Derby, CT road widening

https://lemmy.ml/post/19158585

Derby, CT road widening - Lemmy

Derby, CT is a small, working-class, post-industrial town with a population which has been stagnant at about 12,000 for more than six decades. The geniuses over at the Connecticut DOT decided that this obviously meant that the town’s Main Street needed to be widened, by twice the size, destroying a number of historic buildings and uprooting numerous small community businesses in the process. That red stripe on the far left of the “After” pic is the new edge of the street.

Old buildings like that can have massive maintenance, repair, and sustained costs while also being undesirable for businesses for a lack of modern infrastructure. Given the field behind them, these weren’t central to the town and likely a good call to tear down.

How the space was used after that’s a different discussion.

City or state would have had to pay to buy the properties anyway, though. Then the money spent on the widening could easily have been spent to modernize and update (or otherwise improve) the buildings.

They’re also building an apartment building about 1/2 a block from there that is walkable to the commuter rail and bus station. The road was widend but it also razed some derelict building for the Greenway park. Just over the hill from these pics they re-did the bridge across the river with wide a walkable/rideable sidewalk.

Tldr: Yes, wider road, but lots of good stuff added too.