By Gretchen Webster
WESTPORT — How safe is it for pedestrians to cross Post Road East to get to Main Street from the Jesup Green area?
That issue has become a factor as consultants hired for two separate studies consider creating more public parking south of the Post Road in the lots at Imperial Avenue, Police Department headquarters or the Gillespie Center. Additional parking at any of those sites would require that pedestrians cross the busy Post Road to reach shops and restaurants on Main Street and elsewhere in the central business district.
But it may not be as dangerous as some people fear, according to statistics requested from police by Matthew Mandell, a member of the Downtown Plan Implementation Committee and Representative Town Meeting member from District 1.
“There was a total of four crashes identified over the 10-year period” from January 2014 through the end of 2023, police Cpl. Al D’Amura stated in information he sent Mandell and also discussed at DPIC’s meeting Nov. 21. “None of the crashes were fatal. None had serious injuries,” D’Amura reported.
Asked at the meeting if he thought crossing the Post Road was safe, D’Amura said, “Yes.”
Concerns about pedestrian safety along the Post Road corridor have been raised repeatedly by Sal Liccione, a District 9 RTM member, who wants to see improvements made not only for crossings from Jesup Green to Main Street, but also at the Myrtle Avenue/Post Road East intersection and from Sconset Square across Myrtle Avenue.
Mandell would like to see safety improvements at the Bay Street intersection with Post Road East, near the former Post Office building, now the Paper Store.
Mandell said he believes DPIC should have provided the Police Department’s accident statistics to consultants from Colliers Engineering and Design before its public survey and focus groups on downtown parking and traffic problems.
“This is exactly the type of information that should have been presented before people gave answers to where parking should be, structured or not,” Mandell said.
The accident statistics and D’Amura’s opinion that crossing the Post Road is not dangerous could influence the survey results, Mandell said.
Two intersections currently used for pedestrians crossing from Jesup Green parking areas to shops on Main Street and Parking Harding Plaza are already slated for safety upgrades by the state Department of Transportation, according to Public Works Director Peter Ratkiewich. The Post Road corridor, or Route 1, is a state highway.
“The good news is that both signals [at the Parker Harding crossing and at Main Street] are being replaced,” he said. “The bad news is they won’t be replaced until 2026.”
The two state-funded traffic signal upgrades have been planned since 2015, he said.
“Those signals are probably 40 years old,” Ratkiewich said. “There are all sorts of [safety] features that they are putting in new signals now” to make the intersections safer for both pedestrians and motorists.
In the meantime, especially during the holiday season, the town assigns traffic agents to help direct pedestrians across Post Road East.
These include four intersections downtown, according to town traffic agent Joey Sabin, who was helping pedestrians navigate heavy traffic at the Post Road East/Jesup Road intersection Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving.
The four downtown areas supervised by the town’s traffic agents during the holiday season include crossings at Main Street and Taylor Place, Main Street and Avery Place, Jesup Road and Parker Harding Plaza, where Sabin was directing traffic, and within the Parker Harding Plaza lot itself, he said.
Black Friday, which kicks off the holiday shopping season for many people, will bring even heavier traffic to downtown, he added.
“There are a lot more cars than usual,” he said as he watched for pedestrians about to cross the intersection. “There’s a lot of holiday traffic.”
Freelance writer Gretchen Webster, a Fairfield County journalist for many years, was editor of the Fairfield Minuteman and has taught journalism at New York and Southern Connecticut State universities.
Lpweisman@gmail.com
It is reassuring to learn that crossing the Post Road is not as dangerous as might have been assumed by some, but when it comes to whether parking south of the Post Road is a good idea the issue is as much one of convenience as of safety. Is it really a good idea to create a situation where shoppers burdened by strollers and purchases have to cross twice to access Main Street, and what would that do to the reassuring statistics?
It’s a bad idea no matter how you try to promote it, especially when there are better, safer, more convenient alternatives to the north.
One can always twist statistics to suit one’s agenda while the obvious answer is staring you right in the face; Forcing pedestrians to park on the south side of the Post Road and crossing a major, heavily trafficked, east-west, (4) lane, vehicular circulation route in order to access the majority of the Downtown Neighborhood retail establishments is a dangerous and ill conceived idea.
The obvious response for our esteemed leadership is; perhaps there have been limited pedestrian accidents crossing the Post Road to date but if you construct a major parking structure on the south side of the road and dramatically increase the pedestrian traffic forced to cross the Post Road, your current probability and statistics numbers will no longer be valid. Increased crossings will yield increased accidents.
Stated simply; you don’t have a large accident report history because currently only a small number of pedestrians are forced to cross the Post Road. If you build a large parking facility on or near the Police Station site, a large number of citizens will be forced to cross the Post Road. In this case, poor leadership from this administration will have designed a solution that will most certainly cause an unnecessary and preventable rise in human injuries.
Why is this administration forcing an unwise urban planning agenda?
The simple and obvious fact remains; Baldwin is the one and only site for an increase in parking, given 80% of the retail establishments are located on the north side of the Post Road.
~ J. Vallone, A.I.A.
Happy Thanksgiving, Westport.
My husband and I cross the Post Road regularly on our walks with Max (my dog). We cross either at the downtown crosswalks, or Imperial/Myrtle. The downtown crossings are always scary.
Some are without signals and cars mostly do not stop at those unsignaled designated crosswalks.
At the intersection crossing next to the bridge, there are no “walk/don’t walk” signals; cars chronically try to beat the lights and block the crosswalk; others sometimes swerve into the oncoming lane to get through. There may not be fatalities or serious hits, but there sure are a lot of near-hits that would not be documented in police records.
It is a very uncomfortable situation for pedestrians that I encounter there, and no amount of rhetoric or spin will change that.
Don’t tempt fate. Keep downtown parking safe and convenient by locating it on the downtown side of Post Road.
The public has spoken. Nobody wants to park on the library side of the post road to access the shops on Main Street. And let’s face it as great as the library is, they do not need more parking and they bring no revenue to our economy downtown. In fact they cost us a hefty sum of money every year, paid for by yours truly. Us, the tax payers.
And Joe Vallone is 100% correct. Statistically the accidents will without a doubt increase.
Oh and yes, without any shadow of a doubt all statistics offered by the town are self serving and not true. Twisted to suit their agenda.
We’ve all spoken : no thanks.
From Westportnow.com (12/27/2010): “A 93-year-old man struck by a car on Dec. 11 as he crossed Post Road East in Westport’s center has died, Westport police said today. He was the second pedestrian fatality on the roadway this month and the third in two years”.
Most people would agree that there are more cars, not less on the Post Road today. It’s a dangerous and ill-conceived to add parking in places that force pedestrians to cross the Post Road to access Main Street shops and dining.
Studies from 2014-2022 are basically irrelevant regarding accidents or perils crossing the Post Road in town(or anywhere). We all know traffic and erratic driving has increased exponentially since and poses an extremely skewed view of the potential hazards that only favor
the DPIC and Administration’s plan to force a garage, or any large addition to parking on the Library side- especially after the overwhelming public opinion clearly states otherwise. Why employ a survey when its results will be sabotaged. This does not instill confidence in our leaders to do the right thing and suggests a waste of time to those thoughtfully filling out said survey. Either the Administration is listening or not.
And speaking of surveys where is the promised honest report of current athletic field usage? Long overdue is where it is yet the 10 year accident study was produced in warp factor speed I believe to justify the Administration’s seemingly apparent inclination to disregard the results of the parking questionnaire.