Here are the most expensive projects coming up for Connecticut's roads and railways
From a $50,000 project to install electric vehicle charging
stations at town facilities in Canton to a more than $3 billion effort to
replace a railroad bridge between Stratford and Milford, a five-year capital
plan released this month by the Connecticut Department of Transportation assigns
$15.7 billion in funding to hundreds of projects across the state.
Some projects, such as the EV charging stations in Canton,
are funded by a mix of federal and local dollars. But most involve state
funding, often in combination with federal money.
Here are some of the most expensive projects in the DOT’s
plan.
Devon rail bridge
A project to replace this 120-year-old bridge, which
brings Metro-North’s
New Haven Line and Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor over
the Housatonic River, is expected to cost more than $3 billion, with 80%
funded by the federal government.
“The movable portion of the bridge has experienced
operational issues in the recent past, including a significant incident
in the summer of 2015, which closed one of the lift spans for several days
and severely impacted service for both Metro-North and Amtrak,” DOT’s capital
plan says. “Even with recent rehabilitations, the mechanical and electrical
systems are antiquated.”
DOT said in a recent news release the project is in
the planning stages. The current schedule calls for a design to be finished
in late 2029 and construction to begin in the spring of 2030.
Walk Bridge
On the same rail lines but farther south is the Norwalk River railroad
bridge, or the Walk
Bridge, which is on track for replacement as part of a nearly $1.7 billion
project that is also 80% federally funded under DOT’s plan.
The movable bridge, built in the 1890s, failed a dozen times
in 2011, 16 times in 2013 and twice within two weeks in 2014, according
to DOT’s website for the project.
Construction began
in 2023 and the project is expected
to be done by 2030.
Northbound Gold Star Memorial Bridge
This decades-old span carries Interstate 95 northbound
traffic over the Thames River between New London and Groton. A project to
strengthen and replace parts of the bridge appears in DOT’s capital plan with a
more than $900 million cost.
Josh Morgan, DOT’s director of communications, said cost
estimates for the project have changed as design work has progressed. At a 2024
public information meeting, officials presented a total estimated construction
cost of $592 million.
But Morgan said that estimate reflected a design that was
only 30% completed.
“Following that public meeting, and as the remaining 70% of
design was completed, additional items (were) added to the project, which
increased the overall cost,” he said. “The $906 million in the recently
released capital plan reflects the current total cost, reflecting the low bid
received by the contractor in July 2025, as well as engineering support and
construction inspection, which are part of every project and particularly
important on this complex project.”
The plan indicates 90% of the project will be federally
funded.
New Haven Union Station
There are few details about this project in the capital
plan, which notes it “is currently in the study phase of design, where the
scope is being further defined.” But it could include replacing all of the
train platforms and canopies at Union Station in New Haven.
At this time, the plan puts the total cost of the project at $420 million, with the federal government funding 80% of the work.
Interstate 91/Interstate 691/Route 15
Drivers who have traveled through the middle of the state in
recent years are familiar with this three-phase
project involving three highways.
Phase 2, which is under construction, will include a number
of ramp changes and cost about $250 million, according to the capital plan. The
still-under-design Phase 3 is estimated to cost nearly $290 million.
DOT factored about $200 million in federal funding into its
planning for the second phase and about $150 million for the third.
Forum on Tweed New Haven Regional Airport expansion rescheduled for Feb. 25
NEW HAVEN — A public information forum on Tweed New Haven
Regional Airport's proposed expansion, postponed
by bad weather in January, will take place Feb. 25 at East
Haven High School, airport officials said this week.
The meeting, scheduled to take place at 6 p.m. Wednesday,
Feb. 25, will focus on the environmental aspects of Tweed's proposed
new terminal, parking, entrance and runway extension on the East Haven
side of the airport.
It will provide an overview of the airport's proposed
expansion project and the environmental review process administered by the
state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. or DEEP.
East Haven High is located at 35 Wheelbarrow Lane, off
Foxon Road.
The forum is intended to help members of the community
understand what to expect during the application process and how the public can
take part as it moves forward, officials said in a written release.
Representatives of DEEP will attend along with officials from Tweed and
its development team.
“Our responsibility is to provide accurate, straightforward
information about how the environmental review works and what role the public
plays,” said Michael Jones, CEO of The
New HVN. The New HVN is a subsidiary of airport operator Avports
LLC that runs the airport for the Tweed New Haven Airport Authority.
“This session is an important first step in that process and
part of our broader commitment to ongoing dialogue with the community,” Jones
said.
The meeting will center on what to expect from the DEEP
application process, including the opportunities for public participation,
officials said.
It will not address the merits of the application or
specific concerns related to the project. Those topics will be covered in
future public meetings, they said.
“This community informational session is about making sure
our neighbors clearly understand the process that governs this project and how
important their attendance and participation are,” said Tweed New Haven Airport
Authority Chairman Robert Reed.
“We believe transparency and accessibility are essential,
particularly during formal environmental review, and this session is designed
to explain what that process looks like and what comes next,” Reed said.
The public information session is not a required part of the
DEEP permitting process, airport officials said. It will include a
question-and-answer session to give community members the opportunity to ask
questions and receive information, the release stated.
It is not a formal public hearing, however, and comments for
or against the project will not be entered into the official record, the
release said.
Tweed Director of Community Engagement Tom Cavaliere Jr.
said that nothing much about the forum has changed since it initially was
scheduled, other than the fact that it now has been rescheduled for a new date.
"It's the same format, same agenda, just now on Feb.
25," Cavaliere said.
New Haven startup raises $6M for AI-driven construction planning
Planning a building — projecting timelines, manpower needs
and costs — is among the most complex and uncertain tasks in the construction
industry.
A major development such as a skyscraper can take months to
estimate and cost millions of dollars to design and engineer. Even at the
bidding stage, engineering firms invest significant time and money, knowing
they’re likely to win the work less than 10% of the time.
A New Haven technology startup says it can shrink that
painstaking process from months to about seven minutes using artificial
intelligence.
“LeanCon is building the first pre-construction
engineering team created by artificial intelligence,” is the way that co-founder
Ziv Levi pitches his product.
Investors have taken interest. The company recently
announced a $6 million seed funding round, double its initial target.
Levi and his co-founder Sapir Tubul are both
construction engineers by trade. They grew up in Israel and began working on
construction sites with their engineer fathers. They later met as civil
engineering undergraduates at Technion, the Israeli Institute of Technology.
After graduation, the two took different paths. Levi earned
a master’s degree in civil engineering and later completed an MBA at Yale.
Tubul earned a master’s degree in computer science, specializing in machine
learning and artificial intelligence.
Levi said the idea for LeanCon grew out of his experience
working as a construction engineer, where he dealt firsthand with the
complexities of planning large projects.
“I had to make hundreds of complex decisions, crucial
decisions for the project. The complexity in this process is to understand how
everything would fit together,” he said.
That complexity also often results in estimates that are far
off from reality — with most construction projects going over budget, falling
behind schedule or both — and Levi said that’s not surprising.
“There is not actually a clear method for how to plan
projects. As a construction professional, we rely mostly on our personal
intuition and experience,” he said.
Size of the prize
LeanCon aims to move the process from intuition to data, and
it’s developing software that uses AI to generate detailed projections on
costs, schedules, logistics and construction methods.
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Within the last 18 months, the company has been working with
one of the country’s largest privately held construction and real estate
development firms to continue refining its models in real-world situations.
The surprising thing, says one of their investors, is that
it works at all.
“Artificial intelligence models in their current incarnation
are really lousy at doing several things: spatial reasoning, logic and the
complex interaction of those two things,” said Phil Bernstein, professor
at the Yale School of Architecture and a former vice president at Autodesk,
which makes 3D design and engineering software.
It’s not for lack of effort in the industry though. There
are currently hundreds of companies attempting to implement AI in different
aspects of construction engineering. One database lists more than 1,700 AI apps
for the architecture, engineering and construction industry.
The reason so many are willing to try is the size of the
prize. Construction is a massive global industry — often estimated at about $11
trillion annually — and it’s ripe for a data-based approach.
“Somewhere between 30% and 40% of all the money on
construction is wasted because construction is very inefficient,” Bernstein
said.
Yale skeptic becomes a backer
Bernstein first met Levi when he was an MBA student at Yale.
Levi sought the professor’s opinion on his big idea.
“I told him I thought it was not going to work,” Bernstein
said. “I told him I thought he was barking up the wrong tree.”
Levi was not put off though. He kept refining the idea and
coming back for more feedback, until Bernstein finally had to admit he might
have something. Bernstein contributed angel funding in LeanCon’s recent seed
round.
Bernstein said he has been most impressed by Levi and
Tubul’s focus and energy in tackling the problem, as well as their ability to
bring in real engineering projects to test the software.
“The construction industry suffers from very poorly
organized information that we don’t like to share with one another, and those
are not good characteristics for training AIs,” Bernstein said. “So, you have
to pick a limited problem, you have to understand what the logic is and you
have to be able to train, train, train.”
“We’re collecting data all the time,” said Tubul, LeanCon’s
co-founder who previously worked as a data scientist at Intel and a software
engineer at an Israeli defense contractor.
In addition to the founders, the company now has eight
employees. With the seed funding, the company aims to grow to 12 to 14
employees. But hiring is not straightforward.
Most current employees are software engineers with
backgrounds in AI and data science. But they also need a strong understanding
of the construction industry. Tubul said he recently interviewed about 100
candidates to fill two positions.
As they advance their product and become better known in the
industry, Levi says the challenge is to stay focused. Their model is based on
vertical construction of high-rise buildings. They were recently approached by
a U.S. company building a resort in Mexico based on a series of small villas —
but they had to turn the offer down.
“We need to prove that the business aspect of the company is
there, it’s sustainable,” Levi said. “We are on the chase of product-market
fit, creating technology that our clients really like. They will not remember
the way of doing this process without LeanCon — that is the target.”
Levi says the company’s New Haven base has proven useful —
not only with the support that Yale has been able to provide, but also for
other connections. New Haven-based Newman Architects is now an investor, as is
Connecticut Innovations, the state’s quasi-public venture fund.
Both joined the seed round, which was led by Denver-based
Ibex Investors.
“We definitely owe a lot to this place,” Levi said.
Pending highway bill ‘significantly higher’ than IIJA: Granite CEO
Granite Construction President and CEO Kyle Larkin
said surface
transportation reauthorization amounts being discussed in Congress are
“significantly higher” than those in the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure
Investment and Jobs Act of 2021.
Larkin made his comments Thursday on Granite’s
fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 earnings call, where the company
reported higher revenue and profits for the quarter and year. The firm also
notched a record backlog of $6.97 billion, up 32% from a year ago.
With the IIJA expiring in September, Larkin said securing more public funding for infrastructure was a priority for lawmakers. “What we hear really from industry today is that there’s still bipartisan support,” Larkin said on the call. “There’s still a huge focus on coming up with another investment mechanism and I think the really good news is the investment amount is significantly higher.”
Larkin’s comments echoed those from other public
construction companies, including Dallas-based AECOM, which said an expansion
of highway funding would further extend the current transportation
construction cycle. Larkin said he expects draft legislation to be available in
March or April.
But even before Congress approves any new dollars, Larkin said just half of the original IIJA money had actually been spent through November. The rest should provide stability in the infrastructure market for some time. “There’s still a really nice runway of spending to go, so that’ll last, luckily, for a few more years,” Larkin said.
Beyond money for highways, Larkin said Watsonville,
California-based Granite is also among 11 firms competing for around $40
billion in border infrastructure work on the southern border. In March, Granite
won the first border wall contract of President Donald Trump’s second
term for a $70 million job to build 7 miles of barrier in Hidalgo County,
Texas.
The Trump administration has accelerated the awards timeline
for new border work, Larkin said, and he expects new contracts to be announced
in June or July. But that compressed schedule means previously smaller segments
of work have been bundled into bigger overall jobs.
Since Granite has focused in recent years on taking on
smaller work packages, which offer more near-term visibility into schedule and
cost, Larkin said the firm would be choosy with any additional work in that
area.
“These contracts are getting larger than what we originally
contemplated, so the risk profile is changing a little bit on those to one
that’s just giving us reason to be more disciplined in our pursuits and
ensuring that we can not only just win the work but be successful in delivering
it for ourselves and for our clients,” Larkin said. “So we’ll see.”
Granite reported $1.17 billion in revenue and net income of
$52.03 million for the fourth quarter, a rise of 19% and 25% from a year ago.
For the year, revenue reached $4.42 billion, a 10% gain from 2024. Profits of
$193 million for the year were 53% higher than what the company reported in
2024.
Looking ahead, Granite said it would continue to be on the
hunt for more acquisitions 2026, particularly on the materials
side of its business. On its second quarter 2025 conference call, Granite
announced it had purchased Hattiesburg, Mississippi-based Warren Paving and
Arroyo Grande, California-headquartered Papich Construction for
a combined price of $710 million. That was followed in October by a deal to
buy Carson City, Nevada-based Cinderlite Trucking.
Executives said to expect more of the same this year, as
Granite continues to build out its “home-market” strategy where it supplies
materials from its owned aggregate plants for infrastructure projects in the
areas surrounding those facilities.
“While we are selective in our pursuits, we expect to
achieve our goal of completing several strategic acquisitions in 2026,” said
Staci Woolsey, Granite’s chief financial officer, on the call.