The town has applied for a $500,000 grant from the state Office of Policy and Management to build a third and free commuter parking lot to serve riders on the shuttle bus to the Katonah, N.Y., station.
A shuttle bus connects Ridgefield to the Katonah train station, but parking has run out at the two existing free park-and-ride lots, at Jesse Lee Memorial Church and Prospect Ridge.
The town should know by the fall whether it has been approved for the construction grant, said Charlie Fisher, town engineer, who wrote the application.
It has a good shot, he said. The town already owns the property.
“We have a site adjacent to East Ridge Middle School that will hold 60 cars,” Fisher said.
The bus stop park-and-ride lot will be a key improvement, because commuters have run out of parking spaces, said Richard Schreiner, director of service development for Housatonic Area Regional Transit, known as HART, based in Danbury.
The district operates the SweetHART bus and Danbury-to-Norwalk line.
“Right now there’s no room for parking for the Ridgefield-to-Katonah shuttle, we’re shut out,” Schreiner said.
The service has been operating since 2002, he said.
The line gets decent use. On average there are 250 to 270 bus passengers per day between Ridgefield and New York state, he said.
If the town wins the grant, the construction project will require approval from the local Wetlands and Planning and Zoning commissions.
Construction would probably start next summer, Fisher said.
Importantly, the proposed new parking lot would include a sidewalk, said First Selectman Rudy Marconi.
“A lot of people don’t like using the lot at the dog park because it’s not well illuminated and it gets muddy,” Marconi said.
The new lot could also be used on weekends as an overflow lot for the nearby sports fields, he said.
The grant money would be from the Small Town Economic Assistant Program, known as STEAP.