Connecticut can do better, especially when it comes to our roads and rails. We’re on the wrong track.
The state is in the process of spending $1 billion on a rail line to Springfield, which will eventually serve an estimated 2,200 passengers a day. Meanwhile the 125,000 daily Metro North commuters face delays and other frustrations related to outdated infrastructure and needed repairs.
“We need to prioritize,” said Suzanne Bates, policy director for the Yankee Institute. “The problem is we’ve been chasing projects like the Springfield rail line instead of fixing what we have that’s broken. We should meet those needs first before we spend millions – or billions – more on the wrong projects.”
If transportation is a priority, we need to put our money where our mouth is and reallocate funding from less important areas.
We also need to get better value. Connecticut’s per-mile administrative costs for its roads are seven times higher than the national average.
Through a combination of clear priorities, reallocation and reductions in other taxes, we can find a fair way to fund Connecticut’s necessary transportation investments.
Connecticut already has one of the highest gas taxes in the nation. That money, and the other taxes and fees allocated to the Special Transportation Fund, should be spent only on transportation projects.
We must end the conversation about border tolls. Instead, we should explore congestion pricing in key areas as a way to clear up traffic and reduce the gas tax.
Wrong Track: Reprioritizing Our Transportation Needs
Friends Sprague Public Library
March 22, 2015 @ 9:32 am
Transportation is really big business. I feel it is the best interest of the community the transportation companies start acting like business and focus on taking care of their revenue. If they are a business they will figure out what the customer want. The customer determines the revenue increase. Increase the reason why the customer wants your service and then the money should follow. A train to Sringfield is the same as everything else in CT. It will go right through the state and there will be no reason to shop, visit, work in CT. What does springfeild have that CT does’t, jobs? If the governor thinks he is making a beeline for students he really is drunk on ego. I can not get my head around the fact that SEAT has a “express” bus to Three Rives Community College from Groton. What about all the other students in the state that could use transportation to school or work. What’s the agenda for Groton? Let the kids take the buses like everyone else. Get your butts up early and catch the bus. The transportation palnning in CT is from the top down. It is a clear example of centralization. It is communism. It is big government. Planned economy is communism. This is big government not big business. We must get rid og the council of government and so many other wasteful entities the state calls government.Transportation planning must be grass roots from the bottom up. The story of Tom McCall the maverick Governor of Oregon in the 70’s is the father of the transportion revolution. In the 70’s Portland Oregon a military industrial city became a ghost town after the end of the Vietnam War. There were no jobs. There was a huge influx of population the state could not handel. Governor McCall put up signs that read “You can come to visit but you can not stay”. He believed in borders. It was with the help of the grass roots architechts met in The Awahnee Hotel to what became the Awahnee Principles for buiding livable coomunities. These architechts were very frustrated about being hired over and over by communities to design and suggest what needed to be done to recycle historic places and incorporate new places for economic development. The architechts suggestions and planning would just sit and collect dust because of the bureaucracy everytime. On the dawn of 2000 and Agenda 21 Clinton and Gore began to claim the Oregon Story as the cookie cutter solution to everything. Check the records. Gore was keynote speaker 1998 in Oregon when the rail was Christiened. He made references to the Bookings Institue that was hire to collect data of the communities to find that there was a slice of the population that did not fit the survey. These people had to have their own category. The are dubbed the cultural creatives. They have further education, like organic fresh foods, work to save histroric places, want to homeschool, have nature all around them. If you check the record for the following years there suddenly is the Global Vision. There are more and more people from Chicago advocatiing for rail, HUD, greenways and recycle of old neighborhoods. I sat in workshops in Oregon (up close and personal to Gore), Dallas, Denver, Atlanta. San Francisco was interrrupted by 911. I was a witness to Eminent Domain, New London is the poster child. The vision of Tom McCall has become a political agenda for money mongers world
wide. Communites should not be a cookie cutter project. Communities should reflect their history and who lives there. The vision should come from the community not the government. I feel the most important question communities in CT should be asking is, “What is the product?” There has to be a product to generate jobs and economic growth. What is it that the State of CT has that will benefit the communties, creating a source of income for the people to live free of government subsidy, government intrusion, goverment data mining, government control of the people without hope. I hope Uber does not get discouraged by CT red tape and bureaucracy. I hope Uber stands tall and becomes a good steward in business for CT. Let the lazy welfare recipients of government money, cabs, buses, liveries, trains get off their butts and work for excellent cutomer service, compete for cutomers, compete for real revednue that will increase their revenue and build their companies. That is how free enterprise works. What is good in Oregon dos not mean it is good for Cairo or Connecticut.