Monroe construction projects ongoing
MONROE — Various construction projects in town are expected to cause delays through next week, and public works is urging residents to slow down for work zones.
Most of the projects are classified as minimal and two fall under the major classification. All road work is subject to change based on weather and manpower availability.
These projects began during the week of Sept. 10. They are expected to wrap up next Friday — Sept. 21
Curbs and aprons are being repaired on Verna Road from Route 25 to Bart Road. This is being considered a major project. And drainage repair on Bart Road from Melon Patch Lane to Wood Creek Drive is also being considered major work.
Pastors Walk from Guinea Road to Branford Drive; Downs Road from Cottage Street to Pachaug Trail; Mashapaug Trail from Downs Road to Pachaug Trail; Pachaug Trail to the Mashapaug Trail turnaround; and Sunrise Terrace to the Downs Road turnaround will all undergo curb and apron work.
An apron is the edge of the road — typically between the road and a sidewalk.
These five projects are considered minimal.
There will be three additional minimal construction projects throughout town. No specific locations were provided. One project will address roadside mowing and sight line problems, another will repair drainage issues and the last will focus on hot patch work.
And the state Department of Transportation project continues, too.
The scheduled weekend closure of Route 25 from Brook Street to Knollwood Street continues through 6 a.m. Monday.
Local traffic is being detoured onto Pepper Street and Old Newtown Road. Commercial vehicles are being detoured to Route 111 and route 34. Local business access remains open during the weekend closure.
This is the second of three weekend closures planned for the year. The dates for the final weekend have not yet been finalized.
Bond Commission to consider tens of millions for econ. development projects
The state Bond Commission is scheduled to vote next Thursday on tens of millions of dollars for various economic development initiatives, including three Hartford projects that would help bring hundreds of new apartments and a grocery store downtown.
The Sept. 20 meeting will likely be one of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's last Bond Commission meetings before his term runs out in January.
The funding the 10-member commission will consider includes about $52.69 million for the Capital Region Development Authority, the quasi-public state agency responsible for investing in development projects in Hartford and surrounding communities, according to the commission's agenda.
In addition, the state Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD) is requesting $68 million to enhance the Naval Submarine Base in New London, support a brownfield remediation program, invest in the state's manufacturing supply chain and various other business expansion and retention projects, the agenda shows.
Finally, Connecticut Innovations (CI), the state's quasi-public venture capital arm, is requesting $43.5 million to recapitalize its programs and provide continued funding for its subsidiary, CTNext, a entrepreneurship booster, the agenda shows. DECD's funding request includes an additional allocation for CI to develop a proof-of-concept fund that would award up to $100,000 in grants or investments to support commercialization activities in key industries.
CRDA's funding requests include:
- $16 million to help finance construction of a parking garage on the site of the former public health laboratory on Clinton Street in Hartford, near where the Bushnell is planning a multi-million dollar mixed-use development.
- $12 million to provide a loan for 150 to 200 apartments planned as part of theDowntown North redevelopment, adjacent to Dunkin' Donuts Park.
- $8.4 million for Spinnaker Real Estate Partners' planned 108-unit market-rate apartment project at the corner of Park and Main streets.
- $8.67 million to assist with development of a grocery store at Albany Avenue and Main Street, in what has been a long-running effort to bring a grocery store to downtown Hartford.
- $13 million to the U.S. Navy to assist with constructing an emergency management center at the submarine base in New London.
- $10 million to the Brownfield Remediation and Development program, which is a group working to study the remediation and development of brownfields in Connecticut.
- $8.8 million to provide a supplemental grant to Aer Lingus to maintain its Bradley-Dublin route.
- $5 million for a loan to support Gartner Inc. creating 400 new jobs.
- $5 million to support Stamford's Synchrony Branch allowed under a job creation initiative called the First Five Program.
- $5 million to support grants and loans for the Connecticut Manufacturing Innovation Fund.
Rep. Larson Says Hartford Can Learn From Seattle As City Considers Tunnel Plan For I-84 And I-91
A decade ago, when the state of Washington embarked on a bold plan to replace a highway viaduct running along the Seattle waterfront with a tunnel, planners sought to learn from another massive underground project: Boston’s “Big Dig.”“We talked to them because we wanted to get an idea of their lessons learned,” David Sowers, deputy program administrator at the Washington State Department of Transportation, said. “At the time, their project was way over budget, over scoped, and we didn’t want to go through the issues they went through.”
U.S. Rep. John Larson, who has been pushing an ambitious and expensive tunnel system to bury I-84 and I-91 beneath Hartford, says Connecticut can now learn from Seattle as it contemplates what to about the aging I-84 viaduct and the bottleneck at the interchange with I-91
“This is not the time to be shy or to be at the back of the bus,” said Larson, who has been pushing his plan for two tunnels would connect with an underground interchange beneath Hartford. “This is the time to assert ourselves around the sense of urgency, and what I am excited about is that.”
On paper, the Hartford tunnel proposal would appear to be far more complex than Seattle, however, with two tunnels and a buried interchange.
The Seattle tunnel, which will open within a few months, was delayed by three years, taking seven years instead of four to complete. The delay came, in large part, because the behemoth tunnel boring machine broke down early into the project and was under repair for two years.
“The reality is it’s very difficult to administer and deliver, and keeping our project on scope and certainly keeping it on schedule and [in line financially] was challenging,’’Sowers said.
The benefits, Larson says, are several fold: stitch together a city divided by the two interstates for two generations; fully reconnect the city with its riverfront; and fast-track critical repairs to river levees in both Hartford and East Hartford.Skeptics focus on cost estimates that have ranged from $10 billion to $50 billion and on whether tunnels would actually ease congestion that has long had a chokehold on the capital city. The 2-mile Seattle tunnel with an upper and lower deck cost about $3.3 billion.
There are similarities with Seattle: the urgency to replace an aging viaduct and to reconnect with a waterfront — in Seattle’s case, Puget Sound. In Seattle, the waterfront has morphed from a gritty industrial areas to one prime for redevelopment and tourism. In Hartford, planners and city leaders have long dreamed of reconnecting the city to the riverfront and the possibilities that would open up for development and recreation.
And, like Seattle, construction of the tunnels in Hartford could eliminate years of disruption to the city and its major employers. The tunnels would be built before the I-84 viaduct or interchange with I-91 are closed and dismantled.
The approach, Larson says, would be an attractive alternative to plans now being developed by the Connecticut Department of Transportation. Those plans call for lowering the viaduct to a slightly below-grade highway and rerouting the interchange above ground.
More Complex Than Seattle
On Monday, Sowers and others leading the project will share their expertise in a panel discussion in Hartford. The Washington State officials are not visiting to say whether they think the tunnels will or will not work in Hartford. They will outline their successes — and challenges — and advise approaching such a “mega-project” cautiously.
Sowers said Washington State will share what it learned so that “the state of Connecticut and Congressman Larson go into this thing eyes wide open instead of with the idea that everything always works out and we have these fairy tale endings.”
Major corporations in Hartford are watching how any reconstruction would affect the ability of their employees to reach their workplace.
One, Travelers Cos., the insurance giant, employs 7,000 state residents, the majority using highways to commute into Hartford five days a week.
Andy F. Bessette, executive vice president and chief administrative officer at Travelers, said the insurer supports panels like the one Monday to learn more about how such a massive project could affect its workforce and, ultimately, the company.
“Transportation is critical to us, the Aetna, The Hartford, everyone,” Bessette said. “We are here to listen and learn and find out which is the least disruptive to business and has the longest lasting benefits to Hartford.”
Larson, an East Hartford Democrat, said Connecticut should not back down from the challenges of the tunnel project just because of high costs.
“I feel like we’re in a good spot to not just talk about it but get something accomplished,” Larson said. “I just want to make sure we have an oar in the water ready to pull in the right direction when that happens.”
Other states, Larson says, are already lining up. In New York, for example, there are already four different proposals. Los Angeles, Sowers said, is taking a close look at Seattle.
Larson acknowledges that he is not an engineer. But he has talked to officials, including those in Seattle, learning that tunnel boring technology is evolving, allowing increasingly larger projects.
“Let’s say, at the end of the day, there’s a better solution than the one we put out there,” Larson said. “If we’ve accomplished getting us to a solution that reconnects us to our river, protects our levees, no longer divides the city and gives us economic opportunity, mission accomplished.”
He quickly adds, “But I think this is it.”
No Exits To City Streets
In Larson’s plan, I-84 would be buried from Hartford’s Parkville neighborhood, under the Connecticut River to East Hartford near Rentschler Field. I-91 would run underground from Hartford’s Brainard Airport to the city’s North Meadows. Both tunnels would go by the downtown area.
The Connecticut Department of Transportation has included the tunnel plan among six options it is studying to improve the interchange of the two highways. Earlier this month, however, department planners highlighted what they determined were flaws in the plan.
One, they noted was that motorists entering the tunnel would have to follow it to the end. There would be no exits out of the tunnel.
That could cause problems, they said, because studies show that two thirds of the traffic on the two highways are motorists who want get into the city.
At the Sept. 6 meeting of the I-84 Project’s public advisory committee, Nicholas Mandler, an engineer at TransSystems Corp. of Meriden and a department consultant, said travel to Hartford’s neighborhoods wouldn’t be easy with the tunnel system.
“If you have to get to Upper Albany or Frog Hollow or Asylum Hill or West End, any of the neighborhoods represented here today, these tunnels won’t help you,” Mandler said. “You would have to go all the way to the end of the tunnel and backtrack.”
In Seattle, Sowers said, the tunnel has no exits to local streets either.
“We’ve done a lot of traffic modeling,” Sowers said. “The reality is we won’t really know until it opens up, and even then, the traveling public will have a fair amount of a learning curve to get to their downtown office.”
One studied showed that over half of the travelers headed northbound in the tunnel will double back into the city rather than continue north, Sowers said.
In Connecticut, transportation department planners also expressed concern about the diameter of the tunnel and whether there would be enough space for a shoulder to accommodate emergency vehicles.
Sowers said the Seattle tunnel has enough width for two standard-sized lanes on each deck of the tunnel, plus an 8-foot shoulder on one side. That was an improvement from the old viaduct where, for the most part, there were no shoulders, he said.
Larson says that the money for the two-tunnel system wouldn’t come at the expense of other road and bridge projects in the state, but in addition to them.
U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Elaine L. Chao has announced the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will award $586 million in airport infrastructure grants, as part of the total $3.18 billion in Airport Improvement Program (AIP) funding for airports across the United States.
“These airport investments will create jobs in local communities, upgrade reliability, and further improve safety of air travel for the flying public,” said Secretary Chao.
This fifth increment of funding provides 217 grants to 181 airports in 39 states, and will fund 458 infrastructure projects. These include runways, taxiways, aprons, terminals, aircraft rescue and firefighting vehicles, snow removal equipment and two firefighting training facilities.
Under the Secretary's leadership, the Department is delivering AIP investments to strengthen the safety and efficiency of America's airports. U.S. infrastructure, especially its 3,323 airports and 5,000 paved runways, increases the country's competitiveness and improves the traveling public's quality of life. According to the FAA's most recent economic analysis, U.S. civil aviation accounts for $1.6 trillion in total economic activity and supports nearly 11 million jobs.
Airports receive a certain amount of AIP entitlement funding each year based on activity levels and project needs. If their capital project needs exceed their available entitlement funds, the FAA can supplement their entitlements with discretionary funding.
Among the grant awards announced are:
- Northwest Alabama Regional Airport in Muscle Shoals, Ala., $5.6 million – The airport will use funds to repair the final phase of Runway 11/29 to maintain the structural integrity of the pavement and to minimize foreign object debris on the runway. This grant also reconstructs 69 existing airfield guidance sign fixtures.
- Kenai Municipal Airport in Kenai, AK, $10.6 million – This grant funds the upgrade of the terminal building to enhance the movement of passengers, baggage and cargo.
- Van Nuys Airport in Van Nuys, Calif., $20.8 million – The grant funds the second phase and reconstructs 16,000 feet of Taxiway A and B pavements that have reached the end of their useful lives.
- Chicago Midway International Airport in Chicago, Ill., $12.6 million – the airport will use funds to repair multiple taxiway lighting systems and runway lighting system and guard lights. This grant also reconstructs 30,400 square yards of apron pavements.
- Louisville International-Standiford Field Airport in Louisville, Ky., $21.9 million – This grant funds multiple projects to include repairs to runway and taxiway pavements and lighting systems, aprons and concrete shoulders, and airfield guidance sign fixtures.
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in New Orleans, La., $20.3 million – The airport will use funds to expand the existing terminal apron to 54,675 square yards to accommodate increased aircraft operations.
- Shreveport Regional Airport in Shreveport, La., $9.1 million – This grant funds the final construction phase to extend Runway 6/24 by 800 ft. to meet the operational needs of the airport.
- Madras Municipal Airport in Madras, Ore., $2.9 million – The airport will use funds to construct the final phase of the parallel taxiway pavement that has reached the end of its useful life.
- Philadelphia International Airport in Philadelphia, Pa., $18.2 million – Funds will be used to repair multiple taxiway pavements. This project also will fund repairs to apron pavements and multiple taxiway lighting systems to enhance safe airfield operations during low visibility conditions.
- Myrtle Beach International Airport in Myrtle Beach, S.C., $14.0 million – This project funds the reconstruction of 14,000 ft. of the existing taxiway pavement and the second phase of repairs to multiple taxiways.
- Nashville International Airport in Nashville, Tenn., $4.3 million – The airport will use the grant to repair 2,100 ft. of Taxiway L East pavement that has reached the end of its useful life.
- Valley International Airport in Harlingen, Texas, $7.6 million – this grant reconstructs 77,000 sq. yds. of the general aviation apron pavement that has reached the end of its useful life.
- A complete listing of grants (PDF) is available here.
Eversource sends aid to places hit in gas explosions.
WATERBURY – Eversource Energy announced Friday afternoon that it is sending aid to communities affected by gas explosions Thursday .
Eversource is sending gas crews and equipment to Lawrence, Andover and North Andover, Massachusetts, where at least 10 people were injured and 39 homes were set ablaze Thursday, forcing entire neighborhoods to evacuate.
On their way to help the affected communities from Eversource are 133 people, including two emergency communications trailer and a mobile command unit.
Eversource, which provides natural gas services to 51 towns in Massachusetts, said it conducted a safety stand down Friday morning. It said it’s systems are not connected to the Columbia Gas system and continue to operate safely.