30 October—Litchfield’s Traffic Safety Community Action Group had a meeting last Monday. I decided at the last minute not to go because the agenda warned me that, as usual, nothing of importance would be discussed. And from the minutes . . . wait a minute, the minutes haven’t been posted yet, so I can’t confirm that I was right. But I’m sure I was. (And how can you take anything called a community action group seriously?)

On leaf-peeping weekends and when there’s something going on at the Goshen Fairground or some other venue that attracts too many visitors, traffic on Rtes 118 (East Street), 202 (West Street), and 63 (North and South Streets), Litchfield’s main drags, tends to get backed up. Really backed up. But on normal weekdays, except at times during rush hours, it’s pretty fluid.

Except, that is, at the traffic light at North Street and the Green. (By the way, the 210-foot bit at the south end of North Street between the center and west sections of the Green, I’m told, among other municipal trivia, is properly called Union Street. Try not to forget it.) Contrary to popular belief, the problem at that light is not that pedestrians can push a button to manipulate the timing and thus screw drivers; from my own observation and experimentation, the buttons are just dummies, there only to keep pedestrians busy while they wait impatiently for permission to cross the street.

While the incommodious (but historically appropriate) juxtaposition of intersections around the Green certainly doesn’t help matters, the problem lies primarily with the timing of the one traffic light. There’s almost always at least a small back-up in all four directions at that light.

That’s because the red lights cycle for too long, pure and simple. But last Thursday and Friday, during normal business hours, traffic approaching the notorious light at the Green was backed up for the better part of a mile in at least two directions, and half a mile in the other two.

Could ConnDOT have been fiddling with the timing in its notoriously inept way last week? Rather than checking it out myself, I phoned ConnDOT to find out. So, after working my way through six answering machines from Commissioner Garrett Eucalitto’s alleged one on down, I left a message on the Communications Office answering machine to have the commissioner phone me. Does anybody pick up the phones at Conn DOT central? Does anybody work at Conn DOT headquarters?

Traffic was backed up again on Saturday and Sunday, possibly leaf-peepers. I haven’t checked today. Will Garrett—or even spokesman Josh Morgan—phone back? Josh did get back to me for my last ConnDOT appreciation—after it was published.

A couple of months ago the traffic light at the Green was out for several hours. And—wouldn’t you know it?—the traffic in all four directions flowed smoothly with no back-ups in any direction. Then a ConnDOT crew had to spoil it by turning the light on . . .