Last year, Connecticut ranked 49th out of 50 states in transportation and infrastructure quality, behind only the island state of Hawaii, in a CNBC poll examining business competitiveness.
For a state marketing itself as the link between New York City and Boston, having such poor transportation infrastructure impedes Connecticut’s ability to attract and retain businesses, said Eric Gjede, a lobbyist with the Connecticut Business & Industry Association. The fact that Connecticut is dropping in those rankings (the state ranked No. 43 in 2012) makes the situation all the more dire.
“All of our needs are so expensive, and we do have a lot of transportation infrastructure,” Gjede said.
In its latest attempt to fix a transportation system overburdened by costs, complexity, and a lack of marketing and future planning, the state legislature — three years after forming the Connecticut Airport Authority — has created the Connecticut Port Authority, tasked with increasing the marketing and economic impact of the state’s three deepwater ports.
“Each one has its own unique benefits and circumstances, and it is a matter of giving one voice to advocate for everybody,” said House Speaker Brendan Sharkey (D-Hamden).
The new authority will narrow the extremely broad focus of the Connecticut Department of Transportation to other vital pieces of infrastructure — specifically roads, bridges, and public transit — and put control of the ports under the purview of an organization less concerned about day-to-day maintenance and more focused on the creation of partnerships for better utilization, funding, and economic impact, Sharkey said.
The three ports — New London, New Haven, and Bridgeport — have the potential to carve out niche markets in the logistics industry, Sharkey said. When the widening of the Panama Canal is complete by 2015, many major East Coast ports will cater to super-sized cargo ships, leaving room for Connecticut ports to market to industry subsets.
A 2012 report prepared for the Office of Policy & Management identified eight niche markets that one or more of Connecticut’s ports could fill:
• Liquid bulk at all three ports;
• Private ferry service in Bridgeport and New London;
• Ship repair services at all three ports;
• Dry bulk in New Haven and New London;
• Scrap metal exports from New Haven;
• Wood pellet exports from New London;
• Lumber, copper, and steel imports to New London or New Haven;
• Fresh food imports to New London or New Haven.
The port authority — with its members to be appointed by the legislature and the governor — can help achieve this reality by performing tasks like providing better management at the facility-rich New London port or advocating to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to dredge the Bridgeport port, Sharkey said.
The port authority also will address the sticky issue of funding, as projects like the Bridgeport dredging are estimated to cost in excess of $50 million and are supposed to be entirely funded by the Army Corps. The OPM report said in order for the state to move into those eight niche markets, the ports will need at least $26 million in various improvements.
By having a single entity in charge of the three ports, the hope is that one voice will more effectively advocate for Connecticut projects to move higher up on the federal funding priority list and work with private businesses to create partnerships to fund mutually beneficial projects.
If the authority achieves goals of improving the ports’ infrastructure, increasing imports and exports, and marketing to the domestic and international shipping industries, Connecticut’s business competitiveness will grow, Gjede said.
“If we can get more of our goods coming through the ports, that could alleviate some of the congestion along I-95,” Gjede said.
Congestion on the highways is the No. 1 concern of businesses in the state, Gjede said, as it impacts the movement of goods and employees and the attitudes of clients when they come in for meetings.
Just on the state’s roads and bridges, DOT must perform regular maintenance work, plan and execute major infrastructure projects like the replacement of the I-84 viaduct in Hartford, and create new efficiencies in traffic flows through signal changes, said DOT spokesman Kevin Nursick.
In fiscal 2014 alone, DOT has $1.5 billion in capital expenditures planned and must continue planning for $750 million to $1 billion in projects every year while facing dwindling revenues from state and federal gasoline taxes, which are the primary funding source for road projects.
“We have a boatload of projects,” Nursick said. Because of the creation of the airport and port authorities, “some of these responsibilities have been eased from us, and that — in theory — frees us up to focus on the core transportation issues in the state.”
The transition of the state airports — particularly Bradley International in Windsor Locks — from DOT to the Connecticut Airport Authority took a bit longer than expected but appears to be yielding positive results both for the airports and giving DOT more time to focus on other efforts, Gjede said.
CAA officially took over control in July and has focused on increasing passenger traffic by working with the airlines to add destinations such as Los Angeles and Houston as well as increasing the size of the aircraft used for the existing destinations, said Kevin Dillon, CEO and executive director of the CAA.
Passenger counts were up 20 percent in December, 9 percent in January, 10 percent in February, and 11 percent in March.
“That is a direct result of the creation of the airport authority,” Dillon said.
Having an independent authority enabled Bradley to move quicker on projects like the demolition of Terminal B in August, leading to the construction of a new transportation center at the airport in 2016, Dillon said.
That transportation center will include high frequency bus service between the airport and the planned commuter rail station in Windsor Locks along the New Haven-Hartford-Springfield rail line, Dillon said. The transportation center eventually could include its own rail line.
As the CAA works on airports, the port authority works on ports, and DOT works on roads and bridges, the next area of concentration needs to be commuter services, Sharkey said, especially bringing all these rail plans to fruition.
That will position Connecticut’s transportation infrastructure for the business competitiveness needs of the future, Sharkey said.
“The younger generation is getting used to the idea of not needing to drive, so that is the kind of community we need to start creating in Connecticut,” Sharkey said. “That is where the next focus needs to be, in addition to our airports and water ports, is a vibrant commuter infrastructure, particularly with rail.”
