion, and would be an added expense.
Last month the governor asked lawmakers to approve phasing a seven-cent increase onto the 25-cents-per-gallon retail gasoline tax over the next four years, and establishing electronic tolling on highways by 2022.
Though some Democratic legislators have applauded the governor’s proposals, most have been silent. Republicans largely have been critical of the plan.

Connecticut DOT strikes back at Reason Foundation’s study, but strikes out

by Marc E. Fitch
The Connecticut Department of Transportation hit back against the Reason Foundation’s annual study of state transportation costs, which showed Connecticut had the highest administrative costs per mile in the country.
In a memo circulated to legislators, the DOT claims “inherent flaws” in Reason’s analysis led to its last-in-the-nation ranking and that, in fact, Connecticut should be ranked 10th in the nation for administrative costs.
But the memo contains a glaring flaw which casts doubt on the DOT’s assertion that Connecticut should be considered one of the most efficient, cost effective states in the nation for administering transportation projects.
Among its criticisms of Reason’s report, is the fact the Reason calculates road miles based on a single lane route, rather than incorporating the number of lanes on a highway. For instance: one mile of a standard neighborhood street is counted the same as one mile of a four lane highway.
The DOT says that when Connecticut’s administrative costs are calculated based on the number of lanes, it moves from 50th in the nation to 10th.
Baruch Feigenbaum, one of the authors of the Reason study, disagrees with the DOT’s findings and says all the data Reason used was self-reported by the states to the Federal Highway Administration.
Feigenbaum says single lane miles are the standard calculation used by the FHWA and adjusting for the number of lanes would do very little to change Connecticut’s ranking.
“It might make Connecticut go from 50th to 49th,” Feigenbaum said. “But I don’t know how they’re claiming they went from 50th to 10th.”
The answer to Feigenbaum’s question may lie in the fact that the DOT only adjusted the mileage calculation methodology for Connecticut and not for any other states, automatically driving up its ranking.
“It appears to me that CTDOT is trying to make itself look more efficient than it is in order to justify increasing funds,” Feigenbaum said. “It is very possible that CTDOT needs additional funds, but the fact that the agency is trying to spin the data is not encouraging.”
The DOT has become the center of a heated political debate since Gov. Dannel Malloy suspended $4 billion in infrastructure projects and proposed increasing the gasoline tax and installing electronic tolls on Connecticut’s highways.
The tolls and gasoline tax would bring an additional $1 billion to the Special Transportation Fund when fully implemented, but the proposal has left the legislature divided and the public bitter.
Reason Foundation’s annual study on state transportation costs was released on the heels of Malloy’s taxes and tolls proposal and generated interest by lawmakers and the public.
Reason’s study found that Connecticut was spending more than $99,000 per mile of road on administrative costs — the highest in the nation.
The DOT’s response to that study was sent out to lawmakers earlier this week and included the DOT’s own calculations, which differ from Reason’s, and used different data than what it reported to the FHWA.
“We don’t cherry pick data or do hidden analysis,” Feigenbaum said. “All of the data is self-reported by the states. FHWA has detailed instructions for how the data is reported. It is not up to the states’ interpretation. So either the state has been correctly reporting data and it ranks 50th in Administrative costs or it has been incorrectly reporting data and it ranks higher.”
In its memo, the DOT excluded fringe benefit costs for employees and a number of other expenditures, claiming these costs are actually expenses for other agencies. Excluding the fringe benefits and other expenditures reduced its administrative costs from $340 million to less than $40 million.
The DOT also said Connecticut is unique in that it owns the rail line between New Haven and New York “with full budget responsibility for the investments in the rail infrastructure, unlike any other state in the country.”
Feigenbaum says that if fringe benefits and rail lines are what the state is using its gasoline tax to pay for, then they will be included in the study’s calculations.
“There are other states that fund rail lines that rank better,” he said. “The fringe benefits are a cost the taxpayers pay, so we’re going to include that.”
The DOT ends the memo by repeating its claim that agency administrative costs should be ranked 10th in the nation, without accounting for the fact they changed the study methodology for only Connecticut.
“With two simple corrections to the data, CTDOT demonstrated that we rank 10th in the nation, and that does not account for other important factors like system complexity, age, multi-modal responsibilities, seasonal impacts on construction and maintenance, regional cost of living and many other factors,” the memo said.
Feigenbaum said the DOT response is typical of what he receives every year. “Every year we get complaints from states that do poorly and praise from states the rank well,” he said, noting that states like Delaware and California have improved their rankings over the years.
“We do note that each state is different, and we don’t expect a state such as Connecticut to rank 1st. However, we do expect it to rank higher than 25th,” Feigenbaum said.

Business Coordination Plan for Walk Bridge replacement

NORWALK — If you’re a SoNo business owner, expect a jingle from the Walk Bridge replacement project team.
“We’ll be calling businesses to start to set up interviews,” said Laura Toole, senior supervising public involvement manager with WSP USA, the program manager engaged by the state Department of Transportation in the bridge replacement project. “We’re going to focusing on those businesses on Washington Street first and then moving through the ‘hot zones.’”
Toole said the calls would begin Thursday. On Wednesday evening, she and DOT Project Manager John Hanifin updated property owners on the bridge replacement — slated to begin in 2019 — and spoke about a forthcoming Business Coordination Plan to help businesses survive the $1 billion, multi-year project.“We’re going to work with the stakeholders, the city and the community to address these items, to come up with actual coordination plans,” Hanifin said. “As we continue to develop the design, these plans will be developed in coordination with those stakeholders. About 20 people attended the presentation at the soon-to-open Walk Bridge Program Welcome Center at 20 Marshal St. near the rail bridge “I’m not going to kid anyone and say there’s no impact,” Toole said. “It’s a big construction project, but we want to minimize the impacts as much as possible.”
With help from the city, Toole said, the project team has put together a database of businesses in the area. She showed a map of the full area of anticipated impacts as well as seven “hot zones” — the west and east approaches to the bridge, Fort Point Street, Osborne Avenue, East Avenue, Retaining Wall 27 and the Water Street Staging Area. “The orange hot zones are where we’re going to concentrate on one-on-one interviews, asking businesses if we can take up a half an hour of time at one point, and we’re going to send a team of people with our discussion guide to ask questions,” Toole said. The coordination plan will include a survey asking business owners, among other things, their peak hours of operation, delivery times, how customers get to them, the size of their workforces, and parking options for customers as well as employees.
Kim Morque, president and principal of Spinnaker Real Estate Partners at 1 North Water St., said many small businesses are located within the “hot zones” where “roadway work and disruption and construction, etc.” will occur. He asked who will draft the mitigation plans and if the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development will have input in those plans.
“That gets very granular,” Morque said. “So I’m just curious, based on your past experience, how does that data on the impacts, the feedback that you’re going to get from the local businesses, how does that get kind of fed into the construction and the logistics plan so that businesses are least impacted?” Toole said WSP USA, after gathering information through the interviews and the survey, will consult with the business owners before making recommendations on how to reduce the impacts of the construction. “It seems to me there will be at least two points of consultation,” Toole said. “One is once we have the data to show the city and DECD, what it’s telling us at a very raw level, and then as it gets refined.”Patsy Brescia, a former councilwoman and Liberty Square property owner, said it remains difficult for property and business owners to gauge the impacts of the bridge replacement given that the project remains in the design phase.“That is how they’re going to be able to answer your questions intelligently and constructively,” Brescia said. “If they don’t know what your plans are, it’s very hard to answer those questions of potential impact. Hanifin said the project remains at 30 percent design and will reach 60 percent by late spring. While replacement of the Walk Bridge won’t start until 2019, preliminary track-and-signal upgrades have begun.
 He declined to comment on a lawsuit filed by Norwalk Harbor Keeper against the bridge replacement as designed thus far. The Norwalk-based conservation group maintains the proposed 240-foot, vertical-lift bridge is too big and costly, and that the state and federal government didn’t adequately consider a smaller, fixed bridge. Tony D’Andrea, a Norwalk Harbor Keeper member, asked how much federal money has been allocated for the project.“It will be released in phases,” Toole said. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE

Study calls for ‘strategic’ widening of I-95

Hartford — Rather than advocating for widening Interstate 95 in both directions from the New York border to the Rhode Island border, the state is calling for "strategic" widening in spots to ease traffic congestion.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and state Department of Transportation Commissioner James P. Redeker announced during a news conference Thursday the results of a study on widening I-95 that found "limited, directional [and] strategic" widening only in bottleneck areas would ease congestion.
Malloy said the proposal would be less expensive than widening the entire length in both directions, easier to develop and could be constructed over a shorter period of time, without the need for the state to acquire additional land, for the most part.
The governor stressed the need to improve I-95, pointing out that traffic congestion on the highway costs $1.2 billion in lost productivity and 54 million hours of delay on a yearly basis. He said it makes Connecticut less attractive to families and businesses, and the state is lagging behind other states that have made investments in transportation infrastructure.
Malloy said improvements for the western I-95 corridor "will significantly reduce congestion and improve the quality of life for commuters and businesses." He said the eastern part of I-95 needs improvements to ease both weekday and weekend traffic in an area in which tourism is a major economic driver.
"This is not just an economic issue, it's a safety issue," he added. "From 2014 to 2016, we saw nearly 3,500 crashes on the eastern portion of I-95, including nearly 1,000 injuries and 23 fatalities."
Redeker said the study, part of the governor's Let's Go CT! ramp-up plan, changes a long-held perception that I-95 needs to be widened in both directions across the state to alleviate traffic.
"After a detailed study of alternatives, we have determined that strategic, directional widening on I-95 between New Haven and New York can significantly reduce congestion and can be built within existing CTDOT right of way," Redeker said in a statement. "Similar strategic, localized investments can also reduce congestion between New Haven and Rhode Island."
"These findings indicate that we can achieve congestion relief through strategic and much less costly investments far sooner than previously thought," he added. "In addition, the return on these investments would far exceed the cost of the projects."
If transportation funding is available, the proposed projects could be started in phases in 2022 and the entire plan could be completed by 2030, Redeker said.
While the proposal is conceptual and doesn't include detailed maps yet, for the eastern portion of I-95 the study proposes strategic widening between Exits 54 and 55 for $81 million and improving Exits 88, 89 and 90 for $70 million.
The study further proposes improving and widening the I-95 and I-395 interchange for $900 million, at an estimated timeline of 2024-29 for construction; and strategically widening I-95 between Exit 70 and 74 for $510 million at an estimated timeline of 2025-29 and between Exits 80 and 82A for $260 million at an estimated timeline of 2023-26. More specific details about those plans were not immediately available.
Another improvement would include work on the I-95/Route 32 interchange, at a cost between $40 million and $60 million, according to the proposal.
Other widening between Exits 54 and 69, a proposed long-term improvement, requires further study, according to DOT's plan.
For the western part of the state, the proposal recommends widening I-95 northbound from Exits 19 to 27A for $399 million, southbound I-95 from the New York border to Exit 7 for $659 million, and northbound I-95 from Exits 9 to 19 for $1.25 billion. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE

Legislators buck Senate co-chairs, keep casino expansion alive

Lobbyists watch the Public Safety Committee resurrect the casino gambling issue.
An 11th-hour uprising by rank-and-file members of a legislative committee Thursday resurrected an issue that two Senate co-chairs seemed to have tabled for 2018: Should the state be opened to competition for a commercial casino in Bridgeport, as proposed by MGM Resorts International in its long war with two tribal competitors, the Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods?
On the final day for approving concepts to be considered in the three-month session that ends May 9, the legislature's Public Safety and Security Committee voted 18-6 to override the Senate co-chairs by adding casino gambling to the panel's agenda and then approving the subject for further debate and a public hearing.
The concept approved by the committee, which has jurisdiction over gambling legislation, was broadly written, allowing the legislature to consider opening Connecticut to commercial casinos beyond the one the state has authorized the tribal casino owners to jointly develop in East Windsor to undercut an MGM casino under construction in Springfield.
It is unlikely to lead to passage of legislation this year creating an open competition for MGM and other commercial casino operators to seek licenses allowing them to do business in Connecticut, where the casino industry is limited to two federally recognized tribes granted exclusive casino rights 25 years ago in return for sharing the profits with the state.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, a Democrat in his final year in office, has consistently opposed any gaming proposal that would endanger the profit-sharing deal in which the Mashantucket Pequots and Mohegans pay Connecticut 25 percent of gross revenue from slots at their two casinos, Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods. He said Thursday he saw little chance of a new casino bill reaching his desk.
The profit-sharing deal produced more than $260 million for the state last year and $7 billion since its inception.
The two Senate co-chairs, Sen. Tim Larson, D-East Hartford, and Sen. Tony Guglielmo, R-Stafford, had refused to place on the agenda casino expansion bills that were favored by the House co-chair, Rep. Joe Verrengia, D-West Hartford. Under power-sharing rules in place since the GOP won half the seats in the Senate in 2016, two of the three co-chairs must consent to placing a bill before the full committee.
Larson's district includes East Windsor, where the tribes hope to jointly develop a casino on a hillside overlooking I-91, about half way between Hartford and Springfield. Guglielmo's district covers a dozen communities in eastern Connecticut, not far from the two tribal casinos.
East Windsor has approved the project, but it is currently blocked by the refusal of the Department of the Interior to act on proposed amendments to Connecticut's gaming deals with the tribes. The state law permitting the East Windsor project required Interior Department approval to ensure the revenue sharing in the existing agreements would continue.
Rep. Jeffrey Berger, D-Waterbury, moved to open the agenda, saying the legislature deserved an opportunity for a far-ranging debate on the future of casino gambling in Connecticut. The agenda already included a measure that would allow a debate on sports betting should the U.S. Supreme Court invalidate a federal law that now limits sports wagering to Nevada.
MGM says a Bridgeport casino, close to the New York market, could produce as much revenue for the state as the two tribal casinos. MGM has signed a development deal with the owner of a site on the city's waterfront, but some legislators question whether MGM is sincere or trying to ensure that the legislature will not amend the 2017 law and drop the requirement for approval by the Interior Department.
"I just don't trust them," Larson said.
Sen. Steve Cassano, D-Manchester, said there was no time for the legislature to adequately study casino expansion, since the committee's deadline for sending bills to the floor of the House or Senate was just three weeks away.
"Let's do it in the long session, when we have the time," he said.
Verrengia said there is sufficient time to continue a discussion that opened two years ago, when the tribes first broached the idea of developing a casino off tribal lands to blunt the loss of market share to MGM, which spent $3.8 million lobbying in Connecticut last year, more than three times any other interest group. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE