(12/11) The Fairfield Borough Planning Commission may take-on line-of-sight issues at some of the borough intersections if given the go-ahead by the borough council.
The prospect of the review of borough intersections was discussed at the December 10 meeting of the commission.
According to the commission, the town ship engineers, C.S. Davidson, performed a study sometime ago of the town roads and alleys and determined that there were several problematic intersections.
The main concern was deficient line-of-sight when entering onto Main Street from some of the arterial streets, such as the intersections of Water and Balder streets with Main Street.
Anyone who has attempted to enter onto Main Street from some of the arterial streets often finds then "nosing" their vehicle a little too far out for comfort in order to be able to see if it is clear to proceed.
Councilman Carroll Smith, who acts as liaison to the planning commission, said, "You know, if you’re trying to enter Main Street from a side street, you better know what you’re doing or you’re going to get T-boned."
The study has been in the hands of the council, but to date no action has been taken to further investigate any of the findings, although the council did request and recently received some additional information from C.S. Davidson pertaining to the study.
If and when the commission is asked to proceed with a review of the intersections, Smith said dealing with line-of-sight problems will likely generate other issues in the process.
Addressing line-of-sight, he said, "would require some changes on Main Street and possibly other streets. That brings up the problem of where are some people going to park (if parking spaces are eliminated in order to provide proper line-of-sight)."
One fix might involve having residents who park on Main Street relocate their parking space to the rear of their Main Street properties, where that possibility exists, in order to create sacrificial parking spaces on Main Street that could be given up to created better lines-of-sight at the intersections.
However, the planning commission cannot begin to "officially" address the intersection problems until directed to do so by the council.
"This is something council should direct action or no action on," Smith stated. "At some point in time I guess it will come to us."
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