Saying it’ll make parking easier for large vehicles and improve traffic flow, town officials voted last week in favor of re-striping the Morse Court lot.
The change will create spaces nine feet wide and at 90 degrees from the travel lane, as opposed to the current configuration where stall widths range from 7.5 to 8.5 feet wide and many are angled, according to Public Works Director Tiger Mann.
The new striping also will create wide enough traffic lanes within the lot to allow for two-way traffic all around, though it will bring a net loss of 10 spaces to Morse Court, officials said at the May 1 Parking Commission meeting.
Though the town is “not being forced” to change the parking configuration when it re-stripes the lot, Mann said, the spaces as currently configured are not in compliance with the New Canaan Zoning Regulations or Village District Guidelines, Mann said.
“The problem is you have spaces that are way undersized and the Commission was receiving complaints,” he said at the meeting, held in Town Hall and via videoconference.
“The first selectman’s office was receiving complaints. The first selectman asked us to come back in and see what was possible within the guidelines from P&Z, and this is what came about from that. So we don’t have to [make a change], but you are going to have the same situation as you had before and the user friendliness of the lot will not be there, and we will still have complaints.”
The town engineer studied different striping configurations for the lot, but the others would mean losing even more spaces than the current proposal (20, 16 and 14), Mann said.
“We feel the most efficient would be a 90 degree, so that’s a 9-foot curb length, stall depth is 20 feet and the vehicular aisle width for two-way circulation is 24 feet,” Mann said.
Parking Commissioners Nancy Bemis, Drew Magratten and Kevin Karl voted in favor of the change. Commissioner Katie O’Neill voted against. Commissioner Marley Thackray was absent. The plan now must go before the Planning & Zoning Commission for a state-required “municipal improvement” referral. (The Board of Selectmen at its most recent meeting approved a $6,700 contract with New Canaan-based RKW Land Surveying to survey the lot’s parking stall widths as currently striped.)
O’Neill said she visited merchants around the Morse Court lot and all but one opposed a change that would mean an overall loss of spaces.
Parking Manager Stacey Miltenberg noted that the town did take back 11 “business” parking permits that had been purchased by employees downtown for use in the Morse Court lot.
Karl said that in watching the lot closely since the Commission’s April meeting, he’s seen four to five spaces consistently unused in the lot.
Mann said that the lot, as currently striped, prevents many motorists from parking there because the narrow spaces make it impossible to comfortably pull in and get out of a large vehicle.
“In the end this is as good as we’re going to get, if you will,” Mann said. “And I think that the fact that the spaces are wider and uniform and that you can get in and around the lot is going to help the user a lot more and reduce the angst, even if there is a space,” he said. “Because a lot of times you would get into a space and you couldn’t even get out of the car. Or you had to bypass a space, which is even more frustrating: You find a space but you can’t fit in it, you know? I have a pickup truck and I know that feeling… Yes, in the overall count number we are going down 10. The lot is a lot more user-efficient, it’s more friendly.”
Commissioners asked whether Mann’s calculations had been at a loss of 11 total spaces the prior month and whether he found one more space (yes and yes), how wide would be a buffer area running parallel to and just above Main Street, where parallel parking spaces are planned (four to five feet), whether the lot as now configured is out of compliance (yes), how many EV spaces are in the lot (one EV-preferred space), whether the 15-minute parking spaces alongside the Morse Court shops would be lined out (they can be) and whether there will be bike racks placed in the lot (they’ll come out this spring on Elm Street around the corner).
Mann said that in some ways, the proposal before the Commission is not in compliance with existing local regulations, which call for open “intermittent” spaces every 10 parking spots as well as “islands” at the end of a row of spaces—neither of which are included in the current plan.
Good move.
9 feet wide is much better for spaces.
It really is frustrating to circle Morse court bc the spaces are too small for cars to fit if a car is not perfectly centered or large cars are on either side. Sounds like losing a few spaces but all the rest being usable is a worthy trade off.
Spacing is good, but not sure about two way traffic within lot.
Losing 10 spaces seems like a lot in an already challenged parking environment. It’s highly likely that Morse Court will now be in even greater demand for those going to the library. When this decision was made was there an economic impact study done on how the loss of 10 spaces would affect retailers and food establishments? In a simple example let’s say that each space was used by 4 vehicles an hour and each vehicle represented $25 in revenue to retailers. That’s $100 / hr in lost revenue or $800 per day ( $4800 per week) .