Roundabout Revolution Comes to Southwest Connecticut

For Stamford Representative Virgil de La Cruz, cutting the ribbon on the Greenwich Avenue–Pulaski Street roundabout project—the first roundabout in the city—was a long time coming.

“I cannot tell you how grateful I am for being here and finally seeing this project done. It’s been over 25 years advocating for this,” he said at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the roundabout on October 21. “I no longer have to worry about first responders having to climb the sidewalk to get around the traffic to get to their calls.”

The roundabout was the third in a series of projects aimed at “modernizing this connection to Waterside and the West Side, connecting It to the Transportation Center and Downtown Stamford,” according to Frank Petise, Stamford’s bureau chief of transportation, traffic, and parking. The $4 million project was funded mostly through the Connecticut Department of Transportation’s Local Transportation Capital Improvement Program.

“This roundabout is all about enhancing the connectivity, about improving pedestrian safety, about protecting residents whether you’re on a bike, walk or drive around our city—this provides all of the different options,” Mayor Caroline Simmons said. “This eases congestion for Waterside residents, and it looks absolutely beautiful.”

But Stamford isn’t the only community adding roundabouts around southwest Connecticut. This week, Fairfield also broke ground on a new roundabout at the intersection of Redding and Dunham Roads, and Norwalk is designing a roundabout to go in front of the new South Norwalk School.

Why a Roundabout? 

Modern roundabouts are slightly different than older traffic circles, which involved higher speeds and yielding within the circle. According to the Connecticut Department of Transportation, modern roundabouts follow a “yield-at-entry” rule, involve lower speeds, and are smaller than traffic circles of decades ago. This makes them safer, according to officials. According to a study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety of 23 intersections in the United States, converting them from traffic signals or stop signs to roundabouts reduced injury crashes by 80 percent and all crashes by 40 percent. 

Local officials voiced similar views, stating that roundabouts are effective ways to make the intersections of roads safer, while keeping traffic flowing. 

“There’s no stop or traffic signal that turns red—it’s a slower speed, but that also increases the safety. It also reduces crashes at intersections—even when crashes do happen, it’s at a lot lower speeds,” Petise said, adding that when crashes do occur they usually are “at an angle entering or leaving the roundabout,” and not a head-on collision. 

Kyle Benjamin, a traffic analyst for Norwalk, said the slower speeds are essential to making intersections safer for drivers and pedestrians. 

“Vehicles will be slowed down, so that gives you more time to look,” he said to the Public Works Committee of the Common Council in July. “And then also, being a shorter crossing, you'll have more time to make it across to the pedestrian island and then to the other side.”

Fairfield Police Chief Robert Kalamaras said that the new roundabout the town is installing on Redding Road includes three main components of street safety—education, enforcement and engineering. 

“This (roundabout) is a proven safety countermeasure that will definitely create some improvement not only in the speed of the vehicles, but safety and the turning conflicts that occur at this intersection,” he said.

Stamford’s Roundabout: Reconnecting Waterside to Downtown 

The Greenwich Avenue–Pulaski Street roundabout was the third in a series of projects aimed at relieving congestion issues in the Waterside neighborhood and better connecting it to the train station and downtown.

The first project turned Greenwich Avenue and Davenport Street each into one-way roads to create a “one-way circulator into Waterside.” The second part included improvements to the Selleck Street/Southfield Avenue and Greenwich Avenue intersection, followed by the third piece, the city’s first roundabout at Greenwich Avenue and Pulaski Street. 

“This transformed the entire corridor to provide multimodal travel,” Petise said. “There’s now a southbound bike lane on Greenwich Avenue, exiting the roundabout, a northbound bike lane on Davenport Street, and all new sidewalks as well on Davenport.”

De La Cruz said he’s heard positive feedback from residents so far, particularly about the roundabout.

“Even the skeptics have commented to me that it is working much better than they ever thought it would and perhaps this can be an example for other locations in Stamford that could benefit from a project like this,” he said. 

Petise said this three-part project is part of larger investments taking place in the area, as well as the city’s ongoing Vision Zero efforts. 

“We have several other projects coming that are going to complement this project as well—the pedestrian bridge going across the Rippowam River; we also have a multi-use bike trail from Greenwich into Stamford through a partnership with the town of Greenwich that’s in design; and we have another $17 million grant from the federal government, a reconnecting communities grant to connect Tresser Boulevard to Pulaski Street.”

Norwalk’s Roundabout: Improving School Safety

The intersection of South Main Street, Meadow Street, and Wilson Avenue, which all come together in front of the new South Norwalk School will soon be a roundabout, in an effort to make the area safer and easier to navigate. 

Kyle Benjamin, a traffic analyst for the city, told the Public Works Committee of the Common Council back in July that the intersection was a great fit for a roundabout, as it will help the traffic slow down to make it safer for pedestrians in the area while also moving traffic more efficiently since cars won’t be stopping at stop signs for a long period of time.

“We think that a roundabout will be a perfect solution in this area, especially with the issues in both traffic crashes and pedestrian safety, especially with the school going there,” Benjamin said, adding that the roundabout will also allow for “trucks and buses and the many types of vehicles that are going to be going through that intersection” to navigate it safely. 

The city set aside $1 million in its capital budget and received a $2.5 million state grant to help fund the work at the intersection. Norwalk is also using $1.5 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds to invest in sidewalks in the area. 

“The majority of students who come to this school, they’ll be able to walk safely on sidewalks, they’ll be able to cross streets like a roundabout that will calm traffic,” Jim Travers, the director of the Transportation, Mobility, and Parking, said at a steel topping ceremony for the new school earlier this month. 

Travers said the projects came to life in part thanks to community members and parents who raised concerns about traffic in the area.

“We heard the community who told us the investments here are important, but also told us that we need a transportation system that gets us to school, that this intersection here is one of the most challenging intersections to arrive to, so we’re fixing that,” he said. “We’ll have that done together in a safe and efficient manner.” 

Fairfield’s Roundabout: Slowing Down Traffic on a Dangerous Road 

On October 23, Fairfield officials broke ground on a roundabout at the intersection of Redding and Dunham Roads. The goal of the roundabout is to help “slow traffic moving through this area as well as markedly improve line of sight issues at this low visibility intersection,” according to a statement from First Selectman Bill Gerber. 

Gerber noted in his statement that the town has “made a number of safety improvements to Redding Road, including edge lines that visually narrow the road and slow drivers, center rumble strips that warn drivers when they leave their lane, and reflective post delineators on all speed limit signs on Redding Road that catch the attention of drivers, especially at night.”

The work on Redding Road comes after two pedestrian fatalities on the road since 2020 including a crash in 2023, which killed Meghan Raveis.

“This is just the beginning,” Gerber said at the groundbreaking. “We are looking at many other streets that are also dangerous to see if we can slow people down through [street] architecture and provide safe spaces for people to walk.”

Governor Ned Lamont and the State Bond Commission approved $1 million on October 22 to go toward “improved pedestrian and vehicle safety in the Greenfield Hill area, and go toward installing roundabouts and other traffic calming measures along Redding Road.” 

Officials also said the town is working on a study to review and analyze intersecting roads for vehicular, pedestrian, and bicycle safety on Redding, Mill Plain, and Sturges roads.