Government

Police to Parks Officials: We Have No Safety Concerns Regarding ‘Caffeine & Carburetors’ at Waveny (or Downtown)

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Parks officials on Tuesday night reasserted that they have safety concerns about how the Caffeine & Carburetors auto enthusiasts’ gathering at Waveny, even though the deputy chief of police said that the New Canaan Police Department has no such worries. In fact, Deputy Chief John DiFederico told members of the Parks & Recreation Commission during their special meeting, “We have no issues at all from a police and safety perspective either here in Waveny or downtown.”

“We have worked closely for the past five years with Caffeine & Carburetors and from my perspective they are one of the most organized groups that we have worked with,” DiFederico told the Commission during its meeting, held at Lapham Community Center. “What they bring to the town—the size, the volume of people and the volume of traffic—they work very closely with us, they are very organized, they work with Public Works and with [the Community Emergency Response Team]. They hire as many officers as we need to cover the event. They are open to all suggestions.

News

Police To Step Up Enforcement at New Canaan’s Six Major Car Accident Locations

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New Canaan Police say they’re ramping up enforcement at areas where they see the highest incidence of motor vehicle accidents in town. Deputy Chief John DiFederico said Wednesday night that after studying accident history in New Canaan with the department’s lead accident investigator, authorities identified one cluster of intersections downtown and another series along the Route 123 corridor. In downtown New Canaan, motor vehicle accidents occur most frequently at Elm and Park Streets, South Avenue and Cherry Street, and Cherry and Main Streets, according to DiFederico. The other high-accident areas are along Route 123 at Old Norwalk Road, Lakeview Avenue/Little Brook Road and East Avenue/Silvermine Avenue, he said. The downtown crashes involved violations such as unsafe backing on Elm Street, “which would be people backing out of spaces, and then traffic control devices, going through red lights or stop signs, and then lane violations,” DiFederico said at a regular meeting of the Police Commission.

Business

Elm Street To Lose 15 Parking Spaces

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The one-way stretch of Elm Street, commercial heart of downtown New Canaan and home to many of its most cherished (if in some cases struggling) local businesses, as soon as next week will lose 15 parking spaces due to its lack of compliance with a little-known state statute. New Canaan long has operated outside a 1949 state law that says, “No vehicle shall be permitted to remain parked within twenty-five feet of an intersection or a marked crosswalk thereat.”

Yet recently, when the Department of Public Works removed the parking striping on Elm Street in order to put in a layer of protective seal, a resident put town officials on formal notice that the existing spaces violated that law, since they were too close to the five crosswalks on Elm between Main and Park Streets. 

In all, after doing the math, New Canaan in bringing itself into compliance with the law will lose 13 spaces (and another two by increasing the width of angled parking by six inches per space—see below). The town last week hired a Fairfield-based transportation consulting firm to find out just what could be done with the parking layout vis-a-vis the state requirement, but “it is what it is,” Police Deputy Chief John DiFederico said Wednesday night during a regular meeting of the Police Commission. As the official local traffic authority in New Canaan, the Commission had to vote to change the parking configuration on Elm Street. “Rock and a hard place,” Chairman Sperry DeCew said during the meeting, held at the New Canaan Police Department.

Government

Clapboard Hill Road Residents Seek Reduction in Motor Vehicle Speeds

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Residents of a windy residential street on the east side of New Canaan are seeking ways to slow down motor vehicle traffic there, officials say. Clapboard Hill Road residents have turned to traffic-calming officials in New Canaan to address what they view as a safety matter, according to New Canaan Police Capt. John DiFederico. Though the 85th percentile of drivers travel at 32 mph in the 25 mph zone there, which is “not outrageous for that road,” it’s windy and “a lot of people want to use these roads for pedestrian traffic and bike traffic and kids to play,” DiFederico said during the June 20 meeting of the Police Commission. “And some roads just aren’t really good for that,” DiFederico said at the meeting, held at the New Canaan Police Department. Traffic officials including DiFederico and Public Works Director Tiger Mann are in early conversations with representatives of the neighborhood about what may be done. 

Tax records show that there are nine homes on the street, which runs for about a quarter-mile between Carter Street and Silvermine Road. 

DiFederico said the department has placed speed sentries, which capture data on passing motor vehicles, just once in the past year.

Government

‘A Big Safety Issue for Us’: Nursery Road, Area Residents Voice Concerns Over Heavy, Speeding Commuter Traffic 

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Responding to concerns from residents that speeding commuter traffic on Nursery Road is creating a safety hazard, town officials on Wednesday said they would request a formal study to figure out how to best address the problem. Navigation apps such as Waze appear to be sending motorists stuck in Merritt Parkway traffic along Nursery Road—as well as Gerdes and White Oak Shade Roads—as a cut-through between Exits 37 and 38, officials said at the regular meeting of the Police Commission. According to Police Capt. John DiFederico, data from speed sentries shows that Nursery Road is getting a major spike from 7 to 9 a.m., where traffic rises from about 30 to 40 cars per hour to 200 cars per hour. For Nursery Road residents such as Charlein Megherby, the traffic on the street has been “horrible.”

“It really is a big safety issue for us,” Megherby said at the meeting, held at the New Canaan Police Department. About 20 residents of the roads affected by the surge in traffic attended the meeting.