Derby, CT is a small, working-class, post-industrial town with a population which has been stagnant at about 12,000 for more than six decades.
The geniuses over at the Connecticut DOT decided that this obviously meant that the town’s Main Street needed to be widened, by twice the size, destroying a number of historic buildings and uprooting numerous small community businesses in the process. That red stripe on the far left of the “After” pic is the new edge of the street.
Congrats. Your small peaceful town is about to become a gas stop on the side of an interstate highway expansion.
Either it will boom and you’ll all be gentrified out. Or it’ll bust and dwindle away to literally a gas stop.
Flip a coin.
I’m sure the local business community (on the side that wasn’t torn down) was all for it because it would bring so much more traffic to their business, but they’ll soon discover they lost all foot traffic and nobody driving will stop either because they’re going too fast to even see that there’s a business there.
They widened it to add protected bike lanes, right?
They should remove the buildings on the other side, too.
Businesses can then operate directly out of the bed of a semi truck, and housing is provided by rental RVs.
For recreation, you can race from one stoplight to the next, or coal-roll some cyclists.
The before photo already had far too much road for a small town.
Lol, they demolished half the town for this?
