Police Commission Addresses Parking And Traffic Issues

By Andrew Gorosko

To deter illegal parking along the relatively narrow Elm Drive near Liberty Fields, police have posted additional parking prohibition signs near the baseball diamonds, Police Chief Michael Kehoe has told Police Commission members.

Recently, some motorists had been straddling their vehicles on the west side of the street, with the autos’ right-side tires resting on turf along the road and the left-side tires resting on the pavement.

Besides the previously posted “No Parking” signs on the street, police have now posted new signs specifically banning parking on the turf alongside the street.

Liberty Fields has two parking lots, but after the lots become filled with vehicles, motorists sometimes park along Elm Drive posing traffic hazards on the narrow road.

The new signs posted along Elm Drive state that parking is allowed only in designated areas and recommend that motorists parks at the nearby Dickinson Park.

Chief Kehoe said police will be monitoring the parking situation on Elm Drive in the coming weeks.

Overflow parking for Liberty Fields should take place at Dickinson Park, where there are parking lots, he said. The town has created a pathway linking Liberty Fields to the park, which lies about 250 yards to the south. “At least it’s accessible,” Chief Kehoe said of the walkway’s providing access to the park. It remains to be seen whether motorists will park their vehicles in Dickinson Park, he said.

Police Commission Chairman Carol Mattegat said motorists should not walk on Elm Drive to get to the park from Liberty Fields because it is dangerous to do so.

In another Elm Drive matter, commission members decided to keep in place the three-way stop sign configuration at the intersection of Elm Drive and Brushy Hill Road.

Chief Kehoe said that installing stop signs on all three legs of that intersection has not created traffic accidents. “It’s working,” he said.

“We’ve got to have those stop signs there…We need them,” said commission member Richard Simon, adding that the town’s posting the signs on all three legs of that intersection has made the intersection safer.

In another traffic matter, commission members referred for state review a resident’s request that a traffic signal be installed at the intersection of Route 34, Bennetts Bridge Road, and Grays Plain Road in Sandy Hook.

Sight line problems in the area make it difficult for motorists exiting from Bennetts Bridge Road and from Grays Plain Road to see oncoming westbound traffic.

The hazardous intersection now has a blinker signal.

In another matter, the commission set the speed limit for a newly paved section of Platts Hill Road at 25 miles per hour. Until now that section of Platts Hill Road, which lies between Arlyn Ridge Road and Orchard Hill Road, had been unpaved and had no speed limit.