NORTH HAVEN

The Connecticut Department of Transportation (DOT) is proposing to reconfigure two sections along a state route in North Haven that has been a location for a high rate of automobile crashes.

One of the sections up for reconfiguration is Interchange 62 along Route 15 northbound—an area that the DOT deemed to have “substandard geometric conditions,'' according to its announcement of the proposal. This is the primary objective of a two-part project, with the secondary objective being to reconfigure the intersection of Dixwell Avenue and Vista Road—another area where they are looking to reduce automobile crashes through better operations.

“This project is needed because the existing acceleration and deceleration lengths are insufficient and do not provide adequate distances for merging and diverging at appropriate speeds, resulting in a higher-than-expected number of crashes,” according to the DOT. “Further, the lack of turning lanes on all legs of the ramp termini [Vista Road] and SR 717 [Dixwell Avenue] intersection contribute to both congestion and crashes.”

According to the manager of the project, Jeffrey Pfaffinger, the DOT initiated this project in 2021 following 12 years of traffic studies in the area of reconfiguration.

“This particular project came out of a 2009 study of the Route 15 corridor, the Wilbur Cross Parkway in general,” said Pfaffinger.

The Route 15 project is part of a greater seven-year, three-phase project by the DOT to alleviate traffic concerns across Connecticut, including congestion, automobile accidents, and other improvements to safety.

“The reason that this got initiated is we are going through all the interchanges and trying to fix deficiencies and, specifically, like the stop-controlled ones because those tend to result in a lot of safety issues,” said Pfaffinger.

Substandard designs along major state routes will be addressed for motorists traveling northward along Interstate-91, Interstate-691, and Route 15.

The DOT estimates a total cost between $400 million and $500 million for the seven-year project, which is currently in its first phase.

According to the DOT data studied for the project, between the spring of 2014 and 2017, there were 852 crashes, 233 injuries, and one fatality in the area. Within the Route 15 northbound-Dixwell Avenue project area in North Haven, there were 118 crashes recorded between January 2018 and December 2022.

“Eighty-five of those crashes were on Route 15, and those were generally clustered around the stop-controlled on-ramp, and then the remaining 33 were on Dixwell Avenue in or around the traffic signal,” said Pfaffinger.

The project “will revise the geometry of the Route 15 Interchange 62 Northbound” area, according to the proposal announcement. The display plan of the project proposes shifting on-ramps and off-ramps from Vista Road onto Route 15 northbound, in addition to constructing new acceleration and deceleration lanes.

Pfaffinger said that the deceleration lane will have new off-ramps to allow for cars to “slow down outside of the mainline traffic, getting them out of the lane and onto an area that they can slow down before they get onto the ramps, so they're not affecting the traffic on Route 15.” The acceleration lane will have new on-ramps to allow vehicles “to get up to speed before they need to merge into the mainline traffic,” on Route 15, he added. Existing space at and around the current configuration of the state route will be filled in, according to the display plan.

The display plan is available on the Town of North Haven’s website at www.town.north-haven.ct.us/news_detail_T4_R226.php.

The acceleration lane onto Route 15 will begin at the intersection of Dixwell Avenue and Vista Road, where the DOT recognizes a need for an upgrade of existing traffic control signals and lane configurations. Aside from addressing the “higher-than-expected number of crashes” in that area, the issue of congestion needs to be addressed, as well.

Currently, vehicles on Dixwell Avenue that stop to make a left turn onto Route 15 “essentially need to pull into the shoulder to get around” other vehicles, said Pfaffinger.

“At a certain point, not all the vehicles get around,” he said.

The DOT is looking to add a left-turn lane on Dixwell Avenue to accommodate leftward-turning vehicles that would enter the newly constructed on-ramp. A through lane at the intersection “will allow everybody to get through, and it won’t get stacked up if somebody stops to make a left,” said Pfaffinger.

“We are also adding a second lane on the off-ramp [of Route 15], so that there will be a left-turn lane for people turning onto Dixwell Avenue, so it will reduce the queues,” Pfaffinger said. “There’s not a lot of traffic coming up Vista, but right now, if a vehicle needs to stop to make that left to allow somebody on Vista to come through, the traffic stacks up behind them while they’re waiting.”

Pfaffinger added that the existing traffic signal at Dixwell-Vista intersection will be completely replaced with new equipment.

There are right-of-way impacts associated with the improvements that would occur adjacent to properties on Ridge Road, Vista Road, Dixwell Avenue, Hilltop Terrace, and Beachwood Drive. The DOT identifies these impacts as “rights to reconstruct driveways to tie into the altered road edges of the pavement, partial priority acquisitions of the construction of the widened Dixwell Avenue, installation of traffic signal mast arm foundations, relocation of utility poles, and an easement for the installation and maintenance of guide rail on the north end of Ridge Road.”

According to Pfaffinger, these impacts are “all very minor.”

“We are widening the road out a little bit, which does sort of impact the property lines, but it's just a couple of properties where there are some very minor slivers that need to be taken in order to accommodate both the new, widened roadway and the new traffic signal that we're putting in,” Pfaffinger said.