Government
Consultant: Nursery Road Traffic Soars to 345 Vehicles from 8 to 9 a.m.
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Traffic on Nursery Road soars to 345 motor vehicles on weekday mornings from 8 to 9 a.m., a “very distinct peak” caused by mostly westbound drivers skirting the log-jammed Merritt Parkway, officials with a transportation consulting firm said last week. Based on New Canaan Police data from early-June 2017, that heavy traffic starts to swell about 30 minutes before 8 a.m. and persists until about 30 minutes after 9 a.m. and represents “a very distinct peak” on Nursery Road, which also sees about 141 vehicles in the hour from 5 to 6 p.m., according to Michael Gallante of Fairfield-based Frederick P. Clark Associates.
Though the firm must conduct its own traffic counts at different intersections in order to determine how best to address the sharp rise in traffic, there are “some existing conditions” along the area’s roads that likely will be included in recommendations for a future report, he said. “There is some vegetation that has overgrown on the side of the road, in some cases they are weeds, there are sight restrictions—if you go to one end of White Oak [Shade], there are some large hedges that you cannot see looking south when you come out of Nursery Road,” Gallante told members of the Police Commission at a regular meeting, held Sept. 18 at department headquarters. “We are going to make recommendations to kind of clear things up like that, that is in a way unrelated to the traffic condition but we are looking at safety conditions also.