Updated, 9:39 a.m.: Copy edits
NORWALK, Conn. – Plans to redo East Avenue from the Interstate 95 interchange to Van Zant Street include a “criss-cross” rearrangement at exit 16, a realigned train station driveway at Fort Point Street and underground utilities in between.
“We think it will make a very beautiful gateway into the East Norwalk area,” Mayor Harry Rilling said at a Monday meeting where the plans were unveiled to Third Taxing District Commissioners.
Video by Harold Cobin at end of story
The plans are connected to the State’s Walk Bridge project and the lowering of East Avenue under the railroad bridge. The Department of Public Works in 2016 contracted with A. DiCesare Associates to do preliminary work for the Walk Bridge project, including design of East Avenue improvements near the bridge.
“We put the project on hold for nearly a year because the state wasn’t sure what the project limits were,” DPW Principal Engineer Lisa Burns said Monday. The City is paying 100 percent of the design costs and didn’t want to spend money on design and then have the state change its mind, she said.
Now DPW must go from “30 percent design” to “90 percent design” by April, she said.
Other changes include obtaining grant funding to replace the traffic signal at Myrtle Street. When the State lowers East Avenue under the railroad bridge, and makes it four lanes wide, the train station driveway will be realigned to “T” with Fort Point Street and a traffic light will be installed, making it safer for pedestrians. A long-planned rotary reconstruction “looks like it will finally go forward,” she said.
Norwalk is in charge of almost all of the work on the stretch, except for “a gap” north of Myrtle Street and south of Saint John Street.
“We wanted the State to deal with Mike’s Deli because of all the parking there, it would be easier for the state to take on the St. John intersection,” Burns said. “…It gets very difficult with property acquisition and they are in a better position to work all that stuff out.”
The Connecticut Department of Public Works revealed a new concept for the I-95 interchange, a divergent diamond interchange, to City officials last Spring, Burns said.
“It will be the first in Connecticut, one of the first in the northeast,” she said. “…It’s like a criss-cross. It eliminates all of the left turn conflicts that people have, the dangerous lefts that people are making to try to get onto I-95.”
“A divergent diamond interchange, also known as a DDI, allows two directions of traffic to temporarily cross to the left side of the road. A DDI moves high volumes of traffic through an intersection without increasing the number of lanes and traffic signals….{and} provides easier access to an interstate,” the North Carolina Department of Transportation states in a YouTube video, shown below.
East Norwalk “is the only part of town that has not explored the underground utility option yet,” Burns said Monday. “There’s been a lot of investment in other parts of the city, South Norwalk, West Avenue, where a holistic approach is looked at to try to unify a neighborhood together, the aesthetics of it all.”
The wires are already set to go underground in the railroad bridge area because it’s State policy, she said.
The plot to underground the utilities drew some pushback – Commissioner Debora Goldstein questioned the promised economic benefits and noted the TTD’s track record of low-cost, extremely reliable electricity.
“Everybody talks about moving (utilities) underground because it makes the area more valuable or more attractive, but we have no trouble attracting people to come here,” she said.
“East Norwalk is basically an overhead system,” Goldstein said. “I think I can speak for the ratepayers here, we are very, very proud of the area, aerial wires notwithstanding. But when we are talking about economic development and opportunity, we also have to take into account the fact that this ratepayer-owned utility has successfully kept their rates substantially lower than the investor-owned utilities that are right next door.
That has not been factored into the possible economic development conversations, with attracting businesses to this part of the city. Competitive electric rates are also an economic development driver,” she said.
Former TTD employee Pete Johnson said that underground utilities could cost more in the long term. Johnson said he’d spent 20 years in the Northeast Utilities test department, and underground utilities are great for the first 30 years but then if there’s a nick in the aluminum service cable it takes 10 hours to repair it instead of the quick fix that can be done now.
“You are looking at double to triple the time and then you are not using linemen,” Johnson said. “You are using cable splicers, that have to know what type of material they are using, the material you have to carry on the truck and have it all the time.”
The cable has to be pulled out of the shaft and 90 percent of the time the issue in the middle of the pipe, he said. “Wires have a 60 cycle hum. They are moving, 60 cycles at a time. People don’t know it but it does. Wires move. What happens eventually: the sand will get through it. That’s why I’m saying, 30 years, you’re going to start having problems.”
“We recognize the fact that this is the first time you are seeing it,” Rilling said. “We just wanted to start the discussion. The underground utilities, I know they do it in other places and it seems to be the trend now, when they are building new infrastructure to go underground. I am hoping that at least we can have that discussion.”
Goldstein said the Commissioners would begin to research the topic.
“The ratepayers should vote on something like this,” Johnson said. “All of East Norwalk should have its chance to vote yay or nay on this.”
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