(a) Any town, city or borough may, by ordinance, designate highways or portions of highways as scenic roads and may regulate future alterations and improvements on such designated scenic roads, including, but not limited to, widening of the right-of-way or of the traveled portion of the highway, paving, changes of grade, straightening, removal of stone walls and removal of mature trees. No state highway or portion thereof may be designated as a scenic road under the provisions of this section.

(b) The power to designate such scenic roads may be delegated by ordinance to a planning commission or a combined planning and zoning commission. The ordinance shall prescribe the standards and procedures to be used to determine which highways or portions of highways shall be designated as scenic roads, except that to be designated as a scenic road, a highway or portion of a highway must be free of intensive commercial development and intensive vehicular traffic and must meet at least one of the following criteria: (1) It is unpaved; (2) it is bordered by mature trees or stone walls; (3) the traveled portion is no more than twenty feet in width; (4) it offers scenic views; (5) it blends naturally into the surrounding terrain, or (6) it parallels or crosses over brooks, streams, lakes or ponds.

(c) No highway or portion of a highway may be designated as a scenic road under this section unless the owners of a majority of lot frontage abutting the highway or portion of the highway agree to the designation by filing a written statement of approval with the town clerk of such town. The scenic road designation may be rescinded by the same designating authority, using the same procedures and having the written concurrence of the owners of a majority of lot frontage abutting the highway or portion of the highway.

(d) Any person aggrieved by a designation of a highway or portion of a highway as a scenic road pursuant to this section by a planning commission or a combined planning and zoning commission may appeal such designation in the manner and utilizing the same standards of review provided for appeals from the decisions of planning commissions under section 8-8.

(e) Any highway or portion of any highway designated as a scenic road shall be maintained by the town, city or borough in good and sufficient repair and in passable condition. Nothing in this section shall be deemed to prohibit a person owning or occupying land abutting a scenic road from maintaining and repairing the land which abuts the scenic road if the maintenance or repair occurs on land not within the right-of-way, paved or unpaved, of the scenic road.

(P.A. 81-401, S. 1, 4; P.A. 89-356, S. 3.)

History: P.A. 89-356 amended Subsec. (d) to replace reference to Sec. 8-28 with Sec. 8-8.