Windsor will vote this Tuesday, May 12, on the Town Budget and the Broad Street Traffic Calming and Pedestrian Safety Project, a proposal to make Windsor Center safer for drivers and pedestrians and make our downtown more walkable. This is a scaled-down version of an earlier proposal, with no roundabouts and fully funded by state and federal grants, with no cost to the Windsor taxpayer.
Across the country, Republican lawmakers have increasingly targeted town policies they view as ‘progressive,’ including local transportation and safety initiatives. Here in Windsor, they’ve been spreading misinformation about this project in order to defeat it. We need your help to keep this national Republican-driven rhetoric out of Windsor! Please read on for the facts and vote YES on both ballot questions.
Voting is Tuesday, May 12, 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. at your usual polling place. More information on Question 1, the Town Budget, is available here, and on Question 2, the Broad Street Project, is here. You can find out where to vote here. For a ride to the polls, call or text 860-580-9287.
What is a road diet?
A road diet reduces the number of travel lanes on a road, typically from four lanes to two, and repurposes the reclaimed space for other uses — a center turn lane, bike lanes, sidewalk extensions, on-street parking, or greenery. The redesign does not remove capacity, but to reconfigures the road to serve everyone who uses it: drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, and local businesses.
What is the Broad Street project?
The Broad Street Traffic Calming and Pedestrian Safety Project proposes to reconfigure Broad Street from four travel lanes to two, with a center turn lane. The redesign also includes dedicated bike lanes and sidewalk bump-outs with shorter crosswalks. There are no roundabouts in this version of the project.
The project is the result of decades of advocacy by residents and local business owners, and has been incorporated into Windsor’s Transit-Oriented Development Master Plan and Plan of Conservation and Development.
Haven’t we already voted on this?
Yes, and the version you’re being asked to vote on is a reduced version in response to previous feedback and votes.
The March 2025 referendum failed. That version of the project included roundabouts and carried a projected cost of roughly $6.1 million, which exceeded the funding the town had secured at the time. Opposition included concerns about potential costs to taxpayers and ambivalence about roundabouts.
The town listened. The revised project removes the roundabouts entirely, brings the scope in line with available funding, and is fully paid for — $4 million in state and federal grants, zero dollars from Windsor property taxes.
Won’t this cause traffic jams and slow everyone down?
This is the most common concern. Research consistently shows equal or better throughput and smoother traffic flow after road diets. Four-lane undivided roads with frequent left turns are often less efficient than three-lane roads with a dedicated center turn lane, because left-turning vehicles block through traffic and create unpredictable lane-change conflicts. A properly designed road diet eliminates that problem, allowing traffic to flow more smoothly.
The Federal Highway Administration has found that road diets reduce overall crashes by 19–47% while maintaining comparable traffic throughput, because intersections, not midblock lane count, are the primary constraint on capacity. Most road diets handle rush-hour traffic without incident. Broad Street is no exception: roughly 7 in 10 of its 10,000 daily vehicles are just passing through, and those drivers will continue to pass through, they’ll simply do so more safely.
What about when I-91 backs up?
Road diets handle overflow traffic well because the center turn lane keeps through-lanes clear of left-turning vehicles, the exact bottleneck that creates backups on four-lane undivided roads. The tradeoff being proposed by opponents isn’t a real tradeoff.
Let’s be clear about what this argument is asking. The claim is that we should leave a dangerous road unchanged so that, on the occasional day I-91 slows down, drivers will be marginally less inconvenienced by detour traffic. In exchange, elderly residents, children, people with disabilities, and everyone else who lives and works in Windsor Center must endure dangerous crossing conditions every other day of the year.
Will it hurt local businesses?
No, and the evidence points strongly in the opposite direction. Businesses thrive when people feel safe enough to walk, linger, and shop. A Broad Street that moves cars at high speed through town is not good for Windsor Center’s retail environment. Most of those 10,000 daily drivers aren’t stopping; they’re cutting through.
Road diets and pedestrian-friendly streetscapes attract foot traffic, increase dwell time, and raise property values. Hamburg, NY’s road diet produced a 60% decrease in crashes, a 90% decrease in serious injuries, and catalyzed a wave of social and economic revitalization: a farmers’ market, outdoor movie nights, street festivals, and steady population growth. Studies from cities across the country show similar results.
Nobody bikes on Broad Street. Why build bike lanes?
This is circular logic. People don’t bike on Broad Street because it’s unsafe — not the other way around. A road built to move vehicles as fast as possible, with wide lanes, fast traffic, and 50-foot crosswalks where cars can turn right on red even on a walk signal, is not a road that invites cycling.
Once roads are made safer, bicycle activity typically increases substantially, because people finally feel comfortable using them. That’s the documented pattern in community after community that has implemented these changes. We built an unsafe road, and then pointed to low bike counts as evidence that cyclists don’t exist.
What about emergency response times?
Road diets actually help emergency vehicles, not hinder them. With a center turn lane replacing two of the four travel lanes, ambulances and fire trucks have a clear path to use the center lane to get past stopped traffic, something that’s difficult on the many two-lane undivided roads in town, where there’s no dedicated space to pull aside. The bike lane also acts as additional capacity for vehicles moving out of the way of emergency vehicles. Slower vehicle speeds also mean fewer severe crashes for emergency services to respond to in the first place.
Won’t it push traffic into residential side streets?
This concern is understandable but not supported by the evidence. Road diets reduce conflict points and smooth flow on the main road, they don’t divert drivers who are already using that road as a through-route. Side streets typically see reduced cut-through traffic after a road diet, because the calmer main road no longer creates the backups that push drivers to seek shortcuts.
Worth noting: many residents from Pearson Lane and connected streets spoke publicly at town meetings in support of the project, and have asked for additional traffic calming on their streets as well.
Why not just put more police on Broad Street?
Because that solution is expensive, temporary, and doesn’t fix the underlying problem. Providing meaningful safety enforcement on Broad Street would require at minimum two additional officers, with salaries, benefits, and equipment paid directly from the general fund through property taxes. Just the starting salary for a single officer, sustained over a 50-year project lifespan, approaches $4 million, and that’s before, equipment, vehicles, or overtime.
Or: we fix the underlying problem permanently, right now, with $4 million in state and federal grants that Windsor has already secured.
What about the federal money — can we count on it?
Yes. The $3 million in federal funds has already been transferred from the federal government to the State of Connecticut and is currently held by the state comptroller. It is waiting for Windsor to authorize the project so bids can go out and the funds can be released. An additional $1 million in state funds has also been committed.
If Windsor votes no, the federal money is sent back to Washington and the state funds are redistributed to another town.
Won’t this raise my property taxes?
No. This project will not affect Windsor property taxes. The full $4 million cost is covered by state and federal grants. Windsor taxpayers pay zero dollars.
The argument that “it’s still our tax money” because it comes from state and federal coffers is technically true, but that’s how infrastructure funding works. We pay into the state and federal system so that towns can fund larger projects without placing the entire burden on local property owners. Refusing this money means paying into a system designed to benefit us and then declining the benefit.
They’re rushing this through!
This project has been under active discussion in Windsor Center for thirty years and in various phases of engineering design for over ten. The current timeline is driven by grant expiration deadlines. The $4 million Windsor has secured does not wait indefinitely.
The town has also demonstrated responsiveness: after the March 2025 vote, the project was redesigned to remove roundabouts and brought fully into line with available funding. That took time and effort. Calling the result “rushed” misrepresents the history.
What’s the bottom line?
Broad Street is dangerous. That’s not an opinion; it’s what the crash data shows, what Windsor Center residents experience, and what anyone who spends time there can see. The current design of the road prioritizes vehicle throughput over the safety of the people who live, work, and walk in this neighborhood. We are actively placing public and elderly housing in Windsor Center, and for those neighbors, crossing Broad Street is not optional. It is a daily necessity.
The good news is that we know how to fix it. Road diets are among the most well-studied transportation interventions available, with decades of federal research showing that they save lives, improve traffic flow, support local businesses, and pay for themselves over time. The money to do it is already sitting in the state comptroller’s account. Windsor just has to say yes.
