Since January, the state government has been scrounging for revenue to address a staggering fiscal crisis and cover a backlog of transportation projects. One of the most pressing: fixing the Aetna Viaduct, which carries Interstate 84 through Hartford and badly needs repairs.
The fix will not be cheap: The most likely plan calls for replacing about 2.5 miles of viaduct with a new freeway, partially at ground level and partially in an open trench, for a cost of $4.3 to $5.3 billion.
At about $2 billion per mile, the cost of the I-84 rebuild far exceeds that of more difficult projects elsewhere. Denmark and Sweden, for example, built a crossing of the Øresund, the ocean strait that separates the two nations, for about $4.3 billion in today’s money — the low-end estimate for replacing I-84.
The Øresund crossing includes a five-mile bridge and a 2.5-mile tunnel joined on an artificial island, and it carries a freeway and a railroad with 110 mph trains. Even an option to repair the I-84 viaduct in place would cost $1 billion per mile, far more than fully underground subways in most of the world: according to the transportation writer Alon Levy, subway construction in Europe typically costs about $400 million per mile or less.
Instead of such extravagance, the state should pursue a simpler and cheaper option, which would improve quality of life in Hartford while minimally affecting travel times: Just tear the freeway down.
Several cities have transformed blighted areas by removing urban freeways. San Francisco, for example, tore down its Embarcadero Freeway after it was damaged in an earthquake in 1989. Freed from the shadows and noise of the freeway, the Embarcadero — now a wide avenue along the bay, lined with palm trees and historic buildings — is one of California’s top tourist destinations. New York City, similarly, replaced the elevated West Side Highway with a boulevard and a parallel path that swells with walkers and bicyclists in warm weather. Other cities that have removed downtown freeways include Rochester, Milwaukee, and even Seoul, South Korea. The traffic nightmares that freeway proponents warned of seldom materialized.
The state should remove the whole 2.5-mile stretch of I-84 slated for reconstruction, from near exit 45 in Parkville at the west end to the interchange with I-91 by the river in the east. The elevated portion of this segment, from the west end to Union Station, should be torn down and replaced with a boulevard of two or three lanes in each direction; the remainder, currently in a trench from Union Station to the river, should be closed to traffic and decked over for high-rise development.
With proper engineering, travel times on a boulevard with an average speed of 30 mph would be only two or three minutes slower than a 60 mph freeway. Improved access to local streets should make the real difference for most travelers even smaller. Better bus service along the parallel CTfastrak busway could also absorb many commuters. Vehicles traveling through Hartford on their way elsewhere, about one-third of the total traffic, would take I-691 to I-91 instead, adding less than three miles to most trips.
Removal of I-84 would vastly improve Hartford residents’ quality of life. The viaduct and the acres of parking lots alongside it form a noisy, polluting barrier between downtown and the densely populated Asylum Hill neighborhood. A narrower road easily accessible from local streets would make walking to downtown more pleasant and make the surrounding area into a desirable location for businesses. High-rise construction over the freeway trench north of the city center could enliven a desolate area and reconnect the city center with new developments in Downtown North.
Most important, though, are the fiscal benefits. Years of public pension underfunding now threaten Connecticut with a massive fiscal crisis; the state cannot afford to squander a single dollar, much less $5 billion. It’s time to stop doubling down on expensive urban planning mistakes and kick I-84 out of downtown Hartford.
This piece originally appeared at Hartford Courant
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Connor Harris is a policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.
This piece originally appeared in Hartford Courant