By Gretchen Webster

WESTPORT — New traffic safety zones will be designated at three private schools in town, and a stop sign will be installed at a troublesome intersection at Edge Hill Lane and King’s Highway North. Both measures result from requests by the town’s Traffic and Pedestrian Safety Task Force, and were approved last Wednesday by the Board of Selectwomen.

New safety zones will be created at Greens Farms Academy on Beachside Avenue, Pierrepont School at Sylvan Road North, and the Goddard School on Saugatuck Avenue. Since Saugatuck Avenue is also state Route 33, the town will have to apply to the state for permission to designate that zone, police Cpl. Al D’Amura told the selectwomen. 

Motorists who speed in any school zone around town must pay doubled fines, he said. School zones are identified by pedestrian-crossing signs, some with flashing lights and also may include speed monitors. Signs alert motorists when they enter and exit a school zone, and that traffic violations within the zones will result in doubled fines

State regulations require posted school zones to extend 1,500 feet from a school, according to Tom Kiely, operations director for the Selectwomen’s Office.

“These signs make motorists aware of where they’re going, that they’re entering a school zone,” D’Amura said. “It helps reduce speed, increase awareness and encourages safe habits when driving in these areas.”

The town has already established safety zones at all of Westport’s public schools.

“We received this request from a task force meeting,” D’Amura said. “Parents are concerned that there’s not school zone signage, so we’ve been working to get these signs up everywhere … We truly feel that it will truly keep school kids safer in the area.” 

Safety steps for dangerous intersection

The Edge Hill Lane intersection with King’s Highway North, which includes a sharp downhill curve, has elicited complaints from area residents, and was also identified as a problem by the traffic task force. 

A new stop sign to be installed on Edge Hill Lane just before the intersection with King’s Highway North should help, D’Amura said. 

Traveling through the intersection can be especially difficult for drivers who have never been there before, D’Amura said. “It’s quite confusing, with an embankment and a stone wall” that make it difficult to see oncoming traffic. “People coming from out of town have no idea that they are coming up to an intersection like that.”

The stop sign indicating a one-way stop should make it less confusing, and keep drivers from pausing as if they were going to yield, but then continuing into the intersection, he added.

The Department of Public Works is also considering applying a textured road surface on the curve on King’s Highway North to provide better traction in wet conditions, according to Kiely. The textured material would slow down traffic at a spot that nearby residents have complained is particularly hazardous because of speeding, which has caused to cars to spin off the road. There have also been incidents of motorists hitting utility poles near the intersection, Kiely added.

“King’s Highway North is curved and it’s quite treacherous,” said First Selectwoman Jennifer Tooker. “Residents in that area have been looking for a solution and ways to calm traffic and slow speeding in that area …  they’ve been very vocal, and rightly so.”

Both the safety measures at the intersection and the additional school zones were approved unanimously by the selectwomen.

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.