Stonington Bicycle / Pedestrian Fund to be voted on TONIGHT (7/24) at 7PM, Stonington High School. Residents of Pawcatuck, Stonington, and Mystic encouraged to attend and vote! Check-in begins at 6:30P. If you care about this, PLEASE SHOW UP & HAVE YOUR VOTE COUNTED. *Please also share this to help spread awareness of this item being voted on*

Within this special town meeting, one of the items to be voted on includes creating a town Bicycle / Pedestrian Fund to support bicycle and pedestrian safety enhancement projects. Historically, our town has not gone after active transportation grants due to the sheer reality that we cannot obtain the match from the town's Board of Finance. We were one vote away from securing a 20% match last month, meaning we have made progress, but we need alternative funding options to bring these transportation equity initiatives to life. A fund within the town allows our active transportation commissions and advocacy groups a feasible way forward with action and change to our streets.
We are stuck in a systematic battle between town and state roads whose improvements rely on collaborative care from Stonington, our Police Commission as the Local Traffic Authority (LTA) & CTDOT. While many of the processes and requirements of CTDOT are antiquated, we are stuck in their system of conditions; this aids in making improvement projects much more complicated and expensive than they ever should be. While we would still have to work with CTDOT on projects with state roads, a town fund dedicated towards these active transportation equity projects would allow us to work outside of CTDOTs system and define our own budgets and procedures to get things done on our local roadways. This would also allow us a fighting chance for awarded grants that address larger state-road projects (Route 1 & Route 27) requiring grant matching ability.

The current system has many layers and is incredibly complicated. There is a lot to say about this issue, especially in creating better understanding of how this process works for public knowledge and understanding. We do our best to provide a behind-the-curtain look at things for all interested in learning and advocating beside us. If you would like to learn more (beyond what we can provide in a post) please consider joining Bike Stonington and visiting www.bikestonington.org to get involved with our community efforts.