South Windsor seeks traffic solutions

SOUTH WINDSOR – Over the past few years, South Windsor officials have been fielding complaints about increased truck traffic and speeding on local roads.

Now they are looking to create a traffic calming policy to deal with the issues. Michael Gantick, director of public works, said the town’s growth over the past 20 years factors into the traffic issues in South Windsor.

“We have addressed things as they’ve come along,” he said. “But we’ve reached a few more than the normal amount of people expressing concerns about traffic and related issues.”

Town Engineer Jeff Doolittle said complaints have ranged from speeding to increased truck traffic to motorists not obeying signs. The policy would focus on local roads and not state highways or major arterial roads.

“We aren’t going to try and calm traffic on Buckland Road or Avery Street because those are very busy streets and we feel that’s not appropriate,” said Doolittle, adding the policy would focus on roads through residential neighborhoods.

Doolittle said the policy will only be used when at least 50 percent of the neighborhood signs a petition regarding an issue.

“We want to make sure the whole neighborhood is behind it,” he said. “If it’s only a problem in the eyes of one or two people it may not warrant our attention.”

After an issue is discovered, the town will meet with neighbors and begin a traffic calming study involving consultants and data collection. The process includes counting vehicles, tracking speeds, crashes, traffic volume and types of traffic.

Officials would hold neighborhood meetings to present a plan and get feedback. Possible solutions would include re-striping of lanes, speed humps, medians and landscaped islands. At least 75 percent of neighbors would have to agree with any plan that moves forward. The town council would have to approve funding of projects.

Doolittle said the key to the policy will be getting as much public input as possible and a funding mechanism to pay for the studies and eventual traffic calming plan that could range from $15,000 to $40,000.

“We want to proceed slowly along the way so we aren’t committing a lot of town resources and a lot of town funding to something that’s not going to work and the residents aren’t going to be happy with,” he said.

The town council will hold a public hearing on the policy in June or July.

Peter Marteka can be reached at pmarteka@courant.com.