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The Busway Blues
by Ken Krayeske
Hartford, CT
T o create a transportation culture that eschews the automobile in Greater Hartford, regional planners should pick the low-hanging fruit before scheming for the fruit at the top of the tree.
Growing mass transit capacity is a no-brainer, and the Capital region has plenty of transit apples on the ground, easily collected. The 9.5-mile New Britain-Hartford Busway seems like one of those mangoes way up at the top of the tree that requires a ladder, a scoop and perhaps even an emergency room visit. And when you get it, that mango isn't even ripe.
Those low hanging fruit, like promoting and coordinating carpooling, rideshare vans and biking and walking to work are inexpensive and effective means of reducing carbon emissions and removing cars from the road.
If CONNDOT spent even a quarter of the $335 million it wants to spend on Busway construction on bike and pedestrian safety training and infrastructure, we could convince many more than 4,000 Connecticut drivers to abandon their cars.
Plopping the Busway down in 2011 and expecting drivers to make that leap without having prepared commuters for the lifestyle change required for mass transit is like as crazy as hearing a whisper in the cornfields: "If you build it, they will come."
I won't dwell on the Busway's minutiae that I heard from Mike Sanders of CONNDOT and his compatriots at Union Station Wednesday, March 15. Nor will I make a big deal of the fact that out of 30 people at the meeting, only three weren't white.
Because if I hammered on how Amtrak hasn't agreed to lease or sell the train corridor to CONNDOT, or if I harped on the questionable design, like the $25 million flyover bridge at Flatbush Avenue, I wouldn't have space to deal with the Busway's two most egregious problems: CONNDOT's assumption of stable oil prices combined with its lack of long-term thinking bothered me most.
Let's start by wondering how a $335 million construction budget with a $77 million contingency built in doesn't include fluctuating commodity prices. The headlines of the Willimantic Chronicle on 3/15/06 decried an unexplained $.15 jump in gas prices that day alone. What happens when Al Qaeda succeeds in blowing up Saudi Aramco's oil processing facility that supplies about 9 percent of the world's daily output?
Oil prices will not stay put. And by 2011, when CONNDOT dreams the Busway will be operational, I guarantee we will be well into the world of $5 a gallon gas, which will force 4,000 cars off the road alone.
Nor do I don't think commuters will notice 4,000 fewer cars driving into Hartford daily, considering that right now 80,000 people in probably 60,000 cars commute daily. If current driving trends continue, I bet at least that many new cars will be on the road by 2011. No matter what, the state should raise gas taxes to force people out of their cars. This American life is unsustainable and toxic.
The Busway courts obsolescence before ground has even been broken. And unlike the man in the meeting who identified George Bush, CONNDOT, and the Capital Region Council of Governments as a dictatorial triumvirate, I see CRCOG as a top-notch organization. In full disclosure, I was invited to the board of directors of the Central Connecticut Bicycle Alliance by one of their employees. Since 1994, CRCOG has been pushing DOT towards this Busway.
Yet CRCOG and CONNDOT are equally guilty of not considering the transit picture in 20 years. CONNDOT's Sanders shrugged when asked about planning for two decades down the road.
In 20 years, how about setting a goal that only one in ten people in state actually owns a car. The Busway will help us get there, but I don't think we should build it until we can get 4,000 to carpool, walk, or bike to work on a windy March morning. People ride bikes and walk in blustery Beijing and freezing Finland, why not cold Connecticut?
3/22/06
