Connecticut's Roads Rated Poorly

Worried the federal law funding road maintenance in states and cities expires a year from now, the pressure group Trip is out with a study asserting many major roads in Connecticut are in poor condition.

Trip finds 38-percent of Metro Hartford's major roads below average, 42-percent of Metro New Haven's, and 51-percent of Fairfield County's.

Leroy Henderson thinks road conditions are as bad as his front tire.  Both have been rubbed the wrong way by a manhole cover on Canner Street in New Haven, he said.

"You see that tire right there?  I was never able to get that fixed since I hit that manhole," he said.

"I know where every bump and every hole is and I'm bobbing and weaving every time I pass through there so that's one road that needs to be fixed, that's for damn sure," said Paul Caron, of a road he uses carefully near his home on the New Haven-East Haven city line.

A depression on Prospect Street near the Hamden line makes it one of Paul Drye's favorite roadways.

"So when you hit 'em, it knocks your front end off so you have to get front end alignments," he said. "It costs money."

$500 a year per driver in Metro New Haven, according to Trip, is the added cost from wear and tear on vehicles because of poor roads.

"We have severe changes in temperature so we're always having the asphalt constrict and expand," said Jim Travers, transportation director for the city government in New Haven.

That government depends on federal funds for new roads as well as old roads, which need repaving every fifteen years at best, he said.

"We would not be able to operate a city budget without them," he said, "We would not be able to keep up with the infrastructure costs."

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