A road by any other name...
Lookout Drive — there’s two in Ridgefield, and town officials are looking into the possibility of renaming them to reduce confusion.
“You have two roads, not connected, with the same name,” First Selectman Rudy Marconi told the Board of Selectmen’s Dec. 11 meeting.
It’s a concern for emergency services, according to Fire Chief Jerry Myers, because the driver of an ambulance or a fire truck could end up looking for a house number on the road, and not find it because that number house is on the other road with the same name.
“If you get sent to that road, whichever one you choose, you could be sent to the wrong one,” Chief Myers said.
“...You go to whatever Lookout Drive you come to first, and then we’re hunting around for the correct house.”
And in emergencies — heart attacks, fires — time is critical.
The two Lookout Drives are close together.
“Lookout Drive runs from Lakeview Drive to Highview Drive, and it connects Lakeview to Highview,” Chief Myers said. “But there’s another portion of the road that’s just off of that, that’s off of Lakeview, that’s just a short dead end.
“The residents tell me of the intention years ago to connect the two, but it never happened.”
They’re also worried.
“The residents of the smaller one were concerned, they sent a petition,” Myers said.
“I went out there, I met with the residents, and I drove around and looked at the situation,” he said.
Myers came up with a partial solution, but he’d rather change the road names — at least a little..
“The fact is we still have two roads with exactly the same name, that aren’t connected. And in my mind that’s always going to present a challenge to emergency response teams,” Myers said.
“So I suggested to the first selectman that we change the names to something like Lookout Drive North and Lookout Drive South,” Myers said.
“All I’m suggesting is, if we want to eliminate the possibility of confusion, separate the two portions of the road by different names.”
The selectmen took no action on the matter, but may in the future act upon the chief’s suggestion that the two roads’ names be amended.
“I don’t know the process, which is why I referred it to the first selectman,” Myers said.
And no one raised the issue that there a third road in town called Lookout Point — over by Lake Pierrepont, which also has a second name, Lake Naraneka.