Prompted by a request for a crossing guard that would help get kids cross Route 106/Old Stamford Road from the area of Old Studio Road, toward South, Saxe and the high school, town officials are trying to answer a bigger question about how whether there’s a way to create a safe pedestrian walkway along that stretch of Route 106 itself.
The difficulty is that, although there are crosswalks there—for example, at the southern end of the Old Studio Road horseshoe—there’s no safe route for pedestrians once they’ve landed on the eastern side of the state road.
“They are kind of crosswalks that lead to nowhere,” New Canaan Police Capt. John DiFederico said Tuesday during a meeting of the Traffic Calming Work Group. Composed of police, fire, CERT/emergency preparedness and DPW officials, the work group fields requests for traffic calming measures.
At least one parent from the west side of Route 106 there (Old Studio Road, Richards Lane) and South School officials had inquired about the possibility of putting in a crossing guard at the crosswalks, DiFederico said.
Police did selective enforcement in the area for speeders and monitored the area and found that not many pedestrians used the crosswalk in the mornings, he said.
Part of the problem—and likely a reason why so few people are using it—is that there’s no sizeable shoulder along 106 to get, say, over to the sidewalk at Gower Road.
“If we put a crossing guard there it would create more of a hazard because there is no safe way for people to” get anywhere once they’re across Old Stamford Road, he said. “You could get them across the crosswalk but once you get them across the crosswalk there is no safe place for them to go.”
During an interview after the meeting, South School Principal Joanne Rocco said most of the people who live on the other side of Old Stamford Road do not use the crosswalks because of the situation. There are 10 South School families who live in that neighborhood she said (the figure doesn’t include Saxe and NCHS families).
“We are the only neighborhood school where kids can walk and [DPW Assistant Director] Tiger [Mann] has done great with the sidewalks,” Rocco said. “Very few parents let their kids walk themselves, and even as a parent itt’s difficult to cross there because there might be cars coming.”
Mann said during the meeting that he would investigate whether something could be built along the shoulder of Route 106, leading toward Gower Road from the crosswalk points at either end of Old Studio, to create safer passage for pedestrians.
Here’s the area we’re talking about: