As a result of stating the obvious, the Feds will not contribute $5 million in federal highway dollars to Connecticut. From the Courant:

Concerned by threats to public safety from extensive construction failures on a stretch of I-84 outside Waterbury, federal regulators are holding up $5 million in highway aid in an effort to press the state to quickly prepare a plan to address potential hazards.

Although transportation officials have said nothing to indicate that there is any immediate hazard, the Federal Highway Administration is concerned that what experts call “stunning” failures in the highway drainage system may be creating underground washouts that could lead to road collapses.

Road collapses? Like the ones we already have seen on I-95? But I digress, let’s look at what the FHA had to say about I-84.

“The type of things that might be worthy of immediate action are any cavities being developed underneath the pavement due to the drainage deficiencies,” Bradley Keazer, administrator of the Federal Highway Administration’s Connecticut office, said in an interview. “We need to have those identified and fixed so that we don’t have pavement subsidence on the interstate facility or the ramps.”

Keazer notified the state Department of Transportation of the hold on Connecticut’s federal subsidy for I-84 in a letter to state Commissioner Ralph Carpenter, saying:

“Our intent is to require ConnDOT to conduct a comprehensive risk assessment of the hundreds of defective work items on this project, and to utilize Federal-aid funded work to proactively approach safety on this critical transportation facility.”

For its part, the state Department of Transportation has been largely mute on the subject of the more than $60 million reconfiguration project along a 3-mile stretch of I-84 on the east side of Waterbury and in adjacent Cheshire.

The CT DOT is mute because the incident in under investigation by the FBI. And Governor Rell, as we recall, decided to appoint a former career State Police administrator to the DOT director position. Maybe he’ll help those investigations plod along, but that certainly won’t keep the roads from failing or the tax payers from paying for this fiasco.

At least Chris Dodd sees Connecticut highways a national priority.

Today, an independent study rates more than half of Connecticut’s roads as “poor” or “mediocre,” and more than 30 percent of our bridges as “deficient.”
Can Connecticut afford to have highways in these conditions? Can the rest of America?
Every day, the one-mile stretch of road in Bridgeport that was closed last month carries 120,000 vehicles and $330 million worth of freight. Connecticut’s location makes our highways critical not only to our state, but to the entire Northeast — and in many ways, to our entire country. It’s essential that they be maintained and improved on a regular basis.

source: Courant, Feds Block I-84 Funds Press State To Address Potential Road Hazards, By EDMUND H. MAHONY, April 24, 2007