By Jesse Williams/Zip06.com • 06/08/2021 02:17 p.m. EST
Town officials are celebrating some significant additions by the state to staffing and transportation at Hammonasset Beach State Park, including new bus service and some additional law enforcement personnel, for which Madison has been pushing since at least 2016.
“Especially since last summer really put a spotlight on the traffic and congestion problems we were facing...there was a real effort to come up with different ways to provide public transportation,” said First Selectmen Peggy Lyons.
Governor Ned Lamont announced the new bus line, which will run from the center of downtown Madison near the library to Middle Beach at Hammonasset Beach State Park, late last month through a program called ParkConneCT, which will also serve other state beaches and parks.
Additionally, the state recently finished training 30 new seasonal special conservation officers specifically for state beaches, according to a press release from the Department of Energy & Environmental Protection (DEEP), who will serve as ancillary support to full-time DEEP law enforcement.
These new positions are not exactly full law enforcement, with no powers of arrest, but can issue tickets and will focus primarily on educational and public engagement, according to the release.
Lyons credited recent lobbying efforts by the town, including a presentation put together for DEEP officials a couple months ago, for helping create these new state-level investments, expressing cautious optimism that Madison residents will see a mitigation of crowding and nuisance, as well as better access for everyone to both downtown and the popular state park.
“This was part of a lot of the conversations we had with DEEP last summer,” Lyons said. “We’re not the only town that has had those problems, but I think they found it very helpful that we documented it—we actually talked about data, and tried to provide them more background information [as] to why there were all these problems.”
Just last weekend, Lyons responded to what she called “a lot of frustration” due to crowds with an extensive Facebook post, saying that the town can’t fully staff its own beaches until school gets out on Monday, June 14 and that traffic jams, especially at the Surf Club entrance, were being exacerbated by a variety of factors, including the first closure of Hammonasset and sporting events
In the post she encouraged more people to use the new bus service, and said the town has “looked at” expanding lanes or adding an alternative exit route to the Surf Club due to these issues.
According to the presentation made to DEEP, Madison Police and Fire departments and ambulances had responded to 1,559 calls inside or adjacent to Hammonasset between July 2020 and March 2021—up significantly from the previous year, when emergency responders received 1,156 for the entire year.
The town also has purchased or rented a number of specialty equipment items or vehicles, including a rescue boat, a beach rescue vehicle, and electronic message boards, at a cost of close to $200,000.
“We’re fortunate to have Hammonasset and it’s a great asset to our community, but it does create an obligation,” Lyons said.
The new bus service will be entirely free on weekends and holidays, extending from Memorial Day to Labor Day and will include two brand new lines: a 30-minute daily run exclusively from Madison to Hammonasset’s Middle Beach, and a weekend service that runs from Middletown that also stops at Hammonasset.
Lyons said the hope is that the buses will have a dual effect of mitigating some of the long-running issues with people crowding Madison roads and parking illegally or dangerously, and also giving visitors a chance to easily migrate downtown to patronize local businesses.
“It will just make things run a lot more smooth for the summer, for the town as well as people visiting Hammonasset,” she said.
The service has the potential to not only benefit visitors, but also locals who don’t drive or don’t like to drive—possibly teenagers who are too young or seniors who would prefer to avoid the stressful experience, according to Lyons.
“It just offers another option where you don’t need a car,” she said.
Publicizing these new opportunities will be a big part of ensuring the efficacy of a program like the bus service, Lyons added; if people aren’t aware of the program they will continue to rely on cars. Lamont announced the new bus lines three days before service started.
One of the big issues last year—people parking at the town-owned Salt Meadow Park and walking to Hammonasset—isn’t necessarily solved by these new additions. Lyons said ideally a removal of capacity limits at the state park and the buses will erase the need for people to use Salt Meadow Park as a de facto overflow parking, though the town is working on contingency plans if it does become an issue.
In the presentation to DEEP, Madison requested the ability to charge out of town residents to park at Salt Meadow, which is currently disallowed due to stipulations in grants used for that park.
On the public safety and enforcement side, Lyons said that Madison police will continue the practice of “shoreline patrol,” which she said was “appreciated” by the public last summer. The number of officers or resources dedicated to that effort will likely be lessened due to the additional seasonal DEEP officers, according to Lyons.
As far as how local emergency responders will share the responsibility of public safety, Lyons said the town will remain the primary 911 response at Hammonasset, though the hope is that state officers will essentially take a front-line role and defuse issues before they escalate to the emergency level.
Specific questions of responsibilities and jurisdiction—whether DEEP will be taking over parking or traffic enforcement, for instance—are being worked out between the Madison Police Departmentand the state, Lyons said.
Madison Police Captain Joe Race had not responded to an email seeking more information at press time.
Though remaining optimistic that these new state initiatives will create an immediate, positive effect on summer recreation, Lyons said it was hard to imagine exactly how this summer will look at the beaches around Madison, with no real way of knowing how much the pandemic, weather, or other trends will affect people’s behavior.
“I think we’re all aware of where the problems are, we have different ways we can address them. I think it’s just, ‘Let’s see what happens.’ It’s a little unpredictable this summer,” she said.
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