Same as there’s a special tax on weed but no one’s showing up at your door if you don’t buy weed. That one is a tax on thc. Scratch tickets are a tax on stupid.

Maybe, hear me out, the person driving the 2 ton piece of steel at 35+ mph (so almost certainly speeding) should be the one with the onus out on them. Pedestrians ALWAYS have RoW in uncontrolled crosswalks, so slow the hell down if there’s people anywhere near one.

Since lockdown the amount of entitlement and lawlessness on the roads has reached critical mass. Red lights aren’t a guideline, speed limits off the highway really matter (idc what you do on an expressway but 25 versus 35 is life or death in a pedestrian collision), and ffs use your god damn turn signal.

Are pedestrians on their phones too much and too trusting that drivers are paying attention and abiding by the laws of the road? Yeah probably but that’s hardly new. The change needs to come in the form of drivers keeping their eyes on the gd road and obeying the law! Your 30 second delay is not important than someone’s life or potential maiming.

There is no such thing as a “fast lane”. It’s the passing lane. Make your pass and get back over to the middle or right.

Speed cameras have no correlation with accidents

You’re going to get downvoted by a bunch of MuH fReEdOm (to break traffic laws that inconvenience me) folks but you’re right

I mean idk about the unsourced fraud claims but they’re a little pushy with the “donate your kidney” thing in a very cult like way.

If it’s like Mass prices will be wicked high to start and then steadily come down below the black market. An eighth is down to $40 on average, including tax

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/11/13/marijuana/recreational-marijuana-prices-plummet-massachusetts-medical-sales-slump/

When I lived in Goshen would see them every now and then

The original Columbus ave busway design was for separated/limited access but that got vetoed by emergency services, which is probably for the best. I’ve seen fire trucks FLY down that busway. Making it less limited acces also makes it easier for idiot drivers to get out once they find themselves in

Shifting from high capacity to low capacity modes of transportation when population projections anticipated higher populations than actually came to pass (which the highways can’t even handle) is malpractice of the planning profession, not a natural progression

Idk I think you’re being far too kind. I work in urban planning and the thing about the mid century groupthink is that is was so obviously doomed to fail. In fact, it’s gone far better than any planner then could have hoped! Population projections from the time expected modern populations to be far higher than they ended, and as plenty of people pointed out at the time the geometry just made no sense. Highways are too low capacity to work in urban environments. It’s absolutely fair to slam what was an obvious mistake at the time it was made.

Similarly, the seaport does not reflect modern planning best practices at all. It’s held up as a model by planners of what not to do, no hindsight needed!

Your town most likely belongs to capitol region COG then! https://crcog.org/

Edit: it looks like they actually released their public survey for the long term transportation plan the other day! https://crcog.org/2022/11/public-survey-metropolitan-transportation-plan/

Hope this is helpful!

Council of Governments, they act as regional planning and coordination agencies. They aren’t official units of governments but rather associations of municipalities. All the municipalities are members of a cog, though the northeast and northwest don’t have planning authority.

The CGA is almost entirely irrelevant in this context, except in determining the sizes of the pools of $ (though Munis and COGs have access to federal pots as well and can bypass the state, and of course munis can raise their own funds) and the very very rare instances where they get directly involved in a particular project.

Projects that aren’t in the plans don’t get funded, it’s one of the first things that gets discussed in funding applications. State/federal DOT priorities are much much bigger drivers than anything the CGA says. For example we just submitted a grant application under the federal “safe streets for all” program that will fund 18 projects in our region. Asked for as part of the grant, we can point to all 18 projects being included in our existing plans.

Not everything in the existing plans are good projects, but they could just as easily get funded under an administration with different priorities (widening i95 for example). Getting that taken out of rivercog and southeastcog’s plans matters! It’s why 11 extending to new London is dead and buried for the foreseeable future, hopefully forever.

As someone who works for another COG, not WestCOG, let me be very explicit in saying corporations have exactly 0 influence on the career bureaucrats writing these plans. However we ARE legally bound to serve the public will.

OP is correct that very few people show up to these things or submit public comment. This is both because of public ambivalence and poor publicizing by government. But he is absolutely wrong that it would not matter if more people did. These plans have significant influence on how your tax dollars get spent, you should absolutely submit comments and take surveys when offered.

Active right now: Naugatuck Valley & MetroCOG (greater Bridgeport) long term transportation plan survey: https://survey123.arcgis.com/share/e7b4edb36c3740ec9be13aa9e9c4bf7e

CTDOT I95 Branford-RI study: https://www.i95easternct.com/get-engaged

New haven, Milford, Middletown, Willimantic..I have a soft spot for derby/ansonia and downtown Shelton too

A cog, thankfully not working directly on the 95 study so I’m free to engage with it on a personal level

Yes track 6 is what I was referring too, not the rolling stock, sorry

Definitely, though I can only imagine how well “more money for the dmv” will go over politically

Damn I can’t believe hunter biden was given a position investigating sexual assault in a Massachusetts school district after previously sexual offenses while in his position as a police officer, these situations are exactly the same and definitely don’t have nothing to do with one and other

Who else is going to show up half an hour later and tell me there’s nothing they can do!?

Having a hard job doesn’t entitle you to be a sex pest, no matter how many cops think it does.

That being said, would love to see a cop do a “ride along” with say a server at a busy restaurant or with a special Ed teacher. It’s amazing how much higher the bar is for every other public facing profession.

Idk even I’d get bored scrolling my phone all day at the road work site

Absolutely agreed. It’s a really tough fight too because there’s a lot of self perpetuation. I work in CT in transportation planning, and for example right now we’re working on a lot of studies for southeastern CT. DOT really wants to spend 4.5B to widen 95. If you suggest that similar resources are invested in transit you’re called some combination of insane, naive, and delusional. “Everybody drives, so that’s where the money goes” as if we don’t get what we build for.

4.5 B could get us an electrified shore line east with much more frequent service and extensions to to both Westerly and Norwich via the casino, plus a massive increase in SEAT and Estuary Transit (the regional bus services) routes and frequencies.

For the same price we can widen 95, the extra capacity of which will be filled by 2040 - “loosening our belt to cure our obesity”

Everyone should have to retake the driving test when they renew their license. Blanket statementing a 20 year spanning generation is dumb, but I agree that there are absolutely plenty of people on the road that shouldn’t be.

The other side of this coin is we need to make society less utterly dependent on the automobile to function, as Im sure someone’s going to (not wrongfully) immediately reply to me freaking out about how they’d be able to hold a job without a car