Time To Act On Borough Traffic

To the Editor:

The Borough of Newtown is now under siege by a steadily increasing river of cars and trucks that pass through the central section of Newtown seeking fast and convenient routes to work or to home. Their primary concern is to reach their destinations as fast as possible with little regard given to speed limits or the residents who get in their way. The bad situation we have been living with has become worse, much worse, and is going to produce a tragedy sooner or later.

The opening of I-84 ramps on Church Hill Road and Mile Hill Road years ago was considered at the time a beneficial event that would conveniently connect Newtown to nearby communities and improve our living standards. Today, those ramps are used more and more by drivers with no Newtown connections who wish to get through this town as fast as possible. The vehicular flooding of secondary and primary borough roads has become a tangible testament to the role these highway ramps now play. Wasserman Way (Mile Hill Road) was welcomed when the state put it in. Little did we know that it would redirect an avalanche of commuters onto our secondary roads, which commuters have discovered to be convenient short cuts to Wasserman and I-84. Much like a cancer, these vehicles grow in number and spread throughout our central system, the borough, the geographic and historic heart of our town.

Many borough roads are no longer used by walkers or cyclists or mothers pushing baby carriages. Taking a left turn onto a borough road is often hazardous. Borough life and, by extension, life throughout Newtown, has changed for the worse. The quality of life we once enjoyed has been severely compromised by onrushing cars and trucks. Accordingly, I call upon all citizens of Newtown to act to stop this vehicular invasion and its relentless and seemingly inevitable destruction of a vital part of our town.

In New Haven, a Yale medical student was struck and killed a year ago while attempting to cross a street that directed traffic to a highway entrance ramp. The city is now planning to shut down that ramp and all ramps in that area that endanger the lives of pedestrians and compromise the viability of neighborhoods.

We borough residents have already experienced a hit-and-run incident involving a young boy, who fortunately survived. That was a shot across our bow. Do we need a fatality like New Haven before we take necessary measures to make the borough livable once again? Can we exercise foresight and act decisively and effectively? Every citizen of Newtown knows we have a bad situation in the borough. Let’s correct it and make the borough once again a safe and welcoming place for all. Serious problems require serious remedies. If we continue to do nothing or simply pay lip service to this dramatic assault upon normalcy, we will most definitely live to regret our failure to act.

Dan Shea, Sr

Queen Street, Newtown                                                 July 28, 2010