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Sports blog: Warrior Nation

By LAUREN MYLO

Villager Staff Writer


FAIRFIELD -- According to Vice President Joe Biden, "the road to recovery must literally be repaved."

Which is why he visited the Fairfield Park and Ride on Jefferson Street Monday to praise the $67 million Merritt Parkway improvement project, part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

The project will create more than 100 jobs, and Biden praised this project as well as the 60 other stimulus projects in Connecticut that he said will help America bounce back from its recession. It's more than just rebuilding a road, he said.

"We're not only restoring this economy, we've got to restore the dignity of millions of Americans who have been caught in this vortex of an economy that was spinning out of control," he told the nearly 300 people gathered.

The Merritt Parkway project, which began in July and is scheduled to be completed in August 2012, will restore 13 bridges and replace the bridge over the Mill River, where work begins between exits 44 and 46. The construction will end at Exit 52.

O&G Industries of Torrington was awarded the contract for resurfacing, safety and bridge improvements. Project supervisor Craig Miller joined Biden and U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., on stage along with U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4, who hosted a private fundraiser with Biden earlier in the day.

The vice president praised Dodd, who is up for re-election next year and has recently seen low poll numbers, calling him "his single best friend in the United States Congress."

Biden also said "the best news today" was that Dodd was pronounced "cancer-free" on Friday. Dodd's staff noted prostate cancer, which Dodd was diagnosed with in July, is something you keep an eye on for the rest of your life, but Dodd's doctor did say Friday he did not see any cancer following recent surgery.

Dodd commended Biden and President Barack Obama for the stimulus act, which he said would provide nearly half a billion dollars in infrastructure funding to Connecticut with a third of that going to Fairfield County.

"Mr. Vice President, I know you may have had an escort to move around but let me tell you, for those of us leaving here who are going to be on the Merritt Parkway or on Route 95, we'd like to ride around with you in the car if we could," said Dodd.

"We've got transit issues here and we want transit in our state, we want to be able to move people here and get the help and support we need. Too many of our people spend hours in traffic belching exhaust into the air, at three bucks a gallon by the way. Our congested roads haven't seen repairs in how long. These resources not only provide jobs, they also help us clean out some of this traffic and provide the transit flows we need to see our economy once again be revitalized and move in the right direction."

The speeches Monday afternoon were peppered with good-humored digs at the parkway's traffic, such as when Biden quoted former U.S. Congressman Schuyler Merritt, the parkway's namesake.

"At the original groundbreaking (Merritt) said the following: 'This great highway is not being constructed for rapid transit, but for pleasant transit.' Well I'm guessing he'd be pretty shocked by what constitutes rapid today," Biden said.

"It's still very pleasant, but it'd be nice to get it a helluva lot more rapid than it is. And that's what we're trying to do ... We're not just out to resurface roads with nothing else to show for it. When we're done we're making sure that when we do this work it's part of a larger plan, a plan to spark widespread economic activity."

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