A retrograde plan for state’s future

Ned Lamont owes his election to the cities. But as his transportation plan shows, his heart belongs to the suburbs.

Though Senate Democrats shot down Lamont’s plan to pay for his CT2030 — they think tolls would cost them their jobs, and they’re probably right — there is bipartisan support for the plan’s goals. But those goals take the state backwards, with the $21 billion proposal heavily weighted toward straightening and widening roads used mostly by singleoccupancy vehicles. If Lamont believes, as he says, the state’s economic future is in its cities, his spending priorities show otherwise.

Probably the best that can be said about Lamont’s plan is that it’s not as bad as Dan Malloy’s was.

Malloy in 2015 released a $100 billion transportation plan that never stood a chance of approval but was notable for where its priorities lay. In the most densely populated part of the country, Malloy doubled down on all the failed transit plans of the past halfcentury, pledging to add lanes to Interstate 95 from New York to Rhode Island and do the same for I84 west of Hartford.

There were plenty of other projects, as well, but the retrograde stance on attempting to build our way out of congestion — something that planners have long shown to be impossible, since new lanes just attract more cars, making any gains shortlived — set a marker for how not to do transit planning.

Lamont doesn’t propose anything nearly so extreme, and its widening plans are targeted at specific choke points that the state says could see improvement if the plans are followed. But the overall scope of the plan, overwhelmingly focused on cars at the expense of any other mode of transit, leaves many questions.

Still, all anyone wants to talk about is tolls. It’s hard to think how Lamont could have handled that issue worse. First he promised we wouldn’t have them at all except for trucks, then he proposed a statewide system littered with dozens of gantries before finally settling on the current iteration, on 14 bridges around the state. People who only pay glancing attention to public policy — which is to say, almost everyone — could be forgiven for not trusting what the governor has to say on this, or wondering if he has any idea what he’s doing.

But where the money comes from is only half the story. What the money would pay for is just as important, and more damning.

As critics have noted, of the proposal’s $21 billion, less than a third is for mass transit, and basically nothing goes to improve the pedestrian experience. Throughout the plan are ideas to straighten, widen and otherwise optimize roads for the convenience of drivers at the expense of anyone unlucky enough to get in their way.

The obvious counter to this complaint is that cars are how most people travel in this state. Why, according to this argument, would the state put more money in something other than the dominant mode of transit?

The issue is priorities. We are a state dominated by suburbs and cars, and Lamont’s plan is only pushing us further in that direction. The governor, like Malloy before him, says he wants to promote transitoriented development. But his plan shows otherwise. Spending the bulk of the money on roads in a plan that he has stressed is vital to the state’s economic future shows exactly where his priorities are.

We’re decades into our experiment with cars serving as the dominant form of transit. They are the most convenient for each person individually, but collectively, inconvenience for all is the inevitable result. They take up space, clog the roads and lead to greater emissions, longer drives and people spending ever more time away from doing the things they’d otherwise want to be doing.

There are alternatives to a carfocused way of life, and the state has made a few nods in that direction. But real progress would cost money. And when the governor has a chance to lay out his spending priorities on the future of transportation in Connecticut, he makes clear that cars have been the way of the past and, under his watch, they will be the way of the future.