The Connecticut’s General Assembly 2010 session came to an end last Wednesday and was highlighted by a flurry of activity to close projected deficits and pass an amended $19 billion budget. While transit escaped intact in a budget filled with cuts, a vulnerable user bill supported by transportation advocates stumbled just short of the finish line.

The vulnerable user bill would have enhanced penalties for criminally negligent drivers that injure or kill vulnerable users like pedestrians, cyclists, equestrians, highway workers and first responders outside their vehicles, among others.  Although the language was weakened during the legislative process, its passing would have laid the groundwork for safer roads for all of Connecticut’s residents and would have built upon last year’s Complete Streets law.

However, even though the House voted 140-3 to pass the bill, the Senate omitted the bill from its “consent calendar” — a package of uncontroversial bills passed without debate at the end of the session — apparently due to Republican caucus opposition. This means the bill will probably have to wait until the next legislative session.

There was some good news for transportation advocates.  The amended budget bill maintained the existing level of bus operations funding and added approximately $10.1 million in rail operations (Line T1138), presumably as a way to ensure the Metro-North New Haven Line does not see rail service cuts as a result of the MTA’s service cut package passed last month.  Connecticut seems to be bucking the national trend of transit cuts, with bus and MTA commuter rail operations holding steady and Shore Line East actually expanding service today.

$3.2 million in funding for Transportation for Employment Independence, a jobs access program, was also restored in the budget after having been previously eliminated in deficit mitigation packages proposed by Governor Rell.