Government

Town To Reduce Speed Limits on Four Roads from 30 to 25 MPH

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Members of the volunteer group that oversees traffic in New Canaan are seeking to reduce from 30 to 25 mph the speed limits on four remaining roads in town where it makes sense to do so. Following the most recent meeting of the Police Commission, officials will ask permission from the state to reduce the speed limit on Silvermine Road to 25 mph—something residents of the area long have wanted—and then will take up the same change on Weed Street north of Elm Street, Wahackme Road and Old Norwalk Road near Route 123. Tiger Mann, assistant director of the Department of Public Works, told members of the Police Commission at their Nov. 16 meeting that he would recommend the change “for uniformity’s sake alone, since we only have four roads left [at 30 mph], to take each one to the state and get to 25 mph across the board.”

Commissioners voted 3-0 in favor of the change. After a formal letter requesting the reduced speed limits from Police Chief Leon Krolikowski goes to the state and receives approval, it would be up to four weeks for the state make its decision and then just a few days to swap out signage, Mann said at the meeting, held in the training room at the New Canaan Police Department.

Business

‘No Repeat’ Parking Signs Coming To Main and Elm

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Seeking to address a longstanding problem where those who work downtown take up free parking spaces meant to serve shoppers and diners, officials on Wednesday night approved new signage designed to help keep coveted spots on Main and Elm turning over. The Police Commission unanimously approved the installation of two “no repeats within one hour” signs—in other words, an instruction to those who use the 90-minute spots in the “magic circle” that after their time is up, they cannot simply move to a new spot on the block. It’s a rule that’s been on the books for years, though it’s been difficult to enforce and, according to Stacy Miltenberg, interim superintendent of the Parking Bureau, to convey to drivers. “There has to be a way to get it out, and I do believe that signage is wonderful and education also is wonderful,” Miltenberg said during the meeting, held in the training room at the New Canaan Police Department. Currently, parking enforcement officers chalk the tires of cars parked in the 90-minute zones of Main and Elm, and may ticket those vehicles they come upon again on those streets after 90 minutes has expired.

Government

‘A Pattern of Abuse’: Police Commission To Remove Auto Shop’s Designated Parking Space on East Maple Street

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The volunteers who oversee on-street parking in New Canaan voted last week to spend $1,700 for a field analysis and sight line study of East Maple Street, an increasingly busy commercial area downtown whose residents say they’re concerned about traffic and safety. At its regular meeting Wednesday, the Police Commission also decided to discontinue a practice whereby an auto body shop on the corner at Main Street is allowed to park on East Maple. Instead, the commissioners said, AC Auto Body will use two designated spaces in the nearby Center School parking lot for its flatbed trucks and could park a smaller wrecker in its own lot. East Maple Street resident David Shea, who has become a spokesperson for the concerned neighbors, told the commission at its July 20 meeting that “what we are looking at is two kinds of streets when you come up East Maple from Hoyt it is a wide street.”

“As you turn in the curb toward Main it becomes a bottleneck, it narrows down,” Shea said at the meeting, held in the New Canaan Police Department’s training room. “What we are proposing is that parking only be on the right-hand side of the street, the usual two hours, and then on the right-hand side going east, that would be no-parking, no-standing [zone] that will allow traffic to pass on a two-way basis and give the residents the parking that they need.

Business

‘We Need To Find a Compromise’: ‘No Parking’ Signs To Go Up on East Avenue

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Officials say they’re going to post “No Parking” signs outside of an East Avenue business that’s been plagued by truck drivers idling outside the door to make deliveries around New Canaan. Though the truckers cannot park their vehicles outside day spa Ciel Eau at 1 East Ave.—because it’s illegal, bad for business owner Alicia Brandfellner and unsafe for motorists and pedestrians—still, those delivery drivers must be accommodated somewhere so that New Canaan restaurants get deliveries, Police Commission Chairman Stuart Sawabini said. “We clearly need to protect her [Brandfellner’s] business but we also cannot damage their [restaurants’] business,” Sawabini said during the commission’s regular monthly meeting, held Nov. 18 in the Training Room at the New Canaan Police Department. “We need to find a compromise as we go through all this.”

Though there’s a designated 7 to 10 a.m. loading zone in front of Sleepy’s across East Avenue at the start of Forest Street, it’s rarely used because Forest is still in disarray with the mixed-use project going up by Locust Avenue, commissioners said.

News

‘It’s Beyond Our Control’: No Ready Solution To Morning Traffic Back-Up from NCHS Parking Lot

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Town officials, after receiving a resident’s complaint about traffic backed up on Old Stamford Road at Farm Road in the mornings, reached this conclusion: There’s no feasible solution to the problem, short of an expensive New Canaan High School parking lot redesign for which no one has an appetite. Police sent a shift out to investigate the complaint and what the officers discovered is that “it’s not a timing of the light issue,” Capt. John DiFederico said during the Police Commission’s Nov. 18 meeting. “What the issue is, is that there is a very short period of time—maybe 15 minutes—when there is so much volume going into the high school that it backs up all the way down Farm Road so there are cars that cannot turn from Old Stamford Road onto Farm,” DiFederico said at the meeting, held in the Training Room at the New Canaan Police Department. “It has nothing really to do with the light and it has nothing to do with us—it’s just a poorly designed high school parking lot which makes ingress of vehicles so difficult for those 15 minutes.”

A big part of the problem, Police Capt. Vincent DeMaio said, is that the lot is designed so that kids park at the far side—to the right of the access road as you come in—so that they then must cross the road in order to get to the building, which holds up traffic.