P&Z To Cyclists Group Proposing Donated Road Safety Signs: No Thank You

Calling the design of a proposed sign urging motorists to give cyclists a 3-foot berth ineffective and overly promotional, town officials say they’ll pass on a private group’s offer to supply the signs for free.

Town officials are deciding whether this sign would be appropriate for New Canaan. Credit: Michael Dinan

The Planning & Zoning Commission at its most recent meeting voted 6-0 to forego the offer from the Sound Cyclists Bicycle Club.

Commissioner Elizabeth DeLuca, head of the group’s sign subcommittee, told officials from the club that “we are not OK with your sign because it is not effective, it is not visible” and that Town Attorney Ira Bloom had advised against posting publicly a sign that includes the name of a private group.

“Ira recommended that there be no group name on the sign,” DeLuca said at the July 28 meeting, held in the Sturgess Room at New Canaan Nature Center.

Technically speaking, P&Z’s “No” vote is a sense of the commission rather than a hard denial to the cycling group, which includes some 40 New Canaanites, its officials say. Public Works officials, who make decisions about such public road signs in New Canaan, had sought guidance from P&Z on the matter.

Commissioners asked whether the club might consider producing a different sign that doesn’t include its name.

Nancy Rosett, the bicycle club’s community relations director—who presented the signs to P&Z with New Canaan resident Alan Sheiner, the club’s rides director—said that could be cost-prohibitive.

As it is, the club is willing to purchase 150 signs at about $25 apiece, Rosett said.

“If we want to change the design, then there is a set-up cost and increased cost to us and that would be something the club would have to consider—if they wanted to do a special sign for New Canaan when every other town we’ve dealt with so far has accepted the design we have,” Rosett said.

The club, which has a mailing address in Darien, has already seen the signs go in throughout Fairfield County towns such as Bethel, Brookfield, Fairfield, Norwalk and Westport, with Newtown and Greenwich as future possibilities, Rosett has said.

The sign itself—introduced formally to P&Z in July, a full year after Sound Cyclists first approached the town—instructs motorists to give a legally required 3-foot berth to cyclists, though the sign isn’t in a recognizable shape and might confuse drivers, P&Z members said.

Chairman John Goodwin said the question of whether to support the group’s proposed signs was unusual for P&Z, as the commission “typically looks at site-specific signs” and decided whether they meet certain criteria laid out in the Zoning Regulations.

“I think we can make an argument that potentially we are more limited than our typical mandate than just saying, ‘Do these signs meet specifications or regulations or are they close enough where we are willing to make an exception because of the criteria?’ ”

Commissioner Bill Redman had brought examples of other types of signs he found on the Internet that carried a message of road safety, and fellow commissioners including John Kriz said they favored the alternatives—such as a “Share the Road” sign—in part, because they’re more familiar to motorists.

Sheiner replied that ‘Share the Road’ “is just nebulous, whatever that means—this [the Sound Cyclists sign] tells you to give a 3-foot clearance.”

Redman and commissioner Claire Tiscornia both said that P&Z needs to get clear on what its role in cases where private organizations such as the Sound Cyclists come forward proposing what is essentially a road safety sign.