Traffic Management:

Do It Once, Do It Right

To the Editor:

It’s time for a new approach to Newtown’s traffic issues. The Queen Street Traffic Study has been discredited and is in shambles because:

*Town officials gave preferential treatment to Queen Street

*The study objectives turned out not to be safety, but diversion of traffic to other streets.

*The study failed to gather data in an objective manner.

*Speeding on Queen Street is no more serious than on other roads and accidents are actually among the lowest in town.

*Queen Street is and should be a major route into and out of town.

*The recommendation’s costs are ludicrous at $1.8 million dollars. We can barely afford to fund our other capital projects such as the high school expansion.

The recent plea that Queen Street should be used as a prototype for Newtown’s traffic issues and that we should not blame Queen Street residents for leading the (wrong) way is preposterous. If the Queen Street lobby, with the help of the Police Commission and the selectman, had been focused on Newtown’s traffic issues rather than the “not in my back yard” only approach, maybe we would have some workable solutions for the $50,000 that was spent on the study. Now to suggest that speed bumps every 300 yards should be the prototype for Newtown’s 260 miles of roads is insane. To reward the Queen Street lobby for manipulating the system to solve only their roads issue, with little regard for the impact on the rest of the town, is unwarranted and unjustified.

Newtown has a speeding and traffic problem. We experience it every day. We need solutions that can be applied over the entire town at a cost we can and are willing to pay. We need a plan that manages traffic, not one that essentially closes and barricades one of the major routes into town. We need a plan that doesn’t solve one road’s problems by diverting the problem to other residents.

My suggestions:

1. The Police Commission has to make speed enforcement one of its major objectives. Zero tolerance for speeding. A couple hundred speeding tickets a year is hardly enforcement. Establish a “Slow Down in Newtown” campaign. Fund both efforts; we’ll get way more results with enforcement than speed bumps.

2. The Legislative Council needs to establish a Traffic and Safety Commission to develop a strategy and funding for a traffic management program. Solutions have to be right for all of Newtown. The Queen Street Area Traffic Study should be put on a shelf.

3. Residents need to work with the borough and town officials to plan and fund sidewalks on our busiest street such as Queen, Sugar, Elm, Church Hill and others as deemed appropriate. Let’s link the Borough with Fairfield Hills so we and our children can safely walk to this fabulous property. Bike and running routes should be considered.

Let’s do it once. Let’s do it right.

Bruce Walczak

12 Glover Avenue, Newtown                                     January 24, 2007