TORRINGTON – The City of Torrington, along with funds provided by the local Recreation Board, School District, and Rotary Club have begun the process of redoing, as well as installing new, much needed crosswalk work and improvements throughout town. In total, the city will be investing roughly $50,000 dollars in grants and funding to ensure far better safety on the streets of Torrington.

As much of the community may have noticed in recent years, crosswalks throughout certain parts of town have been fading a bit as far as color and noticeability, increasing the safety risk for both drivers and pedestrians.

Chief Matt Johnson of the Torrington Police Department recently spoke of the project, and believes firmly that the new investment with city crosswalks is one that is undoubtedly worthwhile and long overdue for.

“I have two motivations in talking about it,” Johnson began. “The first is to celebrate a cool accomplishment for the community. There is a partnership with the Rotary Club using grant funding from the Rec. Board, along with club funds to put together enough resources that we could do a very robust project, as far as improving the safety of our walking path. This was nicely supported by the city of Torrington, and the sanitation department. Excited about that improvement, but of course excited about the fantastic partnership in people working together to make it come together.”

Johnson then continued with the additional concern over the new project, one that dealt far more with the safety of both pedestrians and drivers in the town.

In accordance with State Statute 31-5-602, the law states that a traffic-control signal means any device, whether manually, electrically, or mechanically operated, by which traffic is alternately directed to stop and permitted to proceed.

“If there is a pedestrian, according to state statute, the driver is required to yield.,” Johnson said. “Whether it be a crosswalk or marked with a pedestrian crossing signal, all of our pedestrian crossings are now marked, and drivers have an obligation to yield. We just really need our folks to be very aware. We just had a kid who was hit on his bike outside the pool coming in front of a vehicle, and the vehicle stopped quickly. We are so grateful that this was not a catastrophe, but we really want folks to be aware that it can happen. It can happen right here in our community and we are begging for everyone’s studious attention to make sure that we do not have a catastrophe. We need folk’s help, we really do.”

Chief Johnson gave special recognition to Ed Holly, Torrington Sanitation Supervisor, as well as  contributors Doug Peterson, Jake Johner and Mike Sandusky with the efforts of getting the project underway.

Other contributing members in the project include Coby Romig with Baker and Associates, Dr. Tim Pieper who has been instrumental in the Torrington Walking Path for several years, Project Manager Mark Weis and Director of Public Works Jeff Harkins.

The new and improved crosswalks will be upgraded with the brighter, more noticeable material known as thermoplastic. The material will be spread over the heated local blacktops with very resilient coating, and the lifespan of thermoplastic is expected to last for up to possibly ten years.

According to Johnson, this material is a vast development over what the city has used for with crosswalks in the past.

“If anyone is familiar with street mapping and marking, most of the time they will use paint on the blacktop to create the markings,” Johnson said. “That is an age old trial and true process, but it has to be redone frequently within two to three years. In our case with snow and ice, and such hot and cold temperatures, the city has to keep up with it every year. That’s a lot of maintenance.”

According to Chief Johnson, there has not been one particular incident that prompted the city to make the changes to the crosswalks, but in looking ahead long term, the city feels that this will benefit not only the safety of drivers and pedestrians, but will also increase the safety for outside events such as dances and races.

“It opens up events for us as a community,” Johnson stated. “There’s a lot of communities that do 5k walks and runs. We just approved our first one. Previous to that we would’ve been having to close vast sections of streets in order to do something like that. When you think about the advantage of having crosswalks through certain parts of town, we can do some of those things because the pedestrians have the right way. We don’t have to close huge parts of our streets. If you look at doing a 5k run through town, we would have to close off blocks of streets or have a police officer at every crossing. In this case the runners will still have to pay attention so don’t assume you have the right of way and run out front. However, they are in a much safer place to have a fun community experience.”

All in all the project will include 17 crosswalks which will be added or improved. Crosswalks on Main St. as well as East D will include LED flashing lights to increase visibility of pedestrians, as Main currently remains the busiest street in Torrington.

Johnson was amusing in the visibility of the lights already installed on Main St.

“They are super visible,” Johnson said. “Actually they’re knock-your-eyes-out visible.”

For further questions or information on this matter, please feel free to call the Torrington PD at 307-534-7001.