Rookie Embarks On A Road Mission

After poring over the city’s traffic-calming manual, new Alderman Sal DeCola is looking to make the road to Tweed Airport a little less like the nearby runway — and the streets of Morris Cove safer overall.

For more than half a mile near Tweed’s main entrance, Morris Cove’s Burr Street is a wide and nearly straight speedway, uninterrupted by stop signs. Neighbors have long complained about cars tearing through the neighborhood at reckless speeds.

DeCola now has set his sights on calming traffic on Burr Street, one of three traffic trouble spots he’s targeting in the neighborhood. DeCola said he’d like to see a roundabout put in at the airport entrance, to slow cars and make the street more walkable.

DeCola has already started talking about the plan with Jim Travers, the city’s traffic czar, and Tim Larson, Tweed’s executive director. Larson said he’s on board with traffic-calming, but said he’s not sure a roundabout will fit at the intersection.

Tweed is in the beginning stages of an overhaul to its parking area, Larson said. He said the airport has asked its design contractor to look into possible changes to the airport entrance. The airport will help the city however it can to make Burr Street better, he promised.

DeCola, meanwhile, is busy filling out ​“Complete Streets” project request forms in an effort to get the city to address three problem spots in his ward: Burr Street, Concord Street, and Lighthouse Road. He offered the Independent a tour of those locations and pointed out the problems he sees.

The tour began at DeCola’s seaside home on Townsend Avenue, where the retired letter carrier has lived with his wife and two daughters since 1999. The city’s Complete Streets manual was open on the dining room table, which was made from a glass door salvaged from the old Fitzgerald’s tobacco shop on Union Avenue.

DeCola said he’s been studying the manual closely and taking notes in an effort to address one of the main complaints he heard from his neighbors during his recent campaign for office.

“The issue here is speed,” he said as he headed out of the house. Some of the streets in Morris Cove are so wide that they lend themselves to excessive acceleration, he said.

Driving on Concord Street, DeCola pointed out the intersection with Parker Place. He said people routinely ignore the stop sign there. The street is wide enough and visibility at the corners is such that people somehow feel safe flying through at 35 miles per hour, DeCola said.

Bump-outs are what’s needed there, DeCola said. Also known as ​“chokers,” bump-outs narrow a street near an intersection, causing drivers to instinctively slow down while also reducing the distance pedestrians have to cross the street.

At the corner of Burr and Concord streets, DeCola pointed out that Burr has nary a stop sign between there and East Haven, about two-thirds of a mile away. Cars fly down the street, which East Haveners use as a shortcut to I‑95, DeCola said. Neighbors often have trouble backing out of their driveways onto Burr because of cars whizzing by.

The city put speed humps in on Burr Street last summer, then quickly removed them after complaints from neighbors who said they were ineffective and noisy.

Everyone asks for speed bumps, but they’re not the answer, said DeCola. They create a lot of noise and vibrations and they reduce property values, he said.

On Friday, the most effective traffic calming measure in place on Burr Street was an empty blue recycling Toter that the wind had sent onto the double-yellow line in the middle of the road. Cars decelerated to maneuver carefully around the obstacle.

DeCola said he’d like to put that same principle into practice on the street. At the corner of Fort Hale Road and Burr Street, across from the entrance to the airport, the city should install a roundabout or some ​“refuge islands,” or both, DeCola said. Refuge islands are traffic islands that, like bump-outs, slow traffic and reduce pedestrian-crossing distances.

As it is, Burr Street is simply too wide, he said. As a driver, ​“you feel no hindrance,” he said.

He also pointed out the lack of sidewalks, which forces people in wheelchairs to roll in the street, and pedestrians to walk on the rough terrain on the side of the road.

Ideally, Burr Street would look a lot more like Woodward Avenue, DeCola said. On that street, nearby, the alderman pointed out where the city has installed bump-outs, refuge islands, two roundabouts, and lots of eye-catching signs that make drivers slow down.

DeCola then pointed out a final trouble spot: Lighthouse Road. Like Burr Street, the road is just too wide. For drivers, there are no external signals to use caution, he said. ​“There’s no fear factor.”

During the summer, when the route to the beach is most heavily used, neighbors are plagued by speeding cars on Lighthouse Road, DeCola said. He said bump-outs and islands are the answer to excessive speeds on the street.

“Traffic has to slow down,” he said. ​“Because we’re going to build the road for people not for cars.”

“We’ll leave room for cars,” of course, he added.

Airport Assistance

Airport chief Larson said Tweed has contracted Dewberry engineering firm to come up with design possibilities for its new parking area overhaul. As part of that process, Dewberry will take a look at the entrance onto Burr Street and see what might make sense to slow traffic and please neighbors, Larson said.

“We’re trying to get our arms around what would be appropriate,” he said. A roundabout might not work at the location because of the size of the area and the need to accommodate the public buses that service the airport, he said.

Larson said the airport recognizes there is a sight-line problem for people pulling out of the airport, with visibility blocked by a fence and a lack of stopping lines on the pavement.

“The topography is such that it really needs something,” he said.

The airport won’t be able to pay for improvements to the street, he said. ​“But we could help out with some of the plan or the design work to some degree,” he said.

He said Dewberry should have an idea within a couple of months of what kind of traffic solutions might work on Burr Street.