The road ahead for Bridgeport’s highways
Hugh Bailey’s column (“CT in desperate need of new transportation thinking,” Oct. 10), concerning state officials’ aspirations to widen Interstate 95 to fix regional traffic woes and how such plans could induce more congestion, is on target. Is it worth spending hundreds of millions of tax dollars to widen the current roadway? Refurbished some 15 years ago, Bridgeport’s Interstate 95 has a limited service life which if extended indefinitely will cost more to maintain with each passing decade. So what new, economically and environmentally sustainable alternatives can be explored?
Commuters in the state’s southwestern corridor endure repeated traffic delays due in part to overreliance on Bridgeport’s I-95 viaducts and Route 8/25 connector, particularly at their interchange at Exit 27A. Redesign and replacement is called for. Planned in the mid 1950s, I-95 slashes through shoreline cities and towns, dividing neighborhoods and displacing walkable streets with noisy, pedestrian-unfriendly overpasses. Nowhere is this blight more impactful than in Bridgeport’s West Side, East Side and downtown neighborhoods. With the president’s infrastructure bill now law, state, regional and local planners should consider its provisions to study how this vital but hobbled economic lifeline should operate into the next century. Two alternatives are worth investigating:
A new Bridgeport Harbor tunnel
Imagine a widened I-95 achieving superior functional and aesthetic outcomes by placing most of the roadway, including the 8/25 connector, below ground; the new system would run beneath the harbor with room for added express and high occupancy vehicle lanes, streamlining traffic flow and eliminating shadows cast by viaducts currently lumbering over the Pequonnock riverfront, State Street and Fairfield Avenue, among many others important public urban thoroughfares.
Southwest Corridor Bus Rapid Transit
Adding new lanes below grade can accommodate flexible Bus Rapid Transit, or BRT, service using express connections within and through the city. Avoiding sunk costs of light rail, BRT offers commuters a speedier, greener choice by taking thousands of passenger vehicles off the road. Successful in Europe and South America, BRT encourages walkable transit-oriented development in the urban core where it belongs.
Too often, Americans see images of China’s progress in transportation innovation and ask what similar examples exist in the United States. Boston’s recently completed Central Artery Tunnel replacement took over a decade to complete but more than paid for itself by attracting a cascade of new real estate and business investment after its obsolete eyesore I-93 “expressway” was buried below grade. Replaced with the pedestrian-friendly Rose Kennedy Greenway above grade, its success has spawned urban highway relocation and/or removal campaigns across the nation. New Orleans and Syracuse are following suit. In the Bronx, the obtrusive Sheridan Expressway will be replaced with a tree-lined boulevard.
Nearby, in New Haven, a Connecticut DOT plan to reknit blocks severed by the canceled Route 34 connector is now flourishing with new development.
Bridgeport can achieve similar aims by recovering revenue-yielding urban fabric lost to highways over the latter half of the 20th century. In a 2015 UConn civil engineering master’s research study by Kristen Floberg, the planner cites this loss stating: “The most startling result (of the highways) is the change of density and diversity of land uses. From the passenger train station in downtown, a pedestrian can reach only 28 percent of the number of establishments that a 1913 pedestrian could in a 5-minute walk. If examined by land use, only a startling 6 percent of the number of residential properties can be accessed today, greatly diminishing the walkable nature of the city.”
Although its population and real estate values hold steady, more work can be done to promote reinvestment in Bridgeport’s urban core. Placing emphasis on internal growth and reducing the region’s contribution to greenhouse gases, a phased, tunnel-based roadway replacement — in full or in part — could greatly improve Bridgeport’s regional mobility as we know it, inaugurate a physical and cultural transition to using expanded mass transit and relieve the New HavenBridgeport-Stamford corridor from traffic headaches for many decades to come.
President Dwight Eisenhower, creator of America’s now aging Interstate Highway System, famously quipped: “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” Just as I-95 and Route 8/25 spurred enthusiasm for Bridgeport’s suburban growth and lifestyle innovations during the decades following World War II, a new era of planning can turn the tide on Connecticut’s outdated pattern of inefficient sprawl, making Bridgeport far more attractive to citizens, commuters and investors.