The Connecticut Turnpike (officially the Governor John Davis Lodge Turnpike) is a freeway and former toll road in the U.S. state of Connecticut; it is maintained by the Connecticut Department of Transportation (CTDOT). Spanning approximately along a generally west–east axis, its routing is shared with Interstate 95 (I-95) for from the New York state border in Greenwich to East Lyme; I-395 for from East Lyme to Plainfield; and SR 695 for from Plainfield to the Rhode Island state line at U.S. Route 6 (US 6) in Killingly. The turnpike briefly runs concurrently with US 1 from Old Saybrook to Old Lyme and Route 2A from Montville to Norwich.
Construction on the Connecticut Turnpike began in 1954 and the highway was opened in 1958. It originally followed a sequential exit numbering system that disregarded route transition, where the exit numbers on I-395 were a continuation of the exit numbers on I-95. In 2015, the I-395 exit numbers were changed to a mileage-based system reflecting their distance from the split from I-95, effectively removing the defining element of the turnpike. In some sections southwest of New Haven, it carries an annual average daily traffic of over 150,000 vehicles.
Route description
I-95
I-95 enters Connecticut as the Connecticut Turnpike in Greenwich at the New York state line. The turnpike stretches for across the state, but only the first is signed as I-95. This portion of the highway passes through the most heavily urbanized section of Connecticut along the shoreline between Greenwich and New Haven, going through the cities of Stamford, Norwalk, Bridgeport, and New Haven, with daily traffic volumes of 120,000 to over 150,000 throughout the entire length between the New York border and the junction with I-91 in New Haven. The turnpike intersects with several major expressways, namely US 7 at exit 15 in Norwalk, Route 8 at exit 27A in Bridgeport, the Merritt and Wilbur Cross parkways at exit 38 (via the Milford Parkway) in Milford, and I-91 at exit 48 in New Haven.
North (east) of I-91, the turnpike continues along the Connecticut shoreline, usually with less traffic. The six-lane highway is reduced to four lanes in Branford, interchanges with Route 9 at exit 69 in Old Saybrook, crosses the Connecticut River on the Raymond E. Baldwin Bridge and continues until the interchange with I-395 at exit 76 near the East Lyme–Waterford line.
I-395 The turnpike leaves I-95 at exit 76 in East Lyme, continuing on as I-395 north heading towards Norwich, Jewett City and Plainfield until exit 35, where the turnpike and I-395 split. I-395 continues north towards Worcester, Massachusetts, ending at I-290 and the Massachusetts Turnpike. The Connecticut Turnpike officially ends at US 6 (Danielson Pike) in Killingly, which continues on towards Providence, Rhode Island. Unlike the I-95 portion, the I-395 portion of the turnpike has changed very little over the years, retaining its grass median with a guardrail separating directions of travel.
SR 695 SR 695 is the unsigned portion of the turnpike from I-395 in Plainfield to US 6 at the Rhode Island state line in Killingly. The road is not signed as SR 695 but eastbound as "To US 6 East" and westbound as "To I-395 South". SR 695 would have become part of the now-defunct alignment of the I-84 freeway between Hartford, Connecticut, and Providence, Rhode Island, had that freeway been built. (Present-day I-84 continues eastbound from Hartford into Massachusetts where it ends at I-90, the Massachusetts Turnpike). There are two partial exits on SR 695. Westbound exit 1 (formerly exit 90) at Squaw Rock Road is only accessible westbound. The easternmost exit (also numbered exit 1, but formerly unnumbered), located east of the Squaw Rock Road onramp and accessible only eastbound, is for Ross Road, and the only onramp provided from Ross Road is for SR 695 westbound. The interchange with I-395 is only partial: there is no access provided from SR 695 westbound to I-395 northbound and no access from I-395 southbound to SR 695 eastbound.
History The general route and construction of the turnpike were both mandated by state law. Intended to relieve congestion on US 1 and Route 15 (the Merritt and Wilbur Cross parkways), design work began in 1954. The Connecticut Turnpike opened to traffic on January 2, 1958, at 2:30 p.m. However, the westernmost portion of the highway (the connecting Greenwich with the New England Thruway) opened 10 months later. Tolls were originally collected through a series of eight toll booths along the route.
The Connecticut Turnpike was designed and built much differently than other toll roads built around the same time. Unlike toll roads in other states that operated under semi-autonomous, quasi-public toll road authorities, the Connecticut Turnpike was operated by the Connecticut Highway Department (later the Connecticut Department of Transportation) from its inception. Additionally, unlike toll roads in other states where revenues collected from motorists were legally required to be kept within the toll road authority and used to finance the facility's construction and upkeep, toll revenues from the Connecticut Turnpike were placed into the state's general fund and used for highway and non-highway expenditures alike. Finally, the closely spaced interchanges and eight mainline barriers were a result of each town through which the Connecticut Turnpike passed being guaranteed a certain number of access points to gain the support of each affected town for construction of the highway. This is in contrast to toll roads built in neighboring states with widely spaced interchanges that normally featured a ticket system where one obtained a ticket at entering the toll road, then paid a distance-based fare upon exiting.
The turnpike was renamed after former Connecticut Governor John Davis Lodge on December 31, 1985, two months after the tolls were removed. Local legend is the initial phase of turnpike construction in 1954 was so disruptive in heavily Republican Fairfield County that local voters there turned on incumbent Republican Governor Lodge, leading to his defeat by Abraham Ribicoff.
Initially, the Connecticut Turnpike was signed as an east–west route, even after the I-95 designation was added to the turnpike between Greenwich and Waterford in the early 1960s. Signs indicating I-95/Connecticut Turnpike as an east–west route existed in places until the early 1990s, when the remaining east–west signage was replaced by north–south signage.
From Waterford to Killingly, the turnpike was initially designated as Route 52 in 1967, following the opening of the toll-free section of Route 52 from Killingly to the Massachusetts border. To accommodate the truncation of the Hartford to Providence extension of I-84 to Killingly, following Rhode Island's cancellation of its portion of that extension in the early 1980s, Route 52 was to be re-designated as an Interstate. Initially, Connecticut and Massachusetts requested that the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) extend the I-290 designation southward along free Route 52 and the Connecticut Turnpike to I-95 in Waterford. AASHTO rejected the I-290 request and instead approved the I-395 designation in 1983. The article lists "I-290 (formerly Route 52)" as one of the highways to which the lifting of the ban applies.
Accidents Several notorious accidents have occurred throughout the turnpike's history. The worst of these was a serious incident on January 19, 1983, in which a tractor trailer after a brake failure collided with four cars at the Stratford toll plaza, killing seven people and injuring several others. The investigation following the crash determined that the truck driver fell asleep at the wheel just before the crash took place. At the time, the government of Connecticut was removing tolls along the turnpike; as a result of the incident, the government expedited the removal of the remaining tollbooths.
In June 1983, a section of the turnpike's northbound Mianus River Bridge in Greenwich collapsed due to corrosion of its substructure, killing three motorists crossing it at the time.
On March 25, 2004, a tanker truck carrying fuel swerved to avoid a car that cut the truck off and subsequently overturned, dumping of home heating oil onto the Howard Avenue overpass in Bridgeport. Passing vehicles kicked up the oil which ignited a towering inferno that subsequently melted the bridge structure and caused the southbound lanes to sag several feet. The northbound lanes, which received less damage from the fire, were opened five days later after being reinforced with temporary scaffolding. The southbound lanes opened on April 1, after a temporary bridge was erected.
Stalling of upgrades by budget deficits and lawsuits
The Connecticut Turnpike opened southwest Connecticut to a mass migration of New Yorkers, leading to substantial residential and economic growth in Fairfield and New Haven counties. The turnpike became a primary commuter route to New York City. With additional segments of I-95 that opened in the 1960s connecting to Providence and Boston, the turnpike became an essential route for transporting people and goods throughout the Northeast. As a result, much of the turnpike had become functionally obsolete by 1965, with traffic exceeding its design capacity. Originally designed to carry 60,000 vehicles per day (VPD) on the four-lane sections and 90,000 VPD on the six-lane portion west of New Haven, the turnpike carried 75,000–100,000 VPD east of New Haven, and 130,000–200,000 VPD between New Haven and the New York state line as of 2006.
There were dozens of plans discussed to alleviate traffic congestion and improve safety on the turnpike over the past half-century, but most of these plans languished amid political infighting and lawsuits brought on by special-interest groups. Still, traffic and deadly accidents continued to increase each year on the turnpike, and by the 1990s the Connecticut Turnpike had started to become known as "the Highway of Death".
Furthermore, while most of the turnpike is signed as I-95 or I-395, the highway was designed and built before the Interstate Highway System was established. As a result, much of the turnpike does not meet Interstate standards, particularly with overpasses ranging from ; Interstate Highway standards require a minimum of of vertical clearance. Interchanges are too closely spaced; ramps and acceleration-deceleration lanes need to be lengthened. In some areas, median and shoulder widths and curve radii also fall short of Interstate standards.