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The grant, announced last week, is part of the TIGER program begun by the U.S. Department of Transportation in 2009. Several dozen cities and towns across the country, out of hundreds of applicants, were awarded a total of $500 million for projects following smart-growth principles.
The city plans to use most of the money to improve access from Union Station to Main Street and Asylum and Pearl streets downtown. That way more people can take the train to Hartford and easily get to their nearby office -- potentially dramatically changing the fabric of downtown.
"It's going to look a lot greener, it's going to be better lit, it's going to accommodate the buses in a friendlier way," said Mayor Pedro Segarra of the city center after the project is finished. The projected date is the summer of 2014. "So it's going to look quite different."
According to the city's application for the grant, 110,000 people work in downtown Hartford each day. About 80,000 of those jobs are located just a half-mile from Union Station, but anyone would agree the city is car-centric. The key to encourage people to ditch their cars is to make riding the train an attractive option.
"[Union Station] is really the gateway to the city," said Steven Higadishe, who works with the transportation advocacy group Tri-State Transportation Campaign. "And if it's not clear where to go [once you get off the train], if it's confusing, it's not a trip that you really want to take. But if it's safe, if it's pleasant, if it's understandable, then people get a really good impression of the city."
For more on this story, visit the Connecticut Mirror.
