By Gretchen Webster
WESTPORT — The Board of Selectwomen this week approved several traffic improvement projects, adding to a list of initiatives already in the pipeline designed to upgrade safety for pedestrians and drivers.
On Wednesday, the selectwomen unanimously approved projects to prepare for installation of bus shelters on Post Road West, as well as plans for new crosswalks at several Cross Highway intersections.
To prepare for new bus shelters, the board approved sidewalk upgrades, including a pedestrian crosswalk and caution signs, in front of two properties on Post Road West near King’s Highway Elementary School.
The projects at 191 Post Road West and across the street at 176 Post Road West are part of plans to add bus shelters along the Post Road through town. At each site, a concrete pad providing a foundation for the shelter and sidewalks will be installed, Public Works Director Peter Ratkiewich told the board.
The projects on both sides of the street were awarded to Reliable Excavating Co. Inc. of Danbury, which bid $62,125 for the project at 191 Post Road West, requiring driveway and accessible sidewalk ramps in addition to the bus shelter pad. Work at 176 Post Road West, bid at $39,037.50, includes a crosswalk.
It has been challenging for the town to hire contractors for all of its projects, Ratkiewich said, so he has decided to employ smaller contractors for minor jobs like this one.
“We’re running out of contractors. We’re trying to develop smaller contracts,” he said. “These projects are small enough so that small contractors can bid on them.”
The cost of the bus shelter pad and sidewalk projects will be financed from a $150,000 appropriation of ARPA funds to the town in December 2021, according to First Selectwoman Jennifer Tooker.
“This is a great example of an intersection that has been problematic for years,” Tooker said.
Acting in its role as the Local Traffic Authority, the board also approved installation of three crosswalks at Cross Highway intersections with Punch Bowl Drive and Roseville Road.
The town has already completed installation of 400 to 500 feet of sidewalk there this year, but now the intersections need crosswalks, safety signs, pavement markings and sidewalk ramps to enable accessibility for the disabled, Ratkiewich said.
“This is a great example of the Traffic and Safety Pedestrian Task Force and their work,” Tooker said.
The selectwomen approved all the projects unanimously.
Traffic safety improvements at four other intersections were also approved Oct. 11 by the Board of Selectwomen.
Freelance writer Gretchen Webster, a Fairfield County journalist and journalism teacher for many years, was editor of the Fairfield Minuteman newspaper for 10 years and teaches journalism at Southern Connecticut State University.
Thank you to the First Selectwoman’s Traffic & Safety Pedestrian Task Force. The installation of bus shelters for people who use public transportation to and from Westport is long overdue.
Sal liccione and Jen Johnson have been begging for bus shelters for YEARS.
Yet again.
Thank goodness they are both rtm’ers.
I love it when those who argued against them finally finally see the light.
ALL credit for bus shelters goes to liccione and Johnson !
A donation to the Town of $50,000 was made by the previous owner of 191 Post Road West to facilitate the construction of the bus shelter.
Standing in the rain, waiting for the bus is not only humiliating, watching the many expensive cars flowing past, splashing the liters onto already cold feet, one learns about humanity. 20 years ago, i said to myself, jeez, when i was a kid we had bus shelters everywhere. I could build the very best bus shelter for 500 bucks in materials and 2 days labor for one man. A bench and a plastic roof is the easiest design prompt. There are seven specific locations. We dont need to blame leadership, just help the people who take public trasportation, they deserve to not be humiliated and splashed upon by your 10000 dollar tires. Standing there, i figured 35 million in tires rolled past before the bus arrived, ruff estimation. But whose counting. I would need la shovel, 6 bags of cement(premixed), 4 12 4by4s(preasure treated last 25 years), nails, 10 8 foot 2by4s, one sheet of lexan(uv rated,) 8 feet by 4 feet wide, drill with quarter inch bit and screws to hold the lexan down on the roof. A ski chalet style is the easiest. We could send a volunteer down every night after the last bus to roust anybody sleeping in there. The should be strong and be able to deal with drunk homeless people, on occaision. But during the day, if the busses are running, anyone could sit inthere, reading or just relaxing. After all, there are no rules about having a sip of private refreshments after wrking all day while waiting for a bus that can be 3 hours late. As long as the person is not visibly intoxicated,
If we are rousing the unhoused from shelters after the busses stop, it should be to help them into a dry and warm bed. Our Human Services department works to help people, and that should be our goal when others are in a difficult situation.
We are not rousting them because we have not had bus stops in Westport for decades, that is the crime. Some, ingnorantly, imo, suppose that a proper bus stop might attract riff raff. My point is that this exactly the kind of riff raff Westport needs. We have gentrified bus stops out of our culture and that is too much. Obviously our health and human services department is probably the most sympathetic and proactive of anywhere in the world. Westport needs riff raff and humanity, just the kind of thing bus stops provide…imo, after living in a westport with bus stops and a westport without. Westport lacks street culture, which was one of its most amaxing aspects in the old days… all the cool people hanging out at the bus stop…