Rell Gets Down To Business: “Fix The Merritt Interchange”
Now this is something we like to see from our political flunkies. Action words.
“I want this issue resolved once and for all, and as quickly as possible as do the tens of thousands of commuters who get on and off the Merritt at Route 7 daily,” Rell said. “It is time for everyone to listen to one another, come up with a plan that makes sense for everyone and the environment, and get this project off the drawing board and moving toward reality.”
Of course the CT DOT is the worst when it comes to actually completing a project without a major screw up, but it is what it is. Meanwhile, the various hyperactive viligante groups that sued to halt the work in the first place are still out there circling the DOT death star, presumably gearing up for another rebel assault on concrete and asphalt.
They should congratulate themselves as the delay allowed for a developer to secure additional uses for abutting property, long rumored to be in the flyway path of an off ramp, thus increasing costs and providing profit for the usual suspects. Sometimes it is worth wondering who is really in cahoots with whom. Stamford connections abound.
Within the next two weeks, the DOT will schedule public hearings. Those hearings will include the city of Norwalk, the South Western Regional Planning Agency, the Merritt Parkway Advisory Committee, environmental organizations and the general public, and “lead to a determination of a ‘preferred alternative’ for a new interchange, according to Rell’s office.
Rell said the state remains “fully open to design recommendations that support the goals of maximizing public safety and traffic flow in a manner that is also sensitive to the environment and the aesthetic and historical concerns in a project involving this landmark parkway.”
The position of the conservancy is:
“This interchange was designed more than a decade ago for an obsolete project — the extension of the Super 7 to the north,” said Laurie Heiss, executive director of the Merritt Parkway Conservancy. “Even though the highway extension has been scrapped, this project was never downsized to reflect the fact that a full-blown interchange is simply no longer needed.”
Which simply doesn’t reflect the reality that the traffic volumes locally, on Main ave/route 7, are the lowest they can be rated, that the short ramps on inclines contribute to traffic jams on the Merrit and that it is the worst possible planning to not have a route 7 connector ramp to the Merrit going northbound.
source: The Hour, New design, public hearings for Route 7- Merritt Parkway, By ROBERT KOCH, January 4, 2008
