A Town With No Plan
A Town With No Plan
To the Editor:
The letter Hive is one of the most effective ways of determining what the major concerns of the citizens of Newtown are. One of the major concerns is traffic safety and traffic control.
We recently appropriated approximately $50,000 for a study program to alleviate the speeding problem on Queen Street. The section of Queen Street from Glover Avenue to Wassermann Way is 0.6 miles and there are approximately 40 homes on this stretch of country road, which doesnât even represent .25 percent of our townâs population. One resident of Queen Street recently recommended we use Queen Street as a prototype for Newtownâs traffic problems.
Since we are considering expending $1.8 million to solve the traffic problems for 100 people, where are we going to get the $100-plus millions to solve the traffic problems of all the people in Newtown? Queen Street is an example of meeting the needs of a few and transfer the problem to those residents of Glover and Main Street, which have their own set of traffic problems. Anyone who travels Toddy Hill Road on a daily basis will agree that the traffic problems on Toddy Hill Road dwarf those on Queen Street. The speeders on Toddy Hill Road make those on Queen Street look like their cars are in reverse. Not only are there more major accidents on Toddy Hill Road than Queen Street, but that traffic fiasco at commuting time at the intersection of Toddy Hill Road, Route 34, Exit 11, and the high school is something you canât make up.
If you are going to appropriate money to improve traffic flow in town, letâs come up with a plan which is going to meet the needs of all the taxpayers, not just the needs of a few. A recent voluntary police department survey found that nearly 50 percent of the residents who responded say they are dissatisfied with traffic enforcement in town. One common denominator for our traffic problems is speed enforcement, which is the sole responsibility of the police department.
Another problem is traffic lights, which are the most archaic electronic device in the world. The basic design hasnât changed in 50 years. Traffic lights are so dumb they have no idea what is going on under them. Your $10 garage door sensor is smarter than a traffic light and it only controls one car a day. Danbury recently started installing its first intelligent traffic control devices at a cost of $5,000 per unit. There are presently 13 traffic lights in Newtown and at a cost of $65,000 this isnât much more than the $49,000 we just wasted on the Queen Street traffic study and itâs definitely cheaper than the $1.8 million we plan to spend to alleviate the traffic concerns of 100 people.
The combination of traffic law enforcement and bringing high technology into use is going to solve our traffic problems, not widening roads, speed bumps, and sidewalks unless you have unlimited funds, which this town doesnât have. State-of-the-art traffic control systems will drastically improve the traffic efficiency of our roads. We have to get traffic control out of the 20th Century. Cable companies donât run more cables into your home to meet our ever increasing information needs; they upgrade the existing cable with faster high tech equipment. Traffic control technology is here today, we just need the police department and the state to start implementing these new technologies.
Some of our traffic problems are on state roads, which is why Julia Wasserman, our state representative and a resident of Newtown, has to get involved.
The town is proposing major commercial building projects and they donât even have solutions for our existing traffic problems. The only way this problem is going to get resolved is if we as residents of Newtown start demanding answers and solutions. Up to this point we have received neither.
Frank Gardner
6 Surrey Trail, Sandy Hook                                      January 20, 2007