We need an alternative to endless oil wars in the Middle East and relentless burning of fossil fuels. We need to live more compactly. The trick is to get the benefits of more urban living without the traditional detriments - inadequate stores, poorly maintained buildings, unkempt public spaces, etc. If walkability is seen as a benefit, perhaps town or neighborhood centers will be designed for people instead of cars.
I noticed this for the first time a couple of weeks ago, but it wasn't until today that I had a chance to stop and take a closer look. The Danbury Gas & Electric Co. building is getting a makeover! Scaffolding is up—something you don't often see on Main Street— and those are all new windows. Does anyone know what the plans are for it—will it be offices, residential, or both? If there are going to be apartments, I'd like to know. And if there will be, I hope they don't get rented exclusively to WestConn students. I have nothing against students—I'm a student myself—but as a taxpayer and former potential future resident, I'm still a bit vexed at the way the Crosby Street project was handled. I want to see a more permanent residential presence downtown, not more transient student housing.
I wonder if the restoration was prompted by the nearby presence of the new parking garage, which looks like it's almost finished. I won't say it enhances the neighborhood, but it's not bad looking as parking garages go. And at least it's not right on Main Street. I still question the value of imposing a minimum number of parking spaces per residential unit anywhere, but especially in the downtown historical district. I think that people who live near decent bus and train service can manage very well with just one car, or even no cars. But maybe that's just me—I grew up in a city where I could get anywhere by bus, and went to college in a city where I could get anywhere by subway. I didn't have to learn to drive until I moved to Danbury. And I look forward to the day when I have my degree, so I can get a full time job in a library, so I can move where I'm close enough to walk to work, or at least take a bus.
Elmwood Park, but back in the old days it was the Danbury Town Green. Today it's divided into two by Wooster Street, but I wonder if it didn't used to be one continuous strip of green, maybe with a bandstand where Wooster Street now divides it? The 9/11 memorial is located on the smaller strip, between the Fairfield County Courthouse on the east, and the Old Jail/Senior Center on the west. The larger strip has the fountain, and more shady seating, paths, and plantings. It's our own little oasis.
Study says state's traffic getting worse
By Rob Varnon
STAFF WRITER
Another study found Connecticut's traffic is getting worse, but offered no concrete solutions to address the problem.
The California-based Reason Foundation published its annual report on state highways Thursday and, to almost no one's surprise, found Connecticut commuters drive the seventh most congested urban interstates in the country.
This is the foundation's 16th year of studying the condition and maintenance of roads. Connecticut's overall ranking inched up one spot from 40th to 39th -- due in part to Connecticut having the second fewest fatalities on roads during 2005, the year upon which the foundation based its study.
"If a kid consistently brings home F's and D's on his report card and suddenly gets a C, he should get a little credit," said Robert Poole Jr., the foundation's director of transportation research, on Connecticut's better ranking.
Poole said Connecticut has consistently ranked poorly because it spends a great deal of money with little to show for it, except the low fatality rate. That might also be attributable to congestion, however, as Poole said speed is a major factor in most fatalities and the states with the highest rates, like Montana, tend to be less congested with higher speed limits.
Connecticut's problems are well known to Poole, who worked at Stratford-based Sikorsky Aircraft in the 1960s. He said the roads were congested then and he suspects they're worse today.
"A lot of states are in the same boat," Poole said. It's a case where Americans aren't willing to take on the costs of building new routes, he said.
"America has to have a serious debate about transportation," he said.
But getting something done quickly, according to Poole and other experts, seems doubtful because people are looking for cheap solutions, which don't exist. He said it's going to cost money and people need to prepare for new taxes and tolls to cover it. However, to do nothing won't make the problem go away either, he said; in fact, it will just get more expensive.
Michelle Ernst, analyst for the New York-based Tri-State Transportation Campaign, said the foundation's study mirrored results of her own. Tri-State is also a research institute focused on transportation issues in the New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut area.
Like many studies, the foundation's doesn't address the question people are asking more and more, she said, "How do I improve my quality of life right now?"
It's well documented that I-95 and the Merritt Parkway are carrying more cars during rush hour than they were designed for and trains running on the Metro-North New Haven Line are near capacity during rush hour. Many train commuters will say the trains are over capacity now, because it's nearly impossible to get a seat into New York City during the morning rush after Westport.
The state's programs to improve transportation include buying more than 200 railcars, but the first deliveries of those won't come until 2009. While this will ultimately increase the size of the rail fleet, studies by the DOT in the late 1990s and earlier this decade, indicated those cars have been needed for several years as either replacements for ones that are failing or to match today's ridership.
Road improvements remain limited and have often dragged on for years.
Ernst said a planned express bus service between New Britain and Hartford could provide some relief, but she added the project has been in the planning stages for more than a decade.
She also said dedicating a lane to buses on I-95, a three-lane highway, probably is impractical. But, the state might be able to use congestion pricing -- in the form of a high-occupancy toll lane -- to address the problem sooner than later.
Ernst said cars carrying more than two or three people pay no fees, but those with just one are charged. Theoretically, this would encourage car sharing and reduce traffic.
Another possible solution to traffic congestion would be changing land-use patterns to encourage development around transit hubs, like bus and train stations.
Rob Varnon, who covers business for The Connecticut Post, can be reached at (203) 330-6216.
"public spaces should be inspired centers of civic life and the physical manifestation of the common good. Instead, he argues, what we have in America is a nation of places not worth caring about. Reengineering our cities will involve more radical change than we are prepared for, Kunstler believes, but our hand will be forced by earth crises stemming from our national lifestyle. 'Life in the mid-21st century," Kunstler says, "is going to be about living locally.'"
"The automobile has not merely taken over the street, it has dissolved the living tissue of the city. Its appetite for space is absolutely insatiable; moving and parked, it devours urban land, leaving the buildings as mere islands of habitable space in a sea of dangerous and ugly traffic."
-James Marston Fitch, historic preservationist (1909-2000)
How do you feel about your car? Are you enjoying your daily commute? If you have to use one of Connecticut's interstates, you're not. I'm usually driving against the traffic, and what I see is appalling. How much longer can this go on?
Apr 13 2007 4:15 AM
Smart Growth advocates key in on regional cooperation
By Robert Miller
THE NEWS-TIMES
The mixed-use redevelopment of the old Gilbert & Bennett factory in the Georgetown section of Redding is seen as one example of Smart Growth principles in effect.
It seems counter-intuitive, but it may take regional cooperation to preserve good neighborhoods within a town.
On Wednesday, panelists at a forum on Smart Growth discussed the need for the state to take a different approach to development -- one that preserves open space, slows the spread of suburban sprawl and rebuilds the state's inner cities.
"It's not a question of whether we grow, but how we'll grow," Heidi Green of 1000 Friends -- a pro-Smart Growth organization, who spoke at the forum sponsored by the Universalist Unitarian Congregation of Danbury.
Green -- along with urban planner David Kooris and Steven Patton, director of the Nature Conservancy's Devil's Den preserve in Redding and Weston -- spoke of how people in the state are increasingly starting to recognize that some problems are not well-served when there are 169 independent towns to deal with.
Green said under the current political structure, towns must compete against neighboring towns for development to build up their tax revenues, largely to pay for the ever-increasing cost of running a public school system.
"They need to get as much tax revenues out of development as possible," she said.
The end result is housing and development patterns that constantly push out from urban centers, eroding the state's existing open space.
It means people spend more time commuting than ever, more time on the road, and more money on gasoline. That means heavier commuter traffic and more air pollution.
Kooris is a senior planner with the Regional Plan Association, which helps towns and the three states of the greater New York City metropolitan region. The entire region is facing the same challenges as Connecticut.
"They can't be faced alone," Kooris said.
Patton of the Nature Conservancy pointed out that preserving natural resources is also always a regional effort, simply because rivers, mountain ridge lines, forests and wetlands couldn't care less about town boundary lines.
Nor can any town afford to buy a lot of land because of the cost of real estate in Fairfield County.
"But that's a good thing," Patton said. "It forces us to talk together, think together, plan together."
In recent months, the Smart Growth message -- that regions should concentrate growth in places where there are existing stores and office and train stations -- is catching on.
Gov. M. Jodi Rell has created the Office of Responsible Growth to help further Smart Growth goals in the state. And Green said there are several good examples in the state -- including the mixed-use redevelopment of the old Gilbert & Bennett factory in Georgetown, the Blue Back Square development in West Hartford, and the creation of a town green in Mansfield -- where Smart Growth principles are in effect.
Even a small town like Higganum has used community discussions to decide what the town center should look like, then changed roads and added sidewalks to promote that look.
"This isn't just a big city thing," she said.
Danbury City Planner Dennis Elpern, who attended the forum and took part in the fully engaged discussion afterward, pointed out that the proposed Kennedy Place development in Danbury -- to build 500 housing units on the former Amphenol site off Kennedy Avenue -- is another example of building housing in an urban center, near both the city bus lines and the Danbury rail station.
Green pointed out that such approaches can either create new neighborhoods or revive old ones. But she warned that at its worst, it can create gentrified neighborhoods that jack up rents and drive low-income people away.
"That's one of our greatest challenges," she said.
Kooris said Smart Growth works when architecture actually organizes the way people live and travel, and when people in a community are fully involved in planning the town's future.
"Some people are good at reading the numbers on a project," he said. "Some people like maps. Some people like models. You should always seek more input from people, not less."
Kooris said new developments will also succeed when the town and developers agree on what the town and a region can support.
"You need a flexible framework," he said.
Green said there are also looming pressures to build up even more of the region. The population of the United States now stands at about 300 million. It should top 400 million in less than 50 years.
"Connecticut is located between Boston and New York," she said. "A lot of people are going to want to move here."
But currently, Kooris said, the state is hemorrhaging young adults who cannot afford the price of housing in Connecticut.
And Elpern and others at the forum pointed out that in the Danbury area the wealthier suburban towns have often walked away from their responsibilities when it comes to building affordable housing.
"Americans are (conflicted) when it comes to Smart Growth," Elpern said. "They don't like suburban sprawl. But they don't like high-density housing either."
# Contact Robert Miller
at bmiller@newstimes.com
or (203) 731-3345.
There will be a Forum on Responsible Growth on April 19 from 7 to 9 p.m. at New Milford Town Hall.
Connecticut Community Foundation and 1,000 Friends of Connecticut will sponsor the event in cooperation with the Litchfield Hills Greenprint, Housatonic Valley Association, Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, Northwest Conservation District, Working Lands Alliance and the Trust for Public Land.
The public is encouraged to attend.
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* Forum focuses on Smart Growth Thu, Apr 12 2007
