Residents of Mill Road on the eastern side of town say speeding motorists are a major hazard for the many young families that walk and cycle in the area.
Saying it’s only a matter of time before someone is seriously injured or worse, residents are calling for the town to implement traffic calming measures on Mill, a narrow roadway of 31 homes that runs east off of Silvermine Road and then hooks to follow the river toward Norwalk.
“Ever since we’ve moved in there, the level of speeding is unbelievable,” Neil McMorrow told members of the Police Commission at their Sept. 18 meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. “The volume of traffic when we first moved in was not that great. And maybe in 2015 or ‘16, I contacted New Canaan Police, I have contacted Norwalk [Police]. New Canaan put a solar[-powered] speed [sentry]—unfortunately, under a tree canopy, so it really didn’t work. And Norwalk had an officer sit on a Tuesday afternoon. He was very nice, but it’s not that busy on a Tuesday afternoon. So it’s all relative. But I’ve witnessed many, many absolutely close calls where people could have been killed from people speeding in those straightaways right by my house. I mean at least probably a dozen.”
One of those instances happened about two months earlier, according to Mill Road resident Lindsay Quinlan. Addressing the Commission, she said she has two young children and that “my husband and my children and I were nearly hit by a car.” (McMorrow said he saw the near-crash.)
Quinlan said, “I yelled at the car. And when I tell you my children and I were almost killed, that happened. And it is frightening how fast these drivers are going on this road. And as my neighbors have mentioned, there are young families. There are residents of our road that have lived in this neighborhood for years and years now. And they have said that this has remained a problem that has largely been unaddressed. As my neighbors pointed out, before something really horrific happens and we’re coming back having a different conversation, my hope is that we can find some way to curb the speeding and really save lives.”
Town officials said that although data gathered doesn’t point to a consistent speeding problem, that anecdotally they agree there’s an issue on Mill Road with pedestrian safety and they can take steps to try and address it.
Public Works Director Tiger Mann said he would get a crew out to the area to cut back some of the roadside overgrowth that can affect sightlines for both drivers and walkers. Mann also said that he could put “edge lines” on the side of the road—except in one stretch where doing so would make them too narrow—to indicate to motorists where they need to drive. (Some of those in attendance said such additional striping would be ineffective and isn’t in keeping with the character of the rural street.)
“I’ll start looking at the sight lines and see if we can trim up some of the overgrowth,” Mann said. “So that might help give it a little bit more of an expanse and give the pedestrians some room and also have the car be seen by the pedestrian. We’ll go out there and take another look and see what else can be done.”
Some of those in attendance from the neighborhood called for the town to install speed bumps or “speed humps” to try and slow down vehicles—however, Mill Road is an emergency vehicle route, officials said, meaning it cannot get speed bumps.
New Canaan Police Deputy Chief Andrew Walsh said the department did receive complaints about speeding motorists this past summer and responded by setting up officers for speed enforcement 13 times. In that period, officers clocked just four speed violations, Walsh said.
“That could be for various reasons—whether it was the time of day or there wasn’t a speeding issue at that time, or the officer, it’s a narrow road, so having a full police car there is hard to hide,” he said. “We also did a traffic study, as was brought up. We can’t measure the walkers or the bikers. We do understand that it is a highly traversed area for pedestrians and bikers. It’s a beautiful road, it goes along the river. It’s very bucolic. We did measure the speeds.”
The average speed on the road was 17.75 mph, and the 85th percentile of speed was 23 mph, he said.
“There were a couple speeders here and there,” Walsh said. “The maximum speed was 49 mph, so that’s obviously very quick on a narrow road.”
Volume-wise, the traffic appears to be about the same as it was in 2020, based on a past study, Walsh said.
Yet crashes are already happening on the road, according to Mill Road resident Danne Woo. Drivers speeding on Mill Road take turns and bends quickly and “there was one instance where a car just came around too quickly and completely totaled our neighbor’s car,” he said.
“So there have been accidents,” Woo said. “ It’s happened. It really is only a matter of time that someone’s going to get seriously injured if not killed. We’ve been there for six years and it’s just been progressively getting worse and worse. I think GrayBarns is a factor. I think going from Norwalk to Wilton is another factor. It’s a pass-through. But if there’s anything that we can do to help remedy this problem and hopefully save lives in the future, I’m all for that. I don’t know what the solution is, but there should be something.”
The Commission’s next regular meeting is scheduled for Oct. 16.