Interstate 95 in Connecticut - History

History

Interstate 95 in Connecticut, particularly in Fairfield and New Haven Counties, has far more exits than typical Interstate Highways, with some exits less than one mile (1.6 km) apart. State transportation officials have said the reason for the many exits stems from the state's original justification for building parts of the highway — to ease traffic congestion on Route 1 by providing a faster, alternate route, even for drivers traveling short distances within the same community. Rather than skirting urban areas, the highway was built directly through the most dense sections of Stamford, Norwalk, Bridgeport and New Haven.

While most of I-95 was built as the Connecticut Turnpike, the Connecticut Turnpike incorporated several pieces of already-built relocations, some to freeway standards, of U.S. Route 1 (the Turnpike split from the US 1 relocation in East Lyme, along the Old Lyme-New London section):

• Darien bypass, opened ca. 1952
• New Haven east of the Quinnipiac River, opened ca. 1951
• Old Saybrook-Old Lyme Raymond E. Baldwin Bridge over the Connecticut River and approaches, opened 1948
• Old Lyme-New London, opened by 1950 as a two-lane road
• New London-Groton Gold Star Bridge over the Thames River and approaches, opened 1943

Other improvements in the corridor included the New York-Meriden Merritt Parkway/Wilbur Cross Parkway, New Haven-Old Saybrook Route 80, and Groton-Rhode Island Route 184, the latter connecting in Rhode Island to Route 3, a shortcut to Providence.

Most of the Turnpike opened January 2, 1958, and was designated I-95 south/west of the split with the relocated US 1 by 1959. The rest of I-95 to Rhode Island opened December 12, 1964. The Gold Star Bridge was twinned ca. 1975, along with a reconstruction of its approaches, and in 1993 the Raymond E. Baldwin Bridge was replaced with a wider span.

The state installed cameras to watch traffic along the highway in the early 1990s. As of 2007, about 100 cameras have been set up and are monitored by state police and the state Department of Transportation. In Fairfield County, local emergency responders (fire departments and ambulance services) that serve the highway in individual towns have asked for direct feeds from the cameras to avoid mistakes. When travelers report an accident, they sometimes tell authorities that it occurred near an exit that is actually not the nearest to the scene, slowing down response time. The traffic feed from the cameras is available on the World Wide Web, but the service can be spotty, according to the Stamford, Connecticut and Norwalk, Connecticut fire chiefs, who said they were hoping that a proposed $40 million upgrade of the camera system, under consideration by the state in 2007, would provide them access. Feeds from these cameras are also used by local media outlets, as part of traffic report segments in news programming, and in some instances as a part of a designated "Traffic and Weather" Channel.