Movement is gathering to oppose the cloverleaf design, otherwise known as Modified Cloverleaf with Option D2 and a push for the DOT to choose Alternate 12 A. The details from The Hour:
“I have reviewed the department’s presentation, as well as listened to my constituents that are in the affected area of the project. I am disappointed that the department is favoring the ‘Modified Cloverleaf with Option D2′ version of the project,” wrote state Rep. Lawrence F. Cafero Jr., R-142, House minority leader, in a letter to DOT Acting Commissioner H. James Boice on Friday. “I believe that this choice does not provide the best protection to the residents of the area, the motorists using this interchange, or the environment. I would prefer the Department select ‘Alternate 12A’ as the design for ‘the project.’”
According to Cafero, Alternate 12A would not require clearing of woodlands east of Perry Avenue, from Rae Lane to Louden Street. In addition, 12A would have a reduced impact on wetlands and make a safer drive for motorists traveling between the Merritt Parkway and Route 7 Connector.
Alternate 12A, while retaining ramps near Main Avenue, lacks cloverleafs where the parkway meets the connector. As such, the design cuts less into the Silvermine neighborhood than does the cloverleaf design.
Cafero is not alone in questioning the modified cloverleaf design, which the DOT and Merritt Parkway Conservancy, one of a number of preservationist groups that halted the state’s original design two years ago, have agreed upon as an acceptable alternative.
Michael G. Mushak, a landscape architect who lives in South Norwalk and uses the existing interchange daily, said that he cannot understand “why there was this bandwagon that everyone jumped on so quickly for the cloverleaf.” He describes the modified cloverleaf as “inherently flawed.”“This cloverleaf option is going to destroy more wetlands. (Alternate) 12A covers less land, so it basically takes up less area, and cloverleafs apparently need a lot of space,” Mushak said. “The biggest advantage of 12A is it does not have the weave, where the entrance ramp is dumping traffic onto the road as people are trying to exit (where) you have entering traffic merging with exiting traffic.”
Mushak rejects that the ramps proposed in Alternate 12A are overbuilt or unsightly. Ramp heights are lowered from 30 feet to 10 feet, as compared to the state’s original design, he said.
“Many people hated the original parkway when it was built, and one critic even described it, coincidentally, as a ‘hideous scar on the landscape,’” Mushak said. “In other words, one person’s hideous ramp is another person’s soaring and graceful expression of freedom and possibility.”
On March 18, residents, advocacy groups and local officials heard about the Modified Cloverleaf with Option D2 and other alternate designs during a public scoping meeting at Norwalk City Hall. The DOT and the Merritt Parkway Conservancy both prefer the modified cloverleaf design, which is characterized by its looping ramps that allow access to the parkway and Route 7 in all directions.
Most everyone who spoke at the meeting favored the new design, though it introduces what traffic engineers call a “weave” between the on and off ramps of exit 39. Some cars will try to merge right to exit the parkway onto Route 7 while others will be trying to merge left to get out of the exit lane.
At the same time, one official acknowledged safety issues exist with cloverleaf designs, which leaves traffic to merge. This can result in sideswipes, rear-ending and more congestion, said Stephen Ulman, a principal engineer for Purcell Associates, which built computer models of traffic for the interchange plan.
“Weaves are not something we like to introduce,” Ulman said before the meeting. “We live with them.”
State Sen. Bob Duff, D-25, majority whip, while not opposing the cloverleaf design at the scoping meeting, said this week that he needs more information. On Wednesday, Duff wrote Boice and the Parkway Conservancy Chairman Peter Malkin, asking them to include the suggestions of area residents before beginning preliminary work on the cloverleaf design.
“I’m happy that the Department of Transportation and the Merritt Parkway Conservancy were able to reach an agreement on the long-awaited interchange between the parkway and Route 7,” wrote Duff. “However, I would encourage both the department and the conservancy to incorporate the suggestions of area neighbors, who have expressed concerns about both the safety and the environmental impact of the plan.”
Duff said he asked the DOT to extend the public comment period to another public meeting.
Although the modified cloverleaf design “was pitched as the preferred alternative” at the March 18 meeting, the DOT hasn’t made its final decision and is continuing to accept public input, according to Judd Everhart, transportation department spokesman.
“I would say that the cloverleaf currently at the forefront is certainly the preferred plan by the DOT and the conservancy. Having said that, we have not made a final decision. We are continuing to accept public input,” Everhart said Friday. “We’ll probably have at least one pubic hearing this spring. And then we anticipate making a final decision on design sometime in 2009. So there’s still a good deal of time.”
The cloverleaf option is estimated to cost between $98 million and $124 million.
According to the Parkway Conservancy, the modified cloverleaf design is the best choice because it maintains as best possible the historic characteristics of the parkway, the new bridges at Main Avenue and Perry Avenue will be built to a “style and standard consistent with the original bridges built on the parkway,” ramps to and from the parkway will not be lit, and the design requires less and shorter lengths of ramps.
The design also improves traffic movement, is easier to construct, less disruptive to traffic and business during construction, and would cost $30 to $50 million less to build than the original design advanced by the DOT several years ago, according to the conservancy.
In 2005, the DOT halted work on an earlier design in the face of a lawsuit brought on by the Merritt Parkway Conservancy and nearly a half-dozen other preservationist groups.
I’m not a fan of the weave traffic plan, it affects everyone’s commute, beyond making a hazard for Norwalkers getting on and off. So, make the calls and emails to our legislators and let see if we can all put Norwalk’s interests on this one.
source: The Hour, Cloverleaf design not so magic for some critics, March 29, 2008
{ 23 comments }
Thank god people are speaking up. The cloverleaf plan blasts away two hillsides, acres of woods, fills wetlands, and pushes new ramps right into Silvermine over Perry avenue. Why was this plan ever accepted by so many? They probably never really looked at it, and accepted the endorsements from the conservancy without any questions being asked. There seems to be some hidden agenda going on to get the alternate 12a ramp away from the merritt7 buildings. This needs to be looked at more closely…
There go ANOTHER two years!
All the storm drains in that area as well as the merrit rely on those wetlands to take heavy amounts rainfall. What will happen when they fill them. Flooding of main ave?
You may be right about another 2 years, but the alternative for those who live in the area is to live with something they hate FOREVER.
On the contrary, anonymous #2, Alternate 12A will not take another 2 years but START 2 YEARS SOONER, since most of the studies and engineering are done already, since it is just a scaled-down version of the original plan that was all ready to go. And COST EVEN LESS than the land-gobbling cloverleaf, which needs 2 FULL YEARS of NEW engineering, and 2 years of CONSTRUCTION COST INCREASES, that erases its supposed lower cost that was trumpeted as part of its well-orchestrated but dubious PR campaign. If people would just stop and look at the facts, there was a lot of fishy stuff shoved down our throats, and a lot of politicians who didn’t stop and ask some serious questions before jumping on this deadly cloverleaf bandwagon. This whole thing is just unbelievable, and shows how gullible politicians are to some well-worded but inaccurate press releases. It is embarrassing. And the cloverleaf will be a FATAL MISTAKE that we will pay for for generations. Just look at the plans, which nobody has seemed to do yet. They speak for themselves.
Somebody desperately wanted that interchange shoved far to the east right into Silvermine with no regard for the residential neighborhood, wetlands impacts, and open space destruction, not to mention the deadly traffic jam producing effects of the weaves from the cloverleaf.
The question to ask is who wanted this, and why did we have to wait 2 years to get to this point? Is the chairman of the MPC connected to Merritt 7 in any way?
I meant far to the west.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3601/is_n14_v41/ai_15862552
fact:
Peter Malkin is the chairman of the Merritt Parkway Conservancy.
fact:
Peter Malkin owns Merrittview, a large office building located near where one of the ramps of the original DOT interchange design, and the scaled-down alternate 12A, would have also been located, in front of the windows of his office building.
fact:
The original interchange would have been half built by now, at lower cost and with less disruption to open space and wetlands than the dangerous cloverleaf solution that is pushed into the Silvermine neighborhood right over Perry Avenue, but conveniently out of sight of the Merrittview office building.
fact:
the lawsuit brought by the MPC never mentioned that the chairman of the MPC might benefit by not having construction of a higway ramp next to his office building.
fact:
for 3 years Norwalk has had to deal with the delays, traffic, hundreds of accidents on Main Ave. and surrounding streets, and lost time of not having a proper interchange, and perhaps another 10 years because the cloverleaf will need all new permits and engineering according to the DOT.
fact:
the cloverleaf will not cost less as claimed by the MPC when the construction delays and engineering costs are taken into consideration.
fact:
the cloverleaf destroys more wetlands and open space than Alternate 12A, facts conveniently left out of the press releases before the public meeting.
fact:
the cloverleaf has not been accepted by the DOT yet, and the comment period has now been extended beyond the March 31 deadline that was strangely very brief for such an important project.
Contact Thomas Harley, P. E., CT DOT, PO Box 317546, Newington, CT. 06131 and let him know what you think.
The closer look at the cloverleaf is revealing a lot more wrong with it. Alternate 12A seems like the best option for Norwalk, Silvermine, and the whole region. Let the DOT know that Alternate 12A has the least impact on the environment, Silvermine, and is the safest for drivers.
got caught in the weave tonight on rt. 7, just beyond the merge from 95, where evrybody criss-crosses to make the next exit for belden ave.
2 cars nearly sideswiped, wet road, one car fishtailed onto the shoulder. the cloverleaf is going to be real fun if that ever gets built. the broad river fire staion will be real busy when that happens. and the hospital will get a ton of business.
12 A is not a good solution. Take a look at how many bridges it puts across the Norwalk River — I don’t have the plan here but I think it’s something like 6 roadway crossings in a short span. It makes the river a covered ditch at that point and puts massive amounts of harmful run-off into the river. The cloverleaf has one crossing, considerably minimizing the effect on the River.
I agree that the weave at East Ave. – 95 – Rt 7 is abominable. Much shorter span and more dangerous than the proposed Merritt cloverleaf. No one is banging the drum to close Exit 16 for safety reasons. Drivers can do more than guide their vehicles in blissful oblivion, you know.
The furor to support 12A is another effort by the finger-wagging folks who support “nanny-statism” — this time in highways that do the driving for you.
# 11, the 6 bridges of Alternate 12A are over a span of only 100 feet, immediately next to the existing bridges for the Merritt Parkway, so this is hardly a pristine area and one that is already dominated by bridges over the river. Multiple bridges over a span of 100 feet does not create the covered ditch you describe, and besides this is nowhere near a residential neighborhood like the multiple large bridges of the cloverleaf plan over Perry Avenue smack in the middle of a Silvermine neighborhood, and over a main gateway to the precious woodsy and historic Silvermine area.
And the runoff from the bridges that you mention can be directed to retention ponds and/or filtered so it does not go directly into the river, a technique used on newer road designs over the last 2 decades. The flawed cloverleaf plan also has cumulatively more than double the amount of bridge span length over wetlands right next to a residential neighborhood in Silvermine.
No one wants to have the state do the driving for us, but we don’t want the state to build a proven cloverleaf deathtrap that will subject drivers to daily accidents with loss of life and limb and enormous resulting traffic tie-ups. Cloverleafs have been abandoned as a solution all over the world for this reason, and are actively being replaced by responsible transportation professionals from Maine to California, yet we should build a brand new one here in Norwalk? On a very busy and crucial commuter route? Do you think drivers will miraculously just slow down to the 40 mph design speed that the Merritt was built for 80 years ago? Do you really think that will happen? Perhaps you may hope that they just kill themselves off, or end up in wheelchairs for the rest of their lives. It usually is not the reckless driver that ends up killed or injured anyway, but the innocent driver and their passengers just driving down the road who gets rear-ended or side-swiped, two of the most common accidents that occur in the weave of a cloverleaf.
And the cloverleaf plan destroys several acres of mature forest, covers more open space, puts cumulatively more bridges over wetlands than 12A does, and puts 2 enormous bridges over Perry Avenue immediately next to a residential neighborhood and over a main gateway to Silvermine.
The advantages of Alternate 12A far surpass any advantages of the cloverleaf, which has only one main advantage and that is to get a ramp away from the west-facing corner office windows of the Merrittview Class A office building owned by none other than the chairman of the Merritt Conservancy, Peter Malkin, so that his tenants can keep their woodsy view and he can keep his rents up. To hell with the hundreds of residents in Silvermine who will have to live next to the cloverleaf that is shoved right into their backyards.
Guess if you are rich and powerful you can make almost anything happen, especially when you have cleverly conned a few politicians and a few preservationists with a slick PR campaign.
The cloverleaf is a major disaster waiting to happen. Alternate 12A is the only viable and responsible option, and should be supported by anyone who wants to safely drive the highways in our area without major traffic jams due to tragic, deadly, and completely unnecessary accidents, and who values the woodsy and historic character of Silvermine.
You keep swervin’ in my lane
and it’s causing lots of danger
I’m a honkin’ on my horn
I’m a shootin’ you the finger
You keep a switching on your bright lights
But you’re just too dim to know
When you’re swervin’ on life’s highway
You’re running someone off the road
—Robert Earl Keen
from #11: “Drivers can do more than guide their vehicles in blissful oblivion, you know.”
Well, #11, guess all these folks should have just driven better, don’t you think?
From a Long Island Newspaper:
The interchange where the Meadowbrook Parkway meets Hempstead Turnpike loops in the shape of a cloverleaf and is the third most dangerous spot on all the state roads on Long Island.
Police say they respond to a rear-end crash here on the borders of East Meadow and Uniondale just about every day.
The flawed, outdated design and the high volume of rush-hour traffic make for a tricky turn, no matter which way you’re headed.
“It’s kind of like trying to put 10 gallons in a 5-gallon jug,” said Frank Pearson, a regional transportation planner for the state Department of Transportation. “Literally, it just spills over.”
The short stretch of the Meadowbrook Parkway as it undercuts Hempstead Turnpike recorded 180 accidents in 2004 and 2005, two of them fatal and 78 causing injury.
Great editorial in the Advocate today:
SAD, BUT INTERCHANGE NEEDS MORE THOUGHT
It appears that the state Department of Transportation learned from its experience with a group of conservationists who were able to stop a major Merritt Parkway interchange project because they disputed its design.
The DOT is showing signs, at least publicly, that it is taking seriously a new group of residents’ concerns over the project, which has been redesigned. It is giving them greater opportunity for input than had previously been planned.
That’s good, because there are serious, legitimate concerns with the new design – including questions of driver safety.
We’ve long urged the state to get on with it, and make improvements to the Route 7-Merritt Parkway interchange in Norwalk to address safety and traffic concerns for commuters. The project has been in development for more than 10 years, and the DOT finally was about to get started on a new interchange in 2005 when the Merritt Parkway Conservancy sued to halt work. A federal judge in the spring of 2006 ruled in favor of the preservationists, saying the DOT and Federal Highway Administration hadn’t proved that all steps had been taken to ensure minimum impact to the parkway.
Now the DOT and preservationists have arrived at a joint plan that appears acceptable to both.
Hallelujah, let’s get the shovels in the ground right?
Well, not so fast.
Residents of Norwalk’s Silvermine community have stepped up to say they have wrongly been left out of discussions of the new plan, which would affect
them directly by encroaching on their neighborhood.
Furthermore, the new interchange plan employs a so-called cloverleaf design, which in many places has become notorious for the traffic and safety problems it causes – ironic as traffic and safety are the exact issues the Merritt interchange project was intended to resolve in the firstplace.
Just months ago, state DOT officials had said they’d been trying “to move away” from cloverleafs. The problem with those layouts is they make vehicles enter a highway just before the spot where others exit, causing drivers to negotiate a hair-raising weave of accelerating and decelerating cars, trucks and SUVs. Conservancy members have said this particular cloverleaf wouldn’t present the problems of others, but that’s going to take some convincing.
Also, the footprint of the new design is much wider than the original. It overlaps wetlands that the original did not, and intrudes into residential areas.
Silvermine and other residents have been outspoken about the new design since a March 18 public hearing. The DOT, to its credit, has said it will schedule an additional hearing late this month or in May. It also has continued to take written comments from the public, abolishing a former deadline, and will continue taking them until a project plan becomes final.
There is another plan on the table, an alteration of the DOT’s original plan that does not employ a cloverleaf. That needs to be seriously considered, even though it has taken a back seat to the cloverleaf design favored by the Conservancy.
As hard as it is to say after all this time, the DOT should proceed cautiously. The worst possible outcome of this frustrating, drawn-out process would be a new interchange that doesn’t improve traffic or safety, and potentially makes them worse in the long run.
Thanks #15 for posting the Advocate editorial. Should be required reading for the well-intentioned but sometimes foggy-brained preservation herd that jumped on the cloverleaf idea just because the Parkway Conservancy told them to, without ever actually looking at it. (Refer to #8 above).
Columnist Questions Logic Behind Think Tank Support of Highway Projects
With the combined local, state and federal outlays for roads estimated at more than $150 billion in 2005, Governing magazine columnist Alex Marshall finds it ”exceedingly strange” that conservative and libertarian think tanks committed to less government view taxpayer-funded highways and roads ”as a solution to traffic congestion and a general boon to living,” while attacking ”mass-transit spending, particularly on trains.”
These think tanks ‘’seem to see a highway as an expression of the free market and of American individualism and a rail line as an example of government meddling and creeping socialism,” the columnist observes, citing publications and presentations of the Los Angeles-based Reason Foundation and its transportation wing.
They include papers entitled ”How to Build Our Way Out of Congestion”, ”Myths of Light Rail Transit” and ”Rethinking Transit ‘Dollars & Sense’: Unearthing the True Cost of Public Transit,” but none on ”unearthing the true cost of our public highway network.”
Invited by the columnist to square its support for governmental road funding with its ”general dislike of government involvement,” Reason Foundation’s founder, former president and prolific transportation study author Robert Poole responded that he ”never thought about it that way.”
The foundation’s general premise ”is that transportation infrastructure would work better if it were market-driven,” he said. ”Where it’s possible, that infrastructure should be run in a business-like manner with users paying full cost.”
The columnist calls this reasoning ”essentially incorrect,” stressing, ”Transportation is like education: it works best through heavy general funding that pays off down the road in a community’s or nation’s overall prosperity.”
Noting that governments have spent several trillion dollars on roads over the past century, he writes, ”This system, open to all with a car, has created our automobile-based landscape of suburbs, single-family homes, office parks, mega churches and shopping malls. Love it or hate it, it is the product of massive government spending.”
Although the foundation’s ideas for truck-only lanes and congestion pricing ”are worth considering,” the columnist cautions city and state officials often confronted with its studies that ”the systematic bias in favor of roads and against transit makes the foundation’s work suspect.” — Governing 4/7/2008
As a resident of Norwalk I was surprised and dismayed by the recent announcement that a new plan had been created for the intersection of the Merritt Parkway and Route 7.
I am a strong proponent of Alternate 12A for safety reasons, for environmental reasons and for aesthetics reasons.
Safety: Alternate #12A does not create additional crossing traffic or “weaving” situations where cars exiting the roadway must cross through traffic entering the highway. There is a great deal of research, which states that “weaving” is the primary weakness of the cloverleaf design. As a result, cloverleafs are no longer the favored way of creating intersections, especially in urban areas where space is at a premium. We currently have an existing half-cloverleaf where Route 7 joins Route 15 and it is unsatisfactory with the present level of traffic. There are a large number of businesses on Main Avenue, whose workers commute on the Merritt and Route 7. Therefore, it is essential that we have a safe interchange. In addition, as traffic in Fairfield County and on the Merritt Parkway is expected to increase in the future, it doesn’t make sense to use a plan that features weaving traffic.
Environmental: Alternative #12A has the least impact on wetlands, even less than the Original Design. The new Modified Cloverleaf design has much greater impact on wetlands, especially the vernal ponds that are in the woodlands set for destruction. Because Alternate #12A has less wetland impact it is a logical alternative to the Modified Cloverleaf design. In addition, the Modified Cloverleaf design will require 20 acres of mature woodlands on both sides of the Parkway to be completely cleared to make room for large circular ramps east of Perry Ave. This action will destroy more than 6,000 trees, many of them 80-100 years old and more than 100 feet tall.
Aesthetics: Alternate #12A does not encroach on the Silvermine neighborhood. With this plan, all new construction is contained within the existing Route 7/Northeast Utilities commercial corridor. At the present time, Route 7 is well-screened from Perry Avenue with woodlands which preserve the character of this rural roadway, although Route 7 runs close by.
The Modified Cloverleaf option presented will necessitate clearing the woodlands to the
East of Perry Avenue from Rae Lane to Louden Street, creating a clear swath of open land from Perry Avenue to the Merritt Seven office park. The vista would include new bridges and approach ramps over Perry Avenue as well as new, elevated ramps immediately to the East of Perry. In addition, the traffic noise will no longer be buffered by the considerable woodlands. These woodlands have more than twenty different species of mature trees, some of which are 80-100 years old. There is also a tremendous amount of wildlife in these woodlands including Red-tailed Hawk, Wild Turkey, Pileated Woodpecker, Chicadee varieties, Warbler varieties, Eastern Meadowlark, Eastern Phoebe, Carolina Wren, Great Blue Heron, Snowy Egret, Wood Duck, Great Horned Owl, Ring-necked Pheasant, deer, coyote, fox, etc.
Since one of the reasons for completing the interchange is to increase commercial development in Norwalk, it makes sense to keep the new road construction in the already cleared commercial area, rather than forever damage the rural character of Silvermine.
I encourage all to attend the May 14 meeting at 7:00 pm at Silvermine Elementary School and the May 29 meeting at 7:00 pm at City Hall to voice your opinion.
I completely agree with all points made above. Even putting aside the environmental concerns, the entrance and exit patterns with the Cloverleaf Plan make NO SENSE due to the introduction of a weave pattern with known increased accident rates. Why on earth should taxpayers spend a hundred million dollars to build a cloverleaf design that is no longer recommended by traffic engineers for urban areas for both safety and traffic congestion reasons?? Many cities are spending additional dollars to dismantle them; why are we building one? It makes no sense.
The Alternate 12A plan is a much safer, less invasive interchange all around. It keeps the development within the current commercial corridor. The exit and entrance ramps are very straightforward with NO WEAVING introduced and will safely accomodate high traffic volumes.
to #11, imagine having this built in your backyard, in your historic residential neighborhood. How would you feel. I am a modern day commuter just like many on the Merritt. I am all for upgrading the parkway to help the flow of traffic but it belongs in the already cleared commercial corridor.
You state “It makes the river a covered ditch at that point and puts massive amounts of harmful run-off into the river”
Well with the cloverleaf it builds through much of the wetlands now soaking up much of the water, can you imagine the runoff and the floods in backyards of residents, the streets of Perry Ave and of Main Street if the hillsides are destroyed?
The point of this whole debate/conversation is to get a better look at the options. We need to look at the options from
#1 Safety 1st standpoint, cloverleafs are not favored in this respect.
#2 Destroying of wetlands with an abundance of wildlife in it.
#3 Forever changing the landscape of a beautiful historic neighborhood over the landscape of a commercial corridor and a bulding owned by the head of the Conservancy…
We welcome everyone to come and listen to the true facts.
Glad to see there are others who think the cloverleaf is a sham. This needs to be stopped now. Wish the NYTimes wouuld pick up the Malkin connection.
Any new bridges built over the river are required to have drains with filters to catch any pollutants that would otherwise enter the river so #11’s argument doesn’t make any sense.
Perhaps the Merritt Park Conservancy could monitor the filters to make sure no pollutants enter the river – that is if they even still continue to exist after the cloverleaf and new office buildings get built!
#22, you hit the nail on the head. The MPC is a front for powerful real estate interests, and it will take years to recover from this Peter Malkin mess, if it ever does. The preservation community really needs to start thinking before leaping. They have just served up a whopper-a Parkway destroying and dangerous cloverleaf that keeps Malkin’s office building away from any ramps, which are now in huindreds of people’s backyards in Silvermine. Thanks but no thanks, “preservationists”.
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