Everyone has an opinion about the Cribari Bridge.
Save it at all costs! Renovate it for safety and river navigation! Don’t allow trucks! Don’t worry, they can’t get through Saugatuck anyway!
As the March 19 community meeting (6 p.m., Town Hall) with the state Department of Transportation looms, the jury remains out on what Westport — residents, and town officials — really want for the span’s future.
A decade after discussions began on a renovation or replacement of the 143-year-old bridge, no one seems to have an idea of what to say to DOT.
That might be because no one has clearly asked.
Today, “06880” does just that.
We’ve created an 8-question survey. It’s not scientific — we’re not Gallup or Quinnipiac — but it could give some sense of residents’ feelings. Results will be posted on Friday.
The survey is below. NOTE: This is for current Westport residents only. Thanks!
Cribari Bridge (Photo courtesy of Library of Congress)
It seems that users of the “06880” app cannot view the survey. App users who are Westport residents: Please go to http://www.06880.org to take the survey. My apologies!
Very cool ! An “ask your question” segment could bring thoughtful inquiries to the 19th meeting — or even a “Would you rather” format. A recent comment from a neighbor got me thinking: many of the improvements suggested by the state are mandatory requirements — safety standards, clearances, and similar thresholds. Federal funds can’t be spent unless those criteria are met.
So, if that’s true and we can’t have both, would you rather have safe, ADA‑compliant pedestrian paths and bike shoulders, or keep the bridge at its current width?
Another concern raised at the RTM was environmental disturbance of the river bottom from pilings and construction‑related pollution. Would you prefer three rehabilitation projects over the next 25 years — with added maintenance construction and periodic closures — or one project (and one disturbance) that lasts 75+ years?
Would you rather have a quick‑opening, reliable span for marine traffic, or stick with the slower, antiquated system we have now?
That photo showing the 7‑ton rating was also striking. The 1993 rehabilitation increased the span’s capacity to 40 tons by using larger girders and a new paved roadbed to support the decorative historic truss. That substantially increased the weight of the span and the stress on the swing mechanism. A new rehabilitation would likely add more weight and width — but can the pivot point balance a wider, heavier structure as it swings?
These issues came up in the PAC meetings, and we’ll need to weigh them carefully — not just whether each is reasonable, but what we’re willing to trade in order to gain something else.
The Connecticut Water and Watercourses Statute (chapter 440 of the CGS) appears to prohibit the replacement option favored by the DOT (as does the Westport WPLO). The adaptive rehabilitation option does not violate those laws. (I hope an attorney familiar with the ins and outs of these complicated laws will weigh in on all of this – I am not one.) The comparison charts in the DOT’s own environmental assessment state the effects of the different options pretty clearly.
The “adaptive rehab” variation has a lifespan of only one-third that of a full replacement, according to the EA and PAC discussions. This would require CTDOT to undertake two additional major rehabilitation projects, along with all necessary equipment on site, over the 75+ year timeline under consideration. This means the bottom would be disturbed twice more in projects of similar scale.
The question is whether the impacts of three separate projects would be less than those of a single project?
Additionally, the adaptive rehab approach would result in a reduced channel width, which falls under the oversight of the federal government (Coast Guard), though the primary focus in this comment is on the overall environmental impact.
We would love to hear your point.
I don’t know who “we” is – but my point above is that the preferred version appears to be against state and town laws. Maybe not – as I pointed out, I’d like to have a legal opinion. We don’t usually get to choose which laws we obey. That’s it.
So no opinion on the question? “We” are the people wanting to learn , based on facts and you are a environment conservation pro.
Correction: “Every 25 years”, not over 25 years.
Thank you, Dan, for providing a easy way for residents to register their opinion. And Robbie’s questions are also good ones – can we opine on those via survey?
Feel free to opine here Luisa, love the input.
Polls like this can be helpful in surfacing the questions Westport residents want addressed.
Infrastructure projects often involve trade-offs, but the purpose of the environmental and historic review process is to determine whether those trade-offs are truly unavoidable or whether design options exist that address several goals at once—safety, accessibility, and the surrounding Bridge Street National Register Historic District.
Under the Federal Highway Administration’s review process, public comments and questions raised at meetings help identify those issues and become part of the official record considered before a final decision is made.
The poll is a bit ambiguous when asking whether, for instance, whether the potential for use of large trucks is important to the respondent. For me, it’s very important that large trucks be able to use the bridge to ensure that truck traffic doesn’t continue to be artificially routed up 33, creating logjams that shouldn’t exist there while protecting a handful of people’s property values. However, someone else might select that and mean that it’s very important that truck traffic across the bridge continue to be impeded, contributing to the traffic jams and safety issues that so many people here complain about.
We lived in the Saugatuck neighborhood for 17 years. I miss the Italian Festival as much as I’m hopeful for a reasonable Hamlet solution. Except for when we resurrected Luciano Field for instructional league softball, it’s mostly a mess.
When you live on the West Bank, crossing the river to go about your daily life is a thing. And there are three options, all fraught with their own issues.
I don’t want the Cribari bridge to lose its charm, but I do hope that the next act supports trucks above and boats below because it’s not fair for your Riverside Ave neighbors to bear the burden. They have history and fancy on the river houses too.
The protagonists are clearly NIMBY, maybe because they over paid to live on Bridge Street. While we’re solving traffic challenges, we need a no truck left turn on Sunrise and to re open the left turn on Treadwell. Somehow because of traffic laws, Treadwell has a $3m house for sale…
Share the wealth, share the pain.
You raise an important point about fairness and how traffic impacts are distributed. One of the core questions in the current review is not simply whether trucks are “good” or “bad,” but whether changes to the bridge’s geometry could reasonably alter traffic composition and routing patterns across the entire river corridor — east and west banks alike.
That’s why many residents are asking whether the Environmental Assessment has fully modeled long-term and cumulative traffic effects, not just for Bridge Street but for Riverside Avenue and other feeder roads as well. Understanding those system-wide impacts would help move the discussion beyond neighborhood labels and toward informed planning.
That makes sense Werner—no one wants unclear or limited data to review. That’s why Wendy was asked to explain her perspective rather than simply refer to a possible law that might slow progress toward the essential goal of a safe span.
According to CTDOT and the PAC, of which you were a member, traffic analysis, as well as D.E.P. permitting will be handled strictly by the book and in full compliance with all laws, making it essentially a non-issue, unless someone prefers the “do-nothing” option or is intentionally delaying the process.
It’s unfortunate, but after speaking with a couple of RTM members and addressing the full RTM that evening, proposing an open “study” group to work through available options, including the suggested “adaptive rehab Idea”, the response was Naaa,
It was very troubling, A vote on such an important project without understanding the details, especially when the EA is over 600 pages long and admittedly tedious to read, is unacceptable.
I think the Environmental Assement is 160 pages, however I agree that the appendices deserve scrutiny as well…
The Environmental Assessment (EA) acknowledges that the Bridge Street Historic District is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and lies within the project’s Area of Potential Effects (APE). Under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Federal Highway Administration must evaluate not only direct physical impacts, but also reasonably foreseeable indirect and cumulative effects on a historic district’s setting, feeling, and circulation patterns.
Given the public discussion about potential changes in traffic composition—particularly the removal of existing geometric constraints that currently limit heavier vehicles—it would be helpful to understand how the EA evaluated long-term traffic redistribution and how the Federal Highway Administration determined whether such functional changes would, or would not, constitute an adverse effect on the integrity of the Bridge Street Historic District as part of the Section 106 consultation process.