U.S. Senator Chris Murphy is fed up with congestion on state highways and rail line. He wants to hear your fed-up stories as well on a website where you can vent. See here.
“Connecticut traffic is a nightmare,” says Murphy. “I’ve heard from commuters all across the state, and they’re fed up. Traffic means stress. Congestion means being late for work. Delays mean missing dinner with your kids night after night. That’s why I’m launching the ‘Fed Up’ campaign. I want to hear from commuters around Connecticut about the nightmares of their daily commute–the challenges they face getting to work and to school, the valuable time and money lost because of delays. Whether it’s on I-95, I-84, or Metro North, I want commuters to understand that we don’t have to accept the status quo of gridlock. We can do better, but only if we band together to support the tough political decisions–in Hartford and Washington–that are necessary to come up with the money to make overdue improvements to our roads and rails.”
Quack-quack-quack. This is a publicity stunt. Murphy doesn’t have a magic wand.
Murphy is full of it today, 1 hr 10 minutes to get to Norwalk. Screw Murphy, Malloy and the rest of the do-nothing politicians who make people deal with this traffic every day.
A big part of the solution is the regional development policy that locates jobs distal to the workforce rather than proximal–the latter being the case up until the latter 1950s. Probably half the morning, westbound I-95 and Route 15 traffic heading to lower Fairfield County is directly from Bridgeport; the converse is true of the eastbound, afternoon traffic.
A big part of the Fairfield County commuting dilemma would be solved if development policy were adopted to relocate jobs to Bridgeport and create workforce housing down-county where the jobs are located. In this regard, Stamford should be targeted for lots of workforce housing and large-scale, labor-intensive development should be located in Bridgeport.
Obviously, highways/roads and train service in Fairfield County are woefully inadequate for handling commuter traffic needs (including safety); but this will always be the case until development policy is changed. We will never be able to catch up with infrastructure needs and deal with infrastructure maintenance as long as development policy is describable as “regressive,” in every respect of the meaning of that word.
So all the talk about widening roads and improving train service is really just an exercise in tail-chasing–especially in the context of creating long-term solutions to the problems. Until the policy makers recognize they are in an unsustainable/insurmountable situation in regard to the transportation problem, they will just keep focusing time, attention and money on “solutions” that only serve to worsen the problem.
Expanding the roads and increasing train service while locating a growing population distal to areas of increasing labor needs, and all that you can possibly get is a worsening traffic problem.