Around the State: Norwalk

Around the State

Norwalk.  The Connecticut Department of Transportation (DOT) unveiled two alternative plans for the intersection of the Merritt Parkway and U.S. Route 7 at a meeting held in March. The plans were created in response to a lawsuit in which the Merritt Parkway Conservancy successfully argued that the Federal Highway Administration did not document that it had considered all alternatives to DOT’s plans for the intersection (see CPN March/April 2006).           

  After the decision, Governor Rell asked DOT to work with the Conservancy to come up with the new designs. Both alternatives attempt to resolve issues raised by the Conservancy in its lawsuit, particularly the plan to build two parallel ramps that would tower some 30 feet above the Merritt, effectively walling the roadway off from the landscape.

The first option, called “12A,” is a modified version of the original DOT design, on which construction had been started before the lawsuit began in 2005. In the modified version, the long on- and off-ramps are lowered to approximately the same level as the roadway, an improvement, but it still creates a wide expanse of pavement not in keeping with the Parkway’s road-in-a-landscape character.

            The second design, endorsed by the Conservancy and preferred by DOT, is a modified version of a design that the Conservancy submitted at DOT’s invitation. That design, created by a leading national engineering firm, Vollmer Associates, eliminates the long parallel ramps entirely by constructing an irregular cloverleaf intersection. DOT generally tries to avoid cloverleafs, since they require cars entering and leaving the road to cross in a pattern called “weaving,” but officials noted that numerous cloverleafs in the state operate without serious problems. To minimize weaving, the design puts the ramps as far apart as possible.

Since the modified cloverleaf design is smaller than 12A, it will cost less and take less time to construct. According to DOT, the cloverleaf intrudes on a somewhat larger area of wetlands (1.2 acres, versus 0.6 acres), but Conservancy vice-chair Keith Simpson, a landscape architect, said he believes that that calculation may not be correct.

During the negotiations, the Conservancy acquiesced to DOT’s insistence that the original bridges carrying the Merritt over Main Avenue would have to be replaced to accommodate increased traffic levels. DOT says that the historic bridges’ general appearance and stone facing will be replicated.

            At a public information session held at Norwalk City Hall on March 18, comments from elected officials, interested organizations and the general public was predominantly in favor of the cloverleaf plan. State Senator William Nickerson (R-Greenwich) praised both DOT and the Conservancy for working with each other. “This plan happened because DOT listened to the advocates and because the advocates were willing to compromise,” he said.

            Since that meeting, however, residents of the nearby Silvermine area, who feel that they were not consulted on the project, have objected to the cloverleaf design, citing concerns about wetlands, safety, and the road’s impact on their neighborhood. DOT officials plan to hold another meeting in the neighborhood in May.

If the Department feels that there is public support for adopting the cloverleaf design, it will have to produce a new environmental study, which will add close to a year to the project, meaning that construction, estimated to take two years, would probably begin in 2012.