Winsted Board of Selectmen: Bridge Street Intersection Design Scrapped

9/15/2025
Present:  Todd Arcelaschi, William Hester, Troy Lamere, William Pozzo, Paul Marino, Linda Groppo, Candy Perez

Paul Harrington confirmed during his Town Manager’s report that the controversial redesign of the Bridge Street intersection was scrapped.

“To put it mildly, it was very spirited,” Harrington said of the response at the informational meeting the previous week. “Residents came out and they voiced their true opinion of what they thought of the Bridge Street redesigned intersection.”

The town had posted about the changes on social media, but Harrington said it wasn’t until lane lines started getting painted that attention, and consternation, really started growing.

“We knew internally that this was a drastic change. So, we came up with the plan of, well, I guess we gotta’ paint it and show people exactly what (it will look like),” Harrington said. The public opposition was centered around traffic flow changes and safety, which prompted Harrington to acknowledge that the proposals were flawed. “That was the best of the worst plans that (VHB, the engineer) had presented,” Harrington said, adding that some of the alternatives included roundabouts and potentially “pretty costly” property acquisitions.

As a result of the change, crews promptly began removing cones and painting over the lane markings. “We’re gonna’ regroup, we’re gonna’ get with VHB” Harrington said. “We’re going back. … Bridge Street all the way will be two ways, up and down. …

“Although it was spirited, some great ideas surfaced from that particular meeting about what our residents thought we should do,” Harrington added. “So, we're gonna’ bring some of those ideas back to our engineers and see if some of those ideas we can actually put forward.”

There had been $929,000 earmarked for the project. $100,000 was for study and the rest for implementation, but Harrington emphasized that the money was funded through a state grant and that “not one dollar of Winsted taxpayer money was used.”

Perez encouraged extra caution as the town navigates the project going forward, so that costs don’t spiral out of control and potentially land on taxpayers. "If we lost $200,000 already, you don’t want to get an engineer involved and lose another $100,000 to fix the problem. … That’s a priority that came up at that meeting.”