I-95 in the summer.
Normally, that’s something that a meteorologist would mention when describing say, the average temperature of Phoenix.
Here, though, “95 in the summer” is usually accompanied by a grumble and one’s go-to profanity.
Every summer in Connecticut, Friday afternoons from Greenwich to Clarks Falls, exits 3 to 93, are a procession of hiccupping cars, trucks, and SUVs with New York and New Jersey plates all slouching toward Rhode Island.
Then, on Sunday, the same hodgepodge of hybrids and gas hogs go back from whence they came, like a school of steel-plated salmon.
There has got to be a better way, you think, sitting in your car, wondering what the kids in the back seat of the Escalade to your left are watching on their airplane-style flip-down TV screens.
“There must be a better way,” you say out loud, after wondering what possesses people to get vanity license plates.
Nope. As it turns out, when confronted with our nutmeg-flavored stretch of I-95, there isn’t a better way, just a longer way.
From Turnpike to Interstate
I-95, or, as it was once called, the Connecticut Turnpike, has been part of life on the shoreline for 50 years.
The turnpike, with tollbooths erected to help pay down the bond on the highway, opened on Jan. 2, 1958 with Gov. John Davis Lodge doing the honors.
In fact, after the state removed the tolls in 1985 two years after a lethal tractor trailer pile-up at a booth in Stamford, the legislature renamed the turnpike after the governor.
Actually, Lodge faced a revolt among Fairfield County Republicans over the construction of the road, and it eventually led to his ouster from
office.
The turnpike stretched from the New York line in Greenwich to the state’s town with the best name—the near-adverb Killingly.
Why Killingly? Because originally, the Connecticut Turnpike was meant to link up with U.S. 6, the route that connects Hartford with Providence. Long-term plans called for a highway between the two state capitals, but that was only partially constructed. You can see the vestige of the interchange, as I-395 north veers off toward the Massachusetts line, Route 6 then heads east.
Similarly, the entrance to I-395 at Exit 76 near the East Lyme-Waterford border is where the turnpike took its northward bend toward Montville and Norwich. That’s also why the exit numbers jump from 76 to 80 when continuing on I-95 toward New London.
The prodigal Route 11 was also supposed to spill out near there, but let’s all breathe regular on that one.
The Connecticut Turnpike was, as most people over age 35 will recall, a toll road, with booths all along the route.
It was 15 cents to pass through each booth, or you could purchase tokens with the rather spiffy looking CT Turnpike logo. My parents kept a stash of them in a little drawer in their old brown Oldsmobile station wagon.
And tolls are perhaps the reason for the little compartments near steering wheels that are now de rigueur in cars.
The fact that drivers had to pay to use the turnpike ran headlong into a classic Yankee trait—our, shall we say, parsimonious nature.
That’s right, we’re cheap.
The tolls led to the practice of shunpiking, that is, finding free roads in order to avoid shelling out the 15 cents.
Now, bringing the tolls back has been a political shuttlecock in Hartford; just last month former Speaker James Amman, who has his eye on Jodi Rell’s job, criticized any plan to charge for use of I-95 in the state, using the accident nearly 25 years ago as the linchpin in his argument.
He did not, however, mention there have been significant improvements in toll collecting since then, such as E-Z Pass express lanes.
State Sen. Andrea Stillman, who represents New London, Waterford, and Montville, has discussed reintroducing tolls at the Connecticut borders. For the sake of argument, let’s say the legislature brings back the tolls on I-95; what would the new shunpiking look like?
I decided to take a road trip to Greenwich from my home in New London without using 95, on a Friday.
The Road to Greenwich
Despite the fact I’m an ardent believer in mass transit who thinks it is shameful there is no commuter rail in southeastern Connecticut, I am a sucker for the road trip.
In the same way I get weak-kneed for all the saccharine romanticism of baseball, the same American-boy humor over-secretes at the thought of getting on the road.
I’ve done the cross-country trip on both I-40 and I-10.
I went up the California and Oregon coasts and have driven around the Mojave.
I spent two weeks a few summers ago driving around Ohio and Pennsylvania checking out Major League ballparks.
A week after my 30th birthday in 2006, I flew to Las Vegas, rented a Mustang, and drove at unmentionable speeds to San Francisco, a sort of preemptive strike on a midlife crisis.
And despite some guilt over the price of gas, I’m writing this after driving two days to a townhouse near Tampa where my girlfriend and I are spending a week.
But this would, in fact, be my first road trip in my native state.
Instead of ticking the “avoid highways” box on Google Maps, I decided to wing it and count on my sense of direction.
I started out on Broad Street in New London, or Route 85, headed toward Route 82.
Why not just follow Route 1, the Boston Post Road, and the colonial-era path that the Connecticut Turnpike replaced? Well, Route 1 and 95 are the same road in certain places, such as over the Baldwin Bridge.
I took 85 to Salem Four Corners, and then went west on 82 until it splits off to a lane that ends at the Hadlyme ferry landing.
It is $3 for a ride across the Connecticut River. How is it shunpiking if there is a fee to cross the river, you might ask.
Well, I decided not to be so pedantic and enjoy the excellent view of Gillette Castle and the even better one of the British racing green Maserati in front of me on the ferry.
I asked the Maserati guy how he would get to Greenwich without using 95. “Take Route 80 into New Haven, then take the Wilbur Cross,” he said.
Why argue with a guy with such a gorgeous automobile?
After disembarking the ferry, you get a quick peek into Chester, which recalls the fictional Connecticut town of Stars Hollow from The Gilmore Girls. (Nine out of every 10 boyfriends have seen at least one episode of The Gilmore Girls, and I’m not ashamed to admit I have a crush on that jittery Paris chick.)
I then headed west on Route 148, thought about going south on 145, but kept on until the intersection with 80 in Killingworth, a close second in the best-Connecticut-town-name sweepstakes.
I know the state has taken the trouble to note “Scenic Roads,” but Route 80 doesn’t get enough credit.
From Killingworth to East Haven, the road is an abstract expressionist painting of yellow blotches of sunlight along the asphalt. There are all sorts of deciduous trees to see in full summer glory.
The scene changes when you get to East Haven, as strip malls and intimidating intersections return.
But even then you get a splendid view of New Haven, which looks so much more inviting as a distant cluster of buildings viewed from a stoplight, rather than zooming by after surviving the Q Bridge.
I picked up Route 1 in the Elm City, and then promptly lost it.
I found myself on Church Street, with its wonderful collection of 19th-century homes, going toward
Hamden.
Once in Hamden, the hometown of Scott Burrell, the UConn basketball star who passed the ball to Tate George in the greatest moment in the history of Nutmeg State sports, I found, through sheer luck, the Wilbur Cross Parkway.
The Wilbur Cross is the warm-up act for the Merritt Parkway. Though they are both Route 15, the Wilbur Cross does not have the same cool-looking road signs, but does feature some of the same lovely overpasses that mark the state’s most famous road.
I exited back onto Route 1 through Milford, Stratford, and into Bridgeport, where I drove for a while on Route 113.
This was the first time I’ve driven through Bridgeport on surface streets. I never had any reason to go to Bridgeport before.
Like all of the state’s cities, it looks like it could really be something one day. Like New London, it has potential on one corner and crushing poverty on another.
I thought about stopping in South Norwalk, or, ahem, SoNo, but decided to keep on trucking through Stamford, where there seem to be condos going up at every street corner and commuters coming in from New York.
I stayed on the Post Road until it dumped me off in Greenwich.
The journey took me about three and a half hours.
I wanted to go shopping for Ferraris while in Greenwich.
“Do you have one in metallic gray?” I would ask. “How’s the resale?”
But I needed to get back to New London to run some errands.
So, my challenge over, I hopped onto 95.
There was a delay getting onto the entrance ramp to the northbound lanes.
Once on the highway, the electronic signs said there was traffic from exits 7 through 17.
I began to scan my fellow motorists to commiserate.
They looked like they had already said their favorite swear word.
Nearly four hours later, I limped into New London, after avoiding traffic near the old Turnpike-95 fork in East Lyme, by hopping onto Route 1, like maybe a disgruntled motorist would have 50 years ago. I stayed on Route 1 until it morphs into Bank Street, where there are signs reminding you
“To 95.”
The Connecticut Turnpike, or 95, is like the state itself. It was once the future, paving the way for what became representative government, and with the mills a jump-start to American industry.
But now the highway, with its quaint and congested two lanes each way, is a relic.
The future, as it happened, changed.
Now 95 is a problem, not a solution.
It must be strange for those who remember the gung-ho optimism that greeted this most modern way of moving people and goods, to see the highway as a stumbling block, a political minefield.
As the state plans on investing more into rail infrastructure and gas stays at a permanent high, I-95 looks like a road taken and an idea forsaken.