damus

Mystic Seaport to offer summertime water taxi service to downtown Mystic Beginning June 30, visitors to Mystic will soon be able to take a water taxi from downtown to the museum and back. It will operate through Labor Day. The museum now operates the taxis from one end of its grounds to the other, and there was always a desire to increase their capacity, museum publicist Michael O'Farrell said. ... The taxi will run from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. from the dock behind S&P Oyster House to the north end of the museum. The boats can hold 44 people. To get to Mystic Seaport from downtown will cost $2 for a one-way fare. If visitors decide to buy admission to the museum, they will get a $2 discount off the regular rate of $17.50. One way from the Seaport to downtown will also cost $2. A roundtrip boat ride will cost $5.

I'm thinking about starting individual threads for Foxwoods/Pequot and Mohegan developments. There is news coming in about them left and right including the casino being developed in the virgin islands by Foxwoods, property acquisitions regionwide for ancillary developments or tribal uses, and the expansion of their current respective resorts. I'm trying to get enough going for a Southeastern CT subforum to be created and to get more people on UP from this area of the state. If a thread is created for every major property acquisition and business or major cultural event related to the tribes there would be an unreal number of unneccessary threads. It seems to be a no brainer to me, but given that I'm not really in charge around here I don't feel right about taking a forum and treating it like my own. Please leave any thoughts or comments regarding my idea.

I wonder if it was another Dave & Busters drunk....

Day editorializes the need for more mass-transit, but advocates more buses... I really think the region can easily support rapid transit considering the demographics of many of the casino workers, and the fact that in 10 years we could have 4 "one stop shop" attractions. Add in Pfizer (a rail line runs right through the middle of its groton campus) and EB across the street and there could be a lot of users for a light rail "loop" up the Thames to Norwich, down the route 2 corridor to Westerly, and back to the Thames. A viable bus system would require the use of smaller vans to service suburban populations and feed into the major bus lines that now exist. Frequency of service would have to increase along bus routes. Any such system would have to be heavily subsidized, but what transportation service is not? The highway system may be the most heavily subsidized transportation system when the cost of construction and maintenance are factored in. There are hopeful signs. SEAT ridership is growing at a rate of 7-8 percent the last three years and for the first time may surpass 1 million riders this year. Its first proposed fare increase in a decade, 15 cents, has met no opposition. Using a $2.2 million grant, SEAT is studying the use of alternative fuel and hybrid buses to reduce pollutants. Also under study is the development of

A word of advice.. be wary of the Coffee House forum.. Every thread gets hijacked and turned into a political argument, and not always one based upon reason or the ability to internalize arguments contrary to one's own beliefs like the political arguments here have been...

If Connecticut builds on the momentum it's got going for it now, and after the commuter rail is in decides to put in a street car or light rail system for the capital city, it could end up being a real good place. I really hope they scrap that stupid rapid bus transit idea and just use the rails that are already in place.

You need at least one person posting here, even if it's by himself, for a little while updating the site so there's a good listing of the projects going on there. Cotuit seemed to do that in RI and CT judging by the old posts, and now RI is a very strong forum and CT has a 5 or 6 regular posters. I came along as a lurker, and was drawn into the RI forums, despite being a CT native, partly because I went to college in Providence and love the city. Most people do not come to these sites to post about their cities in what seems like a dead forum. Most people probably come here after googling a specific project and reading up on it. If the quality of the threads are good, they'll come back and maybe even participate. That's how I see it. Luckily for me I have the RI forum, and to a lesser extent the Hartford forum, to post in and not go crazy as I'm trying to get threads from my area of CT going...

Someone downloaded the upgraded version of Maxthon on this computer.. Why did they put every button imaginable on the "standard buttons" bar? Given that their target is the more computer literate audience, I'm sure most of the Maxthon users know how to go and screw with the internet/maxthon options, or press ctrl+f to find something. I reverted back to the same ole' settings I had before wth just a link to the control panel, the reload closed tabs, and go up one level to go with the normal IE buttons..

What about tourists? Wouldn't it be nice to siphon tourists off the MBTA and Shoreline East? Also, there will supposedly be 22,500 jobs just at the Utopia main site. This week Gentile should be announcing a major development for downtown Norwich, and he has in the past alluded to wanting to spend $3 billion on development in the first three years of the project alone, including down along the coastline. An economist has been quoted in one of the local papers today as saying that for each casino job, a rule of thumb is one other job has been created as a result. I'm sure the ratio will be at least the same for Utopia. That amounts to 45,000 jobs just taking into account the Utopia main site. Also factor in North Stonington Studios, Foxwoods expansion, and other developments likely to come rolling in as a result of the forthcoming boom in the area (hopefully corporate offices i.e. large hospitality company, possibly more large tourist attractions) and it is reasonable to say there will be a lot of jobs.

I can't help but notice a lot of new posters and lurkers with usernames created in the past month or so both in here and the CT forum. Does this have anything to do with everyone getting out of school/college at the same time? No matter why so many people seem to be coming on board at the same time, welcome to UP!

Are you sure? I think it would work simply in its connecting the two metros, each being 1 million plus. Why are they studying a commuter line from NL to Worcester if THIS wouldn't work? It's not much more of a distance.. BTW: I don't know what you mean by Amtrak being a good idea. The commuter line from New Haven to Springfield will initially only run once an hour, so it can't be the frequent runs... Rails between cities are definately needed in the Northeast.

That makes no sense.... Why couldn't they upgrade it to a commuter line/link between Providence and Hartford. You could have a couple in Willi and have one work in Hartford, the other in Providence and they could both take the train. You can put a nature walk in anywhere, I'd think it's harder to get the right of way for a railroad.

http://www.norwichbulletin.com/apps/pbcs.d...20/1014/OPINION I'd like to say the letter I sent the Bulletin (among others who haven't gotten back to me) influenced this editorial, but head's not that big... I believe what's on the table right now is merely a good start. If the area takes off we'd better have rail access to the major attractions and also provide reliable service in areas where growth will be targeted (i.e. between the Sun and Utopia and downtown along the Thames River).

Upon looking around .. this line runs directly by the "frog bridge" on the rt 32 side... and it before that it closes a fork that went east (compared to the Norwich spur going south and east).

I'm pretty sure there are.. though I have no map (yahoo maps does feature this line, if you wanna follow it and see where it goes that will work). There's a train line on the west side of the Thames River that follows the Yantic through Norwichtown. I assume that one goes to Willi.. In Norwichtown it would be tough to get it double tracked because the hospital, "mall", rt 2 highway, and some other stores get in the way along with the river. The P&W runs paralel to it along the other side of the river and runs north to... Worcester. on edit: It's the New England Central Railroad, and it does run to Willimantic. I know it is occasionally used, as there is a road crossing by the "mall" in Norwich. Enlarged pic...

You gotta play with the settings now and then. For example, I need to turn off the security filters in order to view certain websites. The thing I like about it is you get the ubiquity of IE with some stuff Microsoft wasn't ambitious enough to add to the final product. All the old IE controls are still there, you just get more. Maxthon doesn't seem to be much of a resource hog... I didn't notice any difference between it and IE. Right now it's taking up 7500k of memory according to task manager... One thing I love about Maxthon that you don't get with other tabbed browsers is the mouse functions. If I simply hold the right mouse button and then pull down and then to the right the tab closes, and when I click and drag a link I have it set to open up as a tab but with the original window still as the active tab.

I try to stay away from using straight IE... IE 6 was a security nightmare. I use Maxthon browser, which is basically IE 6 with extra security features and tabbed browsing. I used to use netscape when they were one of the first to come out with tabbed browsing...

I'm getting off topic in the off topic forum, but with the Utopia project a go I'd assume Eastern CT will be seeing enough projects in the coming years to warrant its own subforum..

No real recommendation, I'll just try and defend Wisconsin. Urban Planet is pretty new, and not every area has been well represented. Boston and New York don't get anything close to the traffic that Rhode Island's forums do. If you were to go by the traffic on this site, you'd believe Charlotte is the biggest boomtown in the country. If you have any friends/family in Wisconsin or know anyone who has good knowledge of Wisconsin, then you should encourage them to join. Once you get a Cotuit type (RI actually has several of these) who posts religously in their city's forums, you'll find that more lurkers who would have otherwise not joined will come on board.

And this is the "smart" newspaper around here. It has won several awards for the quality of its work........

http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=2c5a12da-...7f-d908ea99d5bb This new focus has its origins in another evolving New England concept,

The Day today printed two editorials in favor of rail transit... good reading. http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=2c5a12da-...7f-d908ea99d5bb

Well... Utopia is already planning on announcing some "very big" development for downtown this week. There are 2 areas already targeted for redevelopment on rt 32: the Uncas on Thames hospital campus (70 acres) and the blighted Shipping Street corridor (not sure how big, but more than the hospital). I'm pretty sure Norwich's city council wouldn't mind the businesses popping up in and between downtown and the Sun/Utopia areas. They seem to have been trying to get that to happen for years.... If there's a "free" streetcar line it should be feasible for the state to help us out for construction, considering the casinos give them over $30 million per month and the state does have a budget surplus. This Utopia thing looks like it'll have the same impact on the area that Disney did on Orlando and I really think we should put this stuff in ASAP and try to minimize the sprawl that usually comes with this stuff. I just did a yahoo maps search ... and it's 4.3 miles from the gas station at the sun, to the turnaround, and all the way to church st in downtown norwich. That doesn't seem like too far a distance, and I'm assuming rt 12 to Utopia will be around the same. Gentile has hinted that he wants some sort of monrail, I'd like to see what he thinks (though he is fake and could lie to me and say it's a good idea when it isn't).

I sent a few emails out to a few local officials. This was the version I sent the Norwich Bulletin. Any ideas/comments before I start sending more out to the rest of the city/state officials and the NL Day? I believe that the proposed commuter rail from New London to Worcester is a good start, but the region needs a lot more than that before Utopia comes along. Has anyone looked into providing a sort of "loop" from Norwich down the route 2 corridor (possibly including a completed route 2 expressway with limited exits) to Westerly, back along the I-95 corridor to the Thames River, and then back up? I have also thought of a great way to handle traffic and growth that will undoubtedly affect Norwich greatly. Has anyone thought of the idea of a streetcar loop from Utopia to downtown to the Mohegan Sun and back? It could be run as a free line and the city could zone the area within a quarter of a mile or so from the corridor according to "New Urbanist" principles. The Congress for New Urbanism http://www.cnu.org/ website is a good place to start for ideas. In Portland, Oregon they have a streetcar system ( http://www.portlandstreetcar.org/), with a "free zone". This area was a dilapidated area of town and now it's booming with young professionals and businesses moving into the area to take advantage of the transist. The workers at the casinos already take mass-transit and if we could get a good number of the tourists and Utopia employees to use the streetcar system I suggested, I think the sprawl-related impacts of such a large development would be greatly lessened. I was opposed to Utopia for the reason that I feel this will bring in far more development than the local residents thought it would, and that it has the potential to drastically change the region. If you look at Orange County, Florida and Orange County, California they saw significant growth after Disney was built. Today, both areas are examples of what not to do when plannng urban regions. If we had the right infrastructure in place coupled with sound zoning we could see a lot of transit-oriented development in our region. If we are to rely on roads to get around to these attractions, none of the tourists will use the rail, and none of the employees of Foxwoods and North Stonington Studios will either. The time to prepare the area for "smart growth" is now. Lets not make the same mistakes that every city that built itself around automobile dependency did. Sure, we'll need roads, but good transit reduces road usage, pollution, and sprawl. I think it would behoove the Bulletin to educate the public about how some cities grew the right way, while others relied too much on the automobile and wound up with congestion. The time for drastic action is now. I would have sent something like this in as a letter to the editor, but I sincerely believe that most people do not put much thought into what is on that page of the paper. This is a very serious topic and I am concerned about the future of the region, especially considering the "other" paper recently editorialized that we'll need more roads. I acknowledge that this is an auto-centric culture, but relying solely on roads is a recipe for a quality of life disaster. Please get back to me with any thoughts or comments you might have. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Bulletin - Rail may see resurgance in region...