Even as Congressman John Larson campaigns for “Big Dig” highway tunnels beneath Hartford, state transportation planners said Thursday they see trouble ahead for the vision — one of a handful of options now under study to ease congestion at the interchange of I-84 and I-91.
“We have a lot of concerns with this,” Nicholas Mandler, an engineer with TranSystems Corp. of Meriden, a consultant on the I-84 Hartford project, said. “With safety, with capacity, with expense … and it doesn’t serve that local traffic, everyone trying to get in and out of Hartford.”
In Larson’s plan, I-84 would be buried from Hartford’s Parkville neighborhood to East Hartford, near Rentschler Field and I-91, from Hartford’s Brainard Airport to the city’s North Meadows.
Mandler’s comments came during Thursday’s public advisory committee meeting on the I-84 Hartford project, which is part of planning for replacing a 2-mile, aging viaduct that slices through the city.
The interchange study is separate from the viaduct planning but is related since it would involve I-84.
Mandler said a weakness in the tunnel plan is that the tunnels would bypass Hartford and most of East Hartford. A massive underground interchange would connect I-84 and I-91, but motorists could not exit the tunnel until reaching either end, cutting off access to local streets, he said.
Traffic studies have shown that two-thirds of the traffic on the existing highways has a destination in either Hartford or East Hartford.
In Hartford, “if you have to get to Upper Albany or Frog Hollow or Asylum Hill or West End, any of the neighborhoods represented here today, these tunnels won’t help you,” Mandler said. “You would have to go all the way to the end of the tunnel and backtrack.”
The tunnel option for improving the interchange is one of six being studied by the state Department of Transportation, an analysis that is still in its early stages. For actual planning to occur — as is now happening with the I-84 viaduct replacement — additional federal funding would have to be obtained.
Larson says the plan shows that Hartford can think big about its future. Although it would take decades to build, supporters see the benefit of diverting trucks and other through traffic into the tunnels while building boulevards for local traffic where the highways now stand. It also could open up land for new development and, in the case of I-91, further reconnect the Hartford with the riverfront.
But there also is skepticism that the federal government would pay the tens of billions of dollars — perhaps, $50 billion by one estimate — for the tunnel project. Some also fear the idea could derail the more modest, by comparison, viaduct replacement, with a current price tag of $4.3 billion to $5.3 billion.
Construction on the viaduct project could get underway in the late 2020s, if funding is secured.
State Transportation Commissioner James P. Redeker, who attended Thursday’s meeting, said afterward that he has shared the department’s concerns with Larson.
Redeker said the study of the interchange was already underway when Larson approached the administration of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy with the tunnel proposal. Malloy agreed to study and analyze it alongside other options, but still planned to proceed with design of the viaduct replacement.
The viaduct would be replaced with a highway below grade and be accompanied by the relocation of train tracks and the CTfastrak busway dedicated routes.
“The tunnels are pretty challenged, and that’s before you get to the cost,” Redeker said. “But I don’t think that means we should stop looking at it.”
Redeker added: “The Congressman could be in a very strong position at some point to get funding, but $50 billion on top of our current program, I just don’t know.”
At Thursday’s meeting, Mandler said there were technological issues that would only allow boring machines to dig a tunnel wide enough for two lanes of traffic. Traffic could be stacked in two levels to achieve four lanes, but there would be almost no shoulder area to accommodate emergency vehicles.
Mandler also said construction access pits to build the interchange where the two highway tunnels would connect would likely affect Hartford’s Colt Park.
“How could you build a tunnel where you can’t get an ambulance in there?” Jackie McKinney, a committee member representing the Artspace building in downtown Hartford, said. “Fifty years from now, somebody will think we’re all brain dead if we do something like that. What will our next generation think we were doing?”
