Holy toll booth, Republicans never earmarked votes for specific projects? An offer they couldn’t refuse?
Members of Bridgeport’s legislative delegation want toll revenues, if approved by the legislature, to help finance a second city train station.
As part of a Republican strategy to blowtorch electronic tolls that would add hundreds of millions to state revenues, Connecticut Republicans posted a video demonizing city pols for leveraging toll votes for train station investment.
Why don’t Republicans just post this video?
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This is why the GOP is sleeping with the fishes.
Grin hit it out of the park with above comment. or should I say “slam dunk.”
Priority tolling is even worse than priority bonding.
Throw the Bridgeport delegation overboard!
This is making the whole thing look foolish.
Bridgeport wants a new train station.
Norwalk wants the bridge fixed or replaced.
Hartford wants a new exit from I91 to I84.
By the time everyone is heard from you will need a trillion dollars; far more than the revenue tolls will produce.
With Connecticut political reality/development policy being what it is in Connecticut in 2019, both tolls and a train station will serve only to encourage the further economic marginalization of Bridgeport per its use as a dormitory/commuter staging-area for the labor needs of Stamford/Gold Coast/suburbs… Both transportation-needs facilitators (tolls/train station) will do nothing more for Bridgeport than add tax-negative housing to our not-so-grand list even as by-passing of Bridgeport for high-value/jobs-intensive development “elsewhere” is facilitated/encouraged…
Look at how we were treated during this GA session by Ned and our fellow Dems: NO CASINO FOR YOU! (Surprise! Did you think that Ned and the Greenwich oligarchy were going to drop political-economic power in Bridgeport’s lap — and give up their cheap-labor pool in Bridgeport?!…). And look at what Ned did when Amazon pulled out of their Queens HQ2 deal with NYC; Ned said that that was great for Connecticut, because STAMFORD (NOT BRIDGEPORT!) would be the perfect place to cram that huge operation (but, of course there would have be I-95/I-84/R-15 improvements and a new staging area for more workers from the N and E, hence, the need for a Bridgeport commuter staging area with a new train station…).
And just to bring tis point home: Ned is scheduling a special session for tolls — but no special session for Bridgeport casino. That should tell Bridgeport and its delegation something about how much Ned and the burbs actually care about the people of the state’s largest city.
Our delegation appears to have lost sight of Bridgeport’s goals and reality per their buying into a nefarious state development agenda that puts Bridgeport even farther out in the cold… A train station for Bridgeport without companion, high-value/jobs-intensive development plans for Bridgeport in Hartford (such as trying Amazon, et al., to Bridgeport) will just serve allow us to be by-passed to an even greater degree… Tolls will just fund transportation improvements that allow more development to be shoe-horned into the Stamford area (where they believe, and cultivate the belief, that they can be NYC2…). As the present state development is nurtured, the marginalization of the state, as a whole, continues… As the Gold Coast becomes richer, the rest of the state becomes poorer… Bridgeport and the rest of the state’s (non-Stamford)urban centers had better had better wake-up to our political reality (and most of the other 169 municipalities of the state had also better wake up too!). The Connecticut development-deck is rigged — and in favor of only about 20% of the state’s municipalities… The 80% of the state that is not the Gold Coast or Stamford suburbs (and a very others) had better start supporting each other and stymying the plans of the Connecticut oligarchy, or the state, as a whole, will continue to get more and more “Third World”…
Bridgeport delegation: No casino, no support for anything else Ned and the burbs want! And our mayoral candidates should also be finding ways to use Bridgeport’s (potential) electoral power to play hard-ball with the Connecticut Oligarchy/Hartford (and DC…).
So this is how Ned Lamont is going to buy the legislative votes to reinstitute tolling: offering to pay for projects on the I-95 corridor. An east side train station for Bridgeport, bridge repairs for Norwalk and Westport… Why is Governor Ned so bent on highway tolls? Has he not heard of the economic miracle reaped by Colorado after legalizing marijuana for recreational use? What about legalized sports betting? Both of those items would generate more than enough to pull Connecticut out of the debit column.
Oh wait, my bad. In spite of Connecticut’s reputation for liberal values the people holding elected office are encumbered by a “Reefer Madness” mentality, that marijuana is an evil weed. Nothing like a bit of good old fashioned Protestant moral hypocrisy to fuck up the best laid plans of mice and men.
They should do a study on how the Black Rock/lower FF stop has benefited anyone. Unless there is viable income or economic development in the form of an actual Train Station it would be no more than a Train Stop and Parking in an area where SAFETY is a major concern. My question would be who gets the PARKING DOLLARS? Could someone open a small Newspaper and Magazine Kiosk? How would someone go about securing that from Metro North or ? Maybe another Barber Shop? Shoe shine? Sandwich Truck? Tolls hurt everyone, this Stop helps no one, is this what we should be negotiating, wasn’t there talk of some Casino? or some type of Economic Engine that could truly be considered a Negotiation?