Busy Southington intersection will get turning lane
Jesse Buchanan
SOUTHINGTON – The Town Council on Monday night approved a contract to add another lane to a busy West Street intersection.
The work will add a northbound turning lane for drivers heading off West Street and onto Jude Lane.
“You get one person turning left, and it blocks traffic up,” said Public Works Director Keith Hayden. “This will allow a protected lane with a green arrow and improve the operation of that intersection quite dramatically.”
While the additional lane will cost more than $700,000 to design and build, Town Council Chairman Chris Palmieri said it will not come out of the town’s budget because Southington was able to get a state grant to cover the cost.
Hayden said his department is always on the hunt for grants and other ways to fund work without drawing on town funds.
“We’re very aggressive in applying for these funds,” he said.
Hayden expects work to begin in the spring.
The council approved a contract with Paramount Construction of Newington for the additional lane. The cost of the contract is $676,000.
Lisbon landowner fears Eversource project is bothering beavers
John Barry
LISBON — Travelers heading south on Interstate 395 may have noticed in the past few months that land has been cleared on the side of the highway and a gravel road has been built just south of Exit 21.
The clearing and the road are part of a maintenance project being done by Eversource Energy, replacing 121 wooden poles carrying electrical transmission lines with new ones made of steel. The new poles are up to 85 feet tall, but are limited to being no more than 10 feet taller than the wooden ones they’re replacing.
The transmission lines run roughly north from Preston through Lisbon, Canterbury, Plainfield, Brooklyn and Killingly, according to an Oct. 2 filing with the Connecticut Siting Council.
“This line is part of an integrated grid that serves New England,” Eversource spokesman Frank Poirot said.
Randy Wildowsky, a dairy farmer who owns land in Lisbon on both sides of I-395 that Eversource’s lines run across, is complaining that the utility has caused damage to wetlands there that won’t be easily fixed.
Brush has been cleared to make the gravel road off I-395, which goes down a hill on the east side of the highway and into and through a swampy area. A 30-yard-long “swamp mat” — a sort of bridge made of wooden beams laid side by side on the ground — has been made crossing an area that Wildowsky said has been flooded by a beaver dam.
“Anything that irritates the beavers bothers me,” Wildowsky said.
More timbers have been used to prop up and gravel fill dumped in to build what Eversource calls a work pad near one of its new poles.
Stuart Norman, a Griswold attorney who is Wildowsky’s cousin, said that private landowners wouldn’t be allowed to make such an extensive development in a wetlands. “You or I, we’d be in big trouble.”
“They bust me if I lose a wheelbarrow of manure in the road,” Wildowsky said.
To help protect the wetlands, Eversource workers also installed devices to reduce the amount the soil that will wash into them.
On the west side of I-395, Eversource workers are currently building an access road to two of its poles from Mell Road near Wildowsky’s dairy. In its petition, Eversource said it would temporarily disturb about 4,000 square feet of wetlands and 4,700 square feet of a pond.
Wildowsky said that Eversource has gone outside its right of way in several places. “They don’t have much regard for the environment,” he said. “They do what they want to do.”
He said at times during the work, state troopers have been stationed at the intersection of Mell Road and Nygren Road, which he thinks has discouraged customers from visiting his dairy’s store.
The Siting Council approved the project in March 2017, ruling that “this proposal would not have a substantial adverse environmental effect.” The state agency is responsible for overseeing the construction and operation of power plants and transmission lines throughout the state.Eversource is required to bring its electrical transmission lines into compliance with new higher standards, Siting Council Executive Director Melanie Bachman said.
She said Eversource notified officials in all the towns the transmission lines run through as well as property owners such as Wildowsky.
In its application to replace the poles, Eversource said all the work was being done in its right-of-ways — which in some cases have existed since the 1920s — using new or existing access roads. Building the new roads and improving existing ones would disturb 77,400 square feet of wetlands, equal to about 1.7 acres.
The project is expected to be completed by October, Poirot said.
Eversource received permission from the state Department of Transportation to put its access road off I-395 because going from Route 169 would disturb too much wetlands, Poirot said.
Wildowsky has a different explanation. “Eversource told them I was being defiant, and that’s why they gave them the permit,” he said.
Eversource has promised that when the work is done, “all disturbed/exposed areas would be stabilized and revegetated.”
As for the road off I-395, Poirot said it may end up staying if it’s the easiest access to its poles.
Joe Giulietti had been planning to move full time to Coral Springs, Florida, where he owns a home and landed a plum job in the private sector to cap off a four-decade career largely in public service.
Then Gov. Ned Lamont asked him to run Connecticut's Department of Transportation.
"The hard part of the decision was the fact that my wife is a marriage-and-family therapist down in Florida," Giulietti said in an interview. "I had finally gotten back to where the two of us were working out of the same location again."
Instead, the recently nominated DOT commissioner (who has yet to be confirmed by the legislature) is leading a department that Lamont has signaled will be central to his agenda.
Spending winters mitigating snow-related transportation headaches is a far cry from the sunlight and golf ever-present in Coral Springs, but Giulietti believes he's up to the challenge.
And he was hired by Lamont for one reason in particular: his 40 year-plus background in rail.
Prior to being named DOT commissioner, Giulietti led the Metro-North Railroad for more than three years until he retired last August.
Signaling that transportation policy would take center stage in his administration — with rail playing a leading role — Lamont used his inaugural address to announce an ambitious "30-30-30" rail plan.
The proposal is to improve travel times on Metro-North and CTrail trains so that a passenger could make it from Hartford to New Haven in 30 minutes, from New Haven to Stamford in 30 minutes, and from Stamford to New York in 30 minutes.
Currently, it takes between 46 minutes to 52 minutes to get to and from those destinations.
It's a lofty goal, and the responsibility for Lamont's transportation aspirations largely falls on Giulietti's shoulders.
In a recent speech, Lamont said he's not satisfied with the state's "junior-partner" status with Metro-North.
There have been feelings, at times, that Metro-North makes decisions about the New Haven line — which it operates — without consulting with the state. Lamont said he hopes his new DOT commissioner, who he describes as a "game changer" for the state, can change that.
"Probably my biggest priority, and the biggest place I can make the biggest impact over the next four years is transportation," Lamont said.
Giulietti, who worked as a consultant for T.Y. Lin International Group on a yet-to-be-released Fairfield Business Council-sponsored study of the impacts of improved rail service, said 30-30-30 is an aspirational goal that he and his agency will take seriously.
In addition, Lamont's economic policy transition team recommended advancing talks with border states about high-speed rail that connects New Haven to Boston, via Hartford, Storrs and Providence.
"[Lamont] has asked us to look at not only how do we get to 30-30-30, but what can we do along the way that will improve the timeframes for commuters," he said
In recent weeks, DOT has pushed for short- and long-term solutions to at least one nagging rail issue: overcrowding on CTrail's Hartford Line.
Since the route between New Haven and Springfield, Mass., opened last summer, tension has mounted between Amtrak — which owns the track and runs trains along the route — and CTrail customers. Passengers with CTrail tickets or passes have complained that Amtrak officials have asked them to get off crowded, late-afternoon trains they run in order to make room for people who bought tickets in advance through Amtrak. That's despite an agreement with Amtrak that CTrail passengers would be treated equally to Amtrak ticket-holders.
A week after Lamont's inauguration, Amtrak agreed to limit advanced ticket sales to cut down on ticket-holding Amtrak customers riding during peak hours, according to DOT. The more comprehensive solution would be to add more train cars to the Hartford Line, Giulietti said. But the longtime railroad pro is tempering expectations for how fast that can happen, as the DOT also works to add cars to the Shoreline East line, which runs from New London to New Haven.
"If you know anything about (the railroad) industry, the biggest problem we always have is that when we have to go and get more cars, it's not something that's an off-the-shelf commodity that you can go and get," Giulietti said. "When you understand that purchasing cars is a cycle that takes you anywhere up to four years … you can appreciate that you have to start working on those plans well in advance."
More capital spending on rail is planned in the form of new train stations in North Haven, Newington, West Hartford and Enfield, Giulietti said.
However, Giulietti said he hadn't yet identified a funding source for the new cars or stations.
Transportation funding has been an issue that has plagued Connecticut for years, delaying not only investment in rail but also basic upkeep of roads, highways and bridges.
During the campaign, Lamont floated the idea of paying for repairs to Connecticut's run-down highways by tolling tractor-trailers, but not passenger vehicles. Meanwhile, his transportation transition committee (of which Giulietti was a member) went further, recommending a more expansive tolling system that charges passenger vehicles.
Despite all the prescriptions, Giulietti insists DOT hasn't taken a position.
"This is going to take a decision that we go forward to the legislature with, and I see our role (as going) and clearly (laying) out how it can be done, what are the revenues that are going to be generated from it," Giulietti said. "Then [we] get our marching orders from the legislature and the governor."
Truth-telling problem solver
In addition to the challenges already facing a department with an extensive to-do list and a workforce that includes dozens who are eligible for retirement in three years, Giulietti said he'll have to contend with being known strictly as a "rail guy."
The perception makes sense. Giulietti started his career as a brakeman and assistant conductor for the Penn Central Railroad in 1971. Since then, he worked management and leadership stints at systems like Metro-North and the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority.
But there was a lot more to those jobs than keeping the trains running on time, he said.
"You spend 40 years in the industry and people turn around and say, 'he's the rail guy,' " Giulietti said. "But I'm the rail guy that's also had to run buses, had to run ferry services, had to deal with appropriations in Washington."
And part of the reason Giulietti sees himself as the right person for the job is because his experience, and being in the twilight of his career, enables him to be a truth-telling problem solver.
"I'm at that point now that people will accept the fact that I've got enough gray hair to go and … [know] what it's like to deal with a lot of complex issues at the same time," he said.