Gov. Dannel Malloy announced a statewide travel ban will be lifted at 2 p.m. Tuesday (Jan. 27) in the aftermath of a snowstorm that ended up being less severe than forecasted.
Still, Malloy warned drivers not to expect the roads to be great.
“We’re not saying that we want you to get on the roads,” Malloy said at a noon press conference in Hartford. “They are still able to be as they would be in a normal storm as opposed to a storm the likes of which we have just come through.”
Malloy said there were a total of 15 accidents on state roads since he ordered a travel ban beginning 9 p.m. Monday (Jan. 26).
He said the storm provided a “perfect example” of the benefit to putting the travel ban in place.
“People responded to our requests,” Malloy said. “That’s why I’m anxious to reopen the roads as quickly as they can be reopened … There is no doubt that we avoided hundreds of accidents that would otherwise have taken place.”
The governor said crews from the Department of Transportation have begun to give state roads a “second treatment” after clearing them initially.
“By 2 o’clock we believe we’ll have product on all the major roads,” Malloy said.
Though travel will be more difficult for those in the eastern part of the state, some parts of which could see record snowfall totals, the governor said that elsewhere, “We need to get commerce and employment back to where it needs to be.”
“We are through the worst of the storm,” Malloy said.
Other items touched on by the governor:
- Metro-North will resume Sunday service as of 1 p.m. Full service will resume Wednesday, and parking lots will be cleared for commuters.
- Amtrak service is still shut down north of New York City but will likely resume Wednesday.
- Bus service in Connecticut will also resume Wednesday morning.
- The governor said he was “gratified” there were only a handful of power outages in the state, crediting aggressive tree-trimming the last couple of years, as well as the fact that the storm didn’t produce snow which stuck to power lines or froze them.
“We’re learning and getting better at this stuff as we go along,” the governor said.
