The business owner involved in an ongoing dispute with residential neighbors on East Maple Street on Wednesday night pushed back on a traffic consultant’s suggestion to change the way he uses his own parking lot in order to improve traffic and safety.
A look at the sight line at the corner of East Maple Street and Main Street from earlier this year. The owner of AC Auto Body recently paved over the grassy area pictured here.
Instead of asking him to alter a stone wall (if not remove it) at AC Auto Body and no longer park cars in the northwest corner of the lot, the sight line problem at the corner of Main Street would go away if traffic on East Maple Street is made one-way toward Hoyt Street, according to the business’s owner, Anthony Ceraso.
The wall “is on my property that we did have the approval to have erected when we did renovation, as well as the fence,” Ceraso told members of the Police Commission at their regular meeting, held in the training room in the New Canaan Police Department.
“So my concern is and my original observation was the easiest way to rectify this was a one-way street. We don’t have to put up any stop signs, any traffic lights, we don’t have to worry about monitoring traffic going in or out of there with the police department giving tickets or warnings, because now it [would be] changed to a one-way street. It seems to me that line of sight is much easier coming out of Hoyt to Main, in either direction. It’s just so obvious to everyone, I just do not understand why this is not. It is a business-slash-residential area. We all live there, we all have investments there. If we did not know that, maybe we should not have bought there.”
The comments came after the commission in July discontinued a practice whereby Ceraso had been allowed to park his commercial or client vehicles on East Maple.
The consultant that the commission had hired to conduct a traffic study of the area— Michael Galante from Fairfield-based Frederick P. Clark Associates—noted during the meeting that the area on the corner of Ceraso’s lot that been causing a sight line problem for motorists exiting East Maple at Main had been grass but appears recently to have been paved over.
In response, Ceraso said: “That is my property up to the very corner where we just recently blacktopped because of a lack of parking.”
Galante’s suggestions include creating new crosswalks at the intersection and “bumping out” the corners at East Maple Street in order to improve the sight distance for northbound motorists on Main. He also noted that a “low stone wall” at AC Auto “actually blocks sight lines,” adding that it would help if no vehicles parked in the corner of the business’s lot nearest the intersection.
“That is private property, but it is actually blocking sight lines,” Galante said.
His report included a speed study and sight distance analyses. In addition to the changes asked of AC Auto Body, it recommends making at least some of these changes (Galante underscored that not all recommendations are expected to be implemented):
- Re-aligning the double yellow centerline to narrow the southbound Main Street approach and receiving lane at the East Maple Street/Maple Street intersection;
- Narrowing the northbound Main Street travel lane to 11 feet (as measured from the realigned centerline) through the use of a curb extension to the immediate north and south of East Maple Street intersection;
- Relcoating the STOP bar on the East Maple Street approach to Main Street in order to increase sight lines to both the north and south along Main Street;
- Relocating the crosswalk on the westbound approach to Main Street to increase visibility of pedestrians crossing East Maple Street;
- Proving a ‘Road Narrows’ warning sign along the northbound travel lane of Main Street in advance of the East Maple Street intersection;
- Eliminating the most southerly parking space on the easterly side of Main Street between Cherry Street and Maple Street/East Maple Street.
The recommendations come as tensions have escalated between Ceraso and several neighbors. Brought to the town’s attention last winter, the sight line and traffic problems caused by the flatbed trucks that used to park on East Maple Street, as well as customer cars that include school buses, amounted to an abuse of a privilege that the town granted some years ago because the auto shop serves as New Canaan’s emergency towing service, neighbors have said.
A handful of those neighbors addressed the commission.
Joe Cox of East Maple Street, pushed back on the idea of making his road one-way—a suggestion that Commissioner Paul Foley has backed in the past and reiterated at the meeting—saying that if motorists ended up on Hoyt Street it would exacerbate problems there.
Saying that because cars park “all over the place” on Hoyt, navigating it is like “slaloming,” siphoning the volume on East Maple there would be “transferring the problem to another zone, which is even more ‘neighborhood-y.’ ”
Commissioners and neighbors in attendance asked Galante whether making a road one-way increases motor vehicle speeds (yes, generally), how much the sight line would improve with a bump-out (from less than 100 feet to about 200) and whether pedestrian traffic is also a factor in the flow of cars at the intersection (yes though motor vehicles are more important).
Chairman Stuart Sawabini said the commission would study the findings in Galante’s report and return to the matter at its next meeting.