Agree, see also http://www.seeclickfix.com/issues/44811.

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brueggers: actually, whalley becomes 69 at this intersection, and 63 becomes amity road. i am sure you understood the intersection i meant, but sorry to have written it hastilly.

glad we could clear it up. thanks.
intersection of RTEs 63 and 69.

Just to clean it up...Whalley ends at this point. Amity Rd (Rt63) and Litchfield Turnpike (Rt69) both begin at this point).
It is a terrible place for a Traffic Circle.
The State DOT has planned this for years.
Don't expect anything to change.
Hope I've helped.

The image below shows a comparison, at the same scale, of Amity and DuPont Circle in Washington, DC (which contains a traffic circle handling far more volume than Whalley, plus a beautiful park).

DuPont circle not only handles more traffic, it also produces far more in tax revenue and jobs.

Clearly there is room here.

The photo comparison is laughable.
The park alone would swallow up at least12 business locations.
I am not even going out on a limb here by suggesting this is a bad idea.

hahahahhano. Have you ever traveled through this intersection during rush hour? Neither has anyone. It's impossible, you don't really move. The line up both Amity Road and Whalley/Turnpike is incredibly long in the morning. Cars block the intersection preventing people to get through. It's a nightmare.

This shouldn't be about beautifying the area. It should be about solving the traffic problem. One step - mass transit. Get some buses that actually take the quickest route to downtown/medical district/union station. Park and rides need to be in Woodbridge, and CTTransit needs to start two new B bus services. A "B Limited" which skips stops and focuses on getting people downtown to work, and a B bus that travels via the Boulevard along Route 34 towards the Medical District and Union Station.

It's a nightmare to try to maneuver a car through this intersection and a traffic circle would help immensely.

You wouldn't need to have a park that large, Amity business owner - it is just something to shoot for down the road.

The buildings could be built up to the edge of the circle, to enable pedestrian activity, with parking in the rear.

Obviously the land use changes won't happen overnight, but if we don't start planning for them in stages they never will.

Also, I'd like to point out that those parking lots are never close to being full - perhaps some of the parcels could be combined to share lots. (In addition to a land use plan, the city should consider an asphalt reduction plan - many other places do this, it is basically like a "cap and trade" system for our overwhelming, unsustainable amount of asphalt parking lots)

Those parking lots are private property.It is none of your business if they are not always at capacity.
Let the DOT handle the situation.Just make sure the sharrows point the right way.

The circle does not have to be that big! I am posting a picture of what has happened in Gorham Maine which gets the same type of traffic as this intersection. The traffic identical statistics because Gorham is like Bethany and Portland is like New Haven....its the same reason for the type of buildup...business traffic. This road before used to get backed up for MILES!!!! Sometimes 10 miles in the morning for people getting to work. It was a mess. Well this one intersection brings together 2 "routes" into one using the same problems as we face on this intersection on Whalley. Here is their solution and it WORKS! You will note that the intersection is not that big at all! They did 3 of these along this same road where several different routes cascade into one....they are all about 2 miles apart.

to the amity small business owner:
i didn't open this issue as an assault on anyone's property rights. but i do believe that the health and safety of our neighborhoods is absolutely everybody's business.
if traffic was able to flow through at a steady rate, more calmly, people wouldn't be in such a rush to speed past your small business, and would be more inclined to stop in if the intersection didn't have such long lights to sit and grumble at.
and if traffic was calmer, people would be more likely to walk or bike to all of the surrounding businesses instead of driving from one parking lot to another. increased foot traffic leads to increased business.
(it bears mentioning that increased foot traffic also leads to healthier human beings because you are no longer driving everywhere)
i opened this issue because i travel through several traffic circles every time i visit my parents in cape cod, and the one in the center of hyannis, MA connects several small businesses to a steady stream of traffic, and it makes it easier to get to them. it also looks lovely with a small patch of grass and flowers in the center. it looks to me to be about the same amount of space as this intersection has.

aah, i actually said all of that, but gregL was still logged into this computer.
sorry for the mix-up
-juli

Juli makes excellent points that this needs to be carefully evaluated from an economic standpoint -- not just a traffic flow issue, as our engineers have been doing for the past 50 years.

We are trying to delineate issues that are current and need the city's attention to resolve. Any issues prior to 2013 are being closed. If your issue remains and needs to be addressed by the city, please either re-open or open as a new See Click Fix issue. Thanks.