With $1.25M grant, Danbury to improve traffic signals
DANBURY — The city is set to improve traffic signals along key roadway corridors with $1.25 million in federal funding — all part of a national effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by reducing traffic congestion.
“It’s really geared to have efficient movement of traffic on local roads, actually even highways, so we applied for the grants through the state of Connecticut and our project was selected, which is great. We are excited to get the money,” said Antonio Iadarola, the city’s public works director.
Issued to Danbury through the state Department of Transportation, the money for the traffic project is part of a $24 million package awarded via the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program — a U.S. Department of Transportation initiative that has provided funding to over 16,000 projects since 1991.
This year, Bridgeport, Greenwich
and West Hartford are among nine other Connecticut municipalities to receive funding through the federal program, according to a press release issued by Gov. Ned Lamont’s office last week.
According to a 2019 study from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. transportation sector produces 29 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions in the country, with cars and trucks accounting for 82 percent of that share.
“These strategic investments will not only help eliminate traffic bottlenecks in certain communities and build out electric vehicle chargers in others, but they will also help move Connecticut toward cleaner air and a cleaner transportation system,” Lamont said in the statement.
The intended congestion and emissions improvements in Danbury, which include the installment of cameras that will sense the movement of traffic in order to adjust traffic lights, would be made along Main Street from Wooster Street to Golden Hill and from Osbourne Avenue from Main Street to Locust Avenue, Iadarola said Wednesday.
“…If you do the speed limit, it should allow you to very accurately hit the green pattern of every one of those lights, so you very efficiently get through those corridors and obviously the less stopping you do, the more efficient of travel you have and less emissions you have,” he said.