Melissa Bailey Photo
Dave Jabuat & James Inorio celebrate the capstone of 2 years’ work.
Highway hoopla hit a crescendo Friday as officials cut the ribbon on the first half of a new 10-lane Q Bridge that will ferry even more exhaust-spewing cars and trucks through New Haven. Meanwhile, a question lingered in the air: What about that train station garage the state promised back in the 1990s?
Cheered on by weeks of breathless media coverage, state and federal officials trumpeted the opening of the first span of the new Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge at a ribbon-cutting Friday high above the Quinnipiac River. The span will partially open to northbound cars this weekend, causing traffic disruptions between 8 p.m. Friday and 6 a.m. Monday.
The state is replacing the six-lane “Q Bridge” and building a 10-lane replacement as the central piece of a $2 billion project to redo a seven-mile stretch of highway that crosses New Haven Harbor.
“It’s awesome!” proclaimed U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who helped secure federal money for the project. “It’s a great day for New Haven!”
One transportation advocate didn’t join Friday’s cheering crowd.
“When you build bigger roads, you attract more cars,” warned Ryan Lynch, senior planner of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, which aims to create “sustainable, equitable and transit-friendly communities.”
In the short term, a new highway might give once-gridlocked drivers a “faster trip,” he said, “but in the long term, it just adds cars to the road. Wider highways bring more pollution and perpetuate the “sprawl cycle,” which undermines New Haven’s effort to create a walkable, liveable space, he argued.
DeStefano checked out the bridge with Martha Combs and city intern Benny Chan.
From the stage at Friday’s event, New Haven Mayor John DeStefano applauded the bridge — then urged the state to follow through on two local projects with a fraction of the pricetag.
“I urge us to apply the same urgency and vision to two other projects,” he said: expanding the capacity of Tweed-New Haven Airport and building more parking at Union Station.
For years the city has urged the state to come through with promises to build more parking so people can ride rails to work instead of clogging I‑95. But the project got stymied amid political disputes and general bureaucratic inertia at a revolving-door state transportation department.
“The ultimate way to reduce [highway congestion] is an aggressive transportation agenda” focusing foremost on trains, the mayor said.
The DeStefano Administration began negotiating with the state during the Rowland Administration in the mid-1990s about addressing the lack of parking at Union Station, DeStefano later recalled. Union Station has one garage. Its 1,170 spaces fill up by 8 a.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, according to a parking attendant at the booth. So some commuters park downtown at the Temple Street garage and wait for a shuttle to take them to a train station; others use the surface lot on the grave of the New Haven Coliseum.
First the city and state fought over who should run the garage. In recent years, the city has been urging the state to build not just a garage, but a “transit-oriented development” including offices, retail, restaurants, and possibly a hotel. The state offered $390,000 towards the effort last year.
The project is becoming more urgent, the mayor said: The Temple Street Garage, where many rail commuters park, is soon to fill up with students at the new Gateway Community College, which has been guaranteed a portion of the spots. And in years to come, a development is set to rise on the Coliseum lot, he said.
So while I‑95 will have more space for autos, people trying to take mass transit will become more and more squeezed.
“We’re not at a point of resolution yet” about what the Union Station garage should look like, DeStefano said Friday. The city “will insist that transit-oriented development and the merchandising of the station will be part of any project” that’s put forward, he said. The city wants to see a first phase with 700 to 900 parking spots, plus improvements to add more retail at the station, he said.
DeStefano said the project would not be costly. “Revenue from the garage would pay for itself,” he contended.
The new Q bridge has an estimated pricetag of $554 million.
Rosa DeLauro greets survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack.
DeStefano refuted one claim being made onstage Friday about the bridge.
“Families will see less congestion” on the roads, pledged U.S. Rep. DeLauro.
The current Q Bridge, built in the late 1950s, sits on a main corridor between New York and Boston. The bridge was built to hold 40,000 vehicles per day. It now struggles to handle 140,000 vehicles per day, according to the state.
DeStefano said the bridge won’t really bring traffic relief — “I don’t really think there will be a ton of it.”
DeStefano drove up the new bridge in his Prius.
Transportation advocate Lynch agreed.
“Highway widening and bridge expansion don’t do anything to address congestion in the long term,” Lynch argued. “All it does is facilitate the sprawl cycle.” With capacious highways, “people are now able to live further away from downtown and main streets,” which encourages businesses to locate outside of cities and “creates environments that are auto-centric,” he said.
New Haven is a progressive city that promotes non-auto-centric forms of transit, Lynch said: The new bridge will “add to the challenges the city is facing when it tries to make downtown more accommodating to people who don’t drive automobiles.”
Lynch argued that other worthy transportation projects have languished as the state poured so much money into the Q Bridge. The $2 billion harbor crossing project tied up 45 percent of state funding on roads, Lynch calculated. That’s money that could have gone to maintain existing roads and bridges and to build more forward-thinking projects.
City Loses $600K In Taxable Property, Gains A Bridge, Boathouse & Station
DeStefano said the choice was never between the Q Bridge and smaller projects like Union Station’s garage. He said the bridge was worth it for the prospect of economic development — and for the associated projects the state committed to.
He said expanding the bridge ate up 83 parcels of city property, displacing jobs and losing the city $600,000 in taxable property. The city refused to accept the Q Bridge without some other benefits attached. In return, New Haven got a new marina in Long Wharf to replace the one that had to be moved; a new Church Street Bridge over the train tracks; and a new commuter rail station on State Street.
“This has been a pissing match for years,” DeStefano admitted.
Once the first span is fully in use, the state will tear down the existing Q Bridge (pictured) and build another span next to the one that debuted Friday.
After Friday’s press conference, state transportation Commissioner James Redeker said the governor’s administration has become more supportive of mass transit than in the past, when the Q Bridge planning began. Since Gov. Dannel P. Malloy took office last year, he noted, the state embarked on its first transit-oriented development, at Stamford train station. (Transit-Oriented Development, or “TOD” in planning parlance, involves grouping stores, apartments, and offices near train stations to encourage mass transit and benefit from it economically.)
He said the Q Bridge will bring less congestion because it will decrease the amount of “weaving” as cars approach the complex interchange of I‑95, I‑91 and Route 34. The new Route 34 “flyover” allows cars to exit from the right-hand lane as they head northbound on I‑95 instead of merging to the left.
As a result, he argued, cars will drive smoothly onto a roomier bridge instead of grinding to a halt.
“It will reduce pollution,” he said, “because you will not have cars stopping and starting.”
Latest DOT Promise: “Shortly”
Redeker (at left in photo) agreed a wider bridge wouldn’t be something to celebrate “in and of itself” — “but as a part of a system that makes sense.” In addition to the benefits DeStefano outlined, the state has doubled train service on the Shoreline East line, more than doubling ridership, as part of the $2 billion corridor improvement, he said.
Redeker said the state is committed to doing the Union Station garage “shortly.”
“It’s just one of those projects that cries out to be done,” he said. Union Station “is the key hub that begins the New Haven line into New York. It today is serving as the feeder for many parts of Connecticut,” yet there is “not enough parking for that demand.”
He said it’s “entirely possible” that the revenue from the parking garage could pay for itself, or that the state could partner with a private developer that could build and run the garage.
The project is “certainly a priority of mine and of the governor’s — and when that happens, it gets done.”
Exhibit A: The new Q Bridge.
What an absolute disaster for the entire State.
A "social mess" is the term for an issue where those seeking to "solve" a problem are the ones that are causing it.