Governor Jodi Rell was not in office a week before columnists and op-ed contributors in the state’s newspapers started asking her for an overhaul of transportation policy and planning.

Toni Gold, a board member of All Aboard! said in a Hartford Courant op-ed that the keystone of reform would be to change how ConnDOT planners see the world: "First it would mean re-thinking the most fundamental assumptions underlying Connecticut transportation policy for the last 50 years: that we can build our way out of congestion by widening old roads and building new ones, and that transit won’t work in Connecticut."

Courant columnist Stephanie Reitz also called on the Governor to reform transportation, noting "It’ll be nice to ride in a Metro-North Railroad car that doesn’t predate the Nixon administration."

Ms. Gold urged the new Governor to spend more on transit by allocating less of the state’s flexible federal money to expensive road projects, like the Q-Bridge construction and capacity expansions to Route 11. A Campaign analysis for All Aboard! found that about 84% of the state’s flexible federal funding goes to highways, while only 7% goes to transit (MTR #458).

Both writers called for the state to raise more transportation revenue through road user fees or a higher gas tax. CT’s 2003 Master Transportation Plan clearly states "the need for and availability of federal and state funding for transportation services and facilities in CT is critical" and goes on to discuss a ten-year "$3.27 billion shortfall in funds needed to keep maintain the transportation system in a state of good repair."

The Connecticut transportation system — especially its mass transit elements — was starved under the Rowland administration: in 1996, the CT gas tax was 38 cents per gallon thanks to an infrastructure rebuilding program put in place in the 1980s. But Rowland began to cut it back during boom-times, and by 2001, the tax had been peeled back to 25 cents. Most discretionary transportation spending in the last decade has gone into massive road expansion projects, such as the Q-Bridge on I-95 in New Haven, while more sensible projects like the Hartford-New Britain busway are limping along in pre-construction stages and under current conditions, may never see the light of day.

A plan to replace a few New Haven Line rail cars borrows from future bonding capacity, while the needed program to replace the entire New Haven Line fleet is unfunded. Governor Rell will have to make tough choices to improve mobility in the state and stave off another disaster like the New Haven line’s "winter of woe" when snowfall idled big portions of the ageing train fleet.

In overhauling transportation policy and tackling traffic congestion, the Rell administration will also have to grapple with better linking land use and transportation planning. Ms. Gold urged the state to reduce the power of the state Traffic Commission that uses an outdated regulation to approve development projects with major traffic impacts. ConnDOT could work with metropolitan planning organizations and municipalities to create sustainable land use and traffic plans that improve existing roadways, create walkable communities and encourage investment in designated growth zones that support mass transit (or will in the future). However, the failure of ConnDOT’s efforts to consider a land use element in its legislatively-mandated and ultimately doomed effort to reduce vehicle miles of travel in southwestern CT in the late 1990s (see MTR #’s 134, 316 and others) suggests that institutional reform and capacity development in this respect will take considerable work.

Just a few days after taking office, Governor Rell said that transportation would be a high priority for her administration. Since then, two deputy Department of Transportation commissioners have resigned, but the fate of the Commissioner and other agency officials is still unknown. Transit advocates hope the new Governor will transform ConnDOT into an innovative department that does not rely on antiquated road project to try and fix traffic woes in the state.

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