Traffic Light Coming to Fifth Avenue

Try turning left from Fifth Avenue onto Osborne Street late in the afternoon.

"I've waited 10 minutes," said Western Connecticut State University Student Deb Bernard. "I don't go that way anymore. If you try, you have to be very aggressive, and then people are honking at you."

"You can't make that turn. You'll get killed," said state Senator Michael McLachlan, 24th district.

Osborne Street at Hospital Avenue, one block away from Fifth Avenue, has a traffic light. A new light will be built at Fifth Avenue. The problem arises because when Osborne Street is red and Hospital Avenue is green, so many cars come down Hospital Avenue and turn onto Osborne, no one gets a break a block away at Fifth Avenue. They can't pull out. Cars on Fifth Avenue trying to turn west on Osborne toward Main Street are trapped there for minutes at a time. Behind them, cars back up on Fifth Avenue.

Abdul Mohammed, the city's traffic engineer, said putting the two traffic lights near each other (Hospital and Fifth) will allow the two lights to coordinate and better clear traffic jams.

In addition to car traffic, about 65 percent of the students who attend the Ellsworth Avenue School walk to school. The school has an entrance at the Fifth Street/Osborne Street intersection. That leads car traffic through the same intersection as the elementary school students, Western Connecticut State University drivers, and traffic from Danbury Hospital.

"We've had a lot of accidents at that intersection," Mohammed said.