First off bad news out of Hartford, this fall Delta/Northwest is suspending its direct non stop service to Amsterdam and Los Angeles from Bradley airport. They cited rising fuel costs. Strangely, the economy is affecting hard core gamblers, the Foxwoods casino reports a 2% reduction in workforce. These unrelated news items provide context for the next, survey says, moment on Family Feud.  Our two families, representing Norwalk; State Senator Bob Duff; Jack Condlin,  president of the Stamford Chamber of Commerce; Ed Musante Jr., president of the Greater Norwalk Chamber of Commerce; Tad Diesel, the city’s director of marketing and business development; and Chet Valiante, publisher of The Hour Newspapers. Representing Wilton and Ridgefield, State Rep Toni Boucher.

The long standing feud has been Super 7, with the urban centers being essentially for it, and the bucolic tree saturated areas being against it, more or less. And the Norwalk family has essentially created a project to gauge the wants and needs of commuters in the region.  Richard Dawson, or as I like to think of him Newkirk, would be proud.

Boucher has a point about the committee executing the survey:

Boucher said Friday that money should be spent on the Danbury line of Metro-North Railroad, which she labeled the “most important regional asset,” rather than on a Super 7 survey. While promising to read the results of such a survey, she expressed doubt whether those results would be objective.

“I’m questioning whether it would be an objective study and whether it would cover just road projects. We have to look at (transportation) globally and more multi-modal,” Boucher said. “I’ll look at (the survey) and consider everything — I’m am never not open to an idea — but it should … impartial and objective.”

Which considering that there doesn’t appear to be a Danbury representative on the committee would give credence to Boucher’s questioning the objectivity. The greater Danbury area is the other urban area that should be linked to Stamford and Norwalk via some multi modal system of high speed transportation. And yes, I include highways in that. There’s no reason to just build rail lines, just as there’s no reason to just build a highway. Both are needed because more options means more economic opportunity. As the Metro North New Haven line has shown, people will ride trains, but they still need to park cars and travel within urban areas. So thinking through a 22nd century transportation model for Fairfield County would require rethinking those miles of subsidized exurbs we keep thinking we need. That means moving people and goods and services to sustain an economy beyond the residential home improvement economy.