The new ‘No Left Turn’ sign preventing northbound motorists from turning from Marvin Ridge onto Nursery Road during the morning commute is creating an entirely new safety hazard, according to police.
Drivers seeking to avoid Merritt Parkway traffic between Exits 38 and 37 are traveling just past the sign and then pulling into private residential driveways—including those that serve as bus stops for local schoolchildren—in order to swing back around to make the right-hand turn down Nursery, according to New Canaan Police Deputy Chief John DiFederico.
“I can confirm that is happening frequently, every minute or so there is another car that is northbound that pulls into [a Marvin Ridge Road woman’s] driveway, backs out into traffic, goes down southbound and turns right onto Nursery,” DiFederico told members of the Police Commission during their March 20 meeting, held at police headquarters.
“That is a pretty serous safety concern, in my opinion, that now we have cars going onto private property that are school bus stops and backing into traffic. And that is something that we never had before with just high-volume traffic on Nursery Road. It was high-volume traffic but it was never people backing into traffic or pulling into driveways. We never had that.”
The comments came during an update for the Commission, which had voted 3-0 at its January meeting to install the sign restricting left-hand turns at the intersection for up to six months on a trial basis. DiFederico said he would need about two more months in order to get the Commission the four weeks of data it has called for in order to determine whether the new ‘No Left Turn’ sign should be made permanent.
Installed Feb. 18 in response to extremely high volume during the morning commute on Nursery and Gerdes Roads, the sign appears to have addressed concerns long voiced by residents of those streets. According to DiFederico, traffic on Nursery Road during the week of March 13 to 19 averaged a weekday high of 211 cars (down from 345) during the 7 to 8 a.m. hour, and Gerdes Road averaged a high of just 86 during the same time.
A professional traffic engineer hired by the town to study the problems Nursery and Gerdes Roads had been facing predicted that they would benefit from the new sign. Yet he also advised the town not to install it, saying the problem of high traffic volume simply would be pushed to other New Canaan roads and possibly into Norwalk.
Citing accident history data, the police command staff also concluded that the high traffic volume presented Nursery Road residents with a quality-of-life problem rather than an actual safety hazard.
Immediately after the sign was installed, residents of Marvin Ridge Road and its offshoots, as well as Norwalk, showed up to a Police Commission meeting and voiced their own concerns about the change. Opponents of the sign included a woman who had seen her own driveway being used for U-Turns, as well as residents of the Marvin Ridge Road area such as Todd Gaines, whose neighborhood filed a formal petition calling for the sign’s removal.
Gaines attended last week’s Commission meeting and said, “I have irate drivers coming down Marvin Ridge Road because of the inconvenience, now, and they are not stopping completely at the stop sign at Nubel [Lane] and Marvin Ridge Road.”
It wasn’t immediately clear how the temporary sign is affecting traffic on Old Norwalk Road, which does have a history of car crashes. DiFederico said he wasn’t able to download the traffic data for that street in time for the meeting, though he noted that no spike in traffic has been seen in northbound traffic on Marvin Ridge Road during the morning commute.
Police Chief Leon Krolikowski said he has heard reports of increased backup on Old Norwalk Road in the mornings.
“I’m not sure if that is connected” to the sign, the chief said.
DiFederico said he has received no “official complaints” from schools or school bus drivers on Old Norwalk Road.
DiFederico said that in the month since the sign went in, police have stopped 65 vehicles for making the left-hand turn between 7 and 9 a.m. Those stopped for making the turn have been issued verbal warnings for doing so, though some motorists found to be driving unregistered vehicles or driving without licenses have been charged with infraction- or misdemeanor-level offenses.
Commissioner Jim McLaughlin asked about the U-turning motorist sand whether what they were doing was illegal.
DiFederico said no.
“We can’t really prevent it,” he said. “We can’t stop people from doing it. They are welcome to put-up some sort of barricade at the end of their driveway if they choose to, but there are a number of other driveways that people would drive down.”
Commission Chairman Sperry DeCew said, “It’s a consequence of our actions.”
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the town, by going against the advice of a traffic engineer and police citing safety concerns, has opened itself up to legal liability by installing the it anyway. No car crashes have been reported in the area since the sign went in.
DeCew asked whether the navigation apps that had been sending motorists seeking to skirt the Merritt down Nursery—such as Waze and Google Maps—had updated their databases.
DiFederico said the apps had changed that routing initially, but that an officer had reported that very morning that Waze was sending drivers down Nursery Road again. He noted that the information for the routing comes from drivers themselves.
“That is the problem,” he said. “It’s crowdsourcing it, so I can change it and someone can change it back. So, it is user input the changes it.”
Another attendee of the meeting, Richard Megherby of Nursery Road—whose wife, Charlein Megherby, had been a leading voice in getting the sign installed—said the apps will only make a change if the companies hear directly from the town.
“It has to be an official notification from the town,” he said.
Megherby also thanked the Commission for installing the sign, which he said has “made life better.”
“We can take walks in the morning again without being afraid of being hit,” he said.
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