Markeshia Ricks Photo
State Rep. Roland Lemar at Union Station press conference Monday.
If Gov. Ned Lamont succeeds in getting tolls reinstituted on state highways, he’ll cut CT Transit bus fare from $1.75 to $1 a ride.
Lamont announced that deal during a press conference Monday morning at New Haven’s Union Station.
He was joined by local officials and labor activists to make the case for the controversial electronic tolling plan, whose fate the legislature will determine in coming weeks.
The governor said he needs the money from the tolls to upgrade the state’s trains, bus service, and highways.
“We’ve got to do a better job of getting people out of those cars” and “allow people to get around the city of New Haven” on buses, the governor said.
It was one of several references made during the press conference to how the toll plan could benefit cities like New Haven.
Lamont spoke of how higher-speed rail to New York and Boston could help make Union Station “the crossroads of the state when it comes to transportation” and “bring cities back to life.” He noted Yale-New Haven Hospital’s recent announcement of plans to build an $838 million neuroscience center on its St. Raphael campus as an example of the kind of next-generation jobs that better transportation can support.
The governor also mentioned the high rates of asthma “for people living along highways”; New Haven’s Annex neighborhood, in the shadow of the I‑91/I‑95 interchange, has regularly shown up at the top of lists of places in the state with the greatest concentration of asthma cases.
The tolls plan will probably include a “close to” 50 percent discount for in-state commuters and possible exemptions for low-income drivers, said New Haven State Rep. Roland Lemar (pictured at the top of the story), who co-chairs the legislature’s Transportation Committee.
Lemar and Mayor Toni Harp also spoke of how tolls will draw 40 percent of their revenue from out-of-state drivers. Neighboring states are already collecting toll revenue from Connecticut drivers to build up their economies, Lemar noted, so Connecticut should do the same.
Department of Transportation Commissioner Joseph J. Giulietti, who grew up in New Haven, noted how upgrading transit can spawn new development. In less than a year of operation, the new Hartford Line to New Haven has sparked plans for $400 million in “transit-oriented development” (TOD), he claimed. Some $200 million worth of TOD “has already sprung up” along the 9.4 miles of the CT Fast Track busway to Hartford, he added.
A reporter asked the event’s emcee, New Haven Rising organizer, the Rev. Scott Marks (pictured above), whether low-income New Haveners can afford new tolls.
“Yeah, if we had more people in construction doing good union work” on transit projects, Marks responded. “This brings more opportunity. More tourism. We’re going to have more people be able to afford not only tolls but a decent quality of life.”
Republican Bob Stefanowski, who ran against Democrat Lamont for governor last year, held a separate event on the New Haven Green earlier Monday blasting the tolls proposal.