All in all, the projects the Connecticut Department of Transportation have been working on to improve safety and traffic flow on the Connecticut Turnpike are to be applauded. It shows ConnDOT, and the state's elected officials are committed to finding a way to eliminate the gridlock that occurs on a daily basis on southwest Connecticut's roads.
However, there still continues to be items that need to be addressed if we want to see a drastic reduction in congestion, traffic accidents, and frayed nerves.
Perhaps one of the biggest contributors to the Connecticut Turnpike bottleneck in Fairfield and New Haven Counties is the close spacing of exits. Along its entire 129-mile length the Connecticut Turnpike has 91 exits. Of those interchanges, 62 of them are on the 65 miles of turnpike in Fairfield and New Haven Counties. That's roughly one exit per mile, while the remainder of the turnpike has about one exit per every 2.3 miles. In urban centers like New Haven, Bridgeport, and Stamford, some exits are so close together that one can't tell one exit from another, except by the overhead signs pointing to them.
So you ask, "So there's a lot of exits...what's your point?" I was just about to get to that. The problem you create when you have exits so closely spaced together has to do with local traffic using the turnpike, which is intended for travel between major points of interest in Connecticut. Along with the commuters that travel between Connecticut and New York City each day, there are many who "jump on at one exit, just to jump off at the next one a quarter of a mile away." This adds a lot of unnecessary local traffic onto the turnpike that could be better served by local streets and arterial roads, like US Route 1.
But the close spacing of exits not only adds unnecessary local traffic to I-95, but it creates dangerous weaving in the mainline traffic patterns. Many traffic accidents occur when motorists suddenly cut across traffic to reach their exit from the left or center lane.
About half of the 62 exits located in Fairfield and New Haven Counties can be eliminated without major impact on the local communities. Additionally, more interchanges, particularly in urban centers like Stamford, Bridgeport, and New Haven can be consolidated by using collector/distributor roads that separate through traffic from traffic using any one of the exits.
Once the consolidation of the turnpike's exits is complete, they will need to be renumbered to eliminate confusion. This would give ConnDOT a great opportunity to part with its sequential exit numbering system and implement mileage-based numbering. The mileage-based exit numbering system is used in 43 states, with Florida and Pennsylvania recently converting their exit numbering systems from sequential to mileage-based. Maine is in the process of converting to mileage-based exit numbering, and Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and New York are considering proposals for converting to mileage-based numbering. In addition to making it easy for travelers to determine the distance between the point they enter and exit a highway, it allows departments of transportation to insert and remove interchanges without disrupting the numbering order of exits.
Finally, tolls should be brough back to the turnpike, in order to help fund major improvement projects as well as make out of state motorists who use it start footing some of the bill for the turnpike's upkeep. Rather than reverting back to the old barrier system that was the ire of residents in southwest Connecticut. In 1983 a truck plowed into a line of cars waiting at the Stratford toll plaza when the driver fell asleep at the wheel. In all, seven people died, including the truck driver. Since the tolls were controversial since the opening of the turnpike, opponents used the Stratford crash as an excuse to pressure the state legislature into passing a bill eliminating tolls in Connecticut in 1988. The turnpike's tolls came down in 1985, and the last tolls on the Merritt Parkway, the West Rock Tunnel in New Haven, and the Charter Oak Bridge in Hartford were removed by 1990.
With major advances in toll collection technology since the mid-1980s, the return of tolls is more feasable and practical than ever. Today, tolls can be collected electronically, without the need for plazas that create their own traffic bottlenecks and pose a safety hazard.
The latest in toll road technology, being used in Canada on Ontario's Route 407 tollway can be applied to I-95 in southwest Connecticut to collect tolls. The system is a series of transponders mounted on overhead gantries at each interchange. As a vehicle enters the turnpike, it will pass under a transponder on the on-ramp, which marks the start point. When the motorist leaves the turnpike, he or she will pass under another transponder mounted above the off-ramp. These transponders read the license plate of the automobile and calculate the toll based on the distance traveled, type of vehicle, and the state in which the vehicle is registered. A higher toll will be applied to trucks and out of state vehicles so it's not only Connecticut residents footing the bill. A bill is then sent to the owner of the automobile, where many payment methods, including online payment is avialable.
