A pair of transportation authorities ”” one from the private sector and one from government ”” educated an audience of 100 at the Sheraton Stamford on the state”™s roads recently. Congestion and its handmaids of lost productivity, increased pollution and higher costs bore the brunt of the criticism, but any prospect of opening the Merritt Parkway to commercial traffic and to bring the big-rigs inland from I-95 was shot down with an emphatic, “No.”
The event was sponsored by the Connecticut Business and Industry Association in partnership with New Haven-based UIL Holdings Corp. It coincided with the release of The Connecticut Transit Survey for 2013 (Fairfield County Business Journal Dec. 16, “The infrastructure blues, codified”). The Connecticut Construction Industries Association (CCIA), the Motor Transport Association of Connecticut Inc. and the Stamford Chamber of Commerce were event and transportation study co-sponsors.
Frank Szeps was in attendance and was, in essence, the target audience. He is a regulations administrator in the transportation department of Northeast Utilities, whose bucket trucks serve 1.7 million Connecticut and New England customers. Its regional headquarters is in Berlin. On the day of the Dec. 12 meeting, Szeps had driven to Stamford from Rocky Hill. “Here I am on my way to a transportation summit and I”™m stuck in traffic,” he said. “It took me over an hour to get here.”
Paul Timpanelli, president and CEO of the Bridgeport Regional Chamber of Commerce called traffic concerns “a public policy issue.” He said the long-term solution lies in integration of what is already established.
“We have good, well-invested bus transit,” he said. “We have good, well-invested train service and good, well-invested motor routes. What we lack is integration. Ultimately, there is no short-term solution. The long-term solution is integration: drive-park-train and drive-park-bus.”
Phil Byrd gave the keynote address. He is chairman of the 34,000-member American Trucking Association and president and CEO of South Carolina-based Bulldog Hiway Express, founded in 1959 and today with “hundreds of trucks,” owned by Bulldog with Bulldog-employed drivers plying the roads of the U.S. and Canada.
Byrd”™s national appeal was for an indexed federal fuel tax “dedicated to highway improvement, highway maintenance and highway expansion.” He said alternatives like a mileage tax were cumbersome and heavily reliant on administration costs. The reason for action is linked to car mpg advances, which crimp federal fuel taxes. “As cars get more efficient, we must support and maintain the highway trust fund,” he said.
If Byrd had a wish, it would be for glass sides on trucks so consumers could see the goods they receive from the trailers of 18-wheelers. He said 69 percent of all goods nationally are transported in trucks (rail is next at 13.5 percent), but Connecticut”™s trucked-goods burden is far higher.
“Economic development moves on the back of the successful movement of freight as it cohabitates with all the commuters you have on the highways in the Northeast,” Byrd said.
“In Connecticut, 92 percent of everything you want and need to live the lifestyle you currently live is delivered by truck,” Byrd said. But with congestion that can wreck a trucker”™s drive-to-rest mandate, his outfit has turned away from regional roads. “We used to run building materials to the Northeast. No more.” The scenario could only gain steam, he said, as demand for shipping increases and motor carriers can be more selective about where they send their trucks. He praised the CBIA survey, saying, “I read it twice. It”™s almost the same in every state you go to, but here in Connecticut ”” with 92 percent of your tonnage moved by trucks ”” this becomes very important.”
Anna M. Barry, deputy commissioner of the state Department of Transportation, was the featured speaker following Byrd. During the Q-and-A after her remarks, she required perhaps half-a-second to report there were no plans or enthusiasm for turning the Merritt into a commercial road. “It”™s a historic highway of limited size and changing it is not a priority at this time,” she said.
Barry cited the New Haven line”™s 300 new rail cars, the overhaul of the New Haven rail yard and the widening of I-84 in Waterbury ”” the biggest expense at $400 million ”” among current major DOT efforts. Closer to where she stood, she pointed to the Atlantic Street Bridge in Stamford, which is benefitting from a better-than-expected construction schedule owing to prebuilt (as opposed to “design-bid-build”) construction techniques.
The state has been without tollbooths since 1983 when seven people were killed in a wreck at the Stratford toll plaza. Barry said future tolls are on the table for discussion and a pair of DOT studies is looking into tolls. She said, if they reappear, tolls would most likely be completely electronic, without booths.
The event also featured a panel discussion moderated by Jack Condlin, president of the Stamford Chamber of Commerce; state Rep. Brendan Sharkey; state Sen. John McKinney; New Haven-based The Anastasio Group CEO Andrew Anastasio Jr., whose multifaceted corporation includes a trucking division; and Mario Smith, president of Bridgeport-based Waters Construction Co. and past president of the CCIA.
I always wondered why you never see freight trains on the New Haven line.