The Police Commission, in its role as the local traffic authority, is continuing its review of possible measures to correct a chronic traffic speed problem on Pearl Street, a residential connector road in Sandy Hook that links Washington Avenue to Philo Curtis Road.

The police department's traffic unit recently completed its third set of tests on Pearl Street in seeking to gauge both the volume of traffic that uses that road and its speed. The police set rubber tubes across the road, which send signals to a device that calculates the number of axles that roll over the tubes and also the speed at which those axles are moving. Police performed earlier speed studies on Queen Street in April and in December 2015.

Pearl Street residents about a year ago approached the Police Commission for help in bringing down the travel speed of vehicles that use that street. During the daily traffic rush periods, many motorists use Pearl Street as an alternate route to avoid the traffic congestion that occurs on Berkshire Road near Newtown High School and at the Exit 11 interchange of Interstate 84.

The heaviest traffic occurs on Pearl Street on weekdays between 7 and 8 am, and between 4 and 7 pm, according to the police traffic studies.

Pearl Street area residents have repeatedly told Police Commission members that much of that traffic greatly exceeds the posted limit of 25 miles per hour, endangering pedestrians in the area.

At a Police Commission session earlier this month, commission Chairman Joel Faxon told several Pearl Street residents that commission members now have the "raw data" from the third traffic study, which they will analyze in terms of finding a solution to the speeding problem.

Commission members will be reviewing similar raw data that they used in the past while analyzing similar speeding problems on Queen Street and Key Rock Road.

"We have enough data to decide what we want to do," Mr Faxon told the Pearl Street residents.

Some Pearl Street residents have urged that a set of speed tables to be installed there as a deterrent to speeding.

The town installed five speed tables on Queen Street and four speed tables on Key Rock Road after conducting extensive traffic studies on those streets in the past.

Mr Faxon said commission members would discuss possible speed remedies for Pearl Street when they meet on November 1. That discussion would include the factors of topography, road width, traffic volume, and traffic speed, he said. The 3,600-foot-long curving road lies on hilly terrain.

Commission member Daniel Rosenthal said he wants to learn whether making certain changes at Pearl Street would create traffic problems elsewhere.

Besides conducting traffic studies on Pearl Street, police have heightened their enforcement there through radar patrols and by using electronic displays posted to inform motorists of their travel speed, compared to the posted speed limit.

In the past, the Police Commission has reviewed extensive data on speeding problems in a given area before deciding whether installing speed tables is actually the best solution to resolve the problem. The commission has an elaborate policy on "traffic calming" that it uses in reviewing residents' requests on solving traffic problems.