Students driving into Middletown should anticipate altering their usual routes. The city has recently amended its parking rules, banning left turns and U-turns into parking stalls on Main St. between Pleasant St. and Washington St., and signs have been posted on traffic lights denoting the change.
Officer Craig Elkin of the traffic unit at the Middletown Police Department reported that the violation fine is set at $5, although he added that a proposal is currently underway to set all parking fines at a $10 minimum. Drivers will have a certain grace period to become accustomed to the law before facing fines.
“There will be a month for education,” Elkin said. “Unless it’s something really reckless.”
According to Elkin, the law was created for two reasons. First, the angled parking stalls make left turns and U-turns tempting, but these maneuvers are dangerous. Last year alone, 23 crashes occurred when people backing out of stalls did not see someone turning left across the street. The second reason the law was changed is to alleviate congestion on Main St.
“Someone waiting to turn left into a parking stall is creating some congestion, because invariably there’s someone waiting to turn right,” Elkin said.
According to city ordinance 285-10, Middletown last banned U-turns and left turns into parking stalls in 1987.
This new law will be the least drastic in a series of upcoming changes to parking throughout Middletown. According to Middletown City Planner William Warner, in 2005, the city received nearly $18 million in federal transportation funds.
Middletown’s city planning website reports that the Federal Transportation Bill allocated three earmarks for the money, including more than $9 million for a transportation infrastructure improvement project, more than $1 million to construct an intermodal center, and $800,000 to replace the current parking garage with a four-story handicap-accessible garage.
With a required non-federal match of 20 percent, the city currently has over $22 million to spend on parking improvements. Warner reported that the city has just begun a study to decide how best to allocate these resources.
“It’s very unusual to receive that much [money] for a city of our size,” he said.
Several proposed infrastructure changes, as reported in an early-stage planning document on the city’s website, will directly affect life on campus, as the city is considering placing more parking meters on and near campus. In addition, the document puts forward the more general goal of improving connections between Main St. and campus.
Another important infrastructure goal for the city is allowing visitors to the downtown area to park at the location where they intend to shop.
In the long term, the improved parking that the federal grant has facilitated is hoped to free spaces for visitors by giving those who park monthly and downtown employees alternative spots, something Warner told the Hartford Courant he considers important for downtown development.
As the plan for allocation of these funds develops, public meetings about it will be announced at: www.middletownplanning.com.
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