Around Town

Officials: New Canaan Drivers Ignore Designated Loading Zones Downtown

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New Canaan motorists routinely park in designated loading zones downtown, forcing delivery trucks to double-park and exacerbating traffic problems, officials say. There are “always passenger cars,” for example, in the designated loading zone on South Avenue just off of Elm Street, town resident Jeff Holland said during Thursday night’s meeting of the volunteer group that oversees off-street parking in New Canaan. “If I was a guy driving a truck into town, I would be a little bit frustrated,” Holland said during the Parking Commission meeting, held in the Douglas Room at Lapham Community Center. “If I was doing deliveries during the week, I would say, ‘Yeah, I am going to double-park,’ ” he added. And that double-parking creates sightline and safety risks for pedestrians—a problem that town officials tried to address earlier this summer by designating two additional loading zones downtown, doubling the total.

Business

Rule Changes Weighed To Free Up Downtown Parking for Shoppers (Not Employees)

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New Canaan officials are deciding whether to introduce new parking rules designed to free up parking spaces for customers—rather than employees—of downtown shops and other businesses. Specifically, and at the suggestion of a New Canaan resident who is recommending the practice, officials are thinking about adding to 90-minute parking signs a “per day” notice—effectively preventing a motorist from parking the same car twice in the same spot on a given day. In conjunction with that, members of the volunteer group that oversees on-street parking in New Canaan could designate an entire zone—say, the length of Elm Street—as an area in which a car could only park once per day at its signed time limit. What likely is happening now, Police Commission Chair Stuart Sawabini said, is that employees at shops wait until a few minutes before their parking time is up, then “go out to the street, drive their car to different location [on the same street] and park again.”

“Hence the white chalk mark that was established by the town parking enforcement officer now disappears underneath the tire and looks as though they’re a new visitor to town,” Sawabini said at the commission’s regular monthly meeting, held in the Training Room at the New Canaan Police Department. The idea of changing the parking rules had been proposed by New Canaan’s Jeff Holland, the commission said.