As a longtime Bridge Street resident, Werner Liepolt has a front-porch view of traffic — including the vehicles that apps like Waze send past his house. He writes:
Take a look at Westport the way a navigation algorithm does.
I-95: Thursday, March 26, 9 p.m.
It sees not a collection of neighborhoods — but a network.
Because that’s how today’s traffic actually moves.
From the Waze-eye view, the logic is clear. Waze sees traffic speed and volume, but it doesn’t reliably see or respect local rules and human factors that shape safe and appropriate traffic patterns.
Waze emojis and avatars — “Moods” — represent “Wazers:” happy, fast, or stuck in traffic. Other icons indicate real-time reports, crashes, hazards and police.
Waze does not consistently indicate local thru-truck prohibitions. Neither school bus stops nor routes are accounted for. Ditto cyclists, crosswalks and pedestrian activity.
And Waze of course has no way of measuring or reporting long time and cumulative effects of traffic noise, pollution, aesthetic impact or vibration damage.
Waze also ignores narrow streets and historic districts — for example, the Bridge Street National Register Historic District.
The Cribari Bridge is not isolated. It connects directly to a sequence of roads that carry traffic eastward through Westport.
From the Waze eye view, the logic is clear.
The William F. Cribari Memorial Bridge connects Riverside Avenue’s commercial district directly to Bridge Street (Route 136), feeding traffic into a residential corridor that continues inland. What appears to be a local crossing is, in fact, a key link in a broader east–west route.
Now look a few miles away.
Individually, these are routine infrastructure projects.
Together, they form something much more consequential.
Just east of Westport, the Sasco Creek Bridge sits on Greens Farms Road near the Post Road and I-95 Exit 19. The Connecticut Department of Transportation proposes removing a major constraint at the eastern end of the same corridor.
CTDOT is:
- Likely increasing load capacity at Sasco Creek. The design drawings show a full-capacity structure capable of carrying legal truck traffic.
- Removing geometric constraints and increasing load capacity at the Cribari Bridge, making it capable of handling legal truck traffic.
Yet the Environmental Assessment of the Cribari Bridge assumes trucks will not use this route — without analyzing what happens once both bridges in this corridor are upgraded,
That creates a continuous, higher-capacity east-west route from Fairfield on the Old Kings Highway through Westport on Greens Farms Road and Bridge Street to Saugatuck — closely paralleling I-95 between Exits 18 and 19.
This is not speculation. It is visible on the map. The Sasco Bridge CTDOT Project 0158-0218 is already underway. The hearings concluded in 2021.
They concluded about the time the Environmental Assessment for CTDOT project 0158-0214 (the Cribari Bridge) was being written. Now the hearings and time for public comment on that project will end on April 17.
Combined, these CTDOT projects should broaden the Cribari Bridge Area of Potential Effect to the entire I-95-Greens Farms Road corridor.
Navigation apps do not consider whether a road is “appropriate” for through traffic.
They calculate the fastest route.
When I-95 backs up — as it often does — these systems will route drivers off the highway, send them across Sasco Creek, through Greens Farms and Bridge Street, over the Cribari Bridge, and back toward the highway or local destinations.
Once weight limits and geometric constraints are removed, this corridor becomes accessible, continuous, and visible to routing algorithms.
At that point, it will be used.
The Environmental Assessment for the Cribari Bridge suggests that trucks and through-traffic will not find this route “desirable.”
But that assumption belongs to an earlier era.
Today, traffic patterns are shaped not just by drivers, but by software. And software does not share local sensibilities.
Nowhere does the Environmental Assessment meaningfully examine:
- The combined effect of upgrading both bridges
- Diversion from I-95 during congestion
- The role of real-time navigation systems
- Impacts on residential streets and safety
Instead, the project is evaluated as if each bridge exists in isolation. It does not.
If this corridor begins to function as an alternative to I-95, the consequences will be felt across Westport:
- Increased traffic through residential neighborhoods
- Safety concerns for pedestrians and cyclists
- Noise and air quality impacts
- Changes to the character of a federally recognized historic district
These are precisely the kinds of indirect and cumulative effects that federal law requires agencies to consider.
No complex modeling is needed to understand the risk. The map already shows:
- A connected route
- Fewer constraints
- A faster alternative to a congested highway
- Numerous Waze alternative routes from the Post Rd and through residential neighborhoods south of the Post Road
The question is not whether traffic will use the corridor. The question is why the state has not fully evaluated that possibility.
Public comment on the Cribari Bridge project is open through April 17. Submitted comments make a difference and must be counted under FHWA regulations. Comments can be submitted here or by voicemail: (860) 594-2020. (reference State Project No. 0158-0214). Written comments can be mailed to: James Barrows, 2800 Berlin Turnpike, P.O. Box 317546, Newington CT 06131-7546.
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