Opinion: Opposed to Woodbury SDAT plans to narrow Main St with bump-outs

The TLDR version, leave downtown Woodbury Rt6/Main St as it is.

Don't fix what ain't broken.

(reference Woodbury SDAT plans in Patch article http://patch.com/connecticut/w... )
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Main St/RT 6 through downtown Woodbury currently has a traditional, very nice looking downtown with a mix of single family houses, churches, town offices, library, and a small number of stores (some restaurants, realtor, gas station, pharmacy, antique shops.) with off-street parking.

It has a very nice, open "sight-line" for a driver to scan and see the town while driving.

The current street has wide shoulders/turning lanes that allow vehicles to safely go around a vehicle that is waiting to turn.

The SDAT plans would change downtown RT6 into a pedestrian/tourist mall with narrow vehicle lanes (slowed stop and go traffic), bike lane and very wide side walks, and tourist booth at what is currently an area with very little pedestrian/bike traffic, and high vehicle traffic volume at rush hour that has a good flow. There is already a large empty tourist/visitor parking lot, with a tourist booth, next to the Senior Center.

The SDAT plans show the traffic lanes would be physically narrowed with large landscape bump outs that will completely cover the existing shoulder/turning lanes at every street corner, with parking between the bump outs, and large painted cross walks.

The SDAT "traffic calming" bumpouts will make it impossible to go around traffic waiting to make a turn at intersections (similar to the northbound insection of Rt 6/Main ST and Rt67/Roxbury Road). The SDAT plan is similar to the "Streetscapes" plan that is normally used for dense, urban downtown cities like South Norwalk.

The landscape bump outs, narrow streets, tourist booth, and added street parking will negatively impact the current "street-view" and "sight-line", and are not appropriate for the current historic, picturesque look of Main St.

The SDAT board also plans on burying the utility/power lines on Main Street. At the 7/27 meeting, it was noted: 7/27 SDAT meeting minutes

"The Committee next discussed the possibility of sinking the power lines on Main Street.
Mr. Peck will discuss this with contacts at Eversource, and noted that the last time he raised this question with them, for another town, the cost was $4 million a mile. This figure does not including the cost to reconnect each home and business along Main Street to the new underground lines"

At the 10/20 meeting, they now claim that they can bury the lines "with little or no cost". They could not provide any real grant source for funding these changes.

Unless they can prove an actual "free" source for funding, I am against this action item, since it will have to be paid by increasing property taxes.

For some actual cost estimates, reference the Four Corners Brookfield project. The original estimate was $1.9 million, and has grown to over $7 million. http://www.newstimes.com/local...

Personally, I like Woodbury Main Street as it is. Rt 6 itself is my destination. No need to narrow the road and block it with a tourist booth, or make changes to downtown that will increase my property tax.

The full SDAT report file

Woodbury CT SDAT report http://www.aia.org/aiaucmp/groups/aia/documents/pdf/aiab108271.pdf

Please see page 30-32 for the illustration with narrow streets and tourist booth.

If you want downtown and Main Street to stay as it currently is, please attend the next SDAT meeting and let them know your opinion. Meeting dates are on http://woodburyct.org/