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Volume 115, Number 169 - Tuesday, April 13, 1999
DOT: a wolf in sheep's clothing
by John Friedlander
The Connecticut Department of Transportation is convening a Middletown citizen advisory group to "identify and prioritize concerns and, through a consensus building process, develop alternatives" for a safer, more capacious Route 9.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
As I've explored how transportation issues affect the places and routines of daily life, I've gained a new respect for DOT -- much as scuba divers respect sharks and barracudas. The more I talk to people who have an interest in such matters, the more I hear people acknowledge friendly respect for many individuals working for DOT, but passionate dislike and distrust of the agency as a whole.
Though it is called the Department of Transportation, it really functions more like the Department of Highways, since the vast majority of its operations concern construction, maintenance and expansion of the state's road system -- at the expense of developing transportation alternatives that might better serve the public.
The problem is, DOT embraces cars the way many young adults embraced sex in the "if it feels good, do it" sixties. Convenience and enjoyment drive most decisions, while consequences and responsibility take a back seat. These days, we are a bit smarter about sex than we used to be. But we are stupider about cars than ever before.
Our society seems to be so fixated on the primary importance of cars that we completely lose sight of the fact that there are lots of other ways to get around, and that most of them offer great advantages over cars. Take the DOT's stance on Route 9, for instance. A letter announcing the formation of the citizen advisory group begins : the DOT "is planning safety and capacity improvements for Route 9," then goes on to request citizen input in the process of considering alternatives. Here's an alternative that already seems to have been excluded from consideration: that Route 9 carries enough cars as it is, and that traffic needs to be reduced.
Sound like sacrilege? A friend of mine who lives in Los Angeles wrote recently that driving less would be "un-American." I hope he was joking. The fact is, our driving habits are out of control. U.S. population has increased 30 percent since 1970, while the number of licensed drivers has increased by 61 percent. We're driving 90 percent more vehicles an unbelievable 123 percent more miles per vehicle. Meanwhile we've coined new words to describe some of the suffering all this traffic has generated. Friendly words like "gridlock," which means immovable downtown traffic; "road rage," which means unchecked anger and deadly behavior behind the wheel; and "parking lot," used to describe a highway at rush hour.
So when DOT starts a planning process by saying that Route 9 needs to get bigger, I'm instantly convinced that DOT doesn't care about what Middletown citizens might really want. Rather than plan more capacity for more cars, perhaps we should implement solutions to reduce traffic.
When DOT tries to get citizen involvement in a planning process that seems to have already made huge assumptions about goals, I'm instantly convinced that DOT is trying to avoid a messy public relations problem but has no real intention of actually respecting our input.
What precedent might influence my feeling? Let's count a few of the times DOT has ignored the wishes of communities it serves.
Close to home, in 1997 DOT resurfaced and modified the geometry of a portion of Route 157, aka Main Street in Middlefield. The town wanted these changes. In the process however, DOT almost cut on-street parking in half in front of local businesses. Obviously, businesses suffer if their customers can't park nearby. It took Middlefield First Selectman Charlie Augur, State Senator Tom Gaffey, Representatives Susan Bysiewicz and Emil Altobello Jr. and the attention of several local TV news operations several weeks to force a compromise. But this snafu was a piece of cake in comparison to other situations.
These days, Middlefield is preparing for a battle with DOT over the widening and realigning of the section of Route 66 between the end of 691 and Agway. The local citizens' group, Citizens for a Sensible 66, has raised money to propose credible alternatives to DOT's proposals. I've written about this controversy before.
In the Hartford area, the Capitol Region Council of Government has just endorsed DOT's $233 million plan for widening Route 84 between Hartford and New Britain. The plan includes a proposed busway to provide a transit alternative to driving, but it took concerted action on the part of a regional citizen action group to get CRCOG and DOT to realize that the overall plan, which doesn't address the transit needs of the proposed Patriot's Stadium, is seriously flawed and needs to be reexamined.
Since 1963, DOT has been trying to turn Route 6 into a expressway linking Hartford and Providence. Parts of this project are complete, but one 12 mile stretch between Bolton Notch and Windham remains a twisty and dark, accident-prone two lane road. Most of the accidents occur late at night or on weekends, when drivers aren't alert enough to stay on the right side of the road. DOT's proposed solution is a four lane highway. The local citizens' group, Citizens for a Sensible 6, has proposed solutions which preserve the rural character of the present road and add safety features DOT has used successfully elsewhere around the state.
"We were able to do with $25,000 of private funding what the DOT couldn't do with $25 million of taxpayer dollars, which is to propose a community-sensitive safety and capacity upgrade to the present Route 6, " says Michael Williams, a Coventry resident and member of Citizens for a Sensible 6. "DOT still wants to blow through here with a four lane expressway without solving the underlying problem. Highways are their solution to everything."
In New Haven in 1992, DOT convened a group called the Intermodal Concepts Development Committee (ICDC) made up of 22 area groups ranging from highway construction interests to neighborhood groups, the Chamber of Commerce and the Sierra Club. Then DOT Commissioner Emil Frankel pledged to the stakeholders that it would "accept and implement their recommendations." In 1997 the ICDC consensus recommended a $500 million project which included major transit investments, and added one extra lane in each direction on Interstate 95 across the Quinnipiac Bridge and through to Branford. In 1999, DOT announced its preferred alternative: a $945 million plan that scrapped virtually all the transit improvements and added two extra lanes in each direction across the bridge. So much for community consensus building.
These are just a few reasons why Middletown should be very skeptical of DOT's request for community input on Route 9. We are likely to get strung along for years and then have a wider road shoved down our municipal throat, no matter what else we might want.
Any Route 9 "solution" will inevitably involve three major related issues: the complex and valuable atmosphere of the North End; Middletown's access to the river which must not be degraded; and our unique and irreplaceable Main Street. Count on the fact that DOT won't care a whit for any of these.
Mark my words: DOT's plans for Route 9 will cause as much, if not more community upset as the Long Lane School rebuilding/relocation has. We'd best prepare now by understanding the true nature of the process that is about to unfold.
It's tax week. There's a knock on your door. You open the door, and there's a group of people standing there, with a leader who says, "we're from the government. We're here to help!" If your natural reaction is to slam the door and double-bolt it, you're ready to deal with the DOT.
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