Don’t Add To The Congestion

On Church Hill

To the Editor:

Walter Motyka’s recent letter concerning the high school expansion was well thought out and a welcome addition to the open dialogue on this issue.

I was, however, a little confused by his suggestion that we move the middle school entrance from Queen Street to the overcrowded Church Hill Road. He suggested that a benefit of this plan would be the diversion of traffic and school buses off Queen Street to other roads. I was unsure as to what this had to do with his plan to solve the high school expansion issue.

Perhaps Mr Motyka does not understand that real people live, and businesses operate, on these roads that he would so casually divert traffic to. Newtown residents who have tried to enter or leave businesses on Church Hill Road know that there is a huge congestion and safety problem. Merchants loose business to other stores and towns because shoppers find it impossible to pull out onto Church Hill Road. Parents driving to Hawley School can attest to the heavy congestion and would not welcome his plan to divert more traffic onto Church Hill. Parents going to the middle school would not be excited about his plan to divert them onto the more congested Church Hill Road. Naturally residents and drivers on Glover Avenue and Main Street might not appreciate their routes being more congested, so that Queen Street residents might have a little less traffic on their street.

Mr Motyka is not the only official trying to divert traffic off Queen Street to other roads. Other town officials, accompanied by a Queen Street resident, tried to convince school officials to reroute school buses off Queen Street in a meeting held late last year. To the school system’s credit they resisted these unfair efforts.

One of the reasons for the controversy over the current Queen Street Traffic Study are these underlying and unfair efforts to divert traffic from Queen Street on to other roads. Queen Street is a major route into and out of town. It has commercial business up and down the road. On the southern end it has a day care center, a commercial office building and a number of home-based business such as the one on the corner of Queen and Mile Hill. Queen Street has the least traffic of any road leading into town.

Diverting traffic off Queen Street makes no sense and is unfair to Newtown. Making it harder for Newtown to use Queen Street by narrowing the road, erecting stop signs, putting in speed humps, and reconfiguring intersections makes no sense. Spending $1.6 million, as The Bee reported, makes even less sense in light of our recent budget deliberations

The issue for Queen Street is the same as for other residents throughout town: excessive speed and safety. Our public officials need to listen to the public, not just a few individuals with an agenda to divert traffic off Queen Street. We need speed limits enforced and on heavily traveled residential streets we need to consider installing more sidewalks.

Bruce Walczak

12 Glover Avenue, Newtown July 26, 2006