In January 1983, a tractor-trailer plowed into a line of cars at the Stratford toll plaza on Interstate 95, triggering an explosion that killed seven people.
Six months later and 29 miles to the south on the highway, three people were killed when a 100-foot section of the Mianus River bridge in Cos Cob collapsed.
That year, Gov. William O”™Neill signed one law that phased out tolls and left Connecticut as one of the few East Coast states without any form of highway toll revenue, and a second law that established a Special Transportation Fund to pay for road and bridge projects.
Three decades later, the relationship between the series of events and their collective impact on Connecticut transportation policy today is remarkable.
Connecticut”™s roads and bridges are in dire need of safety-related upgrades, to say nothing of traffic that likens Fairfield County to Los Angeles County.
State transportation officials have identified $16 billion in unfunded road and bridge upgrades that will be needed in the next 20 years, and reports have identified 500 structurally deficient bridges statewide, including more than 100 in Fairfield County.
Studies conducted in the last two decades that looked into widening I-95 to alleviate traffic issues pegged the cost of doing so at upward of $2 billion ”” a figure that surely would be higher today.
The problem? There”™s not enough money left in the transportation fund to pay for it all ”” or so we are meant to believe.
While the idea of reinstating tolls to replenish the fund was tossed around during the recent legislative session, the idea remains politically untenable for a number of reasons; namely, because it would likely add to the length of commutes, but also because of the legacy of the 1983 crash.
So legislators, wary of commuters”™ wrath, instead increased the gas taxes and fees collected by the state of Connecticut ”” a move unlikely to further congest I-95. To the chagrin of state Republican leaders, those increases took effect last week, and are projected to raise an extra $60 million in revenue over the coming year.
But we fear little, if any of that revenue will ever hit the pavement.
Precedent says dollars that flow into the state”™s designated transportation fund will ultimately be transferred into the general fund, which pays for state agency expenditures and various state-run programs and services.
Case in point: Under the state”™s budget for the 2014 and 2015 fiscal years, a net of $110 million will be transferred out of the transportation fund and into the general fund.
In May, Frank Fish, a planner who is working with the city of Stamford on its master plan upgrade, told the Business Journal that traffic is perhaps the biggest obstacle to economic growth in lower Fairfield County. When asked whether tolls could help pay for traffic alleviation measures, Fish said in all likelihood, no.
“The basic question is what does Connecticut get out of tolls? What does the driver get out of it? If you can prove that you get something out of them, fine, but if tolls are going to go into the General Fund and not a dedicated fund, that”™s a recipe for disaster.”
In Fish”™s response, “tolls” could easily be substituted for “gas taxes” ”” because it appears drivers will have little to show for the extra hit their wallets will take on a regular basis.
Three decades ago, a burnt-out tractor-trailer and gurneys carrying crash victims served as powerful images for Connecticut lawmakers, leading to the abolishment of tolls. A bridge collapse and cars falling into the Mianus River created an equally stirring image.
If the legislature doesn’t stop siphoning from the transportation fund, the latter history could repeat itself. We only hope that it doesn’t take such an event to remind the state government of its obligation to our transit ways.
