Connecticut Association
for Community Transportation

Public transportation is an essential part of Connecticut’s economic strength. Connecticut residents and visitors used bus transit for over 35 million trips in SFY 2005, thereby reducing congestion, stress and delay suffered by other road travelers. In that same year, the Urban Mobility Report of the Texas Transportation Institute found that public transportation in three Connecticut urban areas saved 1.6 million hours of delay for other road travelers in 2003, at a cost savings to them of $ 26.8 million. Despite the benefits of Connecticut’s public transportation, the state investment in bus operations and capital remains insufficient to maintain current services, much less to make service improvements, or add service capacity.

Connecticut leadership must make a significant investment in public transportation to improve, expand and continue vital bus services to increase ridership, support transit oriented development, and provide affordable, attractive and convenient alternatives to the single occupant vehicle.

The time to act is now!

"This study is a plan for bus service investments that will support the economic development future of the State of Connecticut. Its mission is to identify the range of benefits which can accrue from investing in bus transit and to determine how investing in these improvements to today’s bus infrastructure will contribute to job access, emerging intra- and inter-state markets, smart growth, economic development, environmental quality, and congestion relief.

Over the past fifteen years, service levels have stayed fundamentally the same or have even declined slightly due to inadequate funding streams. However, even as this was happening, initiatives for improved job access by the state and federal governments and economic development initiatives from the Transportation Strategy Board recognized changing and unmet travel needs throughout the state and added some new services. This study focuses on continuing and expanding upon these initiatives to build a strategic vision and bus service plan that will take us into the future."

click here to read the full report "Bus Transit Needs Analysis- Connecticut 2007" as prepared for Transit For Connecticut