A grim anniversary for Connecticut residents should not pass unnoticed.
Twenty-five years ago, on June 28, 1983, a section of the I-95 highway bridge over the Mianus River in Greenwich collapsed, killing three people and seriously injuring three more. The tangle of bodies and mangled vehicles that fell 70 feet to the peaceful little river sent a horrific message that Connecticut's transportation infrastructure was in dire need of repair.
Gov. William O'Neill and legislative leaders created a Special Transportation Fund to support what was initially a 10-year, $5.6 billion reconstruction plan.
A decade later, the program had become a national model. Among other things, workers repaired or replaced nearly 1,500 bridges and repaved more than 4,000 miles of roadway.
The roads and bridges need work once more. In a statement issued on the anniversary of the Mianus collapse, the nonprofit Tri-State Transportation Campaign, a regional transportation policy group, urged the state to invest in existing roads and bridges.
"The Connecticut Department of Transportation spends only 22 percent of its transportation dollars on maintaining existing infrastructure, while 36 percent is dedicated to highway expansion projects, a dangerous allocation of funds in a state with some of the worst bridges in the country," said Ryan Lynch, Connecticut coordinator for the Tri-State group.
He said his organization's analysis of federal data shows that 1,400 of Connecticut's 4,175 bridges — more than a third — were structurally deficient or functionally obsolete in 2007. This is higher than the national average of about 25 percent.
The data urge a "fix it first" policy of bringing the state's existing roads and bridges up to standard before embarking on new highway projects. With the price of gas well north of $4 a gallon, "fix it first" needs to be coupled with transit improvements and other smart growth initiatives.
But fix the bridges. We should have learned a hard lesson in Greenwich a quarter-century ago. We cannot allow another bridge to collapse.
=================================================
Please send your comments to GreenwichRoundup@gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment