Aging bridges, harsher weather strain Northwest Corner infrastructure, DOT Commissioner says

GOSHEN — State transportation officials pointed to mounting infrastructure challenges across the Northwest Corner, from aging bridges to deteriorating roadways, even as a major Route 44project in Norfolk is now expected to be completed nearly 18 months ahead of schedule.

Speaking at a Thursday, April 9 meeting of the Northwest Hills Council of Governments — which represents 21 towns in northwest Connecticut — Garrett Eucalitto, commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Transportation, said infrastructure across the region is under increasing strain.

“Most of the infrastructure that was built back in the ‘50s and ‘60s is now aging out and needing to be addressed and replaced,” Eucalitto said. “That’s why we see more and more bridges having to be addressed — either repaired, replaced or refurbished to extend their life.”

He pointed to ongoing bridge work on Route 8 and across the Northwest Corner as an example of that approach, noting that the state has increasingly turned to a process known as metallizing to extend the lifespan of bridge structures rather than replacing them outright.

“So you’ll see a lot of metallizing to make sure that we can extend the life of the bridges — get the most from our bridges instead of trying to come in and just replace them,” he said.

The process involves removing existing paint — often costly due to lead — before applying treatments to preserve the steel and extend the structure’s life by decades.

“So what metallizing is, is you remove all the paint … then we actually apply some linseed oil over it to protect the steel, and then paint over it,” Eucalitto said. “That can extend it another few decades.”

While the underlying structure of many bridges is still sound, officials said increasingly severe weather events are accelerating deterioration across the transportation system.

“We have … weather events that are more extreme, and so that is really having an impact on a lot of our culverts and bridges and roadway infrastructure,” Eucalitto said.

Harsh winters are causing challenges for the DOT. Officials said this past season brought supply challenges in terms of road salt, requiring both state and local public works departments to carefully manage their resources.

Despite those challenges, the state has worked to reduce salt usage through technology that monitors road and weather conditions and guides application rates in real time, Eucalitto said.

But Eucalitto pointed to a bright spot in Norfolk, where a major state project on Route 44 in Norfolk is going to be completed ahead of schedule.

The roughly $44 million project — which began in April 2024 and includes retaining wall replacement, slope stabilization and roadway reconstruction — is now expected to be completed by the end of 2026, more than 500 days ahead of schedule.

“We were able to pull in the finish date to hopefully the end of this year,” Eucalitto said, crediting a more efficient construction approach identified by the contractor.

The project has been one of the larger projects in the Northwest Corner for some time, which has long disrupted regional traffic patterns.