Newtown’s Traffic Puzzles

Last week Newtown’s Police Commission passed along a set of recommendations to the Board of Selectmen designed to address traffic problems in the center of town. The commission is the town’s traffic authority, and as such it has come under increasing pressure in recent years to exercise some of that authority to reduce the public safety hazards associated with the growing crush of traffic that converges on the center of town via Church Hill Road, Main Street, and South Main Street.

The Police Commission based most of its recommendations on the conclusions of a 29-page draft report by traffic consultants called “The Queen Street Area Traffic Improvement Plan.” As is evident from the title of that report, Queen Street became the main focus of the discussion largely through the efforts of Queen Street residents, who started attending Police Commission meetings in 2001 to complain about the volume and speed of traffic on their road. Largely as a sop to these residents, the traffic plan suggested, and the Police Commission recommended, one of the most nonsensical proposals now before the Board of Selectmen: a series of inverted potholes, otherwise known as speed bumps, along the length of the residential portion of Queen Street. These traffic obstructions will divert even more traffic onto South Main Street where the real traffic hazards lie.

While the Police Commission wisely rejected an over designed traffic island at the flagpole crossing of Main Street and Church Hill Road, it ended up recommending that one of the town’s most hazardous intersections “remain untouched and intact.” Yes, the traffic consultant went overboard in designing a safer intersection at the flagpole, but a formal recommendation to do nothing in the face of continuing accidents and injuries seems equally extreme.

Since the Board of Selectmen’s review of the Police Commission’s traffic recommendations will coincide with the beginning of the local election campaign this year, we trust that traffic issues affecting the whole town, and not just one street or small segment of the community, will get a full airing before any of the Police Commission’s recommendations are authorized or funded.

Newtown’s traffic problems are a hydra-headed affair reaching far out into the community along not only the state Routes 25, 34, and 302, but also on local through-roads, including Currituck, Boggs Hill, Toddy Hill, and Hanover Roads. The center of town, and the flagpole intersection in particular, are only the nexus of various interrelated traffic puzzles that need solving. Addressing the problems on one street at the expense of others is not a solution. The challenge will be to come up with a comprehensive traffic strategy that recognizes the interdependence of our town’s most-used roads and implementing that strategy in a way that doesn’t make things worse.