Facing Traffic and Safety Concerns, Town Considers Making East Maple Street One-Way

Facing safety concerns on a short, busy road downtown that’s often pinched by commercial traffic, officials said Thursday that they will seek a traffic study to help determine whether East Maple Street should flow one-way.

Looking down East Maple Street from Main on May 19, 2016. The AC Auto Body truck is in its designated spot at right. Credit: Michael Dinan

A bustling commercial hub with the New Canaan Cleaners served by a small lot and several on-street parkers, the L-shaped road includes more than one dozen residences and presents sightline problems for motorists seeking to exit East Maple onto Main Street, residents have told traffic officials with the town.

The town body that fields traffic-calming requests in New Canaan—a work group that includes fire, police, public works and emergency management officials—“have determined that making it one-way is a viable option and may solve a lot of the problems there,” Police Capt. John DiFederico said Thursday at a regular meeting of the Police Commission.

Tiger Mann, a Traffic Calming Work Group member who serves as assistant director of the New Canaan Department of Public Works, recommended this week that the town seek the study from Fairfield-based Frederick P. Clark Associates, with an eye on wrapping it up by midsummer.

Police commissioner Paul Foley said: “We are all on the same page that there is a problem and [we want to] solve it and listen to residents.”

Sending traffic one-way down East Maple toward Hoyt Street would preempt the difficulties facing motorists who want to turn onto Main Street, though additional parking problems exist, DiFederico said. Those include the parking of commercial vehicles along East Maple, so on-street parking restrictions likely need to be part of an ultimate solution, too, he said.

Foley said he’s seen problems where cars parked on both sides of the street make it difficult for vehicles to enter East Maple Street at all.

David Shea, an East Maple Street resident who first broached the problem of motor vehicle traffic there one year ago, told DiFederico that he and others are concerned that a traffic study conducted during late-June and July “might not be a true snapshot” of the road, particularly given that there’ll be no school buses or street-narrowing snow just then.

DiFederico responded that the alternative is to wait until September for a study to be done, which in turn would postpone changes to fix it.

Shea and others in attendance at the commission’s meeting, held in the training room at the New Canaan Police Department, also asked what would be the scope of the study (the entire East Maple area), what could be expected when the study is done (if the consultants agree that making the street one-way is the answer, that can be done rather quickly), whether the neighbors would be able to review the study prior to any formal recommendations out of it (absolutely, at the July meeting of the commission), whether homeowners would be consulted (yes) and whether pedestrian traffic would be considered (yes).

The Police Commission’s next meeting is scheduled for July 20.