Seen and Heard in Norwalk: Department of Public Works

NORWALK, Conn. – Here are some items of interest that were seen or heard recently in Norwalk (all of them pertaining to the Norwalk Department of Public Works, oddly enough):

Classification confusion on Norwalk sidewalks

Engineer Dick Linnartz recently explained the reason DPW is looking for $500,000 in capital budget money for sidewalks is also the reason for some odd situations around town.

“In the 2013 calendar year we spent $715,000 on replacement sidewalks and ADA (American Disabilities Act) compliance handicapped ramps,” Linnartz told Planning Commission members. “What’s new is that when we would mill and overlay a road we weren’t required to make the sidewalks ADA compliant because that wasn’t called construction, that was called maintenance. They changed the rules of the game. Now, when you mill the road that’s called construction, therefore you have to bring the sidewalks into ADA compliance. So if you go up Dry Hill Road you’ll see handicapped ramps. There’s no new concrete sidewalks, but there’s nice new handicapped ramps. We have asphalt walks. But if you go over to Ferris, Loundsberry, Captain’s Street — we put in curbs and sidewalks, there’s dozens of handicapped ramps. So we spent roadway money complying with ADA. We’d like to get money for sidewalks that is separate and distinct from the road funds.”

Um, good thing they’ve got a crawl camera

New technology is good, according to DPW Director Hal Alvord, who has been frustrated in his efforts to get infrastructure mapping but has apparently made the best of the technology the department has been allowed to acquire.

Efforts are made with safety first in mind, he said, before launching into a story about a crawl camera:

“Because we’ve been able to use this crawl camera we found a void under Seaview Avenue a few years ago — 10-foot by 12-foot by 12-foot. We’re lucky that a school bus or a dump truck or something didn’t go along and just cave into that thing. It was 10 feet deep, 12 feet wide, 12 feet long.”

That was under the pavement, he said. He did not remember what year it was.

Parking experiments

This one’s already paid for – a SmartParking Technology pilot program will be implemented in the spring, Alvord said recently to the Public Works Committee.

That is “test sensors that go in the pavement that will tell people when the space is empty or occupied so that we can then put an app on a smart phone. For example, someone is coming into town, they want to go to the Black Bear Saloon. They can look at their iPhone and see where a space is going to be,” Alvord said. “We have pay by cell already. If you go to the South Norwalk railroad station from State Street, you can see which spaces are empty in the garage. So we’re starting to implement things.”

He said there are about 100 or so parking spaces that will be the subject of the experiment.