WZHA
A previous design for the garage, at left.
With the state now fully on board for building a long-promised second parking garage at Union Station, the city has added an idea to the mix: Combining it with a regional bus depot.
That’s one of two details that remain unresolved as the Malloy administration prepares to begin design work on a parking facility that the state has been promising to build since the 1990s.
The other detail: Who’ll run the garage?
The new 1,000-or-so-car garage will rise on a surface lot next to the train station’s existing (and often filled) 1,140-car garage. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy included $50 million in his proposed new budget for the garage. He and a top Department of Transportation (DOT) official said in a visit to New Haven Thursday that design work is set to begin soon after the start of the new fiscal year in July.
Malloy cited the garage during a broader “roundtable discussion” on his proposed $100 billion, 30-year plan to remake Connecticut’s road, rail, bus, and bike systems. (Click here to read about that.) A dozen and a half regional transportation planners, advocates and officials gathered around a rectangular (not round) table for the session, held in a fourth-floor conference room at Union Station. It was more of a campaign stop for Malloy’s plan than an exchange of ideas, as the governor pitched the idea that Connecticut should stop complaining about its antiquated transit system and agree to spend the money to fix it. The average person in the state spends 40 hours stuck in traffic congestion, costing the state $4.2 billion in lost dollars (“an undisclosed tax”), Malloy said; he argued that the state is losing out of economic development in the process. The assembled roundtablers applauded his plan as bold and long overdue.
The second Union Station garage is a footnote, a rounding error, in that grand plan. But it is a big deal to New Haven. The Union Station garage often fills up early; the lack of enough parking spaces has been considered a barrier to many people choosing to ride trains instead of driving.
Paul Bass Photo
The new garage “is so high a priority” that the governor included the $50 million for it in the new budget rather than wait for the larger long-range plan to get passed, said Thomas J. Maziarz (pictured), the DOT policy and planning chief who accompanied the governor to Thursday’s New Haven session. “It’s absolutely needed. The governor and the mayor are anxious to get this” started. Malloy and his predecessors have promised before to get started (like this July 2013 vow to get started “in 60 days”), but this time money and specific action plans appear in the pipeline.
The state doesn’t have a set design yet, according to Maziarz. But he said the garage will likely include an overhead bridge leading to train platforms. That way parkers won’t “have to walk through the second garage and then the first garage to get to the station to go under the tunnel to get to the platforms,” he said.
Who Runs It?
City Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson (pictured with Malloy Thursday) praised the governor’s overall plan and thanked him for the commitment to the garage.
The city and state are working to resolve some details on which they differ. One key issue is one that had, years back, also divided then-Mayor John DeStefano and then-Gov. John Rowland: Whether the city or the state should control and operate the garage.
Maziarz said the state intends to run the garage. “There’s a strong sense we’d like to control all parking along the New Haven line,” to ensure consistency in maintenance standards and parking rates, he said.
Nemerson noted the city’s parking authority has operated the parking at Union Station since the mid-20th century. It has done a good job, he said. He gave three reasons for having the agency — rather than the state or a new state-controlled authority — to run the new garage:
• The garage generates money that the authority uses to maintain parking garages and lots citywide.
• New Haven needs to control “the experience” for visitors coming to the city through Union Station. “This is our front door,” Nemerson said.
• Parking policy at Union Station needs to fit in with plans for development projects coming online at the old Coliseum site, in Wooster Square, and in the Hill-to-Downtown district.
T.O.D.?
A second question is whether the second garage should be just a garage, or include more uses. The buzz phrase for combining train station garages with stores, offices, and/or apartments is “T.O.D.,” for transit-oriented development.
Until recently the city had pushed the state to include housing in the design. Then New Haven approved plans for three new developments with a total of 1,000 new apartments within blocks of the station. So housing became moot.
New Haven also pressed the state to include retail outlets in the garage. That became moot, too, because of plans to open dozens of upscale retail outlets in the train station itself.
Now the city is looking to include a bus depot on the first floor of the garage. It would centralize transfer points for bus riders connecting to, say, Waterbury or Bridgeport or North Haven or Meriden. Right now those points are scattered around town. Nemerson said New Haven should follow the lead of other cities in having one depot where riders could wait for connections — and visit shops during their wait. Peter Pan and Megabus would also use the depot rather than the stops outside the main station, he said.
Asked about the idea, DOT’s Maziarz was noncommittal. He said state officials will definitely consider the idea as the design process begins. It’s too early to commit to a position, he said.
"... as the governor pitched the idea that Connecticut should stop complaining about its antiquated transit system and agree to spend the money to fix it."
Wow. Plain speaking and basic truth-telling in political leadership. Clearly, Malloy has no future in politics.