WINTER WARRIORS: CDOT VS MOTHER NATURE

I used to think March 1st meant Spring was around the corner.  This year it means Winter is just getting warmed up.  Last week’s blizzard followed by mid-week “flurries” convince me that May is a better hoped-for date for a reprieve. 

Meantime let’s give credit to all those who kept us moving in the worst of what Winter has had to throw at us.

ON THE RAILS:                While some railroads (like NJ Transit and the LIRR) “temporarily suspended most service” (i.e. shut down) before or during the blizzard, Metro-North kept chugging along, albeit on a reduced schedule.  Amtrak kept the Northeast Corridor technically open which in a blizzard counts as a small miracle.  Understandably, people were warned to stay off the roads, but if travel was absolutely necessary the train could get you there.  So thank you to the crews that worked tirelessly to keep the station platforms plowed, track switches cleared and the trains still running.

ON THE ROADS:    Here’s where the miracles happened.  The faceless teams of plow operators and salters worked night and day reopening our interstates as quickly as possible.  Even on Wednesday, with another brief storm, my drive along the coast on I-95 from Fairfield County to Rhode Island appeared clean and well plowed.  I saw several conga-lines of plows clearing the travel lanes and shoulders and using bucket and dump-trucks to remove what remained.

Where does all that snow go?  Most is what they call “toss snow”, literally tossed off to the side of the road.  On bridges and overpasses, giant snow blowers are called into action. In cities like Hartford larger amount of snow are trucked to state property to await melting. 

But there was so much snow to be removed this week that CT’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) temporarily allowed dumping in local rivers and even Long Island Sound.  That’s despite the fact that plowed snow carries road salt (chlorides), sand, oil, tire particles, litter, fertilizers, and other contaminants, which can degrade water quality, harm fish and aquatic life.

Clean water is important. So is clean pavement.

CDOT uses salt brine to pretreat our highways, roughly the equivalent of 100 pounds of salt per lane-mile in each direction, lowering the freezing temperature of water to - 6 degrees F.  Years ago they used sand but abandoned that for environmental reasons.  Then come the plows and salt trucks.  

Morton Salt mines

Understandably, rock salt is in short supply this year so it now costs over $80 a ton.  Most comes from Morton Salt’s mines in upstate NY while some is also imported by the shipload from as far away as Chile.

In some states, fracking brine (euphemistically called “produced water”) is used for highway treatment.  But that’s banned in Connecticut due to its residual radioactivity.

All of these salty corrosives aren’t good for your car, damaging the frame, underbody, brake and fuel lines, suspension components, and fasteners. Rust never sleeps. That makes washing your vehicle after a storm even more important… after, of course, removing the ice and snow atop your vehicle lest it fly off at high speed endangering other drivers.

CDOT had almost 650 trucks clearing 10,000+ lane miles of state highways during the blizzard.  In your town or city your local DPW cleared the local roads.  And in shoreline communities like Madison the 22” of heavy, wet snow was still being cleared days after the storm.

So effective were the CDOT crews that Governor Ned Lamont later dispatched CDOT personnel (drivers and mechanics) and equipment to Rhode Island and Massachusetts to assist in their clean-up.

Thank you also to neighbors who didn’t park their cars on local roads impeding plowing and then cleared their sidewalks, incentivized by local ordinances.

And then there are the private plow operators whose long hours during and after the blizzard have made for a lucrative if exhausting period of work.

The Winter of ‘26 isn’t done with us yet.  The crews will keep plowing.  We’ll keep salting.  And come April we’ll all complain about potholes instead.

DIESEL DEJA VU ON SHORE LINE EAST

It was only three years ago that CDOT made a big hoopla over adding electric-powered M8 trains to the Shore Line East rail line from New Haven to New London, promoting how clean, quiet and fast they were.  

Governor Lamont hailed them as “fighting climate change by investing in cleaner, greener transportation.”  Passengers loved the new cars for their quick acceleration, comfy seats and plugs for charging their devices.

Now CDOT says they’re too expensive to operate and will be replaced by the older diesel locomotives and second-hand coaches from Virginia.

As CDOT Commissioner Eucalitto told lawmakers, reverting to diesels is better than cutting service, as if this was the only option in his $15 billion five-year transportation program.

DOES CDOT WANT TO KILL SHORE LINE EAST?

It sure seems so… and with Amtrak’s help.  Post-COVID while the other rail lines were restored to full service, Shore Line East was not.  CDOT blamed low ridership … the predictable result of running fewer trains and then acting surprised when fewer people ride them. 

Compared with the shiny M8 trains, diesels are slower to accelerate and create a witches brew of noxious gases even though they burn what’s called ultra-low sulfur diesel (ULSD) fuel, the railroad equivalent of “clean coal”.  Nothing says “climate leadership” like bringing back the spewing exhaust.

Photo Credit - Ewing Leon

The real reasons for this reversion?

First, Metro-North needs those Shoreline East M8’s to run elsewhere.  They’ve already been sighted on the Harlem line.  When equipment gets tight, the shoreline always seems to be the first place CDOT looks for “flexibility.”  

And second, because CDOT says it can save $8.8 million by not having to pay Amtrak for electricity to power the M8’s or for the privilege of using their overhead catenary power lines.

Amtrak is acting like a greedy electric company… charging you to plug your hair-dryer in their socket even before you turn it on.  But saving $8.8 million by making service worse is the kind of efficiency that only works on spreadsheets.

DOES AMTRAK HATE COMMUTER RAIL?

While in most of the US Amtrak operates as a guest on freight railroads’ tracks, in the Northeast Corridor they’re the boss and their profitable Acela trains get the VIP treatment while commuter lines schedule their trains in between.  That’s why Amtrak is able to bully CDOT and Shore Line East: it’s their tracks and wires.

But in Connecticut where the state owns the tracks west from New Haven to the NY state line, Amtrak is our customer and we get to call the shots.  So why doesn’t CDOT just tell Amtrak to play nice if they want to keep those over-priced Acela trains on time?

Amtrak pays Metro-North a bonus for keeping its trains on schedule in Metro-North territory.  Maybe we could make a deal for letting our M8’s keep running on Shore Line East?

NEW LOCOS & RAILCARS

CDOT has 60 new passenger cars and six dual-mode locomotives on order which should start arriving later this year.  But none are promised to Shore Line East.  Instead the branch line riders to Waterbury and Hartford will be riding in style (in cars with Wi-fi) while Shore Line East commuters (or what’s left of them), are clunking along in 35-year-old hand-me-down trains.  Hartford gets Wi-fi while New London gets nostalgia with a cloud of diesel exhaust.

Shore Line East was created to relieve highway congestion on I-95.  Now it risks becoming a case study in how to discourage rail ridership without ever formally abandoning it.  Is it any surprise that locals refer to the southeast part of our state as “Connecticut’s forgotten corner”?

VANITY LICENSE PLATES

Your car has a face, and in Connecticut, that face can be subject to editorial review by the Department of Motor Vehicles.  Six characters may not seem dangerous, but in the wrong order your choice of vanity plates may apparently pose a serious threat to public morality. Or so says the DMV.

Since 1937, Connecticut motorists have been allowed to personalize their license plates… slowly, cautiously, and always under supervision. The earliest vanity plates were just two initials.  When possible combinations maxed out, you could do four letters.  And by the 1970’s, six characters combining letters and numbers.

Today you can also order one of the dozens of different special plates supporting various organizations or causes ranging from Friends of the Amistad to Preserving Long Island Sound.  There are plates for your pet, Special Olympics, Greenways, the Marine Corps League, Gold Star families, the Red Sox and Amateur Radio too. The DMV’s most recent addition celebrates Connecticut as “The Pizza State”. 

Mind you, not all requests for vanity plates are approved, despite their application fee of roughly $90 to over $140, depending on the plate.  That’s because the killjoys at the DMV don’t allow anything profane, crude, obscene, or vulgar.  Context, irony, and spelling variations are apparently not mitigating factors.

Examples of some of the 350 applications reportedly rejected in 2024 include WEEDBIZ (drug dealer?), F4RTBOX (bad muffler?), BIGSEXY (don’t ask) and GR8FUL (presumably a Jerry Garcia fan).  But somehow these plates got approved:  DICKS, BUTTS, BALLS and TOOL.  And we have confirm sightings of FUBAR, COVFEVE, PUTIN and RUSSIA.

So yes, these plates have existed in the wild, roaming our highways freely, confusing children and giving their parents a chuckle and something to explain to the backseat crowd.

I had a doctor once whose plate read NOPCMD.  I asked him why he hated computers.  He said I was misreading the plate and that I’d forgotten he was a urologist.

In a similar vein there’s the New Hampshire woman, Wendy Auger, who for many years has proudly displayed her plate PB4WEGO, harkening back to the phrase always uttered by Dads to their kids before a road trip.

It took the NH DMV 15 years to notice, which says less about the plate and more about the review process. For a time the DMV told Auger to return her plates as they suddenly realized they refer to a bodily function. The state has since relented.  After all, New Hampshire is the “Live Free or Die” state.

Not surprisingly, Connecticut lawmakers receive special plates identifying them as members of the House or Senate, with leadership titles prominently displayed. We’re told these plates confer no special treatment, no parking privileges, and no immunity from law enforcement. The word “told” is doing a lot of work here.