Corridor Management Plans

The corridor management plan is the best way to address the complicated issues facing any community wanting to protect their scenic roadway. State highway designation requires that ConnDOT modify its standard maintenance and road building procedures to be compatible with the roads' scenic character, as far as safety requirements allow.

These protections only cover the area for which ConnDOT is responsible- the land within the road's right-of-way, including bridges, guiderails, pavement, bicycle lanes, stone walls, trees, and signs. But scenic quality is largely determined by what lies outside right-of- way. Land use is an important factor; uncontrolled development can destroy views and generate traffic that creates hazardous conditions on the road, negating the effect of scenic road designation.

In order to guide development so that it enhances the scenic character of the roads, ConnDOT has commissioned a series of management plans for state scenic roads from a team of professionals including landscape architects, planners and engineers.

Management plans address issues of land use, economic development, and traffic planning. They encourage an active role for land trusts and conservation interests in helping working farms remain active in use, strengthening village centers, and creating informative waysides for visitors. In each town, a scenic corridor overlay zone guides planning and land use decisions. Each corridor plan provides towns with a number of different ways to preserve the scenery. Landowners and other citizens have expressed a preference for incentives for conservation, rather than regulatory procedures.

The goals of the plans are to get all interested parties- including town officials, ConnDOT, landowners, regional plan associations, preservationists and conservationists- to work together. A state advisory committee is available to advise the planning team, as well as an advisory committee for each corridor.

State scenic roads for which a management corridor plan has been completed can apply for National Scenic Byway designation. This in turn makes them eligible for addition federal scenic byway program funding. Many of the states scenic roads deserve national recognition as well.

The most important aspect of this program is its cooperative, broad-scale approach. The goal includes not just preservation in the traditional sense, but conservation, economic development, and land use planning. As citizens work through the process, they will have to talk about how they want their communities to look and work. It's an opportunity to create ways of preserving buildings, villages and landscapes that give Connecticut its distinctive personality.

This cooperative approach should also be applied to designate local scenic roads and the issues of land use need to be addressed in the town's comprehensive plan of development and road department operating guidelines.

The ConnDOT's Scenic Roads Advisory Committee published a handbook titled " Preserving Connecticut's Scenic Roads: A Handbook for Collaboration on Corridor Management Planning." The guide is a good starting point for communities that don't have designated scenic roads but would like to preserve their scenic and historic character. It also highlights some of the pertinent issues addressed in existing corridor management plans and offers recommendations for the future of scenic roads in Connecticut.

ConnDOT also revised its "Highway Design Manual" in 1999 after the General Assembly passed a bill requiring them to formulate alternative design standards, finding that current guidelines were often inappropriately stringent, resulting in roads too wide, too straight and too flat. The new manual offers designers more flexibility and includes "context sensitive design" - designing projects with consideration for the land use and the environment next to the road. Environmental quality and historic and scenic characteristics were added to the criteria for assessing projects.

For more information, please use one of the resources below.

SHPO - State Scenic Roads Merritt Parkway Conservancy National Scenic Byways Program