The Connecticut General Assembly’s “short session” ended at midnight this past Wednesday. In light of recent projections that the national economic recession will impact Connecticut to the tune of a $68 million budget deficit, many of the bold transportation initiatives proposed by the Legislature either failed to move forward or were drastically scaled down [...]
House Bill 5734, An Act Concerning New and Expanded Bus Transportation Services Throughout Connecticut, passed the Connecticut House yesterday, approving $5 million in capital spending to purchase approximately 20 buses. The bill now moves to the Senate and must be passed prior to the General Assembly’s closing tomorrow.
The Senate must move quickly to pass [...]
Last week, Connecticut Governor M. Jodi Rell nominated Joseph F. Marie to be the new head of the Connecticut Department of Transportation. In doing so, Governor Rell chose the first ever transit expert to lead the agency. According to the Governor’s press release, Mr. Marie, currently the Director of Operations and Maintenance [...]
This week the New York League of Conservation Voters (NYLCV) released its Long Island Policy Agenda for 2008, a document with a heavy focus on smart growth and important transportation initiatives for Long Island. NYLCV called for “a new and more comprehensive growth strategy” that would be able to meet the needs of Long [...]
A slide shows one City of New Haven vision for its post-Route 34 future.
On Wednesday, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign and the New Haven Urban Design League hosted a public event, attended by approximately 150 people, in order to raise awareness of and increase support for the “tear-down” of the Route 34 Connector in New Haven [...]
Last week Governor M. Jodi Rell announced a dramatic jump in Connecticut rail ridership in 2007 — a combined increase of nearly 1.4 million riders on Metro-North and Shore Line East over 2006.
According to the Governor’s press release and subsequent news reports (The Day and Stamford Advocate), 2007 ridership on the state-run Shore Line East [...]
On March 28, the Connecticut State Bond Commission released $75 million dedicated to a new “Fix-it-First” program. The Tri-State Transportation Campaign welcomed the Bond Commission’s release of these monies, but noted that ‘Fix-it-First’ should be the underlying strategy behind all of ConnDOT’s transportation policy and investment decisions, not a separately funded program.
In a statement, Tri-State [...]
L-R: New Haven’s Oak Street neighborhood in the 1950s, the area in the 1970s after the construction of the Route 34 Connector, and today.
The negative impacts of postwar urban renewal — wanton highway construction, residential displacement, social fragmentation — are still felt in cities throughout America. New Haven, the recipient of more per capita [...]
The Connecticut General Assembly’s Joint Committee on Transportation reported 31 bills out of committee as of Monday, the official deadline for doing so, on issues ranging from the waiving of motor fees for Purple Heart recipients to the proposed split of ConnDOT into a Department of Highways and a Department of Public Transportation, Aviation and [...]
Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi spent much of yesterday’s State of the County address discussing government consolidation and property tax relief, but also talked at length about responsible growth, calling for increased investment in downtowns that would attract new businesses and stem the exodus of young people from Long Island. This “New Suburbia” concept has [...]
