Planners Seek To Balance Traffic Flow And Property Access

By Andrew Gorosko

A planning consulting firm is collecting information on how driveways intersecting with major local roads could best be configured for the sake of improved traffic flow, enhanced travel safety, and better access to businesses and homes.

Fitzgerald and Halliday, Inc, of Hartford is conducting the study for the Housatonic Valley Council of Elected Officials on behalf of the town.

The six-month study’s overall goal is to improve how driveways intersect with local major roads. The roads under study are Route 25 and Route 6. Locally, those roads are known as Mt Pleasant Road, Main Street, South Main Street, and Church Hill Road.

The planning study will produce a document known as a “curb cut and access management plan” for the major roads. “Curb cuts” exist in places where driveways intersect with roads.

The planning project will review the existing configuration of driveways, intersections, and other access points along roadways. It will evaluate places where new driveways may be needed in the future. The planners also will review information on past accidents involving motor vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians to learn which areas pose travel hazards.

“The resulting plan will identify opportunities to enhance existing access patterns, as well as identify optimal locations for future access points along these roadways,” according to Fitzgerald & Halliday.

The plan to be formulated will recommend changes to the zoning regulations concerning the access to properties. The project will produce a “curb cut plan” to be used as a reference for the creation of future driveways.

Access management seeks to balance the competing interests of motor vehicle mobility, land access, and community character. It seeks to manage access to properties while preserving safe and efficient traffic flow, including the movement of bicyclists and pedestrians.

Carol Gould, a land use planner with the consulting firm, said of the study, “This is really focused on the arrangement of driveways” and how that arrangement affects traffic flow on adjacent roads.

When future development or redevelopment occurs, the town would refer to an advisory planning map to be produced for aid in planning access to properties, she said.

 

Planning Workshop

The planning consultants are seeking help from the public to better formulate their access management and curb cut plans.

A workshop session on the project is slated for 12:30 to 8 pm on Wednesday, June 24, at Booth Library at 25 Main Street (Route 25).

Members of the public may attend to offer comments and view mapping on the project. Five time periods during the workshop will focus of five separate stretches of local roadways now under study.

From 12:30 to 2 pm, the workshop will focus on the entire length of Mt Pleasant Road, and also on the section of Main Street lying between Mt Pleasant Road and Main Street’s intersection with Currituck Road.

Between 2 and 3:30 pm, the subject matter will be the section of Main Street lying between its intersections with Currituck Road and Glover Avenue.

From 3:30 to 5 pm, the topic will be the entire length of South Main Street, from its intersection with Glover Avenue to the Monroe town line.

A break is slated for 5 to 5:30 pm.

Between 5:30 and 7 pm, participants will discuss the entire length of Church Hill Road, extending from the Main Street flagpole to Church Hill Road’s intersection with Washington Avenue, Riverside Road, and Glen Road in Sandy Hook Center.

From 7 to 8 pm, the planners are slated to present a preliminary version of their curb cut plan for the major roadways.