Visions of a Route 6 Expressway continue to capture the imagination of local officials east of Hartford. In August, news stories reported an effort by leaders in Bolton, Columbia, and Windham to re-interest Conn-DOT in the highway construction plan that had gone down to decisive defeat in 1998 at the hands of federal agencies, Connecticut environmentalists and other nearby towns fearing the road's likely sprawl, natural habitat and traffic impacts. The expressway plan would replace the two-lane Route 6 with a four-lane limited access road from the current terminus of I-384 eastward toward Rhode Island.

An east-west highway connecting Hartford and Providence has been on the state's wish-list for over thirty-three years, and had strong support from Governor Rowland. Rowland vowed to build the road even after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers rejected an application for a wetlands-filling permit for the project.

It's unclear the new effort will get off the ground, but the project's long life on ConnDOT's books has expressway foes wary and on the lookout for signs of movement. Local backers of the expressway may be looking for Congressional allies to pressure the Corps.

Still, the Journal Inquirer cited ConnDOT's Richard Martinez, who said that the Army Corps had made it clear that "anything north of the Hop River was not permitted."

Opponents of the road plan hope the Route 6 brawl is not re-opened. "The EPA and the Corps were decisive in their opposition to the massive wetlands fill envisioned in the expressway plan, and a local consensus favoring the road does not exist," said CT Fund for the Environment director Don Strait. If the issue were brought back to the table, "highway advocates would lose again, after another time- and money-consuming debate," he said.

Better news is that the DOT is testing center-line "rumble-strips" on Route 6 between I-384 and Bolton. The strips are aimed at reducing head-on collisions, a problem on the highway cited during the expressway debate. The method has a history of success in Maryland. Because the strips reduce drivers' ability to pass on the left, the strips will be accompanied by improved shoulders, which will let slower traffic pull aside for faster vehicles.