Residents speak on South Windsor traffic calming plan

SOUTH WINDSOR – Residents who spoke about the South Windsor’s traffic calming policy last week were concerned about the lack of funding and the timeliness of the proposal.

The council held a public hearing on a policy town officials hope will get people to slow down along local roads, especially those used as shortcuts to major streets. The council did not discuss or take action Tuesday and will continue finetuning the policy over the summer.

Under the policy, after an issue is discovered and 50 percent of the neighborhood signs a petition, 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.

Traffic calming measures could 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.

But Laurel Street resident Dave McDonald was concerned about the time road improvements would take.

“If I follow your flow chart, it could take up to three years to get the speed humps,” he said. “If a resident or group of residents bring up the issue of speeding on their local street it is because there is an immediate, dangerous situation and every day it takes the town to address the situation is another day their lives and property are in peril.”

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

McDonald said the town should fund traffic calming measures every year and not on an as-needed basis. He asked the town to simplify the process and “create a sensible, resident-oriented policy before someone gets killed.”

“The main goal of this plan is for the town to put off providing safeguards we need to make our neighborhoods safe,” he said. “The amount of red tape steps and extended timelines would make a Federal bureaucrat proud.”

Resident Robert Dickinson said there should be more police enforcement in marked and unmarked vehicles along problem streets.

“Nothing is more effective when somebody goes into work and somebody tells them, ‘I got a speeding ticket and it cost me X number of dollars.’ That gets a lot of people that way,” he said.

Dickinson also suggested the town post slower speed limits, install additional stop signs and block off streets that are considered short cuts. Woodland Drive resident Steve Pasakarnis said when he came to town, he thought he moved to a “nice, quiet, calm and peaceful street.”

“Then we realized, not quite. It’s really nervewracking to get out of my driveway,” he said, noting he is 90 feet from a stop sign. “Probably 1 in 4 cars are already doing 40 when they hit my driveway. It makes me a little nervous with no sidewalks and people walking dogs and kids on bicycles and how fast they [drivers] are going.

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