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Rowland Pitches Flex Time, Telecommuting To Ease Traffic Woes

By Denise Lavoie

Associated Press

STAMFORD -- Highway improvements just won't do it anymore.

If businesses want to ease crippling traffic congestion in southwestern

Connecticut, they should offer flex time, telecommuting and incentives for

employees to take trains to work, Gov John G. Rowland said Monday.

Pitching a transportation plan he outlined three weeks ago, Rowland said the

state needs to break from its long tradition of spending millions on highway

improvements.

"We recognize we've now got to do something more creative and more thoughtful,

and this is where the private sector comes in," Rowland told a crowd of about

500 business leaders at the spring luncheon for the Southwestern Area Commerce

and Industry Association, a regional business council.

"Working with many of our larger companies, especially, we've got to change

rider behavior," Rowland said.

In addition to flexible starting times and telecommuting, work done off-site

or at home through computer links, Rowland urged the business leaders to

provide incentives that would encourage more people to use Metro-North trains

to get to work.

Rowland said although Fairfield County has enjoyed strong economic growth over

the last few years, that expansion has worsened an already severe traffic

problem in the region, where many of the state's largest companies are

located.

On an average week day, between 130,000 and 145,000 vehicles travel on

Interstate 95 in Fairfield County, according to the state Department of

Transportation. That's nearly twice as many vehicles than the highway was

designed to carry when it was built in the 1950s.

"It's starting to have kind of a Catch 22 effect. It's the old story that more

and more people would even love to come into this community but they can't get

here, and it's having a huge impact on some of our economic growth," Rowland

said.

Last month, Rowland outlined a $58.4-million plan to reduce congestion on the

region's main commuter roads -- Interstate 95, the Merritt Parkway and Route 1

-- by 5 percent over the next five years.

Rowland, who credited the business council for "99.9 percent" of the ideas

contained in the transportation plan, said the state will spend $57 million

over the next seven years to expand parking and make other improvements at

Metro-North railroad stations, which serve commuters from New Haven to New

York City.

The state will spend another $1.4 million this year to study ride-sharing and

better use of buses, and to develop a telecommuting pilot program among

employers in the Fairfield County corridor.