HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO I-84

Happy Birthday to Interstate 84.  You’re now 64 and you look every mile of it… truly the ouroboros of CT highways

Last week marked yet another birthday for Interstate 84 in Connecticut, first opened on December 16, 1961, a milestone that deserves candles, cake, and perhaps a moment of silence for every commuter who has ever thought, “How is this highway still not finished?”

Back in the 60’s, I-84 wasn’t just a highway.  It was a promise.  The sleek, modern “Yankee Expressway” would whisk drivers effortlessly from Danbury to Hartford and beyond.  Congestion would vanish, they said. Town centers would breathe easier, they hoped.  America would drive happily ever after, wouldn’t they?

Spoiler alert: ‘they’ were wrong.

The early 1960s were the golden age of highway hubris. The federal government was handing out interstate money like Halloween candy, and Connecticut happily obliged by deciding that U.S. Route 6, a perfectly serviceable road that inconveniently (at least to drivers) passed through towns, had to go.  

What better solution than a wide, limited-access highway careening over and through over hills, rivers, and Hartford neighborhoods and downtown alike? 

When the first 15-mile stretch opened between the New York line and Sandy Hook, officials celebrated as if traffic had been permanently solved.  It hadn’t even reached Hartford yet but optimism was cheap, and costly concrete was plentiful.

By the time I-84 finally lumbered into the capital city years later, the damage was already baked in.  Entire neighborhoods were carved up in the name of progress. The highway bent, twisted, doubled back, stacked lanes on top of each other, and introduced a master class in left-hand exits, the traffic engineering equivalent of juggling chainsaws.  And we’re still debating how to fix all that… the topic for a future column, if not a thesis.

Consider the Waterbury “Mixmaster” where I-84 crosses Route 8, a traffic interchange so messed up that national traffic engineers hold it up as an example of what never to build again.  And that’s before CDOT spends $3-5 billion to replace it.

And yet, every decade since the ribbon was cut brought the same response to the ever-worsening traffic: Just widen it.

Traffic backed up? Add lanes. Still backed up? Add more lanes. Still bad? Rebuild interchanges, add HOV lanes, re-stripe everything, and promise that this time it’ll work. This logic has been faithfully applied for more than six decades — making I-84 not just a highway, but a self-sustaining traffic experiment in futility.

So as I-84 blows out its birthday candles, it stands as a living monument to “induced demand”, the transportation principle politely explained in planning textbooks (yawn) and painfully experienced by anyone who’s crawled through Waterbury at rush hour (ouch):  the more road you build, the more traffic shows up to fill it.  Like magic. Or mold.

To be fair, I-84 has aged exactly as expected.  It’s constantly under reconstruction and needed repairs, perpetually congested, and somehow always remains essential despite being deeply flawed, much like Connecticut itself.

So happy birthday, I-84.  Sixty-four years young.  You were built to end traffic and instead, you’ve given us a lifetime of it.

 

TRAIN TICKET TURMOIL AHEAD ON METRO-NORTH

If you’re a Metro-North rider in Connecticut, already juggling limited parking, train delays, and the usual commuter indignities, get ready for something new in January.  Not a fare hike (for once), but a complete rewiring of how train tickets will work, courtesy of the MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority).  All this comes under the guise of a “better customer experience”

Let’s get one thing straight before the panic sets in:   Connecticut is not raising rail fares in January.  That’s just in New York, so if you only consume NYC-media’s recent coverage of this story you are understandably confused.

However… another 5% hike that CTDOT approved for the our trains will hit in July 2026.  Just classic Connecticut: slow, steady, predictable fiscal pain: higher fares, worsening service.

Why the need for fare hikes at all?  In part, because of fare evasion. 

The NYC Citizens Budget Commission estimates the MTA loses $1 billion a year because of that problem, $46 million on Metro-North and the LIRR alone.  And on NYC buses (soon to be made ‘free’ under Mayor-elect Mamdani?), 45% of riders already just jump aboard without paying.

So, in part, the fare hikes are like that ‘public benefits’ surcharge on your electric bill:  the rest of us pick up the tab for uncollectable bills.

January’s big changes affecting us? The new MTA ticketing rules which absolutely do apply to Connecticut riders because we share the system, just with different fare hike schedules.

ONE-WAY TICKETS WILL SELF-DESTRUCT AT 4 AM

Buy a ticket today, use it by 4 a.m. tomorrow, or it evaporates. “Poof”!  The MTA markets this as “flexibility.”  Commuters might call it “gotcha, but make it digital.”  Late for the train because you couldn’t activate your ticket in a cellphone dead-zone? Or ‘forget’ to activate that e-ticket before the conductor comes around?  That’ll cost you a $2 onboard surcharge, a fee whose primary purpose appears to be reminding you who’s in charge.

ROUNDTRIP TICKETS… GONE!

They’re being replaced by the new “Day Pass”, valid until 4 a.m. the next morning and good for unlimited travel that day.  Great for joy-riding and easier for conductors to scan.  But more convenient for riders?  Well, maybe.

10-TRIP TICKETS… ALSO GONE
In their place comes a “mobile pay-as-you-go reward”: buy 10 trips within 14 days and the 11th is free.  It’s the kind of loyalty program only a government agency could invent: stick around long enough, pay full price consistently, and eventually you’ll get something resembling a perk.  Even Dunkin’ Donuts has a better frequent customer program.

And again, all of these rule changes apply equally to riders from Connecticut and New York, because the MTA controls the fare products (with CDOT’s blessing) even on Connecticut-run service.  And all this applies to Metro-North, Shore Line East and Hartford Line trains.

What Connecticut riders are getting in January is a system that’s more complex, less forgiving, and seems designed with the breezy assumption that Metro-North passengers have the time and mental bandwidth to memorize expiring tickets, activation rules, and mobile-only discounts.

So enjoy this moment of clarity.  Your ticket rules are changing in January, but your ticket prices are not… at least not yet.  In today’s commuter world, maybe that almost qualifies as a holiday stocking-stuffer.

 

WHITE HOUSE BOOSTS COST OF DRIVING

Don’t look now, but the Trump White House is changing the cost of your driving commute.

Maybe you missed this news, perhaps disturbed (yet unsurprised) by our President’s daily tirades… attacking Somalis as “garbage” one day, pardoning a convicted drug smuggler the next or his continued threats of invading Venezuela.  How easily we miss the real news by getting distracted by these “bright, shiny objects”.

We all know that Connecticut drivers must cope with some of the highest gas prices, longest commutes, and oldest highways in the Northeast.  Now Washington has decided to dramatically weaken fuel-economy standards for new cars, cutting the 2031 target from roughly 50 mpg to about 34.  This threatens to make things worse for everyone, especially current and future electric-vehicle owners.

On the surface, the rollback is pitched by the White House as a win for “affordable cars,” claiming that these relaxed MPG rules will shave maybe $900 off the cost of a new gas-powered SUV.  But for Connecticut commuters who routinely log 12,000–15,000 miles a year, those savings will evaporate quickly:  cars that burn more fuel cost more to operate, and in a pricey state like ours, the pump always gets paid.

But the bigger, less obvious impact of the mileage rules will be on electric-vehicle drivers, the very people who bought into the promise of lower operating costs, cleaner air, and a modernized transportation system.

According to the Connecticut DMV, there are 2.7 million cars and trucks in our small state.  But only about 60,000 of them are EVs.

For those current EV owners, the MPG rollback creates more uncertainty… beyond just finding a charging station.  EV resale values depend on strong future demand.  So when Washington signals that gasoline-powered cars will stay dominant longer, that EV market may sputter.  Fewer people will shop for EVs, fewer choose them, and used EV prices will likely soften.  

Federal tax incentives (up to $7500) for new EV buyers already expired this fall but some Connecticut rebates continue… for now.

Then there’s the EV charging network — or, more accurately, the charging network we were promised.  Federal programs launched with great fanfare in 2021 pledged 500,000 publicly available chargers nationwide.  But fewer than 400 federally funded chargers have actually been built under the $7.5 billion program.

In Connecticut, fast-charging deserts for thirsty EVs persist across Litchfield County, the Quiet Corner, and shoreline towns east of New Haven.  Even Fairfield County’s charging stations, while more plentiful, are frequently congested or out of service.

For future EV buyers, the rollback removes one of the biggest forces pushing automakers to build affordable electric models.  Without strict fuel-economy rules, carmakers can meet federal requirements by selling profitable gas-powered SUVs rather than investing in lower-cost EVs that would appeal to everyday drivers. The result? Slower arrival of mid-priced EVs, the very models that would make ‘going electric’ a realistic choice for middle-class families in these tight times.

Remember four years ago when Elon Musk promised us a Tesla for $25,000?  In fact the new entry-level models now cost about $37,000 or more.

Here in Connecticut, where we import every gallon of fuel we burn, a slowdown in EV adoption is more than an environmental setback.  It’s an economic one.  More money will leave the state for out-of-region fuel suppliers.  And an unreliable, underbuilt charging network threatens to stall our transportation future.

The real bottom line?  You may find new gas-powered cars will be cheaper, but the cost of driving them will go up in (exhaust) smoke.