WESTPORT — Thursday morning’s commute in Westport — and points east and west — is tangled in knots after a serious crash on Interstate 95 in Norwalk shut down the highway in both directions.
As a result, Westport school officials warn that bus pickups are likely to be delayed by significant congestion on roads throughout town Thursday morning.
Alternate routes, such as the Post Road, are clogged in both directions, with heavy traffic spilling over onto other local roads.
The I-95 crash involved a tractor-trailer truck, which caught on fire, in the area of southbound Exit 15 in Norwalk. The highway’s traffic cameras show southbound traffic backed up on the highway’s travel lanes through Westport and beyond.
As a result of this incident, today we have 18 wheelers coming down Greens Farms Road and turning onto Imperial Avenue because they cannot cross the Cribari Bridge. This is Exhibit A on why the bridge should NOT be changed to accommodate these vehicles. As Route 95 regularly backs up – traffic, accidents, construction – and we regularly get the incremental traffic on Greens Farms Road, we should not pave the way for large trucks to ALSO pass through Saugatuck and create even worse backups and pollution in a residential neighborhood. Notably, this is BEFORE we get additional incremental traffic from the Hamlet and Summit Saugatuck projects.
With regards to the truck traffic turning from Bridge Street onto Imperial Ave…. Enough trucks have had difficulty turning so that there are many skid marks on local sidewalks.
In order to protect children waiting for busses, dog walkers, pedestrians in general as well as to verify property damage, it might be wise for the Westport Police Department to station neighborhood patrols for the duration of this I-95 spill over.