Talking Transportation: Shapiro’s Folly, Part Deux – The Bridge That Won’t Die

Connecticut: the land of steady habits where bad ideas don’t go away, they just get bigger.

Easton housing developer Stephen Shapiro is back again, expanding on his idea of a bridge across Long Island Sound from Bridgeport to Suffolk County, NY. Now he’s even added the idea of a tunnel for parts of the bridge, as shown in a fresh set of AI renderings, gobbled up by the media without asking many questions.

Go big or go home seems the theme, though the Shapiro “plan” is just an amateur’s vision as Shapiro is neither a bridge engineer nor transportation planner. He still thinks the 14-mile bridge/tunnel (or is it 18 miles, as he said this week?) can be built for about $50 billion. But what do the experts think?

“Fifty billion dollars is a fantasy number,” says Pete Harrison of the widely respected tri-state Regional Plan Association, which has been working in this field for over a century. “The era of big bridge highways has passed. But just imagine if that much money was spent on our trains and buses (in Connecticut),” he added.

What does CDOT think of Shapiro’s idea? Not much. “This proposal has never been vetted by CDOT or any transportation planning organization,” says CDOT’s Josh Morgan, echoing Governor Lamont’s comments earlier this year.

And the MTA (parent of Metro-North) is similarly uninspired. “The cross-sound tunnel was not part of the agency’s 20-year plan,” MTA Deputy Communications Director Aaron Donovan told me.

One might guess that Shapiro thought he could win those agencies’ favor with his new design, which adds a rail line down the middle of the bridge/tunnel. Shapiro’s beautiful AI renderings show what looks like an Amtrak Acela hurtling across the bridge. But elsewhere in his descriptions the train line is described as for “light rail,” which Amtrak and Metro-North certainly are not.

None of this bodes well for Shapiro or his political allies who promise to try again to find funding for a study. The bill introduced this past session (HB-5320, which rightfully died in committee) called for a one-year study of indeterminate cost.

That’s not realistic, one transportation insider-turned-consultant tells me: “A market/feasibility study would probably take about three years and cost $5-10 million. An EIS (Environmental Impact Statement) would cost $25-50 million more.”

Is there even demand for such a crossing? Shapiro guesstimates as many as 100,000 cars a day, each paying a one-way toll of $39. For perspective, Fred Hall, the VP-GM of the cross-sound ferry from Bridgeport, carried only 525,000 vehicles in all of last year (at a toll for cars starting at $78 one way). That means an average daily ferry load of 1,400 vehicles. Would a bridge/tunnel toll of half that amount really mean more than 70 times as much traffic?

Most of the speakers at last week’s media event at the Capitol spoke about how much Bridgeport would benefit from this new structure. That city’s former mayor and state Sen. Bill Finch (now a lobbyist for the electricians union) compared the project to putting a man on the moon.

Among the other speakers, a college student from Long Island who’d like a quicker ride home from school … a local disc jockey … and a state rep from West Haven hoping the crossing would bring Long Islanders to his town’s beaches. Not one of the speakers was a transportation expert.

Noticeably absent from the Shapiro cheering squad … anyone from Bridgeport City Hall, the city most affected by such a scheme.

Why should we spend a single taxpayer dollar on a study that’s D.O.A. when we can’t even fund our existing transportation network properly?

This idea has been proposed and studied before … and never built, for good reasons. Let’s keep that track record intact.

About the Author: Jim Cameron is the founder of the Commuter Action Group and advocates for Connecticut rail riders. His column is published by several publications in the state.