Words and photos by Ken Valenti
WESTPORT–The message was clear in the state hearing on the 142-year-old William F. Cribari Bridge last night: no big trucks.
Whether the Connecticut Department of Transportation (DOT) replaces or rehabilitates the span, residents at the hearing in Town Hall requested that the finished bridge bar tractor-trailer trucks from crossing it. They fear that heavy commercial traffic would mar the quality of life and create safety problems, while the vibrations could damage historic homes.
“Once this damage begins, the truck drivers will not pay the price, the homeowners will,” Charles Lucas, a member of the Representative Town Meeting (RTM), District 4, said to the DOT officials and some 300 residents.
Art Schoeller, president of the Green’s Farms Association, said Greens Farms Road, which parallels I-95 and leads Bridge Street over the span, is already “the go-to bypass” on Google Maps when the area is congested.
“We as the Greens Farms Association oppose any alternatives that allow trucks to use this route,” he said, adding, “No trucks!”
The 2½-hour hearing, which followed a one-hour open house for DOT officials to address residents’ questions, served as one piece of the agency’s plan to gather the community’s input, which they will collect until April 17. DOT Deputy Commissioner Laoise King said the DOT is going further than required by holding the hearing and allowing a 60-day public comment period, after releasing its environmental assessment and other documents, rather than the required 45 days.
In 2016, the DOT deemed the bridge structurally and functionally deficient. Slides shown last night included shots of two piers that are suffering from extensive spalling – deterioration in the concrete – and exposed rebar.
The DOT explored five options for the bridge, which carries Connecticut Route 136, or Bridge Street, over the Saugatuck River. The options are: leaving the bridge as is and continuing the current maintenance practices; two levels of rehabilitation; replacing it with a new span where the current one is; or replacing it with one at different points on the river’s shores.
A new bridge on the same alignment as the current one would cost $78 million to $86 million, the DOT projects.
RTM member Matthew Mandell, District 1, presented another alternative – a hybrid of replacing and rehabilitating the bridge. He said the plan was agreed on by four community groups in town – the Green’s Farms Association, the Westport Preservation Alliance, Save Westport Now and the Westport Alliance for Saugatuck.
It would entail removing the trusses, widening the bridge and then putting the trusses back.
“Once you have this bridge that’s wide enough for bikes, for transportation, for your guardrails…you bring back the metal structure and you put it back down on top of it,” he said.
The first public speaker of the night, RTM member Kristin Schneemann, District 9, set the tone of the meeting by insisting on speaking from the lectern addressing the audience rather than into a microphone recording comments at a table staffed by the DOT.
King said members could speak from either and all subsequent speakers, more than 20, chose the lectern. James Barrows II, project manager with the DOT Division of Bridges, said the comments were recorded to include in the project’s record.
Schneeman cited federal law protecting historic assets.
“For bridges that are rehabilitated, historic integrity must be preserved to the greatest extent possible, consistent with unavoidable transportation needs, safety and road requirements,” she said.
Ken Valenti
A career journalist and lifelong resident of the New York City region, Ken Valenti has enjoyed decades of reporting local, regional and national news in New York and Connecticut. Topics of special interest are development, the environment, Long Island Sound and transportation. When not reporting, he’s always on the lookout for the perfect coffee shop or used book sale.
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