The Courant reports on the ongoing disaster that the I-84 construction project. The Federal Highway Administration, which financed 80% of the project, may want a refund. The State is battling with the insurance companies over who is going to pay for the repairs, estimated in the range of $17-29 million. It wasn’t that long ago that Rell was warning about the loss of federal transportation earmarks. What Rell needs to do is get a real reformer to sweep through the CT DOT and fix an agency that has been broken for years.
For over 20 years, the examples of the CT DOT being the slowest most inefficient DOT in the nation abound. I-95 has been under construction in the same areas for decades. The most famous example, the Mianus River Bridge Collapse, was due to drainage problems. Or how about the long rumored application of traction grids on the Sikorsky Bridge that were applied upside down?
The state’s newest repair estimate, a copy of which was obtained by The Courant, is just another piece of grim news emerging from a relatively small, increasingly expensive and by all accounts poorly managed highway reconfiguration project.And it is not the only bad news:
The Federal Highway Administration, which has pumped $55 million into the project, is concerned enough about construction and inspection failures that it may ask for at least some of its money back.
The state Department of Transportation has released a document showing that the construction problems extend beyond more than 200 defective drains to include two overpasses.
L.G. DeFelice Inc., the construction company that walked away from the job and left its insurer to argue over the cost of repairs, owes the Connecticut State Police $1.2 million for construction-related traffic safety services.
Also, the FBI is showing no signs of slowing an investigation of construction lapses that could end in fraud charges. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and a private auditor also are investigating.
The new estimate may provide guidance for state budgeters, but nothing in the numbers is likely to mollify the tens of thousands of commuters looking for an end to construction-related traffic jams on Waterbury’s east side. The job was supposed to have been completed in 2005. That was revised last year to June 2007. More recently, it has been re-revised either to Dec. 1, 2007, or sometime in 2008, depending on the consultant doing the revising.
Governor Rell has to step up and clean up the incompetence and the corruption that have dogged the DOT for decades.
