Solving Connecticut's Transportation Problems

by Benjamin Byers, a former member of the Connecticut Public Transportation Commission, is a research associate at the Yankee Institute, a free-market think tank in Hartford. 

July 18, 2004

A version of the following essay appeared in the July 18, 2004, edition of the Connecticut Post.

In January of 2003, our elected officials tried to give taxpayers the impression that they were forward looking. They published the first report from the Transportation Strategy Board (TSB). The resulting "action plan" for 2003-2023 might more accurately be described as a list of all the measures that should have been undertaken in the preceding three decades.

In 1969, public act 768 granted the Connecticut Department of Transportation (ConnDot) a wide monopoly on all modes of transport within the state in return for a balanced and effective transportation system. Since that time ConnDot has failed to produce anything close to that.

Way has ConnDot faltered? It is a politician's dream to be able to manage a government monopoly in such a way as to buy votes under the guise of "improving transportation."

Here are just five outcomes of political mismanagement:

1. ConnDot has never developed comprehensive rail maintenance and passenger car replacement programs for Metro North, insuring that taxpayers will have to spend now millions more on capital improvements down the line.
2. ConnDot's misguided emphasis on highway construction has left our roads with many times the volume they were intended to handle, while rail lines that could more cost-effectively carry much of the gridlock-causing truck tonnage have been left to rust. Today, the ratio of truck-to-rail tonnage in our state is an astonishing 40-to-1.
3. In 1998 ConnDot wasted about $30 million in repairing pier #1 in New London to handle bulk lumber without taking advantage of containerized cargo systems. There was no excuse for this expenditure. As far back as the 1960s, shipping facilities in New England and elsewhere have gone broke trying to compete with containerized cargo systems and port facilities in cities like Boston, New York, and Newark. To this day, Connecticut is bypassed by rail shippers because of its antiquated facilities.
4. Ridership on trains between stations other than Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal is the fastest growing segment of the rail market (5 percent per year). While this would indicate that trains offer great potential to alleviate our crowded highways, little has been done to upgrade the state's commuter platforms, railroad parking lots, and related facilities.
5. In 1982, the state agreed to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's plan to take over the New Haven Line, with Connecticut and New York sharing expenses equally as they had done for almost 20 years. Today Connecticut pays two-thirds of the subsidy, while our state has been stripped of any ability to control costs or improve services. Connecticut has no seat on the MTA's board and little say over labor contract negotiations, with the result that our state has been bypassed in the design of critical rail links to national and world markets.

To solve Connecticut's massive transportation problems, three things are required:

First, ConnDot should be split into four independent agencies: highways and bridges, railroads, airline transportation, and marine services. Each should be run like an independent business, complete with audited annual budgets and professional management including a product specialist, who knows in detail the design limitations and uses of the transportation equipment they are responsible for buying, not just the price.

This reform would enable Connecticut to buy products and services from the most economical sources. The four agencies would also compete with each other for intercity travelers, driving down transportation costs as similar arrangements in other states have done.

Secondly, a message needs to be sent to our two U.S. senators, Joseph Liebermann and Chris Dodd, to be as diligent in finding money to solve Connecticut's transportation problems as their regional colleagues have been for New York and Massachusetts.

This lack of action is especially galling, since Sen. Lieberman actually sits on the Senate Transportation Committee. On a recent trip to Tucson, Arizona, and Oakland, California, I found both cities are enjoying brand new railway stations and adjacent parking facilities, built courtesy of Amtrack. Why shouldn't Connecticut residents, who contribute more to the federal treasury per capita than people from almost every other state, enjoy similar good fortune?

Finally, our legislature should accelerate buying back from Amtrack the state's share of the rail right-of-way between Hartford and New Haven and then assign top priority to rebuilding service for the Connecticut valley. The billions spent on Adriaen's Landing will be wasted without an easy, affordable, attractive, and comfortable way for outsiders to visit our third-world capitol city.