DOT now aims to settle on a conceptual design by June 2024, produce construction drawings by November 2025, seek bids a few months later, then start construction in June 2026 — exactly one decade after Malloy’s press conference. The complexities of redesigning a relatively short stretch of highway to the satisfaction of myriad stakeholders around Middletown, a city of 47,000 at the center of the state, has been an instructive, if humbling, undertaking for a short-staffed DOT with far greater ambitions and challenges. Designers shifted to working on a conceptual plan for reconstructing not just I-84 but its riverfront interchange with I-91, a section of I-91 that stands between the downtown and river and, possibly, the clover-leaf exchanges that consume acres of valuable land on the other side of the river in East Hartford. Costing billions and requiring 15 years to complete, it would be the mother of all highway makeovers. 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.
https://www.hartfordbusiness.com/article/cts-long-winding-trip-to-fix-a-short-stretch-of-route-9