Around Town

Traffic Officials Weigh New Solution to Awkward Laurel-Canoe Hill Rotary

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Town officials say they’re leaning toward one of three redesigns for the awkward rotary at Laurel and Canoe Hill Roads. The signage that’s already in place, instructing motorists to “keep right” throughout the intersection is adequate for what’s there now, according to Tiger Mann, director of the New Canaan Public Works. The three versions of a future traffic solution there are to make the rotary island itself larger, Mann told fellow members of the Traffic Calming Work Group at their most recent meeting, create a “pear shape” out of it or “recess it” toward Laurel Road. That last option—to “leave it as just an island on Laurel”—would mean the rotary no longer serves the Canoe Hill Road traffic traveling past, Mann said at the May 16 meeting, held in the training room at the New Canaan Police Department. “That seems to be preferable out of all of them, because to try and make [the rotary] larger” would not fully address problems that some motorists have now with the rotary, Mann said.

News

Officials Reject Proposed Rotary at Farm and White Oak Shade

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Calling it a complicated solution to a problem that doesn’t exist, town officials rejected one resident’s proposed rotary for the difficult intersection of Farm and White Oak Shade Roads. Police Capt. John DiFederico called New Canaan resident Jeff Holland’s rendering of a rotary at the offset intersection that also includes Main Street and Old Norwalk Road an “excellent sketch” that’s “very good” in execution. However, if New Canaan is to invest heavily in a solution for the intersection, it must address the most pressing problem facing traffic officials—namely, how to get pedestrians safely across it, according to DiFederico. “I think probably an easier solution and more cost-effective solution would just be to put a crosswalk on White Oak Shade” and install a new sidewalk on the south side of Farm Road DiFederico said at the most recent meeting of the Traffic Calming Work Group. As it is now, a painted east-west crosswalk with a warning sign in the middle connects the southern end of Main Street with the western end of Old Norwalk Road, the start of a sidewalk that runs down toward Kiwanis Park.

Government

‘Taking Your Life Into Your Hands’: Residents Seek Signage To Alert Motorists to Hidden Driveway on Heritage Hill Road

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Traffic officials are weighing a new request to install signage on Heritage Hill Road from a resident who has difficulty pulling out of a shared driveway there. Motorists are traveling faster than ever before on the road—a popular cut-through between Main Street and Route 123—and they pick up speed coming out of a downhill curve approaching Forest Street, according to Juliana McKenna of 175 Heritage Hill Road. “When you come down the hill on your way down toward 123 everybody is going really fast and I guess they pick up speed on the straightaway and then they come around the corner, so when I am coming into my driveway, because when I put my right light blinker on, everybody thinks I’m taking a right onto Forest,” McKenna told members of the Traffic Calming Work Group at their most recent meeting. “So I have to put my emergency lights on to try to get them not to hit me so that I can pull into the driveway and one of our residents, four or five years ago was coming out and got T-boned, and she requested the sign then and was declined,” McKenna said at the group’s meeting, held Oct. 18 in the New Canaan Police Department.

Around Town

Traffic Officials To Set Rights-of-Way at Bowery-Wakeman-Ogden Intersection

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Town officials are studying traffic patterns in northern New Canaan to figure out how signage and rights-of-way should work at a complicated intersection overlooking the Siscowit Reservoir. Right now there are no signs instructing motorists about yielding at the intersection of Bowery, Wakeman and Ogden Roads—which is essentially four-way, since Bowery continues through and runs north across the state line, according to Tiger Mann, assistant director of the Department of Public Works and member of a advisory committee that fields requests for traffic calming. This request came in from a resident who noted that there are no signs there now. The question facing Mann and others on the Traffic Calming Work Group now, he said, is: “Does the cut-through traffic come up Ogden or does it come up Wakeman?”

“That’s the biggest question,” Mann said at the group’s June 14 meeting, held in the training room at the New Canaan Police Department. There’s little time advantage between the two, as they run roughly parallel and dump one house apart onto Lukes Wood Road to the south.

Around Town

Town Resists Urging from State To Remove Flashing Yellow Light at Gower and South

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The state wants New Canaan’s support in removing the flashing yellow light at South Avenue and Gower Road, though local officials say they’re reluctant to give it, particularly if the town is expected to pay to install some other traffic-calming measure as a replacement. Officials in the Connecticut Department of Transportation do not want to maintain the light on state Route 124—a responsibility made more onerous as DOT crewmen have had to respond to work orders placed by a local resident who doesn’t like the light and regularly contacts a state maintenance garage about it. Specifically, DOT officials want to know whether New Canaan would consider installing pedestrian-activated flashing beacons, such as those planned for God’s Acre, at the Gower intersection, a popular place for people to cross as they travel to and from South School. “I was hopeful from [the DOT’s] request that the state would pay for it and install it for us, but I was wrong,” Police Capt. John DiFederico said during the most recent meeting of the Traffic Calming Work Group. The project would cost about $17,000, according to Tiger Mann, assistant director of the Department of Public Works and a member of the group.