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‘40 Kids Is a Lot of Kids’: Town Officials Lay Out Plan To Calm Traffic on River Street
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Responding to safety concerns from residents who live along a densely housed residential street where motorists tend to speed, town officials say they’re looking at a number of ways to slow down traffic. River Street runs for about a half-mile parallel to Route 123 between Brushy Ridge and Strawberry Hill Roads, along the Fivemile River, with most of its houses—many of them multi-family dwellings—on the east side of the street. It has no speed limit signage, faded ‘no parking’ signs on one side, needs (and is scheduled) to be repaved and often sees drivers cut the light while traveling northbound on 123 at Brushy Ridge Road, speeding up to 50 and 60 mph, according to Christine Simmons, a representative of River Street and Charles Place residents. “We have 40 kids on River Street between the ages of 1 year old to 18 years old and the elementary school kids they get picked up on multiple places on River Street and in the fall and winter it’s dark,” Simmons told members of the Traffic Calming Work Group at their most recent meeting. “There are no street lights and we have the older kids that honestly they need education on driving on River Street because they are sometimes the violators of the speed,” Simmons continued at the meeting, held March 20 at the New Canaan Police Department.