News

New Canaan Motorist, 16, in ‘Stable’ Condition at Hospital after Rollover on Merritt Parkway

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The 16-year-old New Canaan boy who suffered “suspected serious injury” following an accident on the Merritt Parkway on Tuesday night is in stable condition at Stamford Hospital, officials say. The motorist, who had a 17-year-old Stamford girl as a passenger in the car (she suffered “suspected minor injury,” the report said), was driving northbound in the left lane just past Exit 35 when he attempted to merge into the right lane at about 8:07 p.m. and “lost control of the vehicle due to its speed and wet road conditions,” according to an Accident Information Summary report from the State of Connecticut Department of Public Safety’s police division. The car struck the median guardrail, rolled onto its roof and came to a stop in the center of the roadway, the report said. The driver was taken by Stamford EMS to Stamford Hospital for treatment of possible serious injury, the report said. A nursing supervisor at the hospital told NewCanaanite.com on Wednesday night that his condition was “stable.”

Around Town

State: New Canaan’s Stretch of Merritt Parkway to Include Traffic-Squeezing Jersey Barriers for At Least Two More Years

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Motorists beware: Officials say the Jersey barriers now squeezing traffic along the New Canaan-Stamford stretch of the Merritt will remain in place until early 2016 as part of a major safety and drainage project, and that the next phase will include a New Canaan segment of the parkway toward Norwalk. The Connecticut Department of Transportation is doing most of the work at night (click on the ‘Active Construction’ in New Canaan icon here for details on times)—it includes updating original 1930s-era drainage systems as well as tree work in the medians and along the edges of the Merritt, Phillip J. Zoppi, a DOT transportation maintenance manager said Tuesday. “Unfortunately for you the pain will not end once New Canaan-Stamford is completed—which it should be competed some time in early 2016—because they still have to do” the New Canaan-Norwalk section, Zoppi said during “Pizza with the Chief,” a public event held in the training room at the New Canaan Police Department. Zoppi was one of about 20 attendees at the hour-long question-and-answer session. “The reason the traffic becomes a nightmare is the Jersey barrier squeezes it in,” Zoppi said.

Around Town

Alternating One-Way in Place on Ponus Ridge at Merritt Parkway

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State officials on Monday installed an alternating one-way traffic light on Ponus Ridge at the Merritt Parkway as bridge repair (and roadway replacement) work gets underway there—a project that will continue through the summer of 2015. Part of a larger, $57 million Merrit Parkway Improvements project that spans several miles of the parkway (and starting in September will include South Avenue), the Ponus Ridge work involves removing the bridge deck, repairing the top of the bridge and then putting the bridge deck back, officials say. “We will do that in sections, one side and then once that is upgraded and repaired, we will flop the traffic back to the other side,” Joe Sorcinelli, project engineer for the Connecticut Department of Transportation, told NewCanaanite.com. Ponus Ridge at the Merritt will remain an alternating one-way intersection for the length of the project, he said. What really matters in terms of the timing of the work is the condition of the bridge arch, Sorcinelli said.