What the heck is going on with our highways… and why is nobody talking about it?
Did you know that 20,000 Americans died on our roadways in the first half of this year… and that that number has been increasing since the pandemic? Have you noticed how aggressive drivers have become in the past year? Or how much speeding is going on, unchallenged?
Why is traffic getting so bad,
all day long, on our interstates and parkways?
Rush hour starts about 5:30 am and, with the exception of a lunchtime
break, runs the full day and into the evening?
From Bridgeport to Greenwich it almost looks like LA.
Why are all these vehicles on the road, especially the commuters? Why aren’t they on the train? How do they tolerate those bumper-to-bumper conditions, every day? No wonder they’re filled with rage!
We’re deep into the fall
campaign season, yet “transportation” doesn’t seem to be getting much
attention, at least not as much as in years past, despite this worsening
situation.
Sure, Republican gubernatorial
candidate Bob Stefanowski delights in teasing incumbent Ned Lamont about his
flip-flopping on tolls. But remember, Stefanowski’s
campaign manager is Patrick Sasser, creator of the hugely successful “No Tolls
CT” grassroots group. (I wonder who
wrote that campaign
webpage.)
But aside from those taunts,
Stefanowski only makes one campaign promise about transportation: that he’ll work to make sure every dollar in
the Special Transportation Fund gets spent on transportation, not pensions. Fair enough.
But there’s nothing on his website about our trains, our highways… no
vision.
Contrast that with Ned Lamont
who has been playing Santa Claus with federal grant dollars and, though
unachievable, has been pushing his 30-30-30 dream
of much, much faster trains on Metro-North.
Ambitious goal setting, if unachievable.
But where’s the discussion of
our under-staffed, under-funded State Police?
Or the problems they and many PDs have had in hiring new recruits. It’s almost a daily occurrence that people
are shot on the street in our cities, often in broad daylight. There was even a shooting near the
capitol in Hartford.
If laws don’t get enforced and
calls continue about “defunding the police”, are we really surprised that road
rage grows exponentially, unchallenged?
Even Metro-North is beefing
up a police presence, assigning MTA PD cops to ride our trains
for the first time in my memory. They didn’t
send their officers to enforce the mask mandate during the pandemic, but now
they can “show the colors” and at least make commuters feel safe as they return
to commuting in record
numbers.
I’m no knee-jerk “law and
order” reactionary, but something must be done to restore civility and law
enforcement to our roads and rails, for everyone’s sake. Pedestrian deaths, highway fatalities and
street shootings are just not acceptable and I hope every candidate this fall is
challenged by you, the voters, to address these important issues.
