On Town Roads, It's 'Double Or Nothing'

There are about 170 miles of town-owned roads in Ridgefield, and 46 of those miles have a single yellow line dividing them.

But, Police Chief John Roche recently discovered, single yellow road lines happen to violate federal highway standards.

Narrower secondary roads in town have had that single yellow line for decades, repainted annually under police department supervision. In the past year, the search for cost savings led Roche and First Selectman Rudy Marconi to discuss the possibility of changing all the town's double yellow lines, painted on most primary thoroughfares, into single ones, Roche said. The annual allotment for road striping is $27,000.

The chief looked into the possibility only to find that double yellow lines, which cover eight more inches of road width than a solo line does, are the only recognized marking to divide two-way traffic.

So instead of a potential cost reduction, the town now has to decide whether to switch to a uniform use of double yellows on all town roads—an estimated $4,000 annual cost increase which would make Ridgefield's narrow roads even narrower—to drop the line altogether on single-line roads, which could be unsafe, or to continue painting single markings in violations of the standards.

Roche sought town attorney David Grogins' opinion on what to do, and Grogins recommended switching to double yellows. The town could be liable if a car crash was caused by "defective" line markings, Grogins wrote.

Roche brought up the quandary at last week's police commission meeting, because its members will be responsible for deciding the town's course of action. Members seemed to agree that keeping single lines was not an option, even though some roads are so narrow that cars might not be able to remain in their own lanes if eight more inches are eaten up by a second yellow line.

"It's either double or nothing. No pun intended," Commissioner George Kain said.

But Roche plans to double check with the Federal Highway Administration, which oversees transportation in the country, as to whether a legal exemption to allow single lines on Ridgefield's narrow, windy country roads is a possibility before the police commission meeting next month, when the topic is again slated for discussion.

"I don't know how we're going to solve it," commission Chairman Tom Reynolds said in an interview Tuesday. "Neither solution is ideal and both solutions present greater safety hazards than what we have right now."