I was excited to learn that a letter I wrote to our state delegation received the attention of Rep. Davis and Sen. Slossberg.  Together they introduced Bill No. 696, a bill that would revisit the 400-car parking garage at the West Haven Train Station.  I was equally disappointed at the comments of Mayor Picard in the New Haven Register on Feb. 1, "let's see after it opens if there is a need for a parking garage."

When the original train station was planned, there was a surface parking lot and a parking garage, which would total roughly 1,100 parking spaces.  In 2010, the state eliminated the parking garage from the plan. It is my opinion that the loss of the garage will create a burden to the city by commuters coming into West Haven to take a train only to find there is no where to park and parking on side streets and existing parking lots of surrounding businesses.

The difference between Mayor Picard and me is while he would take a wait and see approach, I would support a study of parking and traffic and use the information gained to make my decision.  While the current administration is sitting back waiting for gridlock to maybe or maybe not come, I would have advocated on behalf of West Haven and pushed for this review years ago. If the results proved that parking was not adequate at the train station site, I would have lobbied for a parking garage to be built.

I also would have been marketing the area around the train station to give some relief to the taxpayer.  Every dollar a new development pays in taxes is one less dollar the homeowner has to pay.  We should not have taken a wait and see approach to any economic development, and plans for a new train station should have made it more appealing to attract large scale development, but we just waited.

West Haven cannot afford to wait and see anymore, the train station itself is not going to drive development.  It is what we do around it that is important, and that process should have started years ago.  We've taken a wait and see approach for seven years now how much longer can we be expected to wait?

One thing has been proven, the wait and see approach isn't working.

Edward M. O'Brien

West Haven