The Waterbury Democrat., 1939-11-23

NIOS1 C41l Go AOAAS"O
1--WE have very busy year
ahead of us in the Highway De-
partment. In this next year we
will complete the Merritt Park
way and the bridge linking 1t
with the Wilbur Cross Parkway.
We will launch the Wilbur Cross
Parkway towards Hartford, con-
structing, I hope, a substantial
amount of locating and acquiring
rights of way for a great deal
more. We must rebuild the Derby
Turnpike to connect the Parkway
adequately with New Haven and
the Naugatuck Valley. We shall
probably commence actual design
of the New London Bridge, and
quite possibly of the Hartford
bridge. and we shall have to Gre
ate adequate connections between
these great bridges and the APP
propriate roads in the state high
way system We expect to COM
mence actual construction of
four-lane dual type road from
Windsor into Hartford, to allevi-
ate the intolerable situation now
existing north of that city. We
will similarly rebuild the road
from the aircraft factories in East
Hartford to make them more ac-
cessible. We anticipate extensive
reconstruction of the Berlin Turn
pike, to tit this important road
for the volume of traffic using It,
We must continue the improve
ment of the Albany Turnpike to-
wards northwestern Connecticut.
We must study and attempt to
solve the very difficult and very
important problem presented by
traffic conditions In the Nauga-
tuck Valley from Bridgeport at
least as far north as Waterbury,
a problem ct the greatest difficult
ty and of the greatest Importance
and one that we have SHE'D
away from for years. We shall re-
build the one remaining WORKOUT
section of the Boston Post Road in
Fairfield county and will carry
out the long awaited reconstruct
ton of the Kings Highway in the
town of Fairfield. We must fill IN
number Of short gaps in the
trunk line system 20 make i'm
proved roads continuous. We shall
eliminate several hazardous rail-
road grade crossings. We shall de-
sign and rebuild many bridges in
tn. state that are now damaged
or outworn so that they must ac-
tually be supported on false work,
difficult and costly to maintain.
We must carefully formulate and
carefully execute a program for
the armor-coating Of several hum
dred additional miles of the state
road system for the sake of the
additional safety and substantial
economy resulting therefrom, and
We must encourage the towns to
20 much farther in the use of
this type of road maintenance
and betterment which we now
know reduces roadway mainte-
nance costs by more than half.
We must recognize and meet the
fact that owing TO the practical
exhaustion of the chestnut guard
rail posts we have been using, we
must develop a radically different
type of post and one that will Of
fer the maximum OF economy.
and we must erect some hundred
thousand of these posts, to keep
our guardrail to the standard re-
CURED by statute. We must plan
and prosecute a large scale pro-
gram of sub-surface drainage cor
rection to escape an rneconom-
ically heavy burden of annual re-
pair bills and in order that year
later we may be able to
apply roadway surfaces that can
be more safely and eccnom-
ically maintained. We must for
mulate and execute a we'll consid-
cred program of low cost secon-
Diary highway reconstruction along
the lines l indicated a few mo-
ments ago. We must further per-
feet cur road painting machine
and technique, and must perfect
a more adequate control of our