The $24.9 million funding package includes money for both road and public transit projects.
Gov. Dannel Malloy has received the endorsement of the state’s Bond Commission for the first wave of projects in his new transportation initiative. The $24.9 million funding package includes money for both road and public transit projects.
The biggest slice of cash, $10 million, will fund the design and engineering of a plan to widen I-84 in Danbury between exits 3 and 8. There is also initial work on interchange projects in Meriden and Middleton and on the Waterbury Mixmaster.
On the public transit side the bonding money funds the installation of GPS devices on all buses in the state, so that riders can locate them using a smartphone app. There’s also cash to expand bus service to new parts of the state, and to extend the CTfastrak bus-only route east to Manchester.
Malloy told reporters he’s surprised by how quickly funding has come together for the first stages of his transportation initiative. “What I’m trying to do is frontload on the bond agenda and calendar-wise, the projects that we anticipate money to be spent this year or next year, so that those projects can be ready to go, hopefully, when winter turns to spring,” he said.
Malloy wants to see billions of dollars poured into his transportation vision over the next 30 years. Wednesday will see the latest meeting of a task force he put together to try to determine how to fund the first $100 billion of the ambitious program.
The allocations also include:
- $400,000 to review how the state can implement a bus rapid transit corridor for Route 1 between Norwalk and Stamford.
- $500,000 to begin a study on expanding bus service to parts of the state not currently serviced by public transit.
- $4 million for the design, engineering, and construction of a new dock yard on the Danbury Branch Rail Line in Norwalk that will allow the state to increase capacity and service on the Danbury Line.
- $500,000 to begin a study of centralized paratransit service coordination statewide.
Watch the State Bond Commission meeting on CT-N below.
Ryan Caron King contributed to this post.
