In the past four years, Regional Plan Association has had many discussions with citizens from the Connecticut portion of the Tri-State Region. One concern comes up constantly: transportation.

Connecticut residents perceive several major transportation problems. Existing expressways are becoming more crowded, both with automobiles and trucks. New segments needed to keep redevelopment efforts in older cities from starving are being held up. Bus service in and to these cities is running further into the red. Train service from Connecticut cities and towns to New York City, although much improved, also has a large deficit. And at various times, rail freight service has appeared on the verge of virtual elimination.

The Association believes that these transportation problems can be understood and resolved only in their larger context of Connecticut growth policy. Transportation facilities and services not only serve and follow development, they lead it.

An expressway can support a city downtown with needed access, or it can encourage low-density, haphazard development in suburban and rural areas. Regional Plan calls this development “spread city.”

Good public transportation has a more limited, but still essential, ability to shape growth. It cannot survive in low-density spread city without massive subsidies, but it can make city downtowns attractive places to live and work and to locate facilities. Residential densities of ten dwelling units per acre in cities employing about 80,000 people — as in New Haven or Bridgeport — appear to be the critical mass at which enough riders can be generated to run frequent, relatively quick, local service at a reasonable subsidy. To centers of greater density and size, service can be more frequent and rapid; as auto traffic becomes congested and expensive, buses begin to draw drivers from their cars. Although today almost any public transportation requires some subsidy, greater clustering of facilities means better bus service with lower deficits.

Spread city, however, has been the predominant development pattern over the last 30 years. It has lowered densities and weakened the focal points necessary for adequate public transportation and increased our dependence on automobiles, trucks, and limited energy supplies. Spread city is also partly responsible for the steep rise in housing prices, the neglect and decline of the older central cities, the separation of low-income city dwellers from rapidly expanding suburban job opportunities, and the excessive consumption of open land and degradation of Connecticut’s natural environment.

The alternative is a policy of strengthening existing centers — major city downtowns and secondary centers — by directing major employment, housing, and service growth into and near them, and by planning expressways and public transportation to support these centers. Concurrently, further spread development must be inhibited. A centers policy would help reduce housing costs, satisfy energy and environmental constraints, and help bring disadvantaged groups into the economic and social mainstream.