I-84 in West Hartford is known as a hazardous stretch of road with very little shoulder or room for error.
"This really is an area where we have major safety issues and it is a constrained area,” said Connecticut Transportation Commissioner James Redeker during a press conference with Gov. Dan Malloy on Tuesday.
More than 175,000 vehicles pass through the section on any given day, so the state is trying to make the area safer and more efficient. Leaders announced that plans to rework the stretch of highway are finally moving forward.
"We're trying to provide additional capacity,” said Redeker.
Last week, the Bond Commission approved funds for the final improvement design, which will include:
- Additional lanes for traffic flow and merging
- Left and right shoulder widening
- The replacement of two bridges
Leaders also laid out plans to rehabilitate Heroes Tunnel, formerly known as West Rock Tunnel, on the Wilbur Cross Parkway in New Haven.
It opened in 1949 and was carved into land, but it's plagued with issues like falling concrete and bad lighting, making it dangerous for the roughly 75,000 vehicles that travel through it each day.
The state plans to build a third tunnel to keep traffic flowing while construction is underway.
"If you consider closing an entire tunnel one direction on the Wilbur Cross, the impact to our customers would be extraordinary and frankly unsustainable,” said Redeker, “so to avoid that what we plan to do is build a third tunnel."
"This things been a mess for many, many years,” said Malloy, “we had to come up with an innovative way to fix it."
Leaders say the third tunnel could be used as an emergency route or even permanently for traffic once the project is complete.
Construction on both the projects is expected to start within the next five years.