Friday, January 29, 2010

Hardware City hopes to become Hub City - The Bristol Press (bristolpress.com)

By; James craven, Staff Writer
Posted by Frank Smith at 29.1.10

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

In recent weeks, the New Britain Herald has published articles regarding the Hartford/New Britain
Busway Project. While it has taken a laborious ten years, project design, planning, land acquisition,
etc. are now 80% complete for the Busway and DOT Commissioner Joseph Marie has stated that
the project could be completed inside of three years.

While some are calling for abandoning the Busway plan altogether and replacing it with a commuter rail line, I agree with Mayor Timothy Stewart that the City of New Britain will benefit greatly by completing the Busway Project AND from the reopening of the Waterbury to Hartford rail line as well.

On January 21st, Mayor Stewart convened a meeting in New Britain regarding the Busway Project.
In addition to the Mayor, New Britain state legislators, several local officials along with officials from a variety of state and regional agencies were also in attendance.

Mayor Stewart opened the meeting with a vigorous defense of the Busway Project stressing its
importance to future economic development and growth of the City. Additional support was ex-
pressed by Bill Millerick of the New Britain Chamber of Commerce and Gerry Amodio of the New
Britain Downtown District.

Tom Maziarz, a transportation official with CRCOG, the regional planning agency for Central
Connecticut assured those present that funding for completion of the Busway was already in place
and would be released this Spring. No additional approvals for the appropriation are necessary at
this time. In essence, the plan is ready to go and any delay or discussion of abandoning this important
project can only hurt the City of New Britain and its residents.

It is clear that much of the interest expressed by Michael Bailken, the designated Master Developer for
the City’s downtown rebuilding project has been based on the proposed Busway and the addition of the
Busway station in our downtown. Other developers as well have stated their belief that the Busway
will provide added incentive to move to or expand their operations in New Britain.

Given the state of the economy nationally and the focus of the federal government switching to jobs,
this project can achieve these goals and provide a much needed boost to the construction industry
in the shortest timeframe. The time to act is now, not later! Looking at longer term solutions to
our state’s transportation problems is the prudent thing to do and consideration should be given to
expanding our transit efforts including the reopening of the Waterbury to Hartford rail line.

However, completion of the Hartford/New Britain Busway remains the quickest and best solution to
our region’s transportation and economic development problems. We strongly urge that work on the
Busway continue and that all those concerned with New Britain’s future make every effort to assure
that this important project is completed as soon as possible.


Mark Bernacki

January 29, 2010 at 9:08 AM

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