Connecticut's Road Program

I . ' ' > 3 0231 01306 3321 CONNECTICUT'S ROAD PROGRAM STATE HIGHWAY DEPARTMENT CONNECTICUT NOVEMBER , 19 4 6 This is Connecticttt's first ttrban express highway the first urban road engineered for motor traffic. It spells the end of those futile attempts to provide major traffic a'rteries throttgh patchwork improvements of existing streets. It marks the beginning of a program of express highway improvements which will bring the freedom of movement, efficiency and safety so sorely needed in our cities and on the main mral roads which serve them. CONTENTS PAGE FOREWORD . 5 STATE HIGHWAY PROGRAM 7 The Urban Problem 7 Main Rural Roads . 9 Secondary State Highways 12 Safety . 13 The Program 16 WILBUR CROSS PARKWAY AND OLD LYME-OLD SAYBROOK BRIDGE 3 3 THE LOCAL ROAD PROGRAM 37 "Out of the Mud" . 37 Unimproved Roads . 37 Construction Costs . 39 Maintenance and Reconstruction Costs 40 FINANCING THE PROGRAM 41 Income 41 Fund Balance and Existing Obligations . 42 Recurring Obligations . 43 Town Road Construction and Maintenance 44 State Highway Construction 44 APPENDIX 49 FOREWORD This report on Connecticut's road program is intended to give the essential background of facts to permit in telligent consideration of legislative proposals and the development of long range financial plans for highway improvement and maintenance. All public roads in Connecticut are either state high ways or local roads. This report, therefore, outlines the state-wide highway improvement program in which state and local governmental units are respectively engaged. It summarizes the cost of these improvements, and relates to this cost the revenues anticipated from existing fee and tax schedules, and aids from grants. It is, above all, important to recognize that Con necticut's road program long ago developed out of the experimental stage. It is well under way. Much has already been accomplished. Because our program has become an established fact, the problem before us now is to determine how rapidly the work started may be carried on, how soon our future projects may be completed. 5 MORE TRAFFIC .ia ge/We This is the way Connecticttt motor traffic has grown. It is largely this increase in traffic that has outmoded 800 our older state highwa·ys and has created the sttfling congestion which now grips our cities. -'w > 600 < I"' 0 N ~ 400 LL 0 1 zw (.) 200 w "'0.. 0 1920 1930 1940 1950 Accommodation of traffic flows like this reqLtires expressways. Safe and efficient movement cannot be provided on existing city streets, with attendant conflict with pedestrians, cross traffic, and entering and leaving vehicles. 6 STATE HIGHWAY PROGRAM In the two decades between 1920 and Our Cities have developed with concen 1940, traffic volumes doubled, redoubled trations of business and industrial activity and then almost redoubled again in Con in a small core at their centers. Almost any necticut, and state highway improvements improvement which deviates from the exist just failed to keep pace. It is possible, of ing street pattern (and any real improve course, to build highways adequate for the ment must deviate) requires expensive right greatly increased traffic volumes. The park of way. This not only means a costly project, ways, and some few other isolated improve but it means also a reduction in tax revenue ments serving heavy traffic volumes, have because of property being taken over as demonstrated clearly that highways can be public right of way. The high cost of mod constructed to serve efficiently and safely ern highway construction, and this property even on our most traveled roads. Right now angle, have acted as deterrents to a more it's simply a case of the motor vehicles being rapid solution of the city traffic problem. there ahead of the kind of roads needed to However, the situation has now become so serve them. bad that something will be done. Decentrali zation of cities at the expense of their central THE URBAN PROBLEM business districts with resulting deterioration and decline of property values, is now seen The most critical highway improvement to be due, in large part, to the inaccessibility need in Connecticut-and in the entire of the cities for motor travel, and the inade country for that matter-exists in the cities. quacy of parking facilities. It is becoming A real start on the urban traffic problems apparent that the deterioration of property has been long delayed by failure of . most values through lack of good motor ways and communities to recognize, until recently, parking facilities can be greater than would that bold measures are essential, and by be the loss in value of property taken over the financial requirements that such meas 1 to provide them. It is acknowledged, too, ures entail. that halfway measures or piecemeal im 1 In a reporr of 1944 on "'Off Street Parking", the Hartford provements of existing streets cannot do the Chamber of Commerce said : 'T o give concrete evidence of the fact that the assessed valuation of our busi ness district job. is declining the following table will show that Hanford need not wai t for the evils of decentralization. They are with us at present. The question of financing large scale Year Valuation 1932 ............................................................... $127,396,589 urban highway improvements likewise ap 1942 ............................................................... 108,816,3 63 Net loss ro ciry in 10 year period 18,580,226" pears to be reaching solution under the press 7 PROBLEM 8 of urgent need for action and with the of the state highway system inside and out broader viewpoint now being taken of Fed side of urban areas. The first establishment eral and State interest in the problem. The of a state highway system in 1913 included problem confronting the cities is not entirely the urban portions of the routes comprising of their own making, nor does it affect their the system. Over the years since then, de residents only, nor can it be solved by each velopment of the highway system by the city independent of developments outside of State has been confined largely to rural por it. Quite properly, therefore, city traffic con tions because the connecting streets were al gestion should be, and now generally is, ready hard-surfaced and maintained by the fully recognized as a critical State and Na cities. Now, with the city streets unable to tional problem as well as a local one. carry satisfactorily the traffic burden devel oped from the entering state highways, and The Federal Highway Act of 1944, m from the community itself, it is time for the authorizing funds for three years, specifically State to carry major improvements into the earmarks part of them for improvements on Cttles. Of necessity - to permit the free the Federal aid highway system in urban movement of traffic with maximum efficien .. areas. The degree of this recognition of the cy and safety- these improvements will be urban problem as applied to Connecticut is largely on new locations and, at least in the indicated by the fact that 54% of its appor larger cities, will be developed as express tionment is in this urban category. With highways. matching funds, the Federal aid urban pro gram will amount to about $18 million for MAIN RURAL ROADS the three years. A real start toward solving the urgent problem is thus assured. Though great emphasis must now be placed on the urban problem, we still face From the State viewpoint, there has al a large job of modernization on the rural ways been the same basic status for portions highways. The most outstanding require ment is the replacement of old two-lane LEFT: roads, which have become totally inadequate The ttnhampered flow of traffic in and ottt and throttgh for the increased traffic volumes, by four our cities will be possible when a system of expressways is completed. T he new route from the south into the lane highways. Connecticut has a relatively center of Hartford demonstrates how this will be accom large mileage of highways in this category. plished. Motor traffic is carried, on the expressway, According to stndies made during the Con from points sottth of the city to its very center with almost all of the conflicts umally associated with city gressional deliberations on the Federal High travel eliminated. There a·re no stop lights. Cross traf way Act of 1944, there are fewer than ten fic goes over or ttnder. T here are no pedestrians and states in the country which have as many there is no conflict with the opposing traffic stt·eam. T he motor cars really move on the new road and the inadequate rural two-lane highways as does load is taken off the existing streets. Connecticut. This situation is apparently 9 created partly by our proximity to the popu tions of the communities through which lous areas of New York, Massachusetts and they pass. Rhode Island, and partly by the distribution of the population within the State. The re In considering the major improvements sult, in any case, is a great teeming of traffic both in and immediately adjacent to the clear across the lower fringe of Connecticut, urban areas, it is important to recognize the north and south through the middle on sev following facts: eral routes, and radiating in all directions 1. The improvements will be costly from each of our sizeable cities. In addition, per mile of highway construction but nor moderately heavy arteries cover other por per mile of the travel for which they are tions of the State. It has been said that even constructed. For example, the Merritt Park our more lightly traveled state highways way, which cost per mile several times the would be main arteries in the sparsely settled amount spent on the average trunk line areas of the Midwest, Far West and South.

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