Вместо моста через Лонг-Айлендский пролив эксперты призывают инвестировать в развитие общественного транспорта

Like a bad idea boomeranging, the push for a highway bridge across the Long Island Sound is back. Some ideas just won’t die. Estimated to cost $50 billion, we have more than 50 billion reasons why it’s a bad idea. For decades RPA has laid out the clear case against the Long Island Sound bridge. Nothing has changed to make it a good idea now. There is a silver lining here though. Bringing up the bridge again shines a spotlight on the very real problems along I-95 that a bridge won’t fix. Economic growth and population growth have stagnated in the state, particularly in our cities; and vehicle-related emissions are damaging our environment and public health. Credit goes to the bridge’s proponents for amplifying these problems and calling on the state to address them. But a bridge does not solve these issues. In fact, it would make these issues worse. Adding highway capacity by building a bridge is no different from simply widening I-95. The evidence is clear. Every highway expansion has induced new traffic; new trips materialize or converge. They come from different modes, different times of the day, or different routes; or they are trips that weren’t worth the bother until the new road said “sure, come.” Every expansion has the same trajectory: increased capacity means faster travel, faster travel means less time, time is money, the trip is cheaper. Economics 101: cheaper means people will consume more. Most highway expansion projects are justified on travel time savings that are at best short lived. RPA showed this clearly in our 2026 report The False Promise of Building Roads. In this case, the bridge would connect to existing infrastructure that is, itself, already operating beyond capacity. The last thing a traffic engineer would recommend is to dump another 1,200- 2,000 vehicles/hour (the capacity of a modern highway lane) onto the Long Island Expressway or Northern State. Nor would they want to further congest I-95 as more trips head to the new bridge. In spite of the rhetoric and unsubstantiated claims, highways don’t equal economic development. While highway construction projects can have some positive, short-term impacts on local economies, local purchases of non-locally manufactured automobiles and fuel means money leaving the local economy. On the other hand, money spent on public transit, micromobility, and other accessibility improvements would have the same construction impact as highway spending, yet would have the lasting impact of ongoing local jobs that keep local money circulating locally and therefore, longer lasting economic impacts. Agencies reach agreement for ‘landmark’ CT harbor improvement project. A ‘vital’ waterway: officials In addition to these conceptual truths, the argument for potential economic impact on either side of the bridge is dubious, particularly when it lands on two parts of the region notorious for opposing land use reforms to increase economic development and housing growth. The environmental impact on the Sound for the construction of the bridge and on already beleaguered residents of Bridgeport exposed to greater long-term pollution from more car and truck trips would run counter to our climate goals and to undoing the damage of urban renewal to our cities. We owe residents of Bridgeport much more than repeating the mistakes of previous generations. Although the various AI-generated renderings of the bridge don’t all appear to include it, making space for high-speed rail has belatedly been included. Rather than waste more time and taxpayer money doing feasibility studies for going over or below the Long Island Sound or building new lines on Long Island, we should focus public time and money on improving the existing rights-of-way for running future service up the already-denser core of the New Haven-Hartford-Springfield corridor. CT researchers to pilot smaller, risky or innovative projects about Long Island Sound. Here’s how. The potential costs of construction, land acquisition, and guaranteed litigation would be enormous–and much higher than even the exorbitant $50 billion number mentioned by proponents. But accepting that number for the sake of considering trade-offs is useful. Consider the impact of investing even near that number in our existing bus and rail network and the land surrounding those stations. More transit riders means less highway congestion and less pollution and emissions. Greater density in our cities means more homes, jobs, and economic activity and more choices that benefit all of us. Faster transit connections between New York and Boston means integrating our economy into the booming megaregion. The return on public investment for this strategy is overwhelming. We don’t need a bridge from Connecticut to Long Island – we need a bridge from today’s car-centric 20th century planning to the post-sprawl, transit-oriented future that we know will create a more prosperous, equitable, and sustainable state and region for all of us. Pete Harrison and Rachel Weinberger, Regional Plan Association