Plans Advance for Bike-, Pedestrian-friendly Norwalk Roads

A lot of Norwalk streets have sidewalks that suddenly end and then are not resumed again for another quarter mile or so of roadway. If more sidewalks could be connected, more people would walk on them.

Painting crosswalks and bicycle lanes can be very effective ways of making walking and biking safer, and they are among the most inexpensive things a municipality can do to promote biking and walking around town.

Those are some of the observations in a the Norwalk Pedestrian and Bikeway Transportation Plan, a recommendation for a 10-year plan to promote biking and walking. The recommendations will be in a report to be delivered to city officials within a month by consultants Fitzgerald & Halliday Inc. of Hartford.

The priorities can help city officials make rational decisions about which fixes would help promote biking and walking, and the recommendations of a master plan sometimes give a municipality an edge up in getting grant applications approved.

The consultants found 45 "corridors" (streets and sets of streets) where they make recommendations for improvements. Each of those corridors were assigned to one of three "tiers" on the basis of their importance and how much work they would need. Each of the corridors was also ranked from highest to lowest priority. (The full list is available in PDF format; as is a map of priority corridors and a map of proposed improvements.)

For some spots, the consultants recommended "sharrows" or roadways where some lanes are shared with motor vehicles and bicycles. Main Street, between New Canaan Avenue and Cross Street would be one prominent location where the consultants think markings could be painted onto the roadway to indicate sharrows. Northern parts of West Rocks Road would be another area.

Some roadway lanes might also be made thinner in order to fit in bike lanes on the road shoulders.

"Way Finding" is a street amenity in which signs show walkers and bikers where they are and where things are nearby (on a map). The signs will also say how far away another  location is, and they may provide directions on how to get there.

The consultants' report will also have schematic plans for changes at five locations around the city (see photo No. 1 for the list). Preliminary designs and cost estimates for projects to change those locations will also be part of the report.

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Other Norwalk-related planning projects for bicycles:

• Norwalk Harbor Loop Trail—Facebook page—description on Livable Norwalk blog
• Norwalk River Valley Trail Routing Study (from Calf Pasture Beach up to Danbury)—website—article in The Hour
• —website

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At a public meeting Wednesday to present some initial recommendations of the consultants' report, Michael Mushak, an advocate for building the Norwalk Harbor Loop Trail, complained that the city needed an internal advocate for biking issues and initiatives, as many other cities have.

"As much as I applaud this process," Mushak said, he's been waiting for a Norwalk Harbor Loop Trail for years. Mushak advocating having a permanent czar (or czarina) to avoid having another "plan that's 32 years on the table."

Norwak is behind other communities in, for instance, providing bicycle lanes to riders. Norwalk doesn't have any, at present, Mushak pointed out.