Weston resident Bill Dedman is a Pulitzer- and Peabody Award-winning investigative journalist, and author of the bestselling biography ‘Empty Mansions.” He writes:
Have you or your visitors been confused by the new exit numbers on the Merritt Parkway? Have you noticed the haphazard way that the small “OLD EXIT” number signs vary in placement, from one exit to the next?
As you drive north from the New York line, the first sign for Greenwich at the new Exit 3 (3 miles from the state line), has no smaller sign saying “OLD EXIT 28.”
Exit 4 does have the “OLD EXIT” number on its first sign.
Exit 5 does not.
And so it goes, with “OLD EXIT” markers for a little more than half the first signs for exits between the New York line and Westport.
Exit 42 — er, 21 — does have an “Old Exit” sign 1/2 mile away.
Confusing drivers further, many of the exits have no “OLD EXIT” number at the most important new exit sign: the one where you have to make a go-or-no-go decision to move into the turn lane to make the exit. (Perhaps astonishing other drivers by first putting on your turn signal.)
Yet nearly all the exits do have an “OLD EXIT” number placed right after it’s too late the make the turn — after the exit lane has already split completely from the parkway.
But that sign is often not visible. It’s blocked by the back of the “WRONG WAY” sign placed right next to it, to warn wrong-way drivers.
This sign comes after drivers have already had to make a decision. (Photos/Adrian Mueller)
Most GPS systems have caught up to the new exit numbers. Other systems have not.
The Connecticut Department of Transportation publicized an email address for questions and comments about the new signs: DOT.TrafficEngineering@ct.gov.
So I asked, why not put the small “OLD EXIT” numbers on every new sign? And why do some exits have the “OLD EXIT” on the first sign, when others do not?
I received a kind reply from Tyler Clark, a transportation engineer. He copied senior engineer James Massini and supervising engineer Barry Schilling.
Clark said drivers want fewer signs.
“From our experience, less tends to be more. We have received more complaints about having too many signs, than not enough.”
The “gore” he refers to is an old word for the point at the crotch between the two legs of road and exit ramp. In other words: too late.
The DOT did not say why the signs vary from exit to exit as to whether the first sign has an “OLD EXIT” number.
Nor why the most important sign — the one at the point where drivers have to make a decision — usually does not have that “OLD EXIT” number.
Nor why the only sign that always has the “OLD EXIT” number is the one when it’s already too late to make the turn.
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