Leslie Hutchison
WINSTED — Construction of a new span over the Still River could begin as early as April, planning documents show.
The town and the state Department of Transportation will each pay for 50 percent of the project, estimated to be approximately $550,000 , according to project engineers from Cardinal Engineering Associates of Meriden.
The Lanson Road Bridge is considered “in poor structural condition, with crumbling concrete headwalls,” town reports show. The bridge is paved with gravel, as is the road, which is classified by the state as a local rural road.
The town’s Inland Wetlands and Watercourses Commission took up the project application as new business at its Wednesday meeting. The document states that the project covers the “Replacement of Structurally Inadequate Multiple-Pipe Culvert with Single-Cell Reinforced Concrete Box Culvert.”
A public hearing on the project will be held by the wetlands commission on Feb. 20, said Pamela Colombie, land use assistant for the Planning and Community Development Department.
The project application states that the lack of structural integrity of the span is further stressed by trucks from nearby USA Hauling and Recycling Inc. The trucks use the bridge to travel to the company’s location at 185 Torrington Road.Information from USA Hauling on the number of trips the trucks make each day was not available. An employee, who asked not to be named, wondered how long the bridge would be closed and how much further the trucks would have to drive to go around the construction.
The construction is expected to take four to six months, project engineers said.
The Lanson Drive Bridge is the trailhead for Sue Grossman Greenway that stretches nearly three miles to Torrington.
The Lanson Drive Bridge project is the latest in a number of other bridge and street projects under way in Winsted
A rehabilitation project on Sucker Brook Road , with a cost of approximately $1.025 million, is also expected to start this year. The project will be paid for through a federal/local grant with 80 percent of the cost supported by federal funds with the balance to be paid by the city.
No tolls if you live within 10 miles? It’s possible
Jordan Fenster
Should you pay a highway toll if the gantry is near your house?
Sen. Will Haskell, D-Westport, floated an idea during an interview Thursday that he said would put the burden of tolls on the backs of trucking companies and non-resident drivers.
In Haskell’s mind, a driver wouldn’t have to pay a toll if the gantry is within, for example, 10 miles of where an E-ZPass is registered.
“If you’re using 95 as a local road to get to stop and shop you shouldn’t have to pay,” Haskell said.
He did not specify if the distance would be calculated as road miles or concentric circles around the gantries.
Highway tolls haven’t been a thing in Connecticut since 1989. But Gov. Ned Lamont campaigned on limited tolling and a state study released in November said as much as $1 billion may be left on the table as long as there are no tolls.
Lamont visited the state Department of Transportation headquarters on the Berlin Turnpike Thursday, and gave a funny look, then a smirk when a Hearst columnist told him about Haskell's idea.
“He must live within nine miles of a gantry," Lamont quipped.
It's unclear whether any state has tried exempting people based on how far they live from a rolling gantry. None of the top officials at DOT had heard of the idea. Lamont and DOT Commissioner Joe Giulietti are actively working out a proposal for tolls and have not announced anything yet.
But Haskell, newly elected and a member of the legislature’s Transportation Committee, said he’d only be in favor of tolls if residents paid less than out-of state drivers.
A Westport native, many of his constituents are train commuters, and Haskell equated highway tolls with train fares, calling them both “user fees.” “Those who take the train pay a user fee,” he tweeted Wednesday. “Why shouldn’t the same be asked of those on the roads? Why should CT taxpayers subsidize out-of-state drivers and trucks?”
For Haskell, a system in which you pay more the further you go on a highway — such as exists in New Jersey and Massachusetts, among other states — or exempting drivers from the gantries nearest their homes means residents wouldn’t be paying for the wear on roadways caused by out-of-state drivers.
“They’re not really being asked to contribute,” he said Thursday.
Haskell said the issue of transportation is not partisan, but regional. Fairfield County legislators on the transportation committee are unified in their focus, he said of the committee’s first meeting Wednesday. “What we’re starting to build is a Fairfield County coalition,” he said.
Hearst Connecticut Media columnist Dan Haar contributed to this story.