Navigating through Norwalk these days is trying when you’re sipping a hot beverage, chatting on the cell phone, texting, responding to email and changing CDs on most days, but these days it is near impossible. I’ve been relegated to listening to the same CD over and over. No, I really don’t do all those things while driving, simultaneously, I kid. But I’m not kidding when I observe that there are some road construction areas that are so poorly marked that they constitute an obstacle course that even Brian Vicker’s Red Bull Toyota would have trouble navigating.
A few days ago I was on a detour onto Wilton Ave. Asphalt was stripped off in patches, cars were parked haphazardly, tractors were parked too with only couple of orange cones around them, manhole covers and other obstructions protruding and cement culverts were piled curbside. This is primarily a residential street, and cars were attempting to back out onto the road, now jammed with diverted cars from Cross street with sight lines that were blocked. Who lets these construction sites operate like this?
Public safety should be first and foremost on the drawing plans for these projects. The state, or CL&P manages to do this for the electrical cable project that is snaking its way on Westport and Connecticut avenue. Today I appreciated the small asphalt ramps on Westport ave that made the grade change of unpaved and paved roads not as jarring. At night, when these construction crews were working, lots of cones, equipment not stored on the road, in short a well managed project. Wilton ave, by all appearances a city job, looked nothing like this.
Meanwhile in an unrelated observation, if you think traffic in Norwalk is bad, try Westport, at rush hour. The two southerly ways to cross the Saugatuck river are jammed far beyond anything I’ve ever expereinced, even in the days when accidents during rush hour spilled traffic onto local roads. And its not like Westport has had a surge of condos built either. Interestingly, once I crossed the border into Norwalk, the traffic dispersed. See what a nice grid of networked roads gets you.
