Town officials last week approved a $24,500 contract with a New Haven-based engineering firm to help address a major problem of congestion in town.
Southbound traffic on Route 106 backs up during the school year at Farm Road, in part because drivers don’t move left while waiting to turn left at Farm and in part because there isn’t sufficient room for other motorists to get around them if more than one vehicle is making that turn.
The town is hiring a firm to redesign the intersection and traffic signals “to accommodate additional turning lane or lanes at the intersection in order to help alleviate commuter traffic and associated school traffic,” according to Maria Coplit, town engineer in the Department of Public Works.
“For years, this intersection has been plagued with its challenges,” she told the Board of Selectmen during their regular meeting, held Aug. 19 at Town Hall and via videoconference.
To address those challenges, the town is hiring Fuss & O’Neill “to develop a conceptual design package” for a $1.5 million project that would be funded through a state Department of Transportation Local Transportation Capital Improvement Program or ‘LOTCIP’ grant via submission through the Western Council of Governments or ‘WestCOG.’
The firm’s work will include “evaluating available data, performing field investigations for turn movements, and the preparation of a conceptual design plan, proposing intersection improvements to allow for designated turn lanes,” Coplit said.
She continued: “Along with anticipated town coordination and plan review, Fuss & O’Neill would then submit the conceptual design plan and findings for the WestCOG LOTCIP solicitation.”
If the grant solicitation is successful and the project is to move forward, the town would spend another $150,000 to put together the full LOTCIP application, officials said. That application would use every part of the solicitation, according to Fuss & O’Neill’s Gina Musinski.
First Selectman Dionna Carlson and Selectmen Steve Karl and Amy Murphy Carroll voted 3-0 in favor of the contract with Fuss & O’Neill.
The selectmen asked Coplit and Musinski whether the work to be done now is in anticipation of getting the $1.5 million from the state via WestCOG (yes) and whether getting the grant would require the town to move on the project (no).
Officials said during the meeting that the overall grant process via WestCOG could take four to six years.
Asked what New Canaan’s chances of getting an approved solicitation, Musinski was optimistic.
WestCOG intends to commit $11 million worth of LOTCIP funding this year, and it helps that New Canaan’s would be a smaller project within that amount (there’s a $4 million per-project limit, Musinski said) and that DPW has documented a history of complaints and problems at the intersection.
“In our history, typically what they try and do is prioritize smaller projects,” she said. “This is where your project would fall, because the cap for funding is $4 million per project. So basically the odds are better because you have a project that’s looking more towards the $1.5 million range for construction costs. So, although we can’t promise anything, the odds are definitely better because they are able to commit to more projects that way.”
And a project that succeeds in solicitation always gets the commitment to fund, historically, she added. It also helps that New Canaan’s DPW has already tried to improve the intersection.
“There is some back-and-forth that happens after the solicitation with the Connecticut Department of Transportation that we’ve shepherded as well,” she said. “n transparency, that’s something that we would anticipate. But the end result is that you would know after the solicitation if you’re eligible to move forward for that full coverage of the construction costs.”
Karl noted that the problem at the intersection should meet the state’s criteria—in part, because Old Stamford Road doubles as state Route 106.
“You’ve got its proximity to the Merritt [Parkway],” he said. “You’ve got the Metro North Train overpass. And you’ve got the fact that it’s a state road. So you combine all those things together. In terms of a grant, a state grant, it should open up somebody’s eyes and say, ‘This is an issue. There’s a bottleneck here. There’s a big issue going on here.’ ”
He added that Route 106 is “a feeder road to our senior center, and it’s a feeder road to three of our schools—the high school, Saxe and South are all along that corridor there. There’s a safety issue there, as well. So there’s a lot to the argument.”
Describing some of those who get backed up in the morning traffic and Talmadge Hill Station, Carlson added that “everybody’s rushing to get to the train, too.”
How about doing something about the horrendous backup that occurs every day in the afternoon at the southbound 123 and Carter intersection- Major feeder to the Merrit!
I wish they would also address The Farm Road/ Main Street/White Oak Shade Intersection that also backs up from Merritt traffic and all 3 schools. No one ever knows who has the right of way or people just ignore the stop sign completely. It is a true danger to pedestrians and drivers alike.
An out of the box solution for this intersection is to make it much, much tighter. Eliminate all of the turn lanes and force all the cars to come to stops closer together.
So basically widen the road into the eastern edge, and add a third lane for southbound traffic to turn left.
Seems straightforward, I drew it out but unable to paste image in this form
The Farm and South traffic is dependent on school traffic and is not solvable because of parents that insist on driving their kids to the schools rather than taking the school buses. How many times have you stopped behind a bus that does not pick up a kid? I see it everyday. Parents sign up for the bus and the kid never takes it. The bus driver is obligated to make the stop, slowing everyone behind, making the school route slower and feeding into the cycle of the bus is slow.
My 3 kids took the bus everyday, even when they got their license. Besides after school activity pickups, they also took the bus back.
The 123 and Carter traffic is very solvable with a longer duration light for southbound 123 traffic and/or a camera based system. But our focus is on more license readers.
One word: Roundabouts
Having just returned from another European vacation, I concur. So much fun for the disciplined driver. And the lack of lights is a winner. A no brainer for European drivers, I’m not sure that the typical American driver is roundabout aware and can deal with yielding to the circle. But the primary reason, roundabouts will not work is because this intersection has heavy pedestrian traffic.
As long as New Canaan does not go down the Robert Moses path of city design – focused primarily on vehicle traffic – to the detriment of pedestrian, cycle, and mass transit. More sidewalks and pedestrian crossovers would do a lot for traffic flow in the downtown-Y-school corridor.