Jim Redeker has the best job in transportation. And the toughest. As Commissioner of Transportation for Connecticut for the past six years, he’s guided the agency through hundreds of millions of dollars in spending while managing three competing taskmasters: his boss, Gov. Dannel Malloy… the legislature, which controls his budget… and commuters / drivers who depend on his product. Redeker has successfully managed all three.
Transportation
Posted inCT Viewpoints
Never let a crisis go to waste
Last month, I’d have given Tesla an even chance at breaking into Connecticut’s new car market. The electric car maker has been trying for years, but has been blocked by the Connecticut Automotive Retailers Association. The trade group opposes exceptions to the state’s franchise laws. Tesla has been making headway, but nothing seemed certain.
Then came The Big News.
Posted inCT Viewpoints, Talking Transportation
Free parking isn’t really free
Our obsession with automobiles is not only creating gridlock and ruining the quality of our air, but it’s eating up our real estate and sending land costs upward. Because, once we drive our cars off the crowded highways, we assume it’s our constitutional right to find “free parking.” Why are Connecticut’s towns slaves to antiquated zoning mentalities that assume all humans come with four tires rather than two legs? Why do we waste precious land on often-empty parking spots instead of badly needed affordable housing?
Posted inCT Viewpoints
Expanding I-95 is not the way to go
When 41 million hours of waiting and $860 million of lost earnings evaporate in the haze of I-95 traffic jams every year, we should be doing everything we can to make wise investments to relieve congestion and improve transit along the corridor. Although studies have shown highway expansion would not solve I-95 congestion, Gov. Dannel Malloy has made expansion of the I-95 part of his 30-year, $100 billion transportation plan “Let’s Go CT!”
Posted inCT Viewpoints, Talking Transportation
Is Uber playing fair?
It looks like the fate of Uber (and Lyft, the other popular ride sharing service in Connecticut) will be decided in Hartford in a lobbying war, not in the competitive marketplace.
Posted inCT Viewpoints, Talking Transportation
It’s time for tolls
Nobody likes the idea of paying tolls. But tolls are coming back to Connecticut and I just wish that lawmakers in Hartford would be honest with us about why. We are running out of money for the Special Transportation Fund, that’s why. And none of the re-funding alternatives are attractive: vehicle miles tax, sales tax, gas tax and yes, tolls. But tolls on our highways would not be a tax.
Posted inCT Viewpoints, Talking Transportation
What Metro-North can learn from Amtrak
Enjoying a speedy (148 mph) ride to Boston recently on Acela, I started thinking about the differences between Amtrak and Metro-North. Both are railroads, but each has a different mission. Still, there are a few things Metro-North could learn from its national counterpart.
Posted inEducation, Health, Money, Politics, Transportation
Trump budget would end CT heating aid, housing, after-school programs
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s first budget proposal would strip Connecticut of tens of millions of dollars in federal grants, eliminating programs that subsidize heating bills for nearly 110,000 Connecticut households and provide housing for the homeless and after-school care. But the budget would boosting the state’s defense industry and fund a border wall.
Posted inEnergy & Environment, Transportation
Easing auto emissions rules would set back CT clean-air efforts
Anticipated action by the Trump administration to roll back auto emissions standards would threaten Connecticut’s greenhouse gas emission goals, its air quality and its push for more electric vehicles.
Posted inCT Viewpoints, Talking Transportation
Solving the rail station parking mess
If we want to get cars off of the highways, we need to turn drivers into rail commuters. But even the most motivated would-be rail rider faces an immediate problem: the lack of rail station parking.
Posted inEducation, Money, Politics, Transportation
Legislators begin to push back on Malloy’s new budget
The General Assembly began its review of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s new two-year budget Friday with a strong, bipartisan pushback from the Appropriations Committee.
Posted inCT Viewpoints, Talking Transportation
Who should pay for highway sound barriers?
Building and maintaining our highways is expensive. But here’s a quiz question: on interstates 95 and 84, what costs a half-million dollars a mile to construct? The answer: sound barriers. Why are we spending that kind of money to enshroud our interstates simply to protect the peace and quiet of their neighbors? Didn’t they know that living that close to a highway came with the twin costs of increased noise and air pollution along with the benefits of proximity to the highways?
Posted inMoney, Politics, Transportation
Transportation funding debate still centered on ‘lockbox’
While Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has released no transportation-related details from his next two-year budget plan, he also hasn’t backed away from his demand that legislators first back a constitutional ‘lockbox’ amendment to safeguard transportation revenues.
Posted inCT Viewpoints
A rail plan to grow the metropolitan Hartford region
The recent proposal by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) to improve Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor and the incoming President’s concern with the poor quality of American passenger railroads provide a major opportunity for the Metropolitan Hartford region and Connecticut as a whole to better connect to Boston and New York City, strengthening our position in the regional and world economy.
Posted inCities & Towns
Little Derby has a big plan
In 2003 the city demolished a row of 19th century brick buildings along Main Street to make way for a major development that never happened, leaving a vacant 19-acre site with little more than a rusting grain elevator. Now city officials hope to create a new neighborhood “that will put Derby on the map.”