Waterbury’s Truck-Murdering Low Bridge Overpass Strikes Again

It seems like every other day, there's a new story breaking about ANOTHER tractor trailer hitting a low bridge overpass in Waterbury. There's one notorious one, and another one close by that's almost as bad. If it's not the Bank Street railroad bridge, it's the West Main Street railroad bridge. Both have huge warning signs posted on them - "LOW OVERPASS AHEAD, 12'2", yet still, inevitably, these poor drivers turn their trailers inside out, after whacking into that unforgiving steel and concrete at 24MPH.

The Bank Street bridge runs parallel to Route 8 in the city's Brooklyn neighborhood, and many a tractor trailer driver has exited Route 8, trying to get to the Home Depot area of Bank Street, and didn't see it coming. Just last week, according to WTNH.com, another truck hit the overpass, in fact, it was the 7th time in the past 3 months that someone has done it.

Many times over the years, West Main Street has also turned into a parking lot when the overpass that's right near KFC, the Auto Zone, and Sperry Street gets hit. It's maybe an inch or two higher than the Bank Street overpass, and you have a little more drive-up time to realize it's very low, compared to the Bank Street one.

Why can't Waterbury just go ahead and fix the problem? Because the bridges carry Metro North trains, it's under the MTA and CT DOT's authority, and it will not be an easy, cheap, or quick thing to fix. As I reported last week, there is a 9 million dollar project that just started to replace the bridge that goes across I-84 on Bucks Hill Road in Southbury. The Southbury project is estimated to last around 18 months from start to finish, and that's just to replace a simple bridge, let alone a bridge that can carry 100 tons of locomotive. So, you can imagine the hoops that Waterbury officials will have to jump through to even think about raising those overpasses a few precious inches. Is this at the point where the city needs to install strobe light signs? A tall truck spotter?