When breaking stories emerge on T.V. and legislators take action while "perched" in front of their favorite news channel, I cannot help but think that there is something wrong with this type of response to a problem. I have actually created my own "Snigglet" to describe the combination of media opportunity in conjunction with legislation. I call such politicians "telegislators" a combination of television and legislation. This reckless and careless panic response is what led to America making all its horrible post 9/11 wars and police state laws. I believe that "telegislators" are dangerous to the responsible implementation of policy, as they rush to judgment without consideration of responsibility or holding the proper people accountable.
But since the Speaker is my opponent in the 2008 election, I thought it would be appropriate to express my thoughts and beliefs on where the accountability lies. Take a look at the youtube video below, depicting a fire on the Tappanzee bridge, and see how much damage fire does.
The answer, I believe, is not the "Fix it First" initiative, my opponent mentions. "Fix it First" is flawed because it is linked to "Smart growth" and is emblematic of reprehensible abuses of zoning powers and urban development to achieve the objectives of an ideaology. "Smart Growth" is really nothing more than a Socialist dream of a national "Utopia." This dream costs citizens their property rights by way of government abuses of eminent domain, something I oppose. But that aside I do believe smart growth has good design ideas, save the constitutional rights violations, and the draconian idealogues intent on imposing confiscatory laws to govern citizen land use and ownership rights on everything, not just bridges.
However, if we are to even take this issue seriously than the answer to averting bridge repairs and damage prevention, is to start by ensuring the largest offenders are respecting our highways. The state of CT should be holding offenders accountable by enforcing existing laws. Trucks on I95 and on the Merrit Parkway have caused untold amounts of damage. Many of you may remember driving in traffic on the Merrit only to determine that a mobile home or Truck crashed and got stuck under a bridge. Personally I remember some time ago my car cutting through bowl shaped impressions in the asphalt while driving. Most memorable was the flaming inferno of an exploding oil truck that completely destroyed an overpass in Bridgeport on I95. See the photos below to imagine the damage to the states bridges.
With these obvious culprits I personally believe that the "casual" driver should not be made to pay for these types of costly disasters. The correct answer is not to be impulsive and raid the state surplus, but to enforce the existing laws on the books, operate the states weigh stations, and work on imposing a $20.00 big rig toll at the borders of every major highway entering this state. I also believe that "over height" bars should be placed on all entrance ramps to the Meritt Parkway to minimize damage to over height trucks that may have accidentally got on the wrong route.
Although the short term approach should include the current DOT system perform only emergency bridge repairs, the long term approach should be to revise the way roads and bridges are built. The process is often way over budget, takes excessive periods of time, is subject to litigation, design changes and is often not rewarding contractors well enough for fast and competent completion of our roads. I believe that contractors should be rewarded for fast and professional work and should be afforded bonuses and incentives for completing work ahead of schedule and under budget.
So far Ct has not been immune to bridge failures we have learned hard lessons with the Mianus River Bridge collapse in Greenwich back in 1983 when 3 people lost their lives. The incident was blamed on inadequate inspection resources in the state of Connecticut at the time of the disaster; the state had just 12 engineers, working in pairs, assigned to inspect 3,425 bridges. This cannot occur again if we are to truly take this problem seriously. More sadly our state must adjust to accomplishing this future work with declining resources from the financially belabored Federal Government already on the brink of insolvency.
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