Welcome to On The Menu.

Route 9

From A7 what the future of Hartford can look like if all this is completed,’” Eucalitto said.

Adelphia Café

476 Washington Avenue North Haven, CT 06473

203-535-0149

Family owned/operated. Former proprietors of the Neptune Diner in Wallingford. Extensive menu for all tastes. Breakfasts, luncheons and special dinners. All baking on premises.

Athena II Diner

320 Washington Ave, North Haven, CT 06473

203.239.0663 www.athena2diner.com Open 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Serving breakfast, lunch, & dinner. Accept Q Cards. Serving North Haven for 30 years. Daily specials and full liquor available.

The Middletown project is a smaller-scale dress rehearsal for the more ambitious production in Hartford, which most likely would have to be designed, funded and built in stages, given its cost and size.

611 N Colony Road Wallingford, CT 06492 (203) 269-9507 colonydiner.com

Wallingford’s place to go for oldfashioned breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Proudly serving up delicious and hearty meals daily. Voted Best Diner 4 years running by Record Journal. Open seven days. Breakfast served all day.

With more than 500 vacancies, the DOT is hampered by staffing shortages. Eucalitto said staffing has not been an issue in Middletown but is a factor in the projects lining up behind it.

Over time, the redesign and reconstruction of Route 9 through Middletown has both grown in scope and split into smaller projects:

See Route 9, A9

Community Center

Food bank. Open Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., by appointment only. Current needs: cleaning products, toilet paper, paper towels, pasta, sauce, peanut butter and jelly; gift cards to local grocery stores.

Genealogy program.

Wednesday, June 14, 21 and 28, 1 p.m. Join us for this three-part program taught by Jennifer Zinck to learn how to begin your own research. Join us for lunch before the program. RSVP to 860-349-7121.

Foot care clinic. Friday, June 16, 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Cost is $35. Call 860-3497121 for an appointment.

Senior Book Club. Tuesday, June 13, 2 p.m. “The Woman in Cabin Ten.”

Thursday Evening Book Club. Thursday, June 15, 5 p.m. “A Walk in the Woods.”

Bus trips. Wednesday, June 7, Price Chopper and Aldi; Wednesday, June 14, Elizabeth Park, Hartford. Call Middletown Area Transit at 860-346-0212 (Press 2).

Route 9

two are complete, one recently broke ground, and another is cleared to go to the bid in the fall. Each possesses an “independent utility.”

In other words, they are worth doing on their own, even if the final piece of the puzzle how to eliminate two signal-controlled intersections while maintaining safe access on and off the highway still is being designed.

“So if we never get rid of the signals, all these projects still have a purpose and a need, and they’re beneficial to the environment,” said Steve Hall, the project manager.

Construction recently began on a $56 million project to remake an awkwardly angled ramp that connects Route 17 to Route 9. From a stop sign, drivers must look over their left shoulder for an opening to dash into northbound traffic with no acceleration lane.

It was the site of 319 crashes over a recent three-year period, even more than the 260 attributed to the nearby traffic signals.

Hall said the on-again, offagain conversation over the feasibility of removing the Route 9 lights gained traction in 2014, when the public reacted skeptically to DOT plans to fix the Route 17 ramp without touching the two nearby traffic signals.

“The design back then was pretty similar to what we’re actually building,” Hall said. “But we got comments back then saying, ‘You got to do something about these signals. How can you fix that, and we have two traffic signals on Route 9?’ So we kind of shifted focus.”

The ramp project, which requires a new bridge and other changes, was put on hold. Two years later, Malloy, and James P. Redeker, then the DOT commissioner, came back with a fast-track plan to not only fix the ramp but re- move the traffic lights.

“Real simply, it was just a let’s-look-at-this-from-aminimalist-scope,” Thomas A. Harley, the chief engineer, said then. “When you look at it from that perspective, you come with ‘let’s just raise the southbound [lanes] so the turns can be made underneath it.’”

It was not entirely minimalist. Keeping traffic flowing as it comes off the highway at Washington Street also would require construction of a rotary. Early reviews were not good.

The community complained that one flyover destroyed views of the river when looking down Washington Street from Main Street and that other aspects compromised historic properties, complicated riverfront access and appeared to overwhelm the downtown with traffic that no longer could easily access Route 9.

“Whatever we do on Route 9, there’s a perception that means Main Street will bear the burden of what we’re doing,” Hall said. “There’sa perception DOT wants to fix the Route 9 problem by sending all the traffic to Main Street.”

Engineers experimented with revisions that would move a flyover north and use an open structure instead of retaining walls, opening river views. They also have considered closing off one of the two downtown exits to either north or south traffic, simplifying the design.

Seven of the 11 alternatives were discarded after internal scrutiny. Three others have been subjected to detailed and sophisticated reviews designed to measure how traffic flows would be changed, using big data sold by cell phone providers to a Virginia company, Streetlight Data.

This story originally appeared at ctmirror.org.

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CARPENTRY

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HOUSECLEANING

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HOUSECLEANINGHousekeeper. Offices. Have many years of exper. Refs. 203 4999992, (203) 630-7921.

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JT’S LANDSCAPING

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