Currently, there’s a little bit of a buzz in my neighborhood. You see, I live on a windy, narrow two lane road, which receives a fair amount of traffic due to its being the only through surface street in this part of town, plus the various forces of inertia from this road having existed since at least the early 1700’s.
At one end of the street is a developing industrial park, which is being bolstered due to its proximity to the airport (and the regional hub cargo services there) and its location near the end of a freeway spur connecting the industrial zone and airport to I-91.
However, if you plot the shortest route from locations in the southern 2/3rds of the industrial park to I-91, you’re sent down our windy, narrow, poor-sight-line street, despite the presence of a major thoroughfare designed in part to handle heavy truck traffic. Since so many commercial drivers rely on GPS nav systems now…well, let’s just say that pulling out of my driveway or checking the mail can be mighty “fun”.
We had a town-sponsored neighborhood meeting just before the holiday to discuss this. And, once you got through the warm-and-fuzzy meeting-facilitation crap and the political doubletalk, the message to folks listening carefully was that the town is somewhat limited in what it can do, due to state laws and regulations implemented to protect citizens from capricious, arbitrary, or blatant-revenue-generating tricks that could potentially be pulled by municipalities.
So, it was with some interest that I read this article in the Courant:
An ordinance banning large trucks on Spring Street is being studied by the State Traffic Commission before it’s presented to residents at a town meeting.
Selectmen voted in September to approve the ordinance and forwarded it to the traffic commission for approval. The police department received a letter from the traffic commission last week notifying the town that the ordinance is now under review, First Selectman Steve Wawruck said.
The ban, which prohibits all trucks weighing 10,000 pounds or more from traveling on Spring Street, has already been approved by the town’s police commission. And as required by the state, Wawruck said, Police Chief John Suchocki has submitted a letter in support of the ban.[...]
The proposed ordinance is in response to complaints from residents who say the trucks are noisy and rattle their homes. Officials say the trucks are also taking a toll on a residential road that was never planned for such heavy truck volume.
“We feel we have alternative routes available in lieu of Spring Street,” Wawruck said.
So, the folks in Windsor Locks have been trying for months to get trucks off Spring Street (a state highway is just one block south, of course), and the state is just now starting to think about it.
My, how swiftly the wheels of bureaucracy move.
