At the last Selectmen meeting DPW commission Jim Michel said his department had been working with residents in the area of Porchuck Road as well as the Round Hill Association to come up with ways to reduce vehicular speeds on back country roads used as cut through routes.
Brendon DeSimone, Porchuck Road resident and President of the Round Hill Association, talks to the Board of Selectmen about issues with speeding cars using back country roads in his neighborhood as shortcuts, creating a safety hazard. Aug 14, 2025
Mr. Michel requested the Selectmen’s support to lower the speed limit on both Porchuck and North Porchuck from 25mph to 20mph. The speed limit reduction would need the approval of the Connecticut Office of the State Traffic Administration.
Back in January Round Hill Association president Brendon DeSimone, who is a resident of Porchuck Rd, described to the Selectmen how out of town drivers using navigation apps were using treacherous back country roads to cut through to the Merritt and Westchester Airport.
The RHA also hired their own professional traffic engineer to come up with possible methods to mitigate the problem. He said that since his previous presentation, there had been a number of meetings with the Dept of Public Works.
At the time, DeSimone said, “To our dismay, it was not a collaborative process with DPW. And we feel they weren’t putting the interest and safety of our residents first. We are taxpayers. To each of our suggestions, DPW had a counter-reaction.” He added that one suggestion had been to lower the speed limit by 5 miles per hour, with the goal of keeping drivers on the Merritt and off the local roads, but the Dept of Public Works said the state would not allow it.
Since January DPW has explored traffic calming traffic calming measures.
“We’ve been doing this for a number of years. We’ve made a decent number of improvements with adding signage with improving visibility there – one of the things we’re also looking at are other means of traffic calming,” Mr. Michel told the Selectmen. “We sent questionnaires to residents of Porchuck Road about center line rumble strips to make sure they’re amenable to that before we were to install them.”
He cautioned that while rumble strips can have a positive benefit on speeds and lane departures, improving safety, if a vehicle drives across it, it does make a noise.
“We want to make sure the residents understand, and introduced it as an opportunity for them to comment back. We’re collecting comments back from residents on Porchuck Road.”
“We’ve also started some internal looks at a variety of the different intersections of doing some narrowing of some of the intersections or modifications, potentially adding roundabouts or modifications in other manners to these intersections,” Michel said.
Mr. Michel said the plan was tentatively to meet with residents and Round Hill Association in the Sept/Oct time frame to “get their buy in first,” because he said a lot of these would be major intersection redesigns that would go through the MI process.
As for lowering the speed limit, Mr. Michel said the state’s application clearly states that without a significant reason, 25mph is normally the lowest speed limit they approve.
“We’re willing to try and hopefully the state will agree with some of the points that we’ve made because the road is pretty curvy,” Mr. Michel said, adding that the justification for the request was that about half of the road has curve reduction warning signs urging drivers to travel less than 25mph.
He also said that Greenwich’s roads are intended to have a 25mph maximum speed, although some major roads like parts of North Street have a speed limit of 35mph or 40mph.
“Most of our roads are 30mph or lower,” he added.
First Selectman Fred Camillo said there was a road with a curve in Stamford where the pavement is colored red and has an altered surface – both traffic calming measures.
“Have you thought about something like that?” he asked.
Mr. Michel said he was familiar with that treatment, and that it was similar to decorative crosswalks and the green painted bike lanes some municipalities use to raise awareness.
He said he had a few ideas but they were “not fully baked” and would be unveiled soon.
Mr. DeSimone said he’d been pulling police crash reports.
“There are lots of crashes we would like to send in a spreadsheet with the application to the State showing that it is a dangerous road. There are a lot blind curves and narrow hills.”
Mr. DeSimone said State Rep Tina Courpas (R-149) has made a good point that the situation on Porchuck and Cliffdale is unique given its dangerous curves.
“Jim (Michel) has said many times that he’s worried that if you lower the speed limit on one road, other roads would want the same thing, or put a speed bump or make a change. But part of this issue is the airport – Westchester Airport is right over the line. And cars are coming off the Merritt at exit 28, going onto Porchuck Road, over to Cliffdale Road. There are a lot of Uber drivers. We’re trying to combat that: out of state drivers going to our local roads. This is a one-off thing.”
DeSimone said the privately hired traffic engineer had researched Wayz and Google Maps and concluded that a speed limit reduction would be incorporated by the navigation apps, making it no longer be quicker to get off the Merritt to go to Porchuck and Cliffdale. He said he hoped drivers would stop taking the shortcut, though likely not the ones who already know the shortcut.
He said rumble strips were not the residents’ first choice due to concerns about noise – and that they had indicated, via a petition seeking their input, they desired lowered speed limits. Also he said, residents weren’t told what part of Porchuck the rumble strips would be placed – whether the full road or just on curves.
The item was a first read, and will be taken up again for a possible vote at the next Selectmen meeting.
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Jan 28, 2025
