Posted on 01/01/2021 2:14:35 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Public transit services and Connecticut’s transportation building program have been forced to compete for limited resources for nearly a decade.
But if Connecticut is to revitalize its economy in an inclusive fashion, experts say, legislators and governors must embrace both priorities in equal measure.
Without a comprehensive, time-efficient system of buses and trains — and interconnecting bicycle and walking paths — too many workers can’t get to the jobs, classes and other training they need to make the economy grow.
And if a construction industry that has languished since the last recession isn’t allowed to rebuild Connecticut’s aging infrastructure, many low- and middle-income households will struggle — even as commerce remains trapped in gridlock.
“What’s the vision? What are we trying to achieve here?” said Lyle Wray, executive director of the Capitol Region Council of Governments since 2004.
A decade of meager transportation spending
“We don’t really rank our projects,” Wray said. “We don’t ask which ones are really going to mobilize our economy.”
The CRCOG leader noted that Connecticut ranks middle-of-the-pack in one key transportation metric. According to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, a Washington, D.C.-based fiscal think-tank, Connecticut ranked 22nd nationally in state and local spending per capita in 2017 on roads and highways.
The state’s Special Transportation Fund spent $1.61 billion in 2019 — the last fiscal year before the coronavirus pandemic struck. After adjusting for inflation, that’s just 21% growth since 2011.
(Excerpt) Read more at ctmirror.org ...
PING!
Yeah, goobermint shovel-ready slush funds to send to unions to fund Dem elections are always the kind of stuff that jump starts the economy. [eyeroll]
These guys are behind the times, Dems no longer need money to win elections, they just log on to the machines and check the box for their guy, and the machines do the rest.
SOB!! Poor babies.
In my business world experience, I always had unlimited, infinite resources and never had to compete for resources. My customers were always happy with price hikes and often paid us 50% over our asking price because they were so happy to send us more of their infinite supply of money.
It was such a wonderful stress-free world -- I don't know why I ever retired.
All hackster lies as they gear up for another round of pushing tolls.
Real growth of 21% in nine years, from an already bloated budget? And that’s not enough for these people?
Makes me wonder why our transportation problems aren’t all solved. Oh yeah...government’s doing it.
Mostly the rich and upper middle class use the bike paths and walkways.
Since the poor and lower middle class can't afford to live near many workplaces, they need passable roads that won't wreck their cars with potholes as big as bomb craters.
Only communists would want to “revitalize its economy in an inclusive fashion”.
Command and control economies are their thing.
We do not need any more stinking roads...
To save infrastructure money, just tear up and close all roads, transportation systems, & highways leading into, and out of, major cities...
Isolate the communist bastards and let them starve to death in the dark... The Nation will recover and prosper just fine without them...
I doubt there is a law against it, they just won't get paid.
These are all lies only a leftist could believe, and even that is in question. Telling lies to get other people's money is not ok. It's theft.
Or......NOT!
Governments will spend 5 times the amount to build a building than private enterprise would. In the end, you still have just one building.
Racist Democrat Translation: Minorities be needing government transportation and handouts to succeed.
Preach!
We have rainbow crosswalks, bike paths out the wazoo, handicap access in the middle of nowhere, animal land bridges.
A few years back driving home from the hospital and listening to the radio, they were talking about the ribbon cutting party for a bike path near the the medical center.
I must have hit or avoided six to seven huge potholes whilst they yammered on, that was irritating to me and painful for my husband who had recently had surgery.
Biden to repeat Obama’s infrastructure upgrade.
There’s no money to fix roads when those bureaucrat salaries have to be met first. Jeez. Gotta keep the priorities straight.
84 is one that needs improvement, another is reactivating raillines for freight. 84 is what most of the truckers use since 95 is busy... Connecticut owns most of the abandoned ROWs. A freight car will take 10 trucks off the roads.
They don’t care. They are not building a future for workers.
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