Town officials last week approved another $10,000 in consulting fees in order to finish redesigning a busy intersection to the state’s satisfaction.
Residents have been calling for improvements to the intersection of Route 123 at Locust Avenue/Brushy Ridge for nearly 10 years, and the town—with New Haven-based traffic consultants Fuss & O’Neill—has already worked and re-worked plans for a safe pedestrian crossing at the busy state road.
Yet officials with the state Department of Transportation have returned repeatedly with additional changes to the plan, such as changing the pedestrian crosswalk from the southern end of the intersection to the northern end.
Specifically, according to New Canaan Public Works Director Tiger Mann, the town proposed the “idea of extending the sidewalk down Brushy Ridge to come across 123 to attach to the sidewalk that’s at Locust Avenue”
“Associated with that would be some signal modifications—specifically to the pedestrian heads as far as the locations and then the timing,” Mann told the Board of Selectmen at their regular meeting, held Jan. 4 at Town Hall and via videoconference. “The DOT says that we have to do all of the design ourselves, but come to them for approval since it’s their intersection, right? It’s their traffic signal. It’s their right-of-way, things of that nature.”
The town originally allocated about $10,000 for the consulting work to design the pedestrian crossings, and has had to come back once already for an additional approximately $10,000 (last April).
Mann said the project is now in “the final stage of design and the final stage of their approval.”
With “a couple of tweaks” remaining, “it should go to them for a final sign off, and then we can go back out to bid construction this coming spring. It’s just unfortunate that the amount of time that has been required for these plan modifications. I don’t have control over that.”
The most recent issue with the state has to do with a retaining wall extension and catch basin in the area, he said.
“Each time it keeps going through and there’s various [state] departments,” Mann said. “It’s not just one department.”
Plans now call for a pedestrian crossing on the north side of Route 123 from Brushy Ridge to Locust Avenue, and then another crossing at Locust just west of its intersection with Summer Street.
First Selectman Dionna Carlson and Selectmen Steve Karl and Amy Murphy Carroll voted 3-0 in favor of the $10,000 contract with Fuss & O’Neill. Mann said he doesn’t expect to spend all of the funds.
Mann called the situation for those seeking to safely cross Route 123 there now “dangerous.”
Karl said the plans will be “a great addition over there.”
Carlson said, “There’s always people there waiting to cross. I drive that way all the time. People are always trying to cross.”
Mann said it’s a “high density” residential area on the west side of Route 123 at Brushy Ridge, and that many residents of River Street—which itself received new sidewalks and other improvements in recent years—“want to come into town.”
“We did have a pedestrian [crossing] there a number of years ago, so we’re trying to make it safer,” Mann said. “That’s the goal. It’s just that we don’t own the intersection. Since we don’t own the intersection,we have to go through the modifications that the state requires.”
Kudos to the town’s DPW and Engineering team in creating this important Pedestrian ‘bridge’ from downtown to the dense neighborhood just on the far side of 123. Pedestrian Access investments like this yield gains in reduced parking requirements, reduced traffic and increases the safe mobility of kids to and from town.
While working with the State is hard, these larger roads are often most in need of a ‘local’ perspective. Thanks to the selectman for endorsing this investment.