Cross-sound bridge would bypass New London ferries
O f all the proposals for bridges or tunnels across Long Island Sound made over the years, my favorite was one of the more preposterous, linking Orient, N.Y., and Watch Hill, R.I., with a landing on Fishers Island.
Indeed, it has often been the criticism from communities where these bridges would land that has helped sink them. That and the very big price tags.
Still, the idea of a drivable link between Long Island and Connecticut or Westchester County, above New York City, routinely has surfaced over the years, with serious proposals dating back to 1938, when a bridge from Orient Point to Groton was proposed.
The Watch Hill/Fishers Island route was discussed in the 1960s. Hard to think how you could pick two wealthy communities more prepared to launch an anti-bridge NIMBY fight than those two.
Now, in 2018, New York is once again pondering a tunnel or bridge or combination, with various configurations under study, including ones with Connecticut landings in the vicinity of Bridgeport or New Haven.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo got the bridge discussion going with a new $5 million study, which already has sparked some discussion on both sides of the sound.
The enthusiasm seems to be largely on the New York side, and the official Connecticut response was a big yawn. A bridge to Long Island was nowhere in Gov. Dannel Malloy’s $100 billion blueprint for a transportation future, and that plan looks mired in the budget morass anyway.
For the foreseeable future, Connecticut is going to have a hard time keeping up with potholes.
It is worth noting that, no matter how pie-in-the-sky these cross-sound bridge and tunnel ideas might be, any one of them would have significant impact on New London. Very few people, for instance, would still wait in line for a ferry from New London to Orient Point if they could drive to Long Island through Milford or any of the other Connecticut gateways envisioned.
I wouldn’t say a bridge or tunnel is dead on arrival, not when the governor of New York is talking it up and financing expensive feasibility studies. He has ordered the New York State Department of Transportation to further study the new consultants’ report.
A new bridge or tunnel might have devastating consequences on the ferry business in New London, but I wonder how that would impact New London in general.
The ferry company is a significant employer and it brings a lot of traffic in and out of the city every day. But it is a mystery how much of that traffic benefits the city, how many ferry passengers end up spending money here and stimulating the local economy.
Mystic — The Stonington Planning and Zoning Commission approved a plan Tuesday night that will allow the Coogan Farm Nature and Heritage Center to stage a limited number of special events on the Route 27 property each year.
The commission’s 3-2 approval came after several members harshly criticized several aspects of the plan and the center’s desire to host events, and then eliminated a provision that would have allowed two events a year with up to 250 people each.
The nonprofit center, which was created with private funding to preserve a historic farm and open it to the public, was hoping to use revenues from events to help fund its educational mission.
“This feels a little like an assault on a carefully crafted plan to do a limited amount of special events that may or may not come to fruition,” said Maggie Jones, the executive director of the Denison Pequotsepos Nature Center, which owns and operates Coogan Farm.
Among the harshest critics of the plan was commission member Shaun Mastroianni, who pointed out that, when the commission approved the original plan for the center, Jones said it was to preserve open space for the public.
“What is your mission now? To be a wedding hall?” he asked her.
Commission Chairman David Rathbun said the nonprofit nature center, which would be able to hold six events a year with up to 140 people, would be competing with local for-profit businesses. He added the center is near a residential neighborhood and music could bother residents there. Music is limited to the hours of 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Landscape architect Chad Frost explained that music would be contained within three eight-foot-tall granite walls at the lowest portion of the site and project away from the homes. But Mastroianni said there was nothing in the center’s plan that said the music could not be located elsewhere.
Some members wanted to limit the six allowed events to one per month, but that stipulation was not approved.
Commission member Gardner Young supported the center’s original plan, along with Ben Philbrick, urging commission members to allow one event a year with 250 people and then revisit it to see how it went.
“Let’s not put the hammer down. Let’s give them a chance,” Young said.
When the commission originally approved plans for the creation of Coogan Farm in March 2015, it did so without approving a special event plan after commission members expressed concern about the size and number of special events and their potential impact on traffic and safety along Route 27. At the time the commission barred Coogan Farm from hosting any “third party, private, for-profit events” until it returned with clarification of those plans.
Since then, center officials have revised the special event plan and in December secured the support of the Board of Police Commissioners, which regulates traffic issues in town.
The center’s plan before the commission Tuesday called for allowing an unlimited number of daily events of up to 50 people, events of up to 100 people 15 times a year, weddings, receptions and reunions of up to 140 people six times per year and events up to 250 people twice a year. The events with 250 people were removed by the commission.
There is parking for 56 vehicles, accommodating an estimated 140 people, on the Coogan Farm site. For larger events there would have been overflow parking for 672 vehicles on the grass lot next to the Denison Homestead, with shuttle bus service to the farm as well as at sites such as Mystic Seaport and the adjacent Precious Memories preschool.
Commission member Lynn Conway said she wanted permanent parking on site and no temporary parking arrangements.
Parking and drop-off is prohibited along Route 27 as well as the adjacent streets and businesses. There are requirements for parking attendants and police.
That might be an interesting study for the ferry company to undertake.
After all, if the New York bridge and tunnel initiatives take hold, the ferry company likely will go into high lobbying mode to slow it down.
There have been some economic development hopes stirred around New Haven with the idea of a bridge or tunnel that might connect that part of Connecticut with the population-rich Long Island.
It could be a way for Connecticut to import business and residents, instead of bleeding them.
The costs of a bridge or tunnel are daunting, ranging from about $8 billion to more than $50 billion, with the tunnels forecast to cost the most. Lengths range from about 10 miles to 25 or more miles.
In talking up the project in his State of the State address earlier this month, Gov. Cuomo noted that a tunnel would be invisible, would reduce traffic on the impossibly congested Long Island Expressway and could lure significant private investment.
The study commissioned by Cuomo suggested a tunnel or bridge crossing could attract 86,000 vehicles a day and generate some $500 million in tolls a year.
A private developer proposed a tunnel in 2010, an idea for a self-sustaining investment that never got off the ground.
Curiously, the idea of a bridge across Long Island Sound was a plot device in the second season of the hit Netflix series “House of Cards,” with Vice President Francis Underwood, played by Kevin Spacey, using a contract for the China-financed bridge as a bargaining chip to consolidate his power and influence.
It’s not that much of a stretch to imagine a bridge concept inflating again, with the governor of New York at the bellows.
Don’t we expect infrastructure spending to be a major pitch in the next presidential election?
Maybe the idea of a bridge over Long Island Sound being a leverage issue in the White House is not just the grist for a hit television series.