Government

Police Commission Votes 3-0 To Push Canoe Hill Traffic Island into Laurel

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Officials last week approved a plan to push a sometimes-ignored traffic island out of the roadway at Canoe Hill and Laurel Roads, addressing a traffic problem that’s been before the town for years. Signs posted on the small traffic island instruct motorists to stay to the right, and those coming from Laurel Road must yield, creating a rotary. Yet as it is, motorists traveling westbound on Canoe Hill face the non-intuitive prospect of going around the traffic island, which sweeps cars slightly to the right (toward Laurel) in order to continue on that road, which then jogs left. The road also feels wide enough to motorists on that approach that it should accommodate two-way traffic on the left-hand side of the island. By pushing the island into Laurel Road and installing a stop sign for Laurel traffic, officials hope to make Canoe Hill a true two-way street all the way through.

News

New Canaan Police Monitoring of Motorists’ Speeds Down in 2018

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As it ramps up enforcement at the top motor vehicle accident locations in town, the New Canaan Police Department also will start clocking motorists’ speeds more frequently than it has so far this year, officials said. So far in 2018, NCPD has seen a nearly 50 percent drop in its use of radar from last year, members of the Police Commission noted during the group’s most recent meeting. “Are we just enforcing less?” Commissioner Jim McLaughlin asked at the July 18 meeting, held at police headquarters. Police Chief Leon Krolikowski said that yes, officers “are just not setting up as much as they can, and not making as many stops as they are able to.”

“So that is part of the effort to refocus toward accident locations and giving people directions and the reason why we are doing this is that we want to reduce accidents, it’s not to stop people indiscriminately,” Krolikowski said. “That’s part of our refocus, so I am expecting to see those numbers go in the right direction as we continue to refocus the efforts.”

The increased speed enforcement comes as the department reported a drop in total motor vehicle violations cited, at the meeting, from 3,178 at this time last year to 2,237 in 2018.

Around Town

Officials Approve Road Closure Downtown for ‘Fall Into New Canaan’ in September

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Town officials voted this month to allow a prominent nonprofit organization to repeat a successful charity event downtown in September. The Young Women League of New Canaan’s “Fall Into New Canaan” will be held on Sept. 8 in the area occupied in past summers by the Pop Up Park, following the Police Commission’s 3-0 vote approving a street closure for part of that Saturday. During its inaugural event last year, Fall Into New Canaan saw 50 stores participate by donating 10 to 15 percent of profits for the day to a chosen beneficiary organization (Meals-On-Wheels), according to Marley Thackray, president of the Young Women’s League. “We had a wonderful day in town,” she told members of the Commission at their regular meeting, held July 18 at the New Canaan Police Department.

Government

Parking Officials Re-Designate Time Limit in Two Areas on Locust to 30 Minutes

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Responding to a business owner’s request, town officials are re-designating an area of Locust Avenue as 30-minute parking. The areas directly in front of the Post Office and Joe’s Pizza across the street long have been two-hour parking, as is the rest of downtown New Canaan. Yet town officials recently confirmed with parking enforcement officers “that the people that were parking on that street were not frequenting businesses like Joe’s Pizza or the Post Office—they were using that area to park and go to an office or other places of work,” Parking Manager Stacy Miltenberg told members of the Police Commission during their regular meeting last week. The town long has urged employees of downtown New Canaan businesses to park in municipal lots and leave coveted on-street parking for those seeking to shop and dine here. Last year, the Parking Bureau issued a new type of permit, in Morse Court and the Park Street Lot, specifically to that end.

Business

Elm Street To Lose 15 Parking Spaces

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The one-way stretch of Elm Street, commercial heart of downtown New Canaan and home to many of its most cherished (if in some cases struggling) local businesses, as soon as next week will lose 15 parking spaces due to its lack of compliance with a little-known state statute. New Canaan long has operated outside a 1949 state law that says, “No vehicle shall be permitted to remain parked within twenty-five feet of an intersection or a marked crosswalk thereat.”

Yet recently, when the Department of Public Works removed the parking striping on Elm Street in order to put in a layer of protective seal, a resident put town officials on formal notice that the existing spaces violated that law, since they were too close to the five crosswalks on Elm between Main and Park Streets. 

In all, after doing the math, New Canaan in bringing itself into compliance with the law will lose 13 spaces (and another two by increasing the width of angled parking by six inches per space—see below). The town last week hired a Fairfield-based transportation consulting firm to find out just what could be done with the parking layout vis-a-vis the state requirement, but “it is what it is,” Police Deputy Chief John DiFederico said Wednesday night during a regular meeting of the Police Commission. As the official local traffic authority in New Canaan, the Commission had to vote to change the parking configuration on Elm Street. “Rock and a hard place,” Chairman Sperry DeCew said during the meeting, held at the New Canaan Police Department.