Saying the number two complaint from homeowners with respect to road projects—after “When will you get to this road?”—is that people don’t want road striping painted back on a newly paved street, town officials are opting to forego putting a double yellow line back on Thayer Pond Road.
Thayer Pond Road in New Canaan after its most recent re-paving. There’s no accident history there, and town officials will leave off the double-yellow line striping it, as nearly all residents say they don’t like them for aesthetic reasons. Credit: Michael Dinan
On a recommendation the assistant director of public works and town body that oversees traffic calming—and despite one resident’s objection—the Police Commission decided to let the newly re-paved road that borders Wilton stand as it is.
The 10-year accident history of Thayer Pond Road shows that has no accidents and that striping “on a small road like that is not necessary and not required, by any means,” Police Capt. John DiFfederico said at the commission’s Dec. 17 meeting.
“It is a double-yellow in Wilton over the town line, so where it begins in New Canaan there is no yellow line,” DiFederico said at the meeting, held in the Training Room at the New Canaan Police Department.
Thayer Pond Road runs east of off Mariomi for about a half-mile in eastern New Canaan, includes 14 lots here in town, then (after it crosses the aptly named Parting Brook) becomes part of Wilton just before the Lake Club.
According to Tiger Mann, speaking one day earlier at a meeting of the Traffic Calming Work Group, residents always ask after a road has been re-paved whether the town intends to re-stripe it, and most of them cite aesthetic reasons for not wanting the stripe back.
One homeowner on Thayer Pond had lodged a complaint with the town, presumably because he wanted the stripe back. The commission said he would need to get at least 65 percent of his neighbors on the street to support his effort in order for the town to reconsider.