Over on Connecticut Local Politics is a great discussion about transportation issues. I was planning to add my thoughts there as a comment, but it turned into a fairly long post, so I’ll put it up here.

I would like to note that these are my own thoughts and not a transportation policy statement from the Mayor. It draws a lot of things that Mayor DeStefano has spoken about, as well as discussions I’ve had, comments on the Connecticut Local Politics site, and so on. One of the things that I like about working for Mayor DeStefano’s campaign is that he understands the importance of give and take and a respectful debate in the formulation of well thought out policies.

I would like to see our transportation policies thought out better. Too much of our transportation policy, like so many other polices of the Rowland and Rell years, has been reactive. It is only dealt with when we already have a problem. We should be looking at ten-year plans.

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In business, I always had a schedule for the depreciation of equipment and worked on a continuous replacement of equipment, instead of letting things get out of hand and then trying to fix things all at once. As an example, if you have 400 rail cars that last twenty years, you are probably better off setting up a schedule to get forty new cars every two years instead of waiting until you have a crisis. Mayor DeStefano has also talked about how we should be expanding our rail service and even looking into building our railcars here. If we can build great helicopters and submarines, why can’t we be building better mass transit?

Likewise, as pointed out on Mayor DeStefano’s transportation policy page, only three years after completing the rebuilding of I-95 through New Haven, congestion is projected to be as bad as when it started.

This takes us back to an issue that Mayor DeStefano also brings up on his transportation policy page. We need to be much smarter about our land use policies and what land is being developed where. This drives our transportation policy.

In terms of tolls, I think we should be considering them at the entrances to the state. It may be that we should consider doing something like New Jersey has done on I-87, which is a truck only toll. Another interesting option, which I haven’t heard discussed, is have tolls mirror train tickets. Have a peak and off-peak toll. If you want to take the interstate during rush hour it should cost more than it does at 3 AM. Good old supply and demand for all the capitalists out there.

In terms of better local public transportation, I believe that some small changes to local public transportation could have a great effect. Yes, getting a bus to pick me up in a sprawling suburb may not be the best solution. However, getting a bus to take me from the train station to major offices is a much simpler issue and should be more widely pursued.

Improved bike lanes are also a great idea. Years ago when I worked in New Jersey, I would take the train to the station nearest my office. They had bike lockers at the train station and I would get on my bike and bike the last seven miles. Fortunately for my co-workers they had showers at the office. It was great exercise and a wonderful commute, but I don’t see a lot of people adopting such a commute.

Getting better bandwidth so that more people can telecommute would also help a lot. These days, I try to work as much from home as possible.

Of course all of this is based on my unscientific thinking about why people are on the roads. It would be best if we did surveys and knew why people were on the roads, what it would take to get them off the roads and had good projections about expected growth.

Most importantly, we need a well thought out and respectful dialog with everyone about how to solve our transportation problems. I’ve presented a few of my ideas and a few of the Mayor’s ideas. Let’s all work together to come up with even better ideas. What are yours?