Date: Fri 15-Jan-1999

Publication: Bee

Author: ANDYG

Quick Words:

HVCEO-I-84-Chew-DOT

Full Text:

DOT Begins Study Of Local I-84 Improvements

BY ANDREW GOROSKO

The state Department of Transportation (DOT) is beginning a traffic study of

Interstate 84 between the Housatonic River and the New York State border to

document traffic flow problems and recommend improvements such as road

widening and interchange reconstruction.

Richard Martinez, DOT's chief of policy and planning, explained aspects of the

16-month study on January 8 to members of the Housatonic Valley Council of

Elected Officials (HVCEO) at a New Milford session.

Mr Martinez said DOT hopes to complete the study by May 2000. DOT is making

the study at the request of HVCEO, the regional planning agency which has ten

member towns. The section of I-84 to be studied lies in Newtown, Danbury,

Bethel and Brookfield.

Currently there are no funds in DOT's ten-year master plan for I-84

improvement work, Mr Martinez said.

An advsiory panel will be formed to guide DOT in making the $1 million I-84

study. Also, DOT will solicit public comments on how to improve the highway. A

public information meeting on the study is scheduled for March. The study's

draft recommendations will be presented to the public next fall.

Besides reviewing ways to increase the carrying capacity of the highway and

improving its interchanges, the DOT study will consider how traffic flow can

be improved on local roads along I-84.

The DOT I-84 corridor study will also focus on the highway's relationship to

the Exit 9 area of Hawleyville, a section of Newtown that has been targeted

for economic development.

A detailed planning study on economic development scenarios for Hawleyville

through the year 2017 was presented to HVCEO in 1997. The Newtown Planning and

Zoning Commission (P&Z) endorsed that study last April, attaching it as an

addendum to Newtown's 1993 Plan of Development.

DOT considers Exits 9 and 8 to have geometric deficiencies which need to be

corrected.

Genesis

HVCEO Executive Director Jonathan Chew said the study of I-84's problems and

possible improvements grows out of traffic problems experienced by motorists

using Exits 5 and 6 in Danbury.

Danbury Mayor Gene Eriquez has urged DOT officials to promptly deal with

traffic hazards at Exits 5 and 6 where motorists back up on the highway while

waiting to exit.

Danbury officials have agreed to expand the scope of the I-84 study, extending

its focus to the area extending from Exits 1 through 11, Mr Chew said.

Mr Chew observed that widening an interstate highway can take a long time to

accomplish, noting that the past widening of a section of I-84 in Danbury took

eight years to achieve from the study stages to construction work.

Mr Chew has said it could take a decade before I-84 is widened in Newtown as a

result of the new traffic study.

Widening I-84 is vital to the future of the towns through which it passes, Mr

Chew also said.

In its I-84 corridor study, DOT will consider what is needed in the way of

physical improvements to the highway, incorporating environmental and social

factors. The study will include subjects such as air quality, noise levels,

stormwater runoff, traffic volume, mapping and bottlenecks.

HVCEO wants I-84 widened to improve traffic flow on the highway and on

adjacent local roads. HVCEO's recommendation to widen I-84 is included in its

1998-2018 Regional Transportation Plan.

"One of the beauties of I-84 is that when it was originally designed ... it

was designed to be widened in the median, without ripping all the bridges

down," Mr Chew noted late last year. I-84 was increased to six lanes in

Danbury in 1988 by widening it in the median, meaning road embankments did not

have to be extended outward. Widening interstate highways in the median is

less politically controversial that widening the overall width of the road,

according to Mr Chew.